GRENVILLE'S RADIANT STAR
Even had sleep overcome Elaine, the explosion must have startled her
awake like a wildly fluttering bird.
All her life she had known the sound of guns, but never before had her
ears received such an air-splitting shock as this.
Her alarm could know no bounds. It had come so suddenly and
unexpectedly; it had been such a cataclysmic destruction of the
island's haunting calm! She was certain some hideous blunder had
occurred--that Grenville, too, had perished by the thing he had
fearlessly dared to create.
She had seen for an instant that fan-like glare, as she gazed far out
across the jungle. And now, as she stood there, rigid with fears and
fixedly staring at the formless gloom--why did she hear no sound?
"Oh, he might--he might call!" she said, and she tried to halloo, but
in vain.
She waited a time that seemed endless for some little sign from the
jungle. He had promised before that, if all went well, he would hasten
home at once. Surely this promise held good to-night--especially after
that explosion!
Perhaps it was not yet time; perhaps it was farther away than she had
thought. The glare had seemed near, but he had no torch, and must walk
but slowly through the thicket. How dark it must be along the trails,
in that tangle growth, with nothing for a light! How could he possibly
hasten?
She was standing out on the brink of the wall, staring down at the
gloom of the clearing, convinced that her ears, if not her eyes, would
detect the first sign of his coming. Just the merest red gleam from
the firebrand was all she would ask of the darkness--just that dull
little star in the firmament of black!
But the ebon remained unbroken. That he might be lost occurred to her
mind, but again she thought it was yet too soon for his return. She
stumbled swiftly to the fire again, to stir it to brighter refulgence.
It would seem to him a beacon against the sky to guide his footsteps
home!
She thought of a blazing brand she could carry to the brink of the
wall. With the largest limb afforded by the fire she returned, in
haste and eagerness, to wave him a signal of welcome. And still
nothing came from the clearing.
"Sidney!" she cried through the stillness, at last. "Sidney! Are you
there?"
The night surrendered no response, save some animal cry far off where
the barque was rotting.
"If he's dead!" she moaned. "If he's dead!"
But he might be wounded and helpless, she thought, with no one to come
to his side. He might not be hurt unto death itself--if aid could
reach him now!
If he died--if he left her thus alone---- A thousand times she
preferred to die beside him!
"Sidney!" she cried, as before.
With a strange dry note, choked back between her lips, she fled once
more to the fire.
Meantime the man by the tiger's kill continued to lie without motion on
the earth. Not even the glow of his cheering brand remained like a
sign of life in that silent theater.
The jungle cat, smitten and addled in its brain, had dragged itself
painfully away to the cover of the thicket, its instinct feebly alive.
There was not a sound in all the place, where crash and roar had been
so tremendously expended for one prodigious second.
A vague, weird dream came finally creeping intangibly through
Grenville's brain, resuming an intermittent function. When at length
it began a little to clear, he dreamed he was trying his utmost to
rise, but something held him down.
Consciousness poured a trickle through his being, and he felt he was
partially awake. Then a flood, a cataract of surging life, rushing
back to its centers, brought confusion and tumult to his thoughts. He
was still only partially aroused.
His eyes at length were opened. The darkness which their gaze
encountered seemed more complete than that of his region of dreams. He
attempted to rise, but his muscles and nerves refused their customary
obedience to his will. He tried to remember what had happened, but the
glancing blow sustained on his chin had blotted him out, temporarily,
like a stroke of death itself. And, had the stroke been more direct,
his jaw or his neck must have broken.
When he raised his head a bit from the ground and propped himself up on
his elbow, the sense of dullness and leadlike weight in both his feet
and legs continued unabated. He was battling to retain his
consciousness.
He began to remember, slowly. The process was only well started,
however, when it was singularly interrupted. He was staring blankly
through the jungle, which he partially recollected. It was funny, he
thought, how a star should fall and wander through all those aisles of
trees.
It was a star, he was fully convinced, coming haltingly through the
gloom. Its course was erratic. He lost it at times, but still it
persisted in approaching. How beautiful it was--the largest star he
had ever known--with its flames divinely ascending.
