A GIRDLE OF GOLD
Elaine had not yet appeared on the scene when Grenville went down to
the jungle. The morning hour was still decidedly early, but plans and
impatience to be up and at work had prodded the man from his rest. The
lassitude that should have followed his night of excitement had not yet
laid its weight upon him.
Apparently nothing had come to the jungle scene where the tiger had met
his end. The great form lay there, torn and rigid, but no sign of the
cat could be discovered.
Grenville passed his trophy, presently, to examine the space beyond.
The spot where the bomb had exploded was a gaping hole in the earth.
This was not the place where Grenville had placed the deadly tube,
which he knew must therefore have been moved--doubtless when the fuse
was pulled and broken by the creature taking refuge in the tree.
All about the spot where the kill had been the shrubbery was shredded.
The boar's remains had been blown away when the gap was made in the
sod. The trail, Grenville saw, must be repaired or a new one must be
made about the place.
He returned to the tiger, and was suddenly elated to behold the metal
collar, half-hidden by the fur about his neck. He had quite forgotten
this bauble, thus singularly employed, and, kneeling down to inspect it
closely, not only found it was massive gold and set with costly jewels,
but also discovered he must break or force a heavy link to take it from
the creature.
It was not until he had brought two sharp-edged rocks to his needs that
the collar was finally freed. Its weight and worth then amazed him.
The band was fully two inches in width, with the edges curved up and
turned under, in a simple and hammer-marked finish. It was all
hand-wrought, each blow that the smith had struck with his tool being
faintly recorded in the metal. The jewels--three sapphires, three
rubies, and one diamond--were simply and solidly set with bands that
barely clasped their bases. The rubies only were cabochon cut, the
other stones gleaming with facets.
There was not a mark upon the collar's outer surface to show what was
meant by its presence here in such extraordinary keeping. But
Grenville presently bethought him to glance at the inner circumference.
He was not in the least astonished, but he was a bit concerned, to
discover a number of those mystic symbols, deeply graved in the gold,
that had once been tattooed on the man sitting dead in the barque.
Here were the three hills, bounded by the water, and one with the tree
on its summit, while on either side the cartouch appeared, bounded by
crude drawings of the tiger. That the brute had been liberated here
upon the island as a sort of sacred guardian of the cave that was
mentioned by the writing found secreted with the map, Grenville could
not, or did not, doubt. There was nothing more to be found engraved on
the gold.
He finally slipped the heavy band about his own smooth, sun-tanned neck
and went at the task of securing Elaine's promised robe. This toil was
far more difficult than even his lack of proper appliances had led him
to anticipate. Although he had sharpened his stub of a knife-blade to
a very respectable cutting-edge, it was far too small for the business.
His doggedness and application were the assets on which he had most to
count, and without them here he must have failed. As it was, he
remained so long away that Elaine, who was up, was alarmed. And, when
at last he appeared below with the heavy, striped skin across his
shoulder, she started abruptly, till she saw he was not another tiger.
"I thought you might like to see the size of his hide," he said, as he
brought it to the terrace, "before I take it down by the shore for
tanning. I shall soak it a while in a mixture of brine and saltpeter.
Both are highly preservative---and the best the island affords."
"He was simply tremendous!" Elaine replied, when the skin had been
spread on the rocks. "What have you got about your neck?"
"Oh, this?" said Grenville, removing the golden collar. "This is a
symbol of royalty that his Bengal highness wore--your property now, as
a trophy of the hunt."
She took it a little uncertainly as he held it forth in his hand.
"Why--it's gold!" she said. "These jewels---- The tiger was wearing
this?"
"About his kingly neck."
"But how--unless someone put it on?"
"Undoubtedly someone did. He must have been a captive once, and
probably escaped."
It could serve no good end to acquaint her with his actual suspicions,
which might be ill-founded, after all.
"It's beautiful," she continued, gazing in admiration on the collar's
simple massiveness. "But it's not for me, I'm sure." She held it out
for him to take. But he bent above the skin.
"Then pitch it away," he instructed, laconically. "Toss it into the
sea."
She colored, looking at him strangely. She could not throw away his
property--anything of such great intrinsic value. She was baffled
again, as he managed so frequently. Her hand and the golden circlet
fell at her side. She could think of no appropriate speech of final
rejection. A whimsical notion only arose to her groping mind.
"Fancy me wearing this priceless band of splendor," she said, "and
eating with a stick!"
"It will just about fit around your waist," he conjectured, taking it
from her as he rose. With easy strength he bent it in his hands, to
make it more snugly conform to her slender and graceful little body.
Why should he not bend it thus, she thought, who had wrenched it from a
tiger? She felt how weak and inadequate was her own diminishing
struggle. But to wear this band--a symbol, almost, of Grenville's
ownership---- A hot recurrence of her former pride came surging to her
bosom.
"It's too heavy to wear," she told him, a trifle coldly. She once more
accepted the girdle, however, despite herself, from his hand. "The
tiger that wore it," she concluded, "met with a lot of trouble."
"You've met with some yourself," he answered, candidly, and he
shouldered the skin and started off for the estuary's mouth.
Elaine burned suddenly scarlet, interpreting his speech in some manner
of her own. Helplessly she carried the girdle to her cave, and left it
there in a hollow of the rock.
