No doubts could be for long entertained as to what the smudge was expected to accomplish. Its dense and suffocating fumes not only rendered a further watch upon the clearing or the trail practically useless, but it seemed to Grenville highly improbable that he or Elaine could for long survive the pungent reek they were soon obliged to breathe.
There were two slight elements only in their favor. One was the passageway, through the rock, where clean fresh air was constantly flowing upward; the other was the very breeze itself that swept the smoke upon them. It frequently split the cloud of black and gray upon two juttings of the headland, or even beat it down and mingled its own overheated but acceptable ozone with the otherwise stifling fume.
Anger and horror together had lodged in Grenville's being. That the Dyaks would soon attempt a sneak upon them, under cover of the cloud, he felt was as certain as that hideous death must be their portion, were this business sufficiently prolonged. Even retirement to the cavern could avail them nothing but a short delay of the fate they must finally face when their food and water should be presently exhausted.
Under cover of the drifting smudge, he sent Elaine to the passage. As long as a breath remained in his lungs he resolved he would not desert his post, where he waited for attack by the trail. To permit the fiends to swarm upon the terrace, destroy or capture his powder and the gun, and prison himself and Elaine in the narrow gallery, was a thought that aroused him through and through.
All further contemplation of his scheme for alluring the Dyaks to the cavern was necessarily abandoned. The most he could do was to watch as before, and, perhaps, convey his bombs and stores to the passage, as time and his highly essential vigilance permitted.
Back and forth through the smoke he moved upon the hill, seeking the better air that came occasionally through the billows, and listening intently for the faintest sound from the always ready alarm. When an hour had gone and no attack had developed, his heart underwent a new despair. He began to doubt that the Fates would supply him an opportunity for further retaliation on the fiends below, who could finally overcome him with the fumes.
The drift of smoke was intermittently broken, near the trail, where apparently a current of wind that assumed a rotation as it rose through a half-round niche of considerable dimensions in the wall, swept vertically upward to lift the billowing cloud. Thus for at least a portion of the time Grenville could glimpse the ledge behind the trail where besiegers must finally pass.
So dense became the reek, however, that he feared his post must soon become insupportable. There was neither time nor air in which to arrange a longer fuse, which, as a matter of fact, would be too long for accurate work with the gun.
He knew at last the hour was nearing sunset, and silence still seemed to roll with the smoke across the enveloped terrace. His eyes were burningly filled with water; his head had begun to ache. He went weakly over towards the gallery, intent upon breathing a little fresher air before resuming his duties.
Suddenly, above the ringing in his ears, came a sound from his gate alarm. Its deep hollow tone was strangely resonant in all that blanket of smoke. He darted back, where lay his bombs and the short fuse laid to the cannon.
The smudge had, unfortunately, fallen like a pall, concealing all the trail. It lifted slightly, however, as a fog may lift over waters, revealing one half-seen form upon the ledge.
Then, in the second that Grenville laid his fire to the powder, his second alarm, from the frame of bamboo buckets, hung behind him on the wall, rattled out its xylophonic warning. The head-hunting demons, front and rear, were practically upon him!
He fired the gun. Its orange flame shot out through the smoke in ragged spears, mingling the fume of imperfect powder with all that reek from the jungle.
A gap was apparently torn in the rolling cloud, to be filled with a denser substance. Nothing could possibly be discerned where the charge must have splattered on the wall. There were cries in the air, but whether from pain, or the Dyaks' exultation, Grenville could never have told.
Aware that the demons were capable of sacrificing some of their number to the gun, to beget its discharge, and thus clear the way for concerted attack by greater numbers, Grenville promptly lighted the fuse of a bomb and hurled it from him down the trail.
It burst in the smoke, its red blot of fire a lurid illumination in the black and gray billows from the smudge. Again a cry succeeded, this one unquestionably voicing some wretch's mortal agony in the all-concealing fume.
Without for a moment pausing, Grenville plunged swiftly through the drifting envelope, to gain the brink at the rear. He caught up a rock as he stumbled half blindly onward, and blew on the fire of his brand.
A thicker shroud of the reek revolved about him, halting him there to gasp for breath, which he stooped in the hope of finding. He dropped the stone as a useless burden. Once more he staggered onward—and blundered against a Dyak, more blinded than himself!
The creature had scaled the wall despite the bamboo framework and its cups, or wooden bells! He and Sidney were instantly locked in a fierce and deadly embrace!
A battle as silent as it was swift and ferocious was curtained there in the smoke.
That the edge was near was a knowledge equally shared, as each man wrestled in desperate violence to overcome his antagonist and hurl him down to the sea.
More by instinct than design, Grenville had paused to grip his firebrand hotly between his teeth. He had seen that the head-hunter held a knife, which was instantly turned, as the boatman writhed in Sidney's arms, in an effort to sink it to the hilt.
