VARIOUS DISCOVERIES
The sound had no sooner died on the air than a second, far louder, and
far more uncanny in its suggestiveness of someone in mortal pain,
followed piercingly, up around the rock, and rang in their startled
ears.
The third sound more resembled a scream. It was immediately succeeded
by a chorus of hideous cries and moans, singularly distressing. They
rose to a pitch incredible; they seemed to involve every accent of
human grief and torture, and to wrap the rock escarpment completely in
an agonizing appeal.
This chorus sank, but a haunting solo of wailing arose as before, to be
followed again by the air-splitting scream, and at length once more by
the mingling of many dreadful voices.
The island exiles glanced at one another inquiringly, Elaine blanched
white with awe.
"By Heavens!--it can't be human," Grenville muttered, as the programme
recommenced with only a slight variation.
To Elaine's dismay he started for the cliff.
"Mr. Grenville!" she cried, and helplessly followed where he went.
The wail was dying, in a horrid series of feebler repetitions, when
Grenville came to the edge of the wall and peered down below at the
water.
There was absolutely nothing to be seen in any direction. The direful
sounds, fast progressing once more to that nerve-destroying climax,
appeared to issue from a natural cove, a little along to the left.
Grenville continued around the edge, to a point directly above them.
But here, as before, there was nothing in all the sea suggestive of
boats or beings. The tide, Grenville thought, ran in and out with
particular force, reversing at a certain point, and performing singular
movements in a basin of hollowed stone.
Elaine had paused behind him, a rod or more from the brink. He waited
deliberately for all the cycle of sounds to be repeated, then turned
away with a smile.
"I think we have come upon the explanation of the island's uninhabited
condition," he informed the girl, as he came once more to her side.
"Those noises are made by the sea, forcing air to some cavern in the
cliffs. It is doubtless repeated twice a day at a certain stage of the
tide."
"It's horrible!" Elaine replied in dread, as a feebler rehearsal of the
chorus filled all that tropic breeze, "simply horrible!"
"It may be our greatest bit of good fortune," Grenville informed her,
sagely. "I much prefer those sirens to a colony of Dyaks who might
otherwise live on the place."
"We shall have to endure it twice a day?"
"Possibly not. I may be entirely mistaken, concerning that. I can
only be certain it is caused by the tide, and is, therefore, not to be
dreaded."
For fully ten minutes, however, the tidal conditions were favorable to
the sound's continuance. It subsided by degrees, the last moaning
notes possibly more suggestive than the first of beings perishing
miserably.
Meantime Grenville had gone indifferently about the business of cutting
huge armfuls of the tall grass and ferns abundantly supplied in the
clearing. This moist and not unfragrant material Elaine in silent
helpfulness carried to the top of the terrace, where she spread it
about on the rocks. She was certain Grenville was providing far more
than they could use in reason, yet although his stubby knife-blade was
a poor tool, indeed, for the business, he toiled away unsparingly,
blithesomely whistling at his task.
"You may be glad by nightfall to burrow into a stack of this hay," he
told Elaine as he brought the last load up the trail. "If you wouldn't
mind turning it over from time to time I think I'll look about again to
get an idea of the island."
Elaine had as little inclination to remain on the terrace alone, with
all manner of worries respecting Grenville's safety, as she had to
follow where he would lead through the shades and thickets of the
jungle. She was aware, however, her presence at his side would be more
of a care than assistance; while the necessity for his explorations
addressed itself clearly to her mind. She made no confession of her
natural wish to see him returning promptly.
He departed, with his club in hand, quite certain he should not be gone
above an hour. He had not, however, reckoned with the jungle.
Despite the fact he had set his mind on the region about and beyond the
spring, the flow of which formed the estuary, some wonder respecting
the area once blackened and cleared by fire attracted his attention
immediately upon his descent from the hill.
Through a fringe of scrub he forced his way to this region close under
the walls, discovering old, charred stumps, many dead saplings, and
quantities of half-consumed branches, affording a large supply of fuel.
There could be no doubt the fire had raged within the previous year.
Human visitors of some complexion had come, left this scar, and
departed.
Hopeful of some enlightening sign as to who or what they might have
been, he searched the earth about and between the shrubs and grasses
with considerable care. Not so much as a bone, however, rewarded his
scrutinizing gaze. He came to the tree trunk left hollow by the
flames, and paused to marvel at its size. Above his head it was four
feet through, while the base was certainly eight. An arch had been
formed in its substance, near the ground, and into this he curiously
peered.
