As It Was in the Beginning Part 35

"Where has he gone?" Elaine faintly chattered. "If he should only be waiting to come again---- Such a horrible fright---- I don't know why I didn't faint, or what I did. I'm so weak I can hardly walk."

"Oh, you're as right a trivet!" said Grenville, with a ready comprehension of the need of keeping up her courage. "You can now retire with a comforting sense of having saved the night."

But Elaine's sense of comfort was a woefully negative quant.i.ty. She was shaken to the center of her nerves. She dreaded to be left for a moment.

Grenville, however, sent her off to bed in the most peremptory manner.

A realizing sense that their trials had only well begun was his one deeply settled conviction.

"Cheer up!" he said to her, finally, "the worst is still to come."

"I'll try," she answered, courageously. "But please don't let it come to-night."

For more than two hours she did not sleep, or even close her eyes.

Then she dragged her couch to a s.p.a.ce outside her door. Every movement made by Grenville, as he watchfully policed the edge of the terrace, she thus followed for a time, half rising beneath her tiger-skin rug in her dread to hear him go.

When she finally slept she dreamed once more of the murderous eyes, the clenched white teeth, and the flame-shaped blade she had seen at the brink of the cliff. Grenville heard her laboredly call his name as in her dreams she once more underwent her disturbing ordeal, but he did not move from his seat.

At dawn she was slumbering more peacefully, a smile on her lips as she lay there facing his position. What a royal little princess of the island she appeared with her colorful robe lying out upon the rocks, her hair so much more golden than the tawny hide, and the warm, healthy glow restored once more to her cheeks!

Grenville was sure he had never half appreciated the wonder and abundance of her hair, the darker penciling of her arching brows, the delicate beauty of her features.

He presently once more bent his attention on the island that rendered up never a sign.

Neither the jungle, the summits of the further hills, nor the sea that stretched interminably about them enlightened his searching eyes. Save for that night experience, it might have seemed preposterous that enemies existed in the miniature world by which they were surrounded.

He crept in his cautious manner to the crumbling edge where Elaine had seen the face. There was nothing below in the water. He could readily follow the bits of shelf and succession of pits in the wall, however, whereby a daring, barefooted native might grope his way to the summit, even in the dark. It would doubtless be possible here, he reflected, to explode a bomb against the pitted surface and break away so large a cavity as to render all future ascents impossible. But this was a task to be deferred for a time, since he had no wish to acquaint the visitors oversoon with the fact that he possessed an explosive.

When he returned to the shelter again, Elaine had waked and carried her couch to the cave. Despite the fact the hour was early and the sun only well above the ocean's rim, she declared she had rested much longer than was either wise or essential.

Yet there was nothing to do for either, now that the day was begun.

Their breakfast of fruits was soon concluded, then of occupation there was none. Grenville felt it inadvisable to move about too freely on the terrace, and thereby risk betraying the fact they were only two in number. A watcher stationed on the second hill could not, as a matter of fact, examine the entire top of the terrace, or even discern its princ.i.p.al features, but he might ascertain decidedly too much, should they carelessly expose themselves to view.

The morning proved for Grenville another exasperation. He thought of nothing by way of labor he could advantageously perform. Their defense, though crude, was fairly complete, and could scarcely be improved. To watch the edge of the jungle, hour after hour, where never a sign was vouchsafed his vigilance, was a dulling inactivity, yet a highly essential precaution that was not to be neglected.

By noon he was fairly in a mood to seek out the island's invaders alone, to hasten some definite action. That the natives intended to starve them into a visit to the spring seemed all too obvious.

Grenville felt a.s.sured, however, the water down in the cavern would suffice for their needs, if no better could be relied upon, when once their jars were empty, while gathering fruit would not be wholly impossible under cover of the night.

With the thought in mind that only the trail would be kept under watch by the Dyaks, he made up his mind he could readily contrive a ladder-like platform to extend from the brink, whereby the distance to the nearest tree might be conveniently bridged to permit easy access to the jungle. Of creepers and extra bamboo poles he had laid in ample stock. For the lack of better employment, he began the construction of his bridge when their meager luncheon had been finished.

His mind, as he worked, spun schemes innumerable for the daily defeat of the natives. Aware that as long as the terrace could be held starvation and thirst would be their only unconquerable enemies, he entertained no end of plans for catching fish without bait and even trapping or fis.h.i.+ng up small animals that might rove at night below the cliff. From these reflections he returned to the men who prowled about them after dark.

To secure his cord across the trail and thereby provide an alarm, or notice of the enemy's approach, from that direction, was a very simple matter. When he finally invented, in his mind, a singular "rattle" to guard the approach by the cliff, he dropped all employment on the bridge at once and began forthwith on the other.

What he made was a series of bamboo buckets, or cuplike sections of the hollow tube, with stones suspended inside to knock against the walls when the things were lightly shaken. These he intended to hang, one beside another, in a line from the brink of the wall, where a climber must strike them unawares and sound a resonant warning.

