GRENVILLE'S DESPERATE CHANCE
At noon Elaine reluctantly consumed the last remaining drop of water.
Grenville had taken a sip, and pretended to take a swallow. To refuse
it longer, Elaine quite clearly comprehended, would be but to see it
ooze away through the jar, to be drunk by the merciless heat.
"I shall get a new supply," said Sidney, attempting an accent of cheer,
"but I'd rather avoid using that of the cavern, for fear it may not be
wholesome."
Elaine, in her way of divining the truth, was only partially deceived.
She felt that the water below in the cave was wholly unfit for
consumption. She knew that if anything even remotely possible could be
done to refill their vessels, Sidney would have filled them long before.
She made no discouraging comments, however, despite the fact her hope
was succumbing to despair. The smoke continued to roll in sullen
clouds across and about the terrace; the sun beat down through it
redly, soaking the rock in caloric, that sank to the gallery itself.
The noonday meal had been slight and unrefreshing--a bit of fruit, too
warm and too ripe for relish on the palate, and a few odd scraps of the
meat. It was water that both insistently craved, and for which they
grew fevered and distressed.
The smoldering brands in the furnace of rocks could not be permitted to
die away in ash. Elaine had undertaken the maintenance of this, their
altar spark, which rarely rose to a flame. She was safe enough to come
and go from the passage entrance to the nearby furnace Grenville had
moved to facilitate her duties, but the smoke seemed far more stifling
and hot than it had the previous day, while, with headache, thirst, and
a heaviness in all her weary being, the endlessly cheerful and
courageous little companion of Grenville's maddening ordeal felt ready
to drop and rise no more.
Again at his task of constructing a float that should bear him from the
cavern to the inlet formed by the spring, Sidney toiled with no mercy
to himself in the workshop far down in the rocks. He felt at times he
must gulp down even the water of the sea, so parched was his throat,
and so craving was his system.
At five o'clock his bamboo raft was completed, even with braces for his
jugs. It had also been tried in the basin of the cave, and made
finally ready for launching. But the tide would be low till eight.
His blast had made the water more approachable than formerly, yet to
fight his way against a powerful current would over-tax his strength.
In any event he must wait for the darkness of night.
He returned to Elaine, and although he, too, was weary to the bone, her
patient endurance of suspense and suffering aroused him to a state of
anguish in which no exhausting task would have seemed too great for him
to undertake. He was wrung by her wistful attempt at a smile.
"The day is nearly done," she said. "The night is sure to be cooler."
It was considerably cooler, but scarcely more fresh, since the smoke
appeared to pour in even vaster volumes from the greenery below. That
the Dyaks were keeping strict watch on the water supply there could be
no reason to doubt. From time to time a weird bit of chanting arose
from that fume-creating garden that had once been so fair as to win
from Elaine the prettiest name she knew.
Grenville felt certain, in fact, the boatmen's camp had been made about
the inlet or the spring. The short stretch of beach where he and
Elaine had landed, and where he had later made a bower of the trees,
would be certain to attract these half-amphibious savages, though their
boats were moored behind the opposite hill.
For a time he wondered if he might not be more wise to pass entirely
around the island, to approach the pool of fresh water from below. But
reflecting that various currents of the tide would buffet and beset
him, in addition to which he must run the gauntlet past the Dyak boats,
he surrendered the suggestion without delay, and impatiently awaited
the tide.
Three times he went down the passage, torch in hand, to examine the
stages of the water. At length he bethought him of two short
scoop-like paddles, to assist in propelling his craft, and feverishly
set about their construction.
They were done in less than half an hour, since they consisted merely
of two half-sections of bamboo cylinder, lashed to a pair of handles.
Elaine was aware he was making ready for more than an ordinary
adventure, as she watched him with her wide and lustrous eyes.
"Perhaps relief may come to-morrow," she finally observed. "You are
quite exhausted. Might you not be wiser to rest to-night? We can get
along, I am sure."
But even her voice made a rasp in her throat, so distressed was her
system for water.
"I need a bit of change," he said. "It is certain to do me good."
With a touch of his former brusqueness, he presently bade her seek her
couch, during the time he expected to be gone, and vanished once more
down the dark, steep passageway, with his paddles and torch in hand.
The torch was left in the gallery, extinguished. The concealing door
was adjusted to its place. These were mere precautions against the
cave's discovery, yet Grenville was certain no Dyaks would approach the
place that night. His two best jugs were placed on the ledge; his
cleaver was hung at his belt. He could take no bombs or lighted brands
on such an expedition.
The task of launching his raft on the tide involved unexpected labor.
Its lightness made it an easy prey to the swirl that always filled the
cavern's walled approach. It was sucked once nearly under, its farther
end disappearing entirely from view--and Granville withdrew it,
desperately glad the jugs had not been placed upon it.
Awaiting a quieter mood of the whirlpool, half seen in the darkness, he
launched the float again, and beheld it rest there, quietly, nosing
against the ledge. He turned for the jugs, but, casting a quick glance
backward, at the slightest of scraping sounds, saw the raft swinging
outward from his reach.
His arm was too short for its recovery. Leaping wildly out in the
water, he caught it again, and was washed against the jagged wall
before he once more returned it to the landing. He was soaked to the
skin, but his pulses throbbed with heat and dogged energy that would
think of no defeat.