Grenville, however, clutched the wiry wrist with all his might, and tried to fetch it upward for a quickly planned maneuver. It slipped from his grip, and together he and the native froze more savage than before. The Dyak once more attempted a stabbing pass, and Sidney again caught the sinewy hand, in a clutch that he knew must fail.
The wrist left his impotent fingers like a snake. The whole arm writhed backward for the stroke. Sidney abruptly leaned forward, turning his head, and jabbed the red-hot firebrand against the Dyak's eye.
With a shriek of pain the fellow lurched galvanically, to stab with demoniacal might. But the blow went wide, in his agony, and when Grenville had caught the wrist in a grip that a serpent could scarcely have broken, he instantly laid hold of it with his second hand, with a motion incredibly swift. Then turning his back with the skinny brown arm across his shoulder, and abruptly stooping forward, Sidney hoisted the scoundrel free from the rocks, on his shoulders, and, moving quickly towards the cliff, ended the fight then and there.
He broke the arm thus used as a leverage against the Dyak's weight, and literally slammed the shuddering creature down on the rocks, at the brink of the wall, where he poised but a moment over death.
If he tried to writhe backward to the solid ledge, the effort was belated. With a piercing scream he toppled over, flinging out his broken arm in a gesture grotesque and disordered. Then he suddenly grayed, in the limbo of smoke, and shot swiftly downward to his doom.
Grenville still bit upon the branch that glowed with fire. He searched about pantingly, found his end of fuse, and saw the powder sputter with ignition. He had barely stepped back when, from over at the trail, came a sudden and tremendous detonation.
That the Dyaks were there on the terrace, after all, destroying his bombs, was the one thought that flashed through the smoke in his brain, as his own sharp explosion shook the air and hollowed huge masses from the cliff.
He stumbled and groped laboriously across the uneven heaps of stone to reach the secret passage, where Elaine must be crouching in fear. In his ears rang her words "If it has to come, let's receive it here together."
Already he feared her one grim wish had been brutally denied her in this hideous pall of smoke. He saw a figure, dimly, through the reek, and crouched to take revenge.
The figure was Elaine's. Grenville was almost upon her, prepared for some swift and terrible deed of retaliation, when a swirl in the shroud that enveloped them both revealed her standing near the edge.
She still held a glowing fire-stick in her hand, as she peered through the billowing cloud of smoke where she had flung an ignited bomb. She had fled from her shelter, in desperate dread, lest a murderous fate overtake her companion, battling alone with the fiends. She had found his post deserted, and, having discerned two figures on the trail, had instantly obeyed an impulse to protect the hill with the only means provided.
She uttered a cry as she saw Grenville crouching behind her, raising her brand like a weapon, then sinking in relief.
"You!" he said. "Elaine! I might have known!"
"I am sure they are coming up behind us there!" she answered. "I know I heard the bamboo buckets jangling! Have you been across to see?"
"I fired the bomb," he answered. "Didn't you know?"
She shook her head. Her ears, that had been so finely attuned to catch the warning from the rearward cliff, had received or recorded no impression whatsoever of the huger disturbance, while her own bomb's colossal thunder and shock engrossed her eager attention.
"Was anyone there?" she asked, half choking with the reek. "I suppose you couldn't see."
"I saw no one when lighting the fuse," he answered. "What was happening here?"
She related what she had seen and what she had done.
"I hope I killed them!" she added, weak and dizzy from the smoke. "But they probably ran away!"
It was the first time she had entertained such a feeling.
He urged her again to the shelter, where he coaxed her to drink, and bathe her face, for the freshening and soothing influence of which she was sadly in need. Returning, then, to the shelter for some of their fruit, he groped his way down along the trail—and found that one or the other of the bombs had so shattered the ledge, as to render it useless for passing till the gap could in some way be bridged.
They were safe from invasion in the night—but they were, likewise, marooned on the hill! It was hardly likely the Dyaks would attempt to construct a platform across the yawning cavity, under the shadow of the gun, while, as for themselves, descent at present was entirely out of the question.
Meantime the smoke was unabated, if it was not, indeed, more dense and choking than before. All the man's characteristic doggedness of purpose was required in preparations for the night. The sun was down; the brief and usually comforting twilight seemed entirely absent, as darkness was hastened by the fumes.
Back and forth from the now deserted shelter to the passage Sidney groped time after time, fetching her couch and robe for Elaine, and their meager supplies for dinner. The gallery then became her boudoir, sanctified to her uses. Outside on the ledge, where at least a breath of air trailed upward from the cave beneath, to escape at the door and a little dilute the stifling smoke, he finally made his sentinel post to pass the long session of darkness.