But he found, on hanging a pair some ten feet down along the face, where the man had climbed in the night, that the wind would sway them to and fro against the rock and constantly ring their hollow tones.

This defect he presently remedied by forming a frame, some ten feet long and one foot wide, in which all his cups were suspended, or moored, both top and bottom. They were thus so lightly hung that the smallest jar against the frame would joggle them all to musical utterance, while the wind could have no effect on any single one.

The entire frame was lowered down till it rested a bit unevenly on two projecting shelves of rock, where it leaned a trifle outward like a picture on a wall, as the creepers that held it from falling were finally made secure. When Grenville, by way of a trial, nudged it once with a pole thrust down against it for the purpose, it rattled out a decisive alarm that one could have heard from the trail.

Grenville thereupon brought out a bomb from his store and lowered it down below the frame, and six or eight feet to the side. This was secured not only by the fuse, but likewise by more of the creeper.

Elaine, who during his absence had maintained the watch of the trail, now ran to the place, at Grenville's signal, for a moment's inspection of the whole arrangement and instruction concerning its use.

It was while they were there that the haunting wail arose for a gasping spasm. It had practically failed. Sidney doubted if its loudest note could have been heard as far as the spring. But still the end of the tiresome day developed no attack.

Grenville was completely puzzled by the tactics the boatmen had adopted. That they knew Elaine was present on the terrace there could be not a shadow of doubt. Even if the man she had thrust away from the cliff-edge fell to the sea and was dashed to pieces, or drowned, his friends who had brought him around to the place must have heard her voice and recognized its feminine quality.

They would likewise know she could hardly be alone, and would guess her companions were not numerous or likely to be armed. No plundered wreckage lay about the sh.o.r.e from which castaways could have drawn ammunition or rifles. It was utterly impossible for any ignorant natives to imagine the loading of a cannon or the making of bombs from materials on the place.

What, then, was the reason of their long delay? They could scarcely be waiting for reinforcements. They would hardly be dreading the island's "spirit" now, since the sounds had practically ceased, and one man had dared ascend the cliff with a knife between his teeth. That they feared an open attack by day and dreaded the tiger by night was the only tenable theory that Grenville could devise.

Yet the fact of the matter was that, until the cavern "spirit" should be absolutely silenced, the superst.i.tious Dyaks could only be forced by the bulldozing threats and ferocity of their fiendish leader to set foot upon the land. It was he who had sent the climber up the wall, having thrust a pistol behind the fellow's ear. A certain tragic outcome of this premature adventure had been wholly attributed by the victim's companions to the anger of the wailing soul who inhabited the headland.

The bridge, constructed of bamboo supports, was a simple affair, completed and ready by sunset. Before the darkness was absolute, Grenville conveyed it along to the eastern jutting of the cliff, slid it down to a ledge below the level of the terrace, and easily thrust the end across to the nearest tree, where it rested securely on the branches.

He found that it bore his weight remarkably well. With an ordinary length of pliable ladder he could reach the ground beneath the tree without the slightest difficulty, thereby escaping all the undergrowth and broken rock that would render a straight descent from the brink not only a noisy piece of business, but likewise one of considerable hazard and discomfort. And descending thus, instead of employing the trail, he could certainly expect to escape the shrewdest observation on the part of any native set to watch for some night adventure.

Indeed, so alluring became the prospect of leaving the hill, to conduct some helpful and informing explorations, that he could scarcely wait for the shadows of night to settle on the island before he should test his apparatus.

Elaine was frankly and confessedly alarmed when at length he could resist the temptation no longer and announced his intentions for expending a portion of the evening.

He set an alarm at the gate on the trail, however, and, arming himself with his heavy, cleaver-like implement for chopping, instructed his worried companion to fire the cannon without delay should attack develop in his absence.

"I am sure you will have no visitors, but, in case you do, don't wait to see who it is, or how many," he said; "let the little gun count the numbers."

"But suppose--it might be you!"

"I shall not return that way. You may look for me back in fifteen or twenty minutes at the most. I feel it's important to know what is going on, as well as to gather a bit of fruit, and see what I may be enabled to do by way of setting some traps for game. If one of my snares could be brought a trifle closer, it might provide us with the meat we certainly ought to have."

Without another word, she watched him depart for his bridge and ladder to the jungle.

CHAPTER x.x.xII

DEATH AS A BROTHER

Despite the ease with which, in theory, he expected to descend to the ground, Grenville was fully ten minutes escaping from the tree.

A number of twigs that he could not have pa.s.sed without creating a disturbance he cut away with his knife. His ladder was also badly caught and stubbornly refused to be adjusted. One violent rustling of a heavy limb he caused when it finally slipped straight down, with his feet all but striking on the ground.

He remained perfectly silent, ready for immediate retreat, regaining his breath and straining his ears for the slightest sound, for a long, uneventful minute. When he finally drew his sharp bra.s.s cleaver from his pocket and started through the thicket, there was not the slightest sound in all the region about him, either of animals or men.

Into one of the numerous wild creatures' trails he found his way with greater ease because of his thorough familiarity with all that end of the island.