A BATTLE IN THE SMOKE
No doubts could be for long entertained as to what the smudge was
expected to accomplish. Its dense and suffocating fumes not only
rendered a further watch upon the clearing or the trail practically
useless, but it seemed to Grenville highly improbable that he or Elaine
could for long survive the pungent reek they were soon obliged to
breathe.
There were two slight elements only in their favor. One was the
passageway, through the rock, where clean fresh air was constantly
flowing upward; the other was the very breeze itself that swept the
smoke upon them. It frequently split the cloud of black and gray upon
two juttings of the headland, or even beat it down and mingled its own
overheated but acceptable ozone with the otherwise stifling fume.
Anger and horror together had lodged in Grenville's being. That the
Dyaks would soon attempt a sneak upon them, under cover of the cloud,
he felt was as certain as that hideous death must be their portion,
were this business sufficiently prolonged. Even retirement to the
cavern could avail them nothing but a short delay of the fate they must
finally face when their food and water should be presently exhausted.
Under cover of the drifting smudge, he sent Elaine to the passage. As
long as a breath remained in his lungs he resolved he would not desert
his post, where he waited for attack by the trail. To permit the
fiends to swarm upon the terrace, destroy or capture his powder and the
gun, and prison himself and Elaine in the narrow gallery, was a thought
that aroused him through and through.
All further contemplation of his scheme for alluring the Dyaks to the
cavern was necessarily abandoned. The most he could do was to watch as
before, and, perhaps, convey his bombs and stores to the passage, as
time and his highly essential vigilance permitted.
Back and forth through the smoke he moved upon the hill, seeking the
better air that came occasionally through the billows, and listening
intently for the faintest sound from the always ready alarm. When an
hour had gone and no attack had developed, his heart underwent a new
despair. He began to doubt that the Fates would supply him an
opportunity for further retaliation on the fiends below, who could
finally overcome him with the fumes.
The drift of smoke was intermittently broken, near the trail, where
apparently a current of wind that assumed a rotation as it rose through
a half-round niche of considerable dimensions in the wall, swept
vertically upward to lift the billowing cloud. Thus for at least a
portion of the time Grenville could glimpse the ledge behind the trail
where besiegers must finally pass.
So dense became the reek, however, that he feared his post must soon
become insupportable. There was neither time nor air in which to
arrange a longer fuse, which, as a matter of fact, would be too long
for accurate work with the gun.
He knew at last the hour was nearing sunset, and silence still seemed
to roll with the smoke across the enveloped terrace. His eyes were
burningly filled with water; his head had begun to ache. He went
weakly over towards the gallery, intent upon breathing a little fresher
air before resuming his duties.
Suddenly, above the ringing in his ears, came a sound from his gate
alarm. Its deep hollow tone was strangely resonant in all that blanket
of smoke. He darted back, where lay his bombs and the short fuse laid
to the cannon.
The smudge had, unfortunately, fallen like a pall, concealing all the
trail. It lifted slightly, however, as a fog may lift over waters,
revealing one half-seen form upon the ledge.
Then, in the second that Grenville laid his fire to the powder, his
second alarm, from the frame of bamboo buckets, hung behind him on the
wall, rattled out its xylophonic warning. The head-hunting demons,
front and rear, were practically upon him!
He fired the gun. Its orange flame shot out through the smoke in
ragged spears, mingling the fume of imperfect powder with all that reek
from the jungle.
A gap was apparently torn in the rolling cloud, to be filled with a
denser substance. Nothing could possibly be discerned where the charge
must have splattered on the wall. There were cries in the air, but
whether from pain, or the Dyaks' exultation, Grenville could never have
told.
Aware that the demons were capable of sacrificing some of their number
to the gun, to beget its discharge, and thus clear the way for
concerted attack by greater numbers, Grenville promptly lighted the
fuse of a bomb and hurled it from him down the trail.
It burst in the smoke, its red blot of fire a lurid illumination in the
black and gray billows from the smudge. Again a cry succeeded, this
one unquestionably voicing some wretch's mortal agony in the
all-concealing fume.
Without for a moment pausing, Grenville plunged swiftly through the
drifting envelope, to gain the brink at the rear. He caught up a rock
as he stumbled half blindly onward, and blew on the fire of his brand.
A thicker shroud of the reek revolved about him, halting him there to
gasp for breath, which he stooped in the hope of finding. He dropped
the stone as a useless burden. Once more he staggered onward--and
blundered against a Dyak, more blinded than himself!
The creature had scaled the wall despite the bamboo framework and its
cups, or wooden bells! He and Sidney were instantly locked in a fierce
and deadly embrace!
A battle as silent as it was swift and ferocious was curtained there in
the smoke.
That the edge was near was a knowledge equally shared, as each man
wrestled in desperate violence to overcome his antagonist and hurl him
down to the sea.
More by instinct than design, Grenville had paused to grip his
firebrand hotly between his teeth. He had seen that the head-hunter
held a knife, which was instantly turned, as the boatman writhed in
Sidney's arms, in an effort to sink it to the hilt.
Grenville, however, clutched the wiry wrist with all his might, and
tried to fetch it upward for a quickly planned maneuver. It slipped
from his grip, and together he and the native froze more savage than
before. The Dyak once more attempted a stabbing pass, and Sidney again
caught the sinewy hand, in a clutch that he knew must fail.
The wrist left his impotent fingers like a snake. The whole arm
writhed backward for the stroke. Sidney abruptly leaned forward,
turning his head, and jabbed the red-hot firebrand against the Dyak's
eye.
With a shriek of pain the fellow lurched galvanically, to stab with
demoniacal might. But the blow went wide, in his agony, and when
Grenville had caught the wrist in a grip that a serpent could scarcely
have broken, he instantly laid hold of it with his second hand, with a
motion incredibly swift. Then turning his back with the skinny brown
arm across his shoulder, and abruptly stooping forward, Sidney hoisted
the scoundrel free from the rocks, on his shoulders, and, moving
quickly towards the cliff, ended the fight then and there.
He broke the arm thus used as a leverage against the Dyak's weight, and
literally slammed the shuddering creature down on the rocks, at the
brink of the wall, where he poised but a moment over death.
If he tried to writhe backward to the solid ledge, the effort was
belated. With a piercing scream he toppled over, flinging out his
broken arm in a gesture grotesque and disordered. Then he suddenly
grayed, in the limbo of smoke, and shot swiftly downward to his doom.
Grenville still bit upon the branch that glowed with fire. He searched
about pantingly, found his end of fuse, and saw the powder sputter with
ignition. He had barely stepped back when, from over at the trail,
came a sudden and tremendous detonation.
That the Dyaks were there on the terrace, after all, destroying his
bombs, was the one thought that flashed through the smoke in his brain,
as his own sharp explosion shook the air and hollowed huge masses from
the cliff.
He stumbled and groped laboriously across the uneven heaps of stone to
reach the secret passage, where Elaine must be crouching in fear. In
his ears rang her words "If it has to come, let's receive it here
together."
Already he feared her one grim wish had been brutally denied her in
this hideous pall of smoke. He saw a figure, dimly, through the reek,
and crouched to take revenge.