As It Was in the Beginning Part 41

Instantly pouncing upon the nearest length of his precious bamboo, he darted with it to the pa.s.sage. 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 s.p.a.ce. 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 c.h.i.n.k 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 pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sed 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 c.h.i.n.k 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 pa.s.sage 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.

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII

GRENVILLE'S DESPERATE CHANCE

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 succ.u.mbing 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 sc.r.a.ps 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 pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sage, torch in hand, to examine the stages of the water. At length he bethought him of two short scoop-like paddles, to a.s.sist 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 l.u.s.trous 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 pa.s.sageway, 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 sc.r.a.ping sounds, saw the raft swinging outward from his reach.