The incident concerned with the tiger was practically closed. A new,
bright era of security and liberty thereupon commenced, particularly
for Elaine. She could not take immediate advantage of the comfort thus
vouchsafed in moving about the island, but at least her worry was
lessened when Grenville was obliged to venture in the jungle.
His return to the work so frequently interrupted was delayed but the
briefest time. So eager did he constantly feel to accomplish his
boat's completion that he had grudged every hour the tiger had cost him
from his labors.
With no thought of sparing his tireless strength, he promptly resumed
the task of digging and fetching the clay. Elaine might have joined
him in the clearing now had not some task she was eager to complete
engrossed her attentions at the shelter.
That day the remaining surface of his prostrate log was plastered by
Grenville's eager hands. He likewise mixed sufficient clay to finish
his furnace in the morning. The fire that was helping to hollow his
log was once again ignited. Much of the old charred substance, left
from previous operations, Grenville knocked away with an improvised
tool of brass, in order to daub more clay inside the shell before the
flames could continue removing the wood as he required.
On the following day, while the walls in his smelter were drying,
Sidney wove a two-piece door of wattle--framework of creepers,
plastered with clay--to fit across the orifice at the bottom of his
tree. With this he felt he could regulate the draught and protect
himself while removing his crucibles of metal. The top door only would
be tossed aside to accomplish this latter purpose.
He likewise plastered the edges and sides of the hole that pierced his
smelter. He knew the heat, when he came to melt the brass, would
spread at once to all unprotected wood. After that he had still to
contrive a clay-covered implement for lifting out his crucibles, and a
tripod affair to be placed inside the furnace to support these
crucibles upon.
What with more work done upon the boat-to-be, and a goodly portion of
the afternoon expended in killing and preparing another of the
pheasants for their dinner, Grenville's hours sped swiftly away.
A weary but elated craftsman he was that day-end when at length he
returned for the final time to the terrace. He had been to the shore,
where the tiger-hide was curing in a strong solution of brine and
saltpeter, mixed in a hollow in the sand, and, having there turned it
over, had washed himself to a fresh and ruddy color.
Notwithstanding the unbecoming growth of beard upon his face, he
appeared to Elaine the most commanding figure she had ever taken time
to inspect. He looked every inch a master of the island, if not also
of his fate and her own. But she was more than usually excited that
evening, as she disappeared within her shelter.
She presently emerged with such an air of uncertainty and diffidence
about her as had never before appeared since their coming to the
island. But she did not hesitate in the task she had set herself to
perform.
"I have finished my first bit of knitting," she said, "and there it is."
To Grenville's thorough amazement, the clean, new article held in her
hand, and shyly offered for his acceptance, was a cap she had made for
his head. It was not unlike a golf-cap in shape, but the visor was
considerably wider, to protect his eyes from the sun.
She had woven this of finely divided creeper-core on a frame neatly
made of the same. Its meshes had then been filled by fibers, snugly
and neatly plaited back and forth to make it opaque to the light. The
frame was firmly knitted to the cap.
"Pretty good," said Grenville, busied with several arrows. "Thanks;"
and, placing it carelessly on his head, continued with his employment.
Elaine, who had conjured all her resolution to make of the presentation
the merest commonplace affair, was wholly confounded in her thoughts by
the man's unheard-of conduct, after all she had recently undergone
before she could make him such a gift.
She had feared some demonstration of the passion shown on the ship--or
at least some disturbing outburst she had armed herself to quench. But
this--such scant courtesy or gratitude as this--left her absolutely
impotent and baffled.
She was piqued, disappointed, chagrined. It was horrid of anyone, she
was sure, to be so outrageously unfeeling. There was nothing, however,
she could do, and nothing she could say. Standing there, mortified,
almost angry, and conscious she was burning guiltily red with various
emotions that he did not even notice, was such a footless and
irritating proceeding, with the situation robbed of its point.
She turned away, fairly ready to cry with vexation, and pretended to
make herself busy with things already well prepared for their evening
meal. But the new rebellion of her nature, partially begotten by the
uncontrolled and uncontrollable impulses loosed in the jungle the
previous night, when Grenville lay helplessly stunned, with his head
loosely pillowed on her knee, was not to be longer contained. She
presently fled from before the cavern, across, through the shadows of
the terrace, to the hidden shelf where Grenville had angled for fish.
There she suddenly sank to her knees on the rocks and covered her face
with her hands.
"I hate him!" she said, in a hot and passionate utterance, suggestive
of a sob. "I hate him! I hate him! I hate every man that ever
lived--and you, Gerald Fenton, as much as all the others!"
She snatched off the ring from her finger. It was Fenton's ring, with
a single stone that gleamed in the failing light. It seemed to her to
represent the man far absent from her side.
"It was you who brought it all about!" she continued, in her fiercely
waging conflict, and, overwrought, she cast it down on the ledge as if
it burned her palm.
It bounded lightly where it struck and, clearing the shelf, fell
swiftly downward to the water. A gasp and a moan escaped her lips
together. Vividly, of a sudden, she remembered Grenville's prediction
that she would throw it away in the sea.
"Oh, Gerald, I didn't mean to!" she moaned. "I didn't! You've got to
believe me!" She sank farther forward on the ledge, her face closely
hidden in the curve of her loose brown arm. She wept and wept there,
bitterly, in a mood of mixed emotions.
"I hate him! I hate him!" she said, as before. "It's not my fault in
the least!"
And after a time, as Grenville did not come, she returned to the camp
alone.