He was roused repeatedly in the night by the sheer discomfort of his resting-place, and the smoke that smarted his nostrils. All the long hours through the dull red flames glowed fitfully, down through the jungle. He was tempted, times without number, to throw out his platform to the tree and descend with a bomb, to hurl at some group of the demons, there in the nether gloom of the Hades they created. He curbed his impatience rigidly, however, and crowded the impulse back. That one or two natives at the most maintained the fires was a supposition not to be ignored. The possible results of such an enterprise were incommensurate with the risk that must be incurred.
Despite his uneasiness of mind and body he slept for a time between midnight and dawn as the mere result of overstrain and the weariness accumulated for several days.
For a brief time after sunrise the northerly breeze abated, permitting the smoke to ascend more nearly straight. The headland was thereby freed and sweetened, only, however, to be re-enveloped later, and, veiled from the other features of the island.
Grenville took advantage of the respite to make an examination of the cliff at the rear of the camp. It had been so shattered, where the bomb shook down the disintegrated tufa, that its ascent would never again be attempted. The framework of bamboo cups was gone. There was nothing below to indicate whether or not a Dyak boat might have been swamped by falling rock.
The cavity torn in the regular trail was rather more exaggerated than diminished by the morning's revelations. Grenville was certain the enemy would hardly hazard bridging the gap while they thought a single ounce of punishment remained upon the terrace. He was not altogether certain he should not construct a bridge himself, since only when they charged upon his position could he hope to decimate the blood-desiring savages, who must still remain in menacing numbers on the island.
The little brass cannon was once more charged, though its use was hardly likely. The wind and the smoke resumed their steady flow across and about the hill before Elaine appeared.
She was pale and plainly weary, when at length she emerged from the passage. Her sleep had been broken, and haunted by dreams of countless new atrocities committed by the demons below. Her courage was phenomenal. She made no complaint, but attempted a smile and a cheery outlook on the day.
Grenville was wrung, more than comforted, at the wistful effort she was making to sustain her slender hope and encourage his own flagging spirit. When he found that hardly a pint of water remained in the jugs he had thought would supply them at least for a couple of days, his despair for Elaine became intensely acute, and his heart began dully to ache. Two of the clay receptacles had developed tiny cracks, perhaps from the jarring of explosions, while a third had toppled over and spilled its precious contents after having been placed in the passage. Percolation and usage had drained the others inevitably—and the day was beginning with heat and stifling reek.
Much of the fruit that Sidney had gathered was now unfit for use, and was, therefore, thrown away. By way of conserving the water supply, they made a breakfast of paw-paws and bananas only, though the meat remaining from the previous day was still acceptable.
Grenville descended to the cavern as soon as this scant and oversweet meal was concluded. He bore two jugs, to be filled from the basins in the rock. When the light from the blazing torch he held above his head dimly outlined but one of the pools he had seen on a former occasion, he realized that some insignificant fissure must have resulted from his blast, and permitted the other pools to trickle to the sea.
He filled his jugs with the utmost care, scooping up the water at the deepest hole to leave all unclean sediment undisturbed. That the pool must soon succumb to evaporation was obvious. Vaguely he wondered which might last the longer, this underground well, or the breath in his body and Elaine's.
Even the sight and touch of the precious water excited his mouth to thirst. With the jugs both full and set carefully aside, he sprawled out eagerly, flat on the rocks, for a deep and satisfying draught.
Hardly had the water reached his palate, however, when he lifted his head with a sound like a stifled groan. The pool was connected with the tides—the liquid there was brine!
He rose to his knees, with his fist before his eyes, his whole body tense and rigid with his soul's recoil from the visions abruptly shadowed in his mind. The cordon about the helpless girl was so hideously complete! It seemed like the bitterness of her doom that he tasted on his tongue.
It appeared so useless now to struggle. How he should take this latest news to the uncomplaining comrade of his destiny was more than he could determine. Wild thoughts of offering all the treasure he had found, as ransom for Elaine at least, possessed his mind, as he conjured up the final, triumphant approach of the Dyaks, whom the two famished keepers of the terrace would at length be no longer able successfully to resist.
He likewise thought of offering himself, could Elaine be finally spared. But through it all he was sickeningly conscious that neither course could avail with these treacherous fiends. A human head was more to them than treasures of earth or heaven. Moreover, the murderous savages had already paid a heavy toll, and would smart in their blood for revenge.
There could be no bargain made with such an enemy, all but victorious already, and certain of final success. They should never find that treasure, however, Grenville swore, if he had to sink it in the sea! And as for a final triumph—there were many ways, in a last extremity, whereby at least the unspeakable horrors, certain to follow their capture alive, could be escaped by both himself and Elaine.