Kneeling thus on the earth, he was readily enabled to look straight up
through and out at the top. The hollow in the stout old jungle
champion was fully two feet in diameter, and almost perfectly round.
There was nothing else of interest to be found about the place, save a
huge, smooth log, lying with one end resting on a rock, and long enough
to make a splendid boat.
Attempting the passage of the jungle from this point across to the
midway wall of tufa, Grenville expended fully fifteen minutes of the
toughest sort of effort, and was then obliged to retreat once more to
the trail. He encountered here the first wild animal discovered since
his meeting with the tiger.
It was a porcupine, bristling with trouble for any attacking beast.
Grenville could have slain it with his club. He was fairly on the
point of providing this much meat for the sadly empty larder, when the
fact that he could ignite no fire deterred his ready weapon. He
thought, in that extremity, of his watch, the crystal of which might
serve to give him a white-hot spark from the sun.
Trusting the porcupine might await the result of his quick experiment,
he lost no time in submitting the glass to a trial. It formed a ring
of brilliant light on the back of his hand, but the rays would not come
to a focus.
"Go thy ways," he said to the porcupine, and he continued at once on
his own.
Observing the trail more closely than he had on his earlier excursion,
he presently discovered a divergence to the left that led towards the
central wall of stone. Here he frightened a considerable troop of
monkeys that swung in a panic of activity through the avenues of
foliage overhead. There were likewise sounds of heavier beasts that
escaped observation on the moist and thickly cumbered earth.
The trail under foot was rather well worn, and not, the man was
certain, by the hoofs or feet of brutes. The explanation was presently
forthcoming, at least in part, for the path emerged at a clay pit that
lay against the frowning tower of stone.
Grenville could have shouted for joy as he took a bit of the smooth,
sticky substance in his hand, and began thus promptly, in his fancy,
making pots and jugs innumerable to meet their every need. The deposit
had been previously worked. The evidence of this was unmistakable.
But none of the tools employed by former craftsmen had been left for
Grenville to discover.
He spent some time investigating all the mute signs of former activity
expended at the pit, and finally glancing up at the cliff above,
abandoned all thought of conquering its summit, and retraced his steps
along the trail.
Where the path to the spring made a second fork, he continued straight
on through the jungle. One glance only of the estuary, tortuously
penetrating the waist of the island, was vouchsafed him through the
thicket. Beyond this point, in swampy ground, flourished a forest of
giant bamboo. The creepers and vines in that immediate section were
particularly varied and abundant. The bird life was equally
impressive. Hundreds of swallows were skimming in the air, a number of
argus pheasants wildly fled from the visitor's presence, parrots
screamed and wheeled in huge flocks above the light green bamboo
foliage, and several fine flamingoes made shift to find concealment in
the reeds.
"It's a haunted paradise," Grenville muttered to himself, his thought
having gone for a moment to the wails and moans that had startled
himself and Elaine.
Regretting that his broken knife was a wholly inadequate implement with
which to assail such a bamboo stem as he would gladly have taken to the
camp, he was once more making his way from the thicket when his foot
crashed audibly through something brittle, on the earth.
He parted the shrubbery and uttered a low exclamation. He had stepped
upon a human skeleton, white and suggestively huddled, every fragment
of it perfect--except that it lacked a head.
In a certain sort of anxiety Grenville searched about to find the
missing member. The skull was not to be discovered. Persuading
himself this might be accounted for by many natural explanations, and
resolving to keep his discovery entirely to himself, he forced his way
around this grewsome inhabitant--and came upon another.
This one he did not strike with either foot. It lay outstretched
before him, in company with scattered and broken bits of rock--and,
like its neighbor, it was headless.
Had some monstrous head-hunter written "Dyaks" on all the empty lattice
of those human ribs, Grenville could not have been more convinced of
what this business meant. He returned to the trail accompanied by a
sense of dread that all but sent him back to Elaine. His thought was
entirely of her, and of their helplessness, cast thus alone upon this
unpeopled island, clean stripped of weapons and of all things else save
their wits and bodily strength.
"We've got to escape," he told himself in a new, swift fever of
impatience. "There is not an hour to lose!"
He continued on through the jungle towards the hill at the farther end.