As It Was in the Beginning Part 19

The ladder required for ascending to his stand would better be hung on the side most removed from the trail, for which he must a little clear the thicket.

His club, without which the visit here at sunset was not to be undertaken, could lean on the tree-trunk while he sat above, since there, should any need arise, he could find it in the dark.

He abandoned all thought of treading back and forth from the clay pit to his smelter, and carried his basket away. The ladder he brought at once from the spring, and, expending an hour in more careful preparation for his comfort than had even been possible before, he finally departed from the site of the tiger's gory refreshment, well satisfied with all he had been able to accomplish.

He returned to the camp, made a careful examination of the bomb and its fuse, and selected the wood to be finally used in preserving his essential spark of fire. Then, willing at last to turn his attention again to his daily occupation, he once more descended to his clay-covered log and found the plaster sufficiently dry upon it for the first of the burning to be started. He called to Elaine, who threw him down some glowing embers, from the fire always burning near his shelter.

All day he found abundant employment, working with flame and clay. The eating away of the log in a manner to leave a hollow sh.e.l.l, could not, he found, be accomplished as swiftly as he had hoped. Moreover, the fires required his constant attention, lest they burn too deeply to right or left, and thus destroy, or considerably impair, the walls he desired to protect.

In the afternoon he permitted this fire to die. Until more clay could be plastered about and the blackly charred portions of the wood removed with a tool, the process must be halted. He had still a small section inside his natural smelter to cover before he could undertake the melting of his metal, but his heap of clay was gone.

Once more, as he had on the previous occasion, he informed Elaine in the late afternoon of his intentions for the night. Her look of alarm was the only sign that escaped her resolute being. She had silently noted his earlier activity with the bomb and his fire-preserving wood; she was not surprised by his plans.

"I shall not be down at the spring," he said, "but over there nearer the clay pit. I have found a place where I rather expect our friend to arrive at a decently early hour."

Her eyes were startled and wide.

"Do you mean he sleeps where you have been walking every day?"

"No--certainly not. But I'm sure he was there last night--and I hope he'll come again."

She was quick to divine the unpleasant truth that Grenville was striving to avoid.

"You mean--he's been eating there--and left some awful----"

"Good pork," he agreed, as he took up his bomb; "a fine wild boar--enough to have done us for a week."

She resumed her work of knitting, on a small, round basket-like affair.

"I hope there are more of those hogs for him to get," she told him, quietly. "I hope they are easy prey."

"Right ho! But I trust he'll not be off with the old pig before he is on with the new. I want him to come to the party there to-night."

Elaine looked up for a moment, and thrilled to the look in his eyes.

"Yes," she said, "I suppose you do."

CHAPTER XVIII

AT THE TIGER'S KILL

The island twilight was brief. When the sun departed from that speck of verdure in the purple sea, the covetous darkness seemed to form like a presence that had crouched to bide its time.

Grenville was early on the scene of the tiger's previous feast. He had no idea how soon after sundown the jungle monarch might appear. It was not such a place as inspired hilarious joy in the heart, in any circ.u.mstances. Moreover, one last examination of the bomb and fuse, and one clear impression of the features beneath and about his tree, seemed to Sidney a wise precaution.

The day had, therefore, barely ended when he climbed aloft to his perch. The end of the fuse was tied to a limb a little removed from his feet. He closed his eyes and found it with his hand, by way of making certain it should not be missed in the dark. The larger and denser of the forms below, created by shadows and growing plants, he noted in their relation to the kill. The latter was not to be clearly seen, since a screen of leaves he had purposely left to conceal his presence from the banqueter, served to shield it from his view.

Finally, closing his eyes again, he practiced retreating behind the trunk itself, as he knew he must do when nothing could be seen and his fuse was finally lighted. This was rather a delicate operation to manage in the dark. He made up his mind it must be calmly done, for ample time would be provided by the generous length of fuse.

This length, by the way, was considerably less than he had formerly employed. The bomb was, therefore, nearer to his stand. Yet the bulk of the tree-trunk was, he thought, an entirely adequate protection should he have the delight of hearing his powder explode.

Through the lattice of leaves he presently beheld the last of the day's dying splendor. The army of shadows, already on the march, was taking rapid possession of all the jungle deeps. The same impatience he had felt before, the same vague dread and loneliness previously experienced, and the same slow drag of time impressed themselves upon his senses.