Wild rage possessed him, kneeling there, as he thought of the merciless head-hunters smoking them out on the hill, and waiting as loathsomely as vultures for the slowly approaching end. Mad plans for sinking their anchored boats, for loading himself with torch and bombs, to charge like a Nemesis through their ranks, or for luring them up to some deadly mine, ranged erratically through his brain.
He thought of attempting a condensation of sea water to provide Elaine with drink. He was swiftly possessed by a plan, even more absurd, of making a float with his bamboo stems, and sailing away with Elaine on board, under cover of the darkness.
He arose at last, dizzy, with the vortex of impractical suggestions revolving in his mind. He emptied his jugs and strode to the mouth of the cavern, looking out on smoke and sea. The tide was low. Whole colonies of mussels clung there below him on the rocks. They were food! The thought came home to him swiftly—only to be immediately succeeded by the realization they were salt, and would make for greater thirst. He thought of the wail that had formerly haunted the island—a friendly, invaluable phenomenon that had not been repeated for days. He thought of the raft he had rowed with such ease when he came here to blow out the ledge. Was it floating still in the estuary's mouth, or had some of the Dyaks destroyed it?
The estuary!—could he only reach its tepid pool, creep towards its source, fill one of his jugs, and return to gladden Elaine! His busy mind was instantly working on the various steps by which he might succeed in lashing together some sort of raft, for a night excursion to the tiny rill that fed the vine-surrounded inlet where the water was not brine.
Grenville returned for his jugs and the torch, impatient to be employed. The clay receptacles were useless on the hill, but he carried them back to the gallery, to leave them on the floor. The lower rock-and-wattle barrier he carefully readjusted to its place, and secured with the bar of wood.
"The water below is rather poor," he informed Elaine, when he once more rejoined her above. "I believe I can reach a supply considerably better by building a bamboo platform that will give me access to a larger and fresher pool."
laine was thinking of another, more personal danger.
"Do you think these creatures have visited the cave?"
"If they have, they left no signs."
"You are not afraid they may go there soon—and discover the end of this passage?"
Grenville shook his head. "I only wish they would try—every man Jack of them hunting there at once! If it weren't for this smoke, I should try to lure them in!"
Glad of an occupation, no matter how forlorn the hope it afforded, he went promptly to work fetching all of the largest bamboo stems from his generous supply, together with wood for fuel and many lengths of creeper. By the time these various transfers were complete, he had left but little of their meager possessions in or about the former camp.
Bombs, fuses, torch-wood, and much of his extra powder he now proceeded to store along the wall, and in a niche of the gallery, where they should neither obstruct the passage under foot, nor yet be exposed to possible accident from necessary fire. The terrace continued to be wrapped in smoke, as on the previous day. Instructing Elaine to call him instantly, should any attempt be made by the Dyaks to bridge the gap on the trail, he now began the laborious task of carrying one after another of the bamboo stems down the passage to the cave.
The stems were large, some of them fully six inches through at the butt, and while they were never heavy, yet the twelve or more feet of length to which he had reduced them made their transfer through the narrow and angular gallery an awkward and troublesome maneuver, with only a torch for light.
He had made up his mind that six of these stems, lashed together in pairs, or even laid side by side, and slightly separated, would complete a float on which he could readily find sufficient buoyancy for himself and a couple of water jugs, more especially as he thoroughly intended to stretch himself out flat, full length, upon it while moving about the shore. He felt, moreover, it must be so light he could not only launch it from the cave, but even withdraw it inside again, should danger so require.
Fortunately, he reflected, none of the stems was split. Each comprised a set of water-tight compartments that a load of double his avoirdupois could hardly sink beneath the surface. If he found that four of the lengths would answer as well as six, he would certainly use no more.
As he stumbled and edged his way downward once again, with the last of his load colliding here and there along the wall, he thought, perhaps, it might be possible to test the float in the salty pool that remained in the basin of the cavern. Could this be done, much time would be saved, and no risk of being discovered at his work need be incurred.
For his greater convenience in assembling materials and tools, he placed both his torch and final burden for a moment within the passage, when he came once more to the cave. Three of the bamboo stems were then in the cavern proper, while all of the creeper and the other essentials remained on the gallery floor. He paused to wipe his brow, for he was sweating. His mouth was dry with a growing thirst that refused to be forgotten.
He had barely stepped out to survey the space for the likeliest site convenient to his needs, when, abruptly, a human voice sent a murmurous echo through the hollow tomb. A sharp command immediately followed—all in some barbaric tongue. But before the noise of something dully scraping on the outside ledge could add its confirmation to the somewhat belated alarm, Grenville was certain that a Dyak boat had come to the cavern, and its crew were about to land.
Instantly pouncing upon the nearest length of his precious bamboo, he darted with it to the passage. The second stem struck on the inner wall, not only delaying his movements, but sounding a thud that he felt must be heard through all the vast bulk of the hill.
