A FATEFUL EXPLOSION
With feverish energy Grenville was at work, attempting to achieve a
dozen ends at once.
Nearly a week of high-pressure application appeared to have
accomplished so little. Yet a hundred pounds at least of his liveliest
powder had been mixed and stored away, either loosely or packed in the
bamboo bombs, of which he had a dozen; much extra bamboo had been cut
and brought to the terrace; a new lot of jugs had been molded of clay
and were finally being fired in his former smelter; baskets were made
and ready for fruits, should retreat to the cave be rendered expedient,
and his first small raft, or catamaran, for gaining the exit to the
cavern, was all but ready to launch.
He had taken the bowsprit of the barque and three large stems from the
bamboo growth as a basis for this craft. The bamboo stems were firmly
lashed together, to act as a mate for the bowsprit. They were held
away from the latter at a distance of about three feet by some of the
few unrotted bits of board he had torn from the old vessel's cabin,
plus more bamboo, split and employed for his platform.
Two half-cylindrical sections of this useful plant he had lashed to
eight-foot poles of considerable stiffness to complete a pair of oars.
His rowlocks, saved from the smelting processes, he finally tested in
their sockets, where a rigid bridge had been stoutly secured across his
raftlike contrivance, and found them all he could desire. The seat he
had planned to occupy in rowing he abandoned now as quite superfluous.
He felt he must lose no time in draining the cave, for possible use in
a siege. There was no other task that had been altogether neglected.
The flagpole was once more standing on the terrace; abundant fuse was
made, dried, coiled, and safely stored from damp or accident, and a
mold was hardening in the fire for running lead slugs that would make
the cannon effective.
For this latter need he meant to sacrifice his hammer. It, with the
lead he had saved before, would supply some six or seven pounds of this
needful ammunition. Now, as he swiftly braided three slender creepers
in a "painter" for his crudely fashioned catamaran, he glanced at the
tide inquiringly, and likewise up at the sun. There was over an hour
in which to get to the cave, lodge a bomb in the ledge, and blow out
the dam that held back the water, but the tide was still running
against him.
With ten feet only of his mooring-line completed, he abandoned the
braiding impatiently, secured one end to his raft at the estuary's
entrance, and, wading in behind the clumsy structure, launched it with
one impetuous heave across the sandbar to the sea. Boarding
immediately with his oars, he rowed it far enough only to prove he
could drive it against the tide, and then brought it back to the shore.
"One bomb and a torch," he meditated, aloud. "I can hang the bomb
across my shoulder to keep it out of the wet."
The catamaran having been made thoroughly secure, he hastened away to
the terrace. He missed Elaine. She was down at the "smelter,"
attending the fire that was roasting the new clay vessels.
With a bomb and his lighted torch in hand--held well apart and not for
a moment handled carelessly--he hailed Elaine from the edge of the
thicket by the wall.
"Just thought I'd drop around and drain out that water from the cave,"
he announced. "Everything's ready--and I've nothing else to do. When
you hear the salute, you'll know it's a commonplace affair."
"Oh!" said Elaine, who had her doubts concerning his various
explosions. "I'll watch to see you from the cliff."
"Well--er--I wouldn't stand just at the edge, you know--not till you
know it's all over."
"You're not going to blow down the hill?"
"Hope not, I've taken a baby bomb, but I didn't wish to let it off till
I'd told you what to expect. I'd keep away, in case of flying pieces."
"I will," said Elaine. "But I'll go up now, and perhaps you can call
to let me know how well you have succeeded."
"I'll send you a wireless."
Grenville hastened to his raft. "Please God she may never have to hear
me fire another!" he thought, as he went, reflecting on things that
might happen. He could not have known that only a mild beginning had
been made on their programme as scheduled by the Fates.
He was soon rowing eagerly and vigorously against the current of the
tide, which would run with lessening velocity for perhaps another hour.
When he came to the cave, he promptly discovered why the injunction to
enter its mouth at high water only had been made a point in the mystic
directions found with the map in the tube.
The ledge whereon he had landed before was deeply undercut. During a
tide no more than two or three feet lower than this that would serve
him to-day, the place could scarcely be approached, and could never be
entered at all. The swirl, which was rarely ever absent from the
place, increased in violence steadily with the lowering levels of the
water.
It was not without some chance of catastrophe that he presently landed
on the shelf. He lost little time in securing his painter to the
rocks, the line so adjusted he could readily slip it from the crevice
should a hasty retreat seem wise.
The task of blasting out the ledge was not a simple matter. To lodge
the bomb where its energy would be directed almost wholly against the
dam, or rock, and yet protect it from the trickling stream that could
readily render it useless, involved an extra toil of piling rocks, on
which he had not reckoned.
Fortunately, much of the thickest wall was opposed to the pot-hole in
the dam, while one or two extra-heavy fragments from the cliff were so
lightly poised he could drop them in the breach. Despite these natural
advantages, however, he labored hotly for fully half an hour before he
could even lay his fuse.
Meantime, his torch was blazing smokily, against his final need of
igniting the match and later exploring for results. At length he
looped the fuse along a ragged line of broken honeycomb, where pits had
been eaten in the tufa, and trailed it well down to the brink of the
ledge, with its end propped high between two bowlders.
With one last look at all his careful arrangements, he slipped off his
raft-line, caught up his torch, and was stepping down to board his
float when a sharp piece of rock broke away beneath his foot and
dropped him forward on his hand.
The torch was flung against the fuse, where it lay along the slope. He
heard it hiss, where the powder had caught, and aware that, by three or
four feet, it was shorter now than he had ever intended to light it, he
lurched full-length upon his raft and fumbled to clutch up the oars.
But the swirl was on, and the catamaran seemed possessed to bump
against the ledge.
In a final desperate outburst of strength, he sent the thing shooting
outward. Its bow would have turned in the whirlpool then, but he drove
it clear of the point.
Like a madman he pulled at the clumsy oars, to reach the protection
where the wall all but folded the basin from the sea.
His raft was around it--half of the raft--and another good foot would
have covered himself, when the blast abruptly boomed.
Even out of the tail of his eye he saw the dull-red flare behind a blot
that represented ragged rock in motion.
A fragment no larger than a man's two fists came as straight as a
cannon projectile and struck the pitted wall beside his head.
He had ducked instinctively forward, which doubtless saved his life.
But dozens of smaller and barely less violent fragments were broken
away from the edge of the wall by the piece with the meteoric speed.
One of these struck him above the ear--and down he went, face forward,
on the platform, to hang with arms and shoulders loosely supported on
the bridge that was used for the sockets of his rowlocks.
A rain of loose pieces hissed about in the sea. The cave belched smoke
like a suddenly active volcano. The tide took the raft, with its
motionless burden, and floated it back whence the man had come, but not
so close in the shore.
Then up on the cliff, when the shock and hail had subsided from all the
air about her, Elaine came inquiringly over to the brink, to receive
some word that all was well.
The smoke still rose from down below and obscured the face of the
waters. There was nothing Elaine could discover. She waited a time
that seemed very long, in her usual determination not to seem unduly
alarmed or importunate concerning Sidney's safety.
But at last she called his name.
There was no response. Her uneasiness increased. She called again,
and moved along the brink, staring eagerly down at the sea.
Then at last a sound like a stifled moan escaped her whitened lips.
She had seen that prostrate, helpless figure drifting down by the shore
on his raft.