As It Was in the Beginning Part 42

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 att.i.tude 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. a.s.sisted now by the current, and with eyes intent on the darkened sh.o.r.e, 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 sh.o.r.e, 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 sh.o.r.e 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 sh.o.r.e 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.surance 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, gra.s.s-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 sh.o.r.e.

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.

CHAPTER x.x.xIX

ADDITIONAL HEAD-HUNTERS

The boatmen thus newly arrived off the estuary's mouth were proceeding in a leisurely and confident manner to make themselves and their vessel snug for the night, and Grenville had placed his second jug upon his raft when, without a sound having come to announce their movements, two or three Dyaks from the camp in the growth called some greeting or challenge from the sh.o.r.e.

That their words were interpreted in a friendly spirit by the shadowy natives on the anch.o.r.ed boat seemed to Grenville entirely obvious.

There was something akin to cheer in the voices that replied across the water. Every man was seen to halt at his work and come to the sh.o.r.eward side of the craft, to peer through the darkness towards the beach.

Three of the fiends with whom he had waged unequal battle now appeared on the sand strip a rod from where Sidney was standing. Their backs were presented as they called and gestured to the men beyond, and Grenville identified the chief once more by the fellow's unusual height.

Apparently an argument ensued, conducted, as to the sh.o.r.eward end, by the tall and dominant leader. He waved quick, eloquent gestures, frequently towards the headland whence Grenville had come. That some report of recent proceedings was being thus delivered there could be no reasonable doubt. Expressions of astonishment, satisfaction, and a diabolical glee came back in guttural staccatos from the blood-loving creatures on the vessel.

Grenville almost forgot where he was, and why, such indignation burned in his breast as he grasped at the substance of the conference thus held across the tide. Four more head-hunters, come to swell the already heavily outnumbering forces of the island, was too much for Heaven to permit! Against such odds and such diabolism, what possible chance----

He smiled in a grim, sardonic manner at the thought that a fight between himself and the now augmented Dyaks would ever again be likely, with this boat anch.o.r.ed here before him, Dyaks camping in the jungle, and no trail left by which he could reach the terrace and Elaine, even could he creep away in the shadows and silence of the thicket.

It appeared to him now that the chief on sh.o.r.e was becoming impatient, or angry. He shouted orders and waved his hand down the length of the island in a style growing rapidly more and more imperative, while the new arrivals answered back in a stubborn and sullen dissatisfaction that Sidney began to hope might lead to open rupture. Should one of the factions war against the other, he would think these four boatmen a G.o.dsend.

Even then, he reflected, the situation, as bearing on himself, might present no altered aspect till all was decidedly too late. Should he fail to return to Elaine with water to-night--she would doubtless never see his face again. Should morning still find him hiding here--their fates would have a sudden termination. And now, with this craft at anchor in the current, so close insh.o.r.e, there could be no chance to escape around it un.o.bserved, what possible alternative was offered but to stand here, nearly to his waist in the water, aware that the deadliest sort of snakes might be coiled within a foot of his hand?