Yet he dared not either betray the fact he had been in the cave, or lose that final pole. Once more, as he heard the Dyaks coming, and even beheld a shadow, preceding its owner to the place, he darted silently out at his door to lay hold of the last remaining stem.
He was certain its end must be plainly seen, as the Dyaks now rose above the ledge. A sound that he made seemed incredibly loud—and his door was out where the boatmen's torch must play a red light upon it!
He stumbled across his materials, now congesting his narrow space. He thrust out an arm, laid hold of his door, and had barely drawn it across the opening when the glare of the torch the Dyaks held sent red rays in upon him.
Not another move could he make without betraying his presence near at hand. To adjust the barrier solidly in place might readily prove fatal. To leave it loose, a palpable sham where all should appear as solid wall, was scarcely less of a risk.
Holding it firmly, lest it slip, and peering breathlessly out through the chink which it failed by an inch to cover, Grenville beheld three half-naked forms, incredibly magnified and diabolized not only by the torch they held, but also by the shadows they cast upon the rocks, and the general aspect of the region, black as Inferno. Three thinner, more furtive fiends of the nether abyss would have been hard, indeed, to imagine. In the tallest Sidney recognized the chief.
As they turned about to scan the wall, and the breach he had made with his explosion, the whites of their eyes and the gleam of their teeth rendered all of their faces strangely hideous, with the yellowish glare projecting them indistinctly against the ebon of the tomb.
That their keen, malicious eyes must instantly discover the wall's decided imperfection, where the gallery door was askew, seemed to Grenville inescapable. They motioned towards him, and down at the floor, in manifest wonder that the place was no longer filled with water. Their voices were low. They spoke as if with a certain awe in which the place was held.
It seemed to Grenville they would never go about their business. His muscles ached with the unaccustomed strain put upon them to support the heavy door. How long he could stand there, making no sound, and permitting no movement of the barrier, was a question he could not answer. If only his cleaver had not been dropped around the bend, beside his torch, he would almost have dared spring out on the unsuspecting Dyaks to brain them where they stood!
At thought of his torch, redly glowing, in beyond, he sweated anew, convinced that as soon as the boatmen grew accustomed to the darkness of the cavern, these torch rays must impinge upon their vision, and instantly divulge the secret of the passage to the top.
One of the Dyaks now approached even closer than before. Savagely determined he would slay the man, should he raise a hand, or otherwise give the slightest intimation that the door was seen at last, Sidney grew hot in his farthest pulse, and became as tense as a tight-coiled spring as he steadied to leap from the place.
But the man in command now grumbled another of his orders. The fellow so near discovery and death turned slowly about, made one more gesture towards the shattered ledge, and followed the other where they made their way across the uneven floor.
Until they had passed to a second ridge, where their feet disturbed a few loose fragments that rattled down towards the base, Grenville made not the slightest move to alter his position. Then cautiously, without a sound, he adjusted the door to its proper place and secured it with the bar.
He still had a chink through which to peer, but he first moved back to his blazing torch and smothered its light on the rocks. When he once more groped his way to the tiny opening, the Dyaks had come to the rifled chamber. He could hear their exclamations of disgust and anger, but only their torch could be seen.
Aware they might still return to his wall and discover the one remaining retreat where Elaine was even remotely secure, Grenville was seized with an irresistible impulse to destroy the fiends on the instant, if such a denouement could be rendered possible.
He turned about to grope his way upward and secure a bomb as swiftly as the darkness would permit. Over the basket of treasure, some time since deposited there by the wall, he blundered, and fell to his knees. The thing was in the way. He took it up impatiently and carried it well up the passage to one of the broadest galleries, where he placed it again on the floor.
With one of the smallest of his bombs, and carrying one of his firebrands only for a torch, he once more descended, feeling his way along the wall, eager to regain the lower entrance, lest it might be already discovered. He had been delayed in securing the brand, without which his bomb was useless. He had told Elaine his measures were only of defense.
They were hardly even that. When he came to the door he could see no torch, for the Dyaks had gone, in new exasperation, and their voices echoed back from the ledge. The impulse to rush out thus belatedly, ignite his fuse, and hurl his engine of destruction upon them, or their boat, was one he curbed with difficulty, at the dictates of sober sense. For a dozen reasons the maneuver might fail to destroy the murderous trio. And should one escape to advertise the fact he was somehow concealed in the cavern, no possible cleverness could avail to protect Elaine or himself.
Should a larger number come to the cave—— But he knew it was hardly likely, now, that even a few would return. If the Dyaks had, as he felt convinced, concluded that the open niche meant that the tomb had been pillaged, that the treasure was gone, either taken by himself or another, they would have no conceivable reason left for courting disaster here again. For unless they should dare approach the place by night, it was only under cover of the rolling smoke they would risk attack from above.