He wondered how long his brand would last, although it was longer than the other. He wondered about Elaine, on the hill, and how tedious the hours would seem to her. But the constant, underlying worry was--when would the tiger arrive?

Elaine's suggestion was a bother. Might there not be hogs so plentiful, quarry so readily captured, that the overdisdainful monarch would prefer warm meat to cold?

There was no mysterious cipher to be studied here to-night. There was nothing, in fact, with which to pa.s.s the time. Not even a new speculation concerning the cave and the rotting barque arose to give him entertainment. The haunting, suggestive stillness engulfed him where he sat. The world below had merged in one featureless gloom.

Except for a few fringed patches of sky between the leaves and branches, there was nothing but velvety blackness to be seen above or below.

He waited and waited, a time that seemed eternal. His resting-place was hard and uneven. One of his legs was cramped. To shift about and make no noise was not an easy matter.

Without the slightest warning, suddenly down below him something leaped and crashed through the thicket with a most unexpected sound. Whatever it was, it went bounding off, recklessly parting the jungle. Some creature in fright it undoubtedly was--and Grenville was instantly rigid and alert for the next development.

He was certain the tiger, coming to his feast, had thrown some timid creature into a panic of blind and desperate fear. He listened, with all his powers of concentration, for the sounds that should presently succeed.

But save for another plunging, far beyond, there was absolute silence as before. For fully half an hour after that the stillness was well-nigh insupportable, so fraught was it all with the tragic sense of noiseless life where both hunted and hunters moved about with the cushioned feet of shadows.

Far off towards the spring, or the estuary, a disturbance finally arose. It was neither loud nor clear. It seemed to interpret some struggle for life, or pursuit of the weak by the strong. It approached for a time, then ceased for nearly half a minute, only to break into clearer accents of some brute's agony, poignant but mercifully brief.

At this the discouragement in Grenville's breast was unavoidably increased. He was certain the tiger had taken fresher prey, and would now ignore his former kill. So intent were his senses on that far-off bit of jungle drama that he failed to detect a nearer sound repeated beneath his feet.

When his sharp ears abruptly warned him that something was moving down below, an extraordinary climax to his adventure was swiftly coming to a focus.

Some creature had come to the tiger's kill--of that there could be no doubt. It was lapping, or chewing at the meat!

Unable to distinguish the slightest thing in all that Stygian darkness, Grenville paused, with his brand slightly shielded from the creature's possible notice, waiting a moment to confirm the fact that a banqueter was present before he touched the fuse.

A tremendous roar instantly startled the silence, a few feet beyond the boar's remains. Before the man could move a hand, either to light the ready fuse or steady himself in the branches, some heavy form was hurled against the tree in which he sat--_and that something was climbing madly upward_!

Only a tremor had shivered through the trunk, but the limbs were bent and the foliage stirred as if from a breath of heavy wind. That the creature might run against himself and turn to fight, in its double fear and desperation, Grenville was keenly aware.

Subconsciously, also, he was equally sure the tiger was below. The catlike thing in the tree with himself had undoubtedly dared to sit down at the huge brute's kill, to flee for its life a moment later.

Instinctively turning to protect himself and thoroughly disturbed by this unforeseen complication, Grenville heard his unwelcome companion utter one sudden whine, of surprise and added terror, as it came abreast him in the branches.

It dared not retreat, and, therefore in a wilder panic, clawed its way higher up the tree. The limbs continued to shake their leaves for another protracted moment. Then the beast found a place to halt above his head, and doubtless glared down upon the unknown peril which man supplies to all the brutes.

Grenville recovered his wits as best he might. He had no particular dread of the animal crouched somewhere in his neighborhood, but neither did he relish its presence. What effect the affair would have on the creature he had come there to engage he could not, of course, determine.

He bent to listen for sounds from the s.p.a.ce below. Not the faintest suggestion of a moving or feeding animal could his focused senses detect. He thought perhaps the tiger might have smelled him or seen him in the tree. It occurred to him, also, the brute might be waiting for the catlike thief to descend and be slain at the kill.

But a far more likely supposition was that the tiger, having sniffed the taint of some beast without caste, now left on the meat that was sacred to himself, had disdained to touch it, and had gone away, to return to the place no more.

Ready to curse the despicable animal now sharing the tree's security with himself, Sidney was all but resigned to another long night, spent in vain and in utter discomfort, when once again a lapping sound came crisply to his attention.