THE MOTHER OF INVENTION
It was not until the entire cycle of haunting sounds had been repeated
for its final time that Elaine could consent to return to her pallet of
grasses. And even when she had once more knelt upon this improvised
bed, she could not consent to resign herself to the mercies of the
night without one more glance towards Grenville's cavern.
She returned, unseen, to her door, and peered forth through the starlit
night, discerning his dimly outlined figure, as he sat before his door.
He even arose as she paused there, uncertainly. She noted his
listening attitude, the alertness of his pose. Then he sat once more
upon the stone at his threshold, where she knew his club lay ready to
his hand.
A sense of security, despite her bitterness of feeling, came slowly
stealing upon her. She went back to her couch and slept.
Sidney, for his part, sat there alone, while hour after hour went
silently by, and the constellations hung in higher arches. A thousand
ramifications of thought he pursued in his active brain. But through
them all, like an ever recurrent _motif_, stole a troubled reminder of
the tiger, twice encountered in the day.
To slay this contemptuous, savage beast that already drooled about the
jaws at thoughts of a human morsel, was the one imperative business to
be promptly executed. Elaine and himself could live on fruits, and
neglect all else, without serious results, for a week, or even a month,
but this affair was not to be delayed.
He thought of pitfalls, giant traps, and automatic engines of
destruction by the score, each deadly device absurdly impracticable and
beyond all power of his achievement. His mind, accustomed to civilized
ways, ran in higher ingenuities that were absolutely useless in this
primal state of their existence.
When at length he leaned back against his wall and began to wonder if,
in the end, he must arm himself with primitive man's crude bow and
arrow, and thus engage the master prowler of the jungle, he was ready
for Nature's claims. He slept there, too utterly exhausted to drag
himself in to his bed. And there Elaine found him in the morning.
That day was a long one, of varied and wearying employments. The wall
was finished across the trail, Elaine's too widely opened cavern was
partially blocked up with stone, and, at length, in addition to
searching the jungle for something particularly downy and inflammable
for tinder, to use in making fire, Grenville went with his basket down
to the clay pit and fetched sufficient of this moist and plastic
material to mould a number of vessels.
This last useful art was not, however, immediately attempted. Unfired
jugs and basins were absolutely useless--and as yet they had no fire.
The search for tinder had resulted only in producing a silken, fluffy
material that grew in a fat green pod. It was moist, when found, with
the natural juices of the plant.
While it dried in the sun, under Elaine's supervision, Grenville worked
at a stout, elastic tree-branch to taper out a bow. His stub of a
knife-blade served indifferently against the close-grained wood, which,
nevertheless, was obliged to yield to his persevering efforts.
At noon the weapon, save for the cord, was rudely finished. No arrows
had been as yet provided. Obliged at this hour to replenish the camp
supply of water, Grenville once more visited the spring. So fresh were
the tracks of the tiger here, in the mire about the trickling stream,
that he felt they must almost be warm. The brute was undoubtedly near
at hand, but, perhaps, well fed, as before.
"There is nothing quite so important now as fire," was Grenville's
remark, as he once more rejoined Elaine. "Without it we are
practically helpless. With it--there is almost nothing we may not hope
to achieve."
He had thought of a number of extraordinary and highly important
implements and arts that only flame and glowing heat could render
possible.
Elaine brought the fluff she had thoroughly dried, while Grenville
cleaned his flint and steel. For an hour, then, he strove in vain to
ignite his bit of tinder. It was not at all an easy matter to strike a
spark from the stone. What few brilliant specks of incandescence sped
occasionally downward like vigor transmuted into swiftly fading stars
from Grenville's varied and over-eager strokes, either died on the air
or missed their mark or struck it and found it uncongenial.
"This must be a vegetable asbestos," he finally declared. "If I had
just a pinch of powder, this flint might recognize---- By Jove!" and
he started at once to his feet. "I'm the greatest fool on legs!"
"What seems to be the trouble?" said Elaine, who could not possibly
comprehend his meaning. "Have you made some sort of mistake?"
"I've been asleep--my brain defunct! Excuse me half a minute!"
He started madly down the trail, running like a boy. Before Elaine
could do more than stare in wonder at his antics, he had reached the
bottom of the wall, darted across the clearing, and disappeared in the
jungle growth beyond.
He smashed his way hotly to the wrecked old barque, and, pawing deeply
beneath the surface of the wasting saltpeter, that had been for long
somewhat protected in the hold, promptly filled two pockets with the
mineral, and went racing back as he had come.