He even thought of hastening back to the terrace now to drop a bomb upon them. It was only a recollection of the all-engulfing smoke that halted this intent. Instead he dislodged the wooden bar, removed the door to his secret gallery, and crept out to glide to the breach in the ledge for a possible view of the boatmen.
Only the disappearing end of their craft was shown through the fumes that veiled the tide. It was Grenville's useful catamaran, as he instantly discerned. A new resentment burned in his blood, but left him as helpless as before.
At noon Elaine reluctantly consumed the last remaining drop of water. Grenville had taken a sip, and pretended to take a swallow. To refuse it longer, Elaine quite clearly comprehended, would be but to see it ooze away through the jar, to be drunk by the merciless heat.
"I shall get a new supply," said Sidney, attempting an accent of cheer, "but I'd rather avoid using that of the cavern, for fear it may not be wholesome."
Elaine, in her way of divining the truth, was only partially deceived. She felt that the water below in the cave was wholly unfit for consumption. She knew that if anything even remotely possible could be done to refill their vessels, Sidney would have filled them long before.
She made no discouraging comments, however, despite the fact her hope was succumbing to despair. The smoke continued to roll in sullen clouds across and about the terrace; the sun beat down through it redly, soaking the rock in caloric, that sank to the gallery itself.
The noonday meal had been slight and unrefreshing—a bit of fruit, too warm and too ripe for relish on the palate, and a few odd scraps of the meat. It was water that both insistently craved, and for which they grew fevered and distressed.
The smoldering brands in the furnace of rocks could not be permitted to die away in ash. Elaine had undertaken the maintenance of this, their altar spark, which rarely rose to a flame. She was safe enough to come and go from the passage entrance to the nearby furnace Grenville had moved to facilitate her duties, but the smoke seemed far more stifling and hot than it had the previous day, while, with headache, thirst, and a heaviness in all her weary being, the endlessly cheerful and courageous little companion of Grenville's maddening ordeal felt ready to drop and rise no more.
Again at his task of constructing a float that should bear him from the cavern to the inlet formed by the spring, Sidney toiled with no mercy to himself in the workshop far down in the rocks. He felt at times he must gulp down even the water of the sea, so parched was his throat, and so craving was his system.
At five o'clock his bamboo raft was completed, even with braces for his jugs. It had also been tried in the basin of the cave, and made finally ready for launching. But the tide would be low till eight. His blast had made the water more approachable than formerly, yet to fight his way against a powerful current would over-tax his strength. In any event he must wait for the darkness of night.
He returned to Elaine, and although he, too, was weary to the bone, her patient endurance of suspense and suffering aroused him to a state of anguish in which no exhausting task would have seemed too great for him to undertake. He was wrung by her wistful attempt at a smile.
"The day is nearly done," she said. "The night is sure to be cooler."
It was considerably cooler, but scarcely more fresh, since the smoke appeared to pour in even vaster volumes from the greenery below. That the Dyaks were keeping strict watch on the water supply there could be no reason to doubt. From time to time a weird bit of chanting arose from that fume-creating garden that had once been so fair as to win from Elaine the prettiest name she knew.
Grenville felt certain, in fact, the boatmen's camp had been made about the inlet or the spring. The short stretch of beach where he and Elaine had landed, and where he had later made a bower of the trees, would be certain to attract these half-amphibious savages, though their boats were moored behind the opposite hill.
For a time he wondered if he might not be more wise to pass entirely around the island, to approach the pool of fresh water from below. But reflecting that various currents of the tide would buffet and beset him, in addition to which he must run the gauntlet past the Dyak boats, he surrendered the suggestion without delay, and impatiently awaited the tide.
Three times he went down the passage, torch in hand, to examine the stages of the water. At length he bethought him of two short scoop-like paddles, to assist in propelling his craft, and feverishly set about their construction.
They were done in less than half an hour, since they consisted merely of two half-sections of bamboo cylinder, lashed to a pair of handles.
Elaine was aware he was making ready for more than an ordinary adventure, as she watched him with her wide and lustrous eyes.
"Perhaps relief may come to-morrow," she finally observed. "You are quite exhausted. Might you not be wiser to rest to-night? We can get along, I am sure."
But even her voice made a rasp in her throat, so distressed was her system for water.
"I need a bit of change," he said. "It is certain to do me good."
With a touch of his former brusqueness, he presently bade her seek her couch, during the time he expected to be gone, and vanished once more down the dark, steep passageway, with his paddles and torch in hand.
The torch was left in the gallery, extinguished. The concealing door was adjusted to its place. These were mere precautions against the cave's discovery, yet Grenville was certain no Dyaks would approach the place that night. His two best jugs were placed on the ledge; his cleaver was hung at his belt. He could take no bombs or lighted brands on such an expedition.