He sat up stiffly, his will momentarily gaining strength to resume the
sway of his body. Some mantle partially fell from his brain, to
accompany his physical rousing. Then he knew, not only what had
happened, but also what was happening.
"Elaine!" he tried to call aloud, vainly striving to rise or regain the
use of his limbs, then once more he sank in oblivion.
A strange, wild note broke from her lips as Elaine came plunging along
the trail with a torch redly blazing in her hand, held well above her
face.
She saw, before she could reach his side, that the tiger lay lifeless
upon him. She feared the man was dead, but, with wits exceptionally
clear and ordered, she thrust her torch-end firmly in the earth, laid
hold of the huge, limber beast she so fearfully dreaded, and tugged and
dragged it feverishly off with all her fine young strength.
The face of the inert man beside the tree was redly smeared with blood.
He lay horribly loose and still upon the grass. She knelt at his side
and placed her hands upon him, feeling above his heart.
"Sidney!" she said to him. "Sidney! You cannot--you shall not die! I
never meant the things I said--or thought--or anything! Oh, please,
please don't--don't look like that! You've got to come back--you've
got to!"
She tore at the band about his neck and lifted his head on her knee.
She wiped the red from his pallid face with the hem of her briar-torn
skirt.
"I'll find the spring!" she told him eagerly, starting as if to rise,
but the still form moved, and, dully at first, the two heavy eyes were
opened.
"Oh!" she said. "Oh, you're hurt. Don't try to do anything but
rest.... You didn't come--you didn't come home!"
Despite her entreaty, Grenville weakly raised his head and propped
himself, half sitting. The weight being gone from his outstretched
legs, his normal circulation was returning. He regained his strength
with characteristic swiftness.
"Hurt?" he said. "No--I don't believe---- I must have got a knockout
blow. The tiger? Did I get the tiger?"
He sat up uncertainly and, glancing about, saw the huge striped form
where Elaine had dragged it from his body. She still remained on her
knees, fixedly gazing on his face. Her strength was ebbing rapidly, as
Grenville's now returned.
"You didn't come home," she repeated, by way of explaining her presence
at his side. "I couldn't live here alone."
Grenville arose and assisted her weakly to her feet. She stumbled to
and leaned against the tree.
"By George!" he said, "I'll bet a hat you could!"
He knew what courage had come to her aid before she could make her
excursion. "I went down like a dub," he added, in his customary
manner. "No good excuse, but I do apologize. Better get out of this,
I'm thinking."
He took up the torch she had planted in the earth, to examine the
tiger, dead and mangled in the grass, One of the creature's great front
paws had been rudely torn from his body. He could only have escaped
instantaneous death by having moved from the bomb at the moment of its
explosion.
"Your robe looks mussed," Grenville continued, with a gesture towards
the animal's motionless body. "But I think it can be washed."
Elaine slightly shivered at sight of the frame now done with life.
"You've killed him," she said. "I'm glad!"
He took her firmly by the arm and led her away through the thicket.
When they reached the camp, Elaine was not yet fully convinced that
Grenville was uninjured. She brought him a rag she had torn from some
of her clothing and begged him to wash his reddened jaw. Even the
restoration of his former stubbled complexion could not suffice to
bring her that sense of certainty and calm essential before she could
sleep.
She remained beside him at their fire till long past the midnight hour.
Indeed, she had made no move to retire when at length the weird,
unwelcome disturbance made by the tide had begun its uncanny chorus.
Perhaps she had waited for the conclusion of this added feature of the
night's long ritual of nerve-attacking events, for she seemed to be
considerably cheered when its final wail had died upon the air.
"It seems to me that doesn't continue quite as long as it did at
first," she said to Grenville, as she rose at last to go alone to her
cavern.... "I think you ought to rest. I wish you would."
"I will," said Sidney. "Good-night."
But, for some time after she had gone, he sat there wondering if those
abominable but protective cries, that haunted the island's solitude,
were actually on the wane.
"God help us if they are!" he said, to himself, but he went to bed and
slept.