But beyond the clearing he altered his course to enter the region once
blackened by fire. Here he went directly to the hollow tree he had
once before examined, and, wriggling inside, through the ample orifice
burned out by the flames, he attacked the charred interior with his
knife as if his very life depended on his haste.
In the briefest time he had chipped off more than a double handful of
crisp, but inferior, charcoal. Retreating no less promptly than he had
entered, he gathered this carefully in a giant leaf, and hastily
rejoined Elaine.
"Powder!" he said, belatedly explaining. "Everything lying here and
ready, and my brain a howling blank!"
To Elaine this was not precisely clear.
"There is gunpowder here on the island?"
"No! The ingredients merely. But any child---- Ah! here's my bit of
sulphur! There's a ton of it ready to be gathered. Powder? I can
make enough to blow a dozen tigers into ribbons! The wreck is full of
niter and, once we have a fire, I can burn all the jungle into
charcoal!"
The mystery had not entirely lifted for Elaine, but this she hardly
expected.
"How can I help?" she asked him, quietly. "There must be something I
can do."
"It's a matter of grinding these materials," he answered, more calmly,
depositing sulphur, saltpeter, and charcoal on a rock before them.
"It's a simple composition, after all."
Barely less feverishly than before he began a search for suitable
stones to employ as mortars and pestles. There were many small
bowlders slightly hollowed by the elements, but a number of these had
surfaces ready to crumble, and were, therefore, reluctantly discarded.
In throwing about some loosely huddled fragments, to liberate a smooth,
hard slab of stone that was dished from its edges to its center,
Grenville was doubly rewarded by coming upon a large, thick seashell,
practically perfect.
With this and the basin of harder rock, he returned at once to the
shade. He was soon reducing the charcoal, while Elaine no less
industriously attacked the lump of sulphur.
"We need a little only for a trial," he said, as he presently sifted
out his powdered product, and began to grind the niter. "I wish I
remembered the proportions."
In his haste to obtain results as soon as possible, he finally shook up
and ground together a large-sized pinch from each of the three
materials, producing thereby a grayish, unpromising mixture, decidedly
too rich in both the charcoal and sulphur.
This he placed on a rock, a safe distance away, and attacked with his
flint and steel. Elaine had ceased her grinding operations, to stand
at his side and watch. He struck, perhaps, a dozen times before he
produced a shower of sparks--and nothing occurred. He looked at the
stuff for a moment, helplessly, discouragement swiftly lodging in his
bosom. Half-heartedly he struck the steel again.
A single spark flew hotly from the flint. It seemed to curve to the
outside edge of the powder. Instantly, however, the mixture was
ignited.
It did not burn in a quick, fierce flash, but more with a sputtering,
imperfect combustion, productive of stifling fumes. Grenville's hand
was slightly scorched--but his joy in the triumph was complete.
"We're kings!" he cried, sublimely indifferent to genders. "We're
monarchs of all we survey!" He leaped up, waving his flint about his
head, his face outbeaming the sun.
Elaine was vaguely glad of his results.
"I'm afraid I don't understand it in the least."
"Not at all necessary," he informed her, candidly. "It's the very
worst powder ever made. My charcoal is poor and my proportions wrong,
and I only half ground it all together. But it burned! That's enough
for me--it burned! It assures us a fire, and I'll make a new batch,
that will go off like a Spanish revolution!"
He went below at once to gather twigs and fuel, bits of dried grass,
and other kindling, and brought a large bundle to the terrace. More
carefully, then, he mixed and ground his succeeding sample of the
powder. Recalling more clearly the accepted formula, he increased the
proportion of saltpeter to something nearer seventy-five per cent. of
the whole, approximating thus the standard long since established.
Aware that, when he finally came to manufacture an explosive of higher
efficiency, he would do much better to wet the ingredients and later
dry the finished product, he now proceeded, as before, merely to try
for a fire.
Thus he presently laid a train of his grayish mixture from one small
heap to another, in a place selected for his trial. Over one of the
powder pyramids he arranged his combustible straws, twigs, and branches
with the nicest care. And when, at length, he struck a white-hot star,
divinely potential, into the midst of the second heap, a hissing snake
of incandescence and smoke darted swiftly along the surface of
rock--and his fire leaped into being.
On the towering rock, as on an altar, the flames that meant life to the
exiled pair rose goldenly bright and clear.
A strange exultation in Grenville's prowess possessed Elaine, as she
stood by in wonder, looking on his face.
"It shall never go out," he told her, presently, "not if I can prevent
it."