The task of launching his raft on the tide involved unexpected labor. Its lightness made it an easy prey to the swirl that always filled the cavern's walled approach. It was sucked once nearly under, its farther end disappearing entirely from view—and Granville withdrew it, desperately glad the jugs had not been placed upon it.
Awaiting a quieter mood of the whirlpool, half seen in the darkness, he launched the float again, and beheld it rest there, quietly, nosing against the ledge. He turned for the jugs, but, casting a quick glance backward, at the slightest of scraping sounds, saw the raft swinging outward from his reach.
His arm was too short for its recovery. Leaping wildly out in the water, he caught it again, and was washed against the jagged wall before he once more returned it to the landing. He was soaked to the skin, but his pulses throbbed with heat and dogged energy that would think of no defeat.
With his jugs finally laid flat between the bamboo supporters, front and rear, and with paddles in hand, as he lay at full length on the light but half-submerged platform, he rowed the raft out with a motion as if he were swimming.
Indeed, like a giant oar-bug, more or less helplessly carried by the current that it rides, he spun slowly about in the maelstrom of the gathering tide before he could escape past the portal and head for the inlet below.
He soon discovered that to continue far in this fatiguing attitude would abominably strain his neck, if not his entire body. Not without considerable difficulty, in balancing the craft, he effected a change of position, and knelt upon the supports.
The waves washed up about his knees and feet, but of this he was practically oblivious. Assisted now by the current, and with eyes intent on the darkened shore, beyond the uprise of the cliff, he propelled himself much farther out than formerly, with the purpose of avoiding the possible vigilance of Dyaks on the beach.
The night was not exceedingly dark, so brilliant was the light from the stars. Once the region of smoke was left behind, the blurred and blended features of the island were sufficiently well revealed for his purposes, since he knew its every silhouette as well as the contours of the coast.
He had rowed and drifted, perhaps, half the distance essential to land at the estuary mouth, when the sound of voices, floated out from the shore, abruptly halted his movements. The Dyaks were there. Either motion or any unusual disturbance would suffice to betray his presence off the land.
And now, as if every fate had become malignant, the current drifted him inward, where he knew he should keep well away. At the risk of exciting curiosity, if nothing more, he dipped his paddles, with a slow and silent expenditure of strength, and swept the float powerfully outward again, till the shore seemed a part with the sea.
For a time that seemed interminable he hung about that outer stretch, awaiting a further sound of the voices. They did not come. Once more at last he paddled silently inward, finally worming, as before, to a prostrate position on the raft. The chant of the head-hunters came again, as if from the depths of the jungle.
"Now, if ever!" muttered Grenville, half aloud, and impelled by a new and reckless desperation, increased by his thirst and his impotent rage at the creatures still feeding the fumes that Elaine could not avoid, he sent his craft swiftly landward, thankful, at least, for the mild disturbance of breaking ripples on the shore that would drown what slight noises he might make.
Tempted to moor his float outside the estuary, he readily agreed it might thereby lead to his discovery, and must, as a matter of fact, be completely concealed in the shadows of the pool. Excited now by the possibility that his catamaran, with the oars and rowlocks, might still remain in its former harbor, he was doomed to prompt disappointment on gaining the estuary basin. There was nothing whatsoever in the place.
His jugs and paddles he had placed upon the sand. It was only the work of a moment to draw his float across the bar and gently thrust it away from sight beneath the overhanging verdure. Then he stood there, knee-deep in the water, straining his ears for the slightest sound of the Dyaks stirring in the thicket.
Only the drone of a halting voice was wafted to the place. In silence he concealed his paddles, and took up his jugs, to wade with the utmost caution up the pool, towards the spring that formed its source. The water about him was brackish, from its mixture with the tide.
Deeper and deeper grew the basin. The water had risen to his waist. He sank in steadily with every step, despairing now with the sickening thought he might be compelled to swim. Such a task, with two filled jugs, would be impossible, as he bitterly realized. But on he went, as noiselessly as before.
The water was now about his breast, and he held his jugs above it. Something gently nosed against him—and gave him a start. Thoughts of the tropic serpents so frequently inhabiting the water, chilled a thin channel down his spine. Then he saw that the thing which might have been a reptile head was the cork and neck of a bottle. He dipped down and caught it between his teeth, more gratified in all his being than if it had been a thing of gold.
It almost seemed to the man like a sign that the tide of ill-fortune had turned—the tide of luck. He had certainly passed the deepest section of the estuary; he was rising on higher ground.
To avoid the soundings of dripping water, ready to fall from his clothing, he proceeded more slowly than before. When at length he came to a strip of barren sand, he rested his jugs, withdrew the cork from his bottle, and was gratified to detect the odor of stale beer, or stout, which the thing had formerly contained. He rinsed it then and there, to make it sweet, and crowded it into his pocket.
When he once more took up his jugs, to resume his quest of drinkable fluid, he was presently confronted by an exceptional tangle of the shrubbery, arching the tortuous windings of the estuary's head. Here he found himself obliged to pause and noiselessly bend back or break a number of the slender branches before he could wade as before.
He started some small nocturnal animal out through the growth, and the rustling disturbance made by the beast was heard by the Dyaks beyond. One of them called out sharply. To Grenville's complete astonishment and dismay another man, barely a few yards off, replied with a species of grunt. The fellow had come there, either to visit or to set a snare, and must have believed he had frightened the animal himself.
Sidney could hear him working now, as he leaned a bit closer to the foliage, incapable of moving further while the hunter delayed in the thicket. The fellow presently arose, as if to go. Instead, however, he approached even closer to Grenville's place of concealment, and Sidney oozed cold perspiration, helplessly occupied, as he was, with a jug in either hand, and his cleaver still swung at his waist.
To have moved, or attempted to place either jug in the water at his feet, must have been fatal to his mission. Yet he felt convinced the Dyak must fairly run against him, unless he could move to the side. One of his shoes, moreover, was sinking deeply in slimy mire.
That his balance must be overcome seemed well-nigh inevitable. A branch from one of the larger trees that grew above him on the bank now swept so forcibly against the other foliage as the Dyak hauled it downward, to sever a twig for his trap, that Grenville's face was lightly brushed. When the limb sprang upward a moment later, he pulled his foot from the hole.
It seemed to the man a quarter of an hour at least that the trapper remained there, a few feet away, making one more sound, from time to time, when it seemed at last he must have departed. When he finally went, there could be no assurance he would not return again. Notwithstanding this possibility, Grenville slipped furtively along once more, disturbed to find how far towards the spring this narrowing, sea-level neck of the inlet continued through the growth.
When he came at length to a rise of the island, down which the trickle from the spring had made its course, he found himself at the edge of a small, grass-grown clearing, that could hardly be more than a stone's toss away from the Dyaks' temporary camp. A small, deep basin, filled with the precious water he sought, reflected a star at the zenith of the heavens. It some way gave him hope. Of courage he had no lack.
Noiselessly, but without hesitation, he crept forward to the place and bent to drink, then to fill his bottle and jugs. At a snap that came from the shadows beyond he looked up alertly, beholding through the leaves a bright bit of fire upon the earth, with two of the Dyaks at its side. Every accent of their halting conversation came clearly to his ears.
With his three receptacles filled at last, he began his retreat from the place. He had barely vanished from the clearing, and come to the cover of the growth once more, when the man who was laying the snare in some pathway of the small jungle animals came back to complete his work.
Grenville thought his arms must relinquish the holds in their sockets before the unsuspecting hunter was content to leave the neighborhood. The jugs, so long and silently held, were rested a moment on the bank, when, at last, the moment did arrive when Sidney could dare retreat. Then down through the stubborn tangle, once more, he moved like a silent shade. With every yard thus placed between himself and the natives by the spring, the hope in his breast increased.
He came once more to the deeper estuary pool and, lifting his jugs to his shoulders, waded cautiously forward, nearly up to his throat in the tepid brine that smelled too rank for anything but swamp. He paused by his raft, for a moment undecided as to whether he should place his jugs in the braces lashed upon it, before he pushed it past the bar, or after it should float on the tides.
While he stood there, with a sense of exultation daring to warm in his soul—an exultation centered on Elaine and the joy it must presently be to see her thirst allayed—he suddenly stiffened at the sound of Dyak voices, alarmingly near at hand.
Retreating instantly, under the shadow of the foliage and against the end of his raft, he placed one jug upon it, noiselessly, and put out his hand to grasp at a branch to draw himself further from sight.
But the branch on which he laid his grip was suddenly alive. It writhed and lashed sharply at his knuckles until, with a shudder of comprehension that he had clutched the tail of a snake, he flung it off and knew it had glided away.
He had no choice but to try again, and this time met with better fortune. Out through the foliage, arranged thus hurriedly about him, he peered towards the low bit of beach. There was no one in sight, but beyond, on the sea, suddenly looming before him, and coming about to face the protected inlet, a third of the Dyak sailing-boats, a new arrival, manned by an additional group of head-hunters, nosed gracefully up against the tide.
Her anchor was cast, and there she rode, not twenty yards out from the shore.
Like shadowy demons from some world beyond, arrived on some mission mysterious and tragic—some service of the foulest fiend in Hades—four half-seen figures moved along the railing of the craft, destroying the hope in Grenville's bosom.