With his jugs finally laid flat between the bamboo supporters, front
and rear, and with paddles in hand, as he lay at full length on the
light but half-submerged platform, he rowed the raft out with a motion
as if he were swimming.
Indeed, like a giant oar-bug, more or less helplessly carried by the
current that it rides, he spun slowly about in the maelstrom of the
gathering tide before he could escape past the portal and head for the
inlet below.
He soon discovered that to continue far in this fatiguing attitude
would abominably strain his neck, if not his entire body. Not without
considerable difficulty, in balancing the craft, he effected a change
of position, and knelt upon the supports.
The waves washed up about his knees and feet, but of this he was
practically oblivious. Assisted now by the current, and with eyes
intent on the darkened shore, beyond the uprise of the cliff, he
propelled himself much farther out than formerly, with the purpose of
avoiding the possible vigilance of Dyaks on the beach.
The night was not exceedingly dark, so brilliant was the light from the
stars. Once the region of smoke was left behind, the blurred and
blended features of the island were sufficiently well revealed for his
purposes, since he knew its every silhouette as well as the contours of
the coast.
He had rowed and drifted, perhaps, half the distance essential to land
at the estuary mouth, when the sound of voices, floated out from the
shore, abruptly halted his movements. The Dyaks were there. Either
motion or any unusual disturbance would suffice to betray his presence
off the land.
And now, as if every fate had become malignant, the current drifted him
inward, where he knew he should keep well away. At the risk of
exciting curiosity, if nothing more, he dipped his paddles, with a slow
and silent expenditure of strength, and swept the float powerfully
outward again, till the shore seemed a part with the sea.
For a time that seemed interminable he hung about that outer stretch,
awaiting a further sound of the voices. They did not come. Once more
at last he paddled silently inward, finally worming, as before, to a
prostrate position on the raft. The chant of the head-hunters came
again, as if from the depths of the jungle.
"Now, if ever!" muttered Grenville, half aloud, and impelled by a new
and reckless desperation, increased by his thirst and his impotent rage
at the creatures still feeding the fumes that Elaine could not avoid,
he sent his craft swiftly landward, thankful, at least, for the mild
disturbance of breaking ripples on the shore that would drown what
slight noises he might make.
Tempted to moor his float outside the estuary, he readily agreed it
might thereby lead to his discovery, and must, as a matter of fact, be
completely concealed in the shadows of the pool. Excited now by the
possibility that his catamaran, with the oars and rowlocks, might still
remain in its former harbor, he was doomed to prompt disappointment on
gaining the estuary basin. There was nothing whatsoever in the place.
His jugs and paddles he had placed upon the sand. It was only the work
of a moment to draw his float across the bar and gently thrust it away
from sight beneath the overhanging verdure. Then he stood there,
knee-deep in the water, straining his ears for the slightest sound of
the Dyaks stirring in the thicket.
Only the drone of a halting voice was wafted to the place. In silence
he concealed his paddles, and took up his jugs, to wade with the utmost
caution up the pool, towards the spring that formed its source. The
water about him was brackish, from its mixture with the tide.
Deeper and deeper grew the basin. The water had risen to his waist.
He sank in steadily with every step, despairing now with the sickening
thought he might be compelled to swim. Such a task, with two filled
jugs, would be impossible, as he bitterly realized. But on he went, as
noiselessly as before.
The water was now about his breast, and he held his jugs above it.
Something gently nosed against him--and gave him a start. Thoughts of
the tropic serpents so frequently inhabiting the water, chilled a thin
channel down his spine. Then he saw that the thing which might have
been a reptile head was the cork and neck of a bottle. He dipped down
and caught it between his teeth, more gratified in all his being than
if it had been a thing of gold.
It almost seemed to the man like a sign that the tide of ill-fortune
had turned--the tide of luck. He had certainly passed the deepest
section of the estuary; he was rising on higher ground.
To avoid the soundings of dripping water, ready to fall from his
clothing, he proceeded more slowly than before. When at length he came
to a strip of barren sand, he rested his jugs, withdrew the cork from
his bottle, and was gratified to detect the odor of stale beer, or
stout, which the thing had formerly contained. He rinsed it then and
there, to make it sweet, and crowded it into his pocket.
When he once more took up his jugs, to resume his quest of drinkable
fluid, he was presently confronted by an exceptional tangle of the
shrubbery, arching the tortuous windings of the estuary's head. Here
he found himself obliged to pause and noiselessly bend back or break a
number of the slender branches before he could wade as before.
He started some small nocturnal animal out through the growth, and the
rustling disturbance made by the beast was heard by the Dyaks beyond.
One of them called out sharply. To Grenville's complete astonishment
and dismay another man, barely a few yards off, replied with a species
of grunt. The fellow had come there, either to visit or to set a
snare, and must have believed he had frightened the animal himself.
Sidney could hear him working now, as he leaned a bit closer to the
foliage, incapable of moving further while the hunter delayed in the
thicket. The fellow presently arose, as if to go. Instead, however,
he approached even closer to Grenville's place of concealment, and
Sidney oozed cold perspiration, helplessly occupied, as he was, with a
jug in either hand, and his cleaver still swung at his waist.
To have moved, or attempted to place either jug in the water at his
feet, must have been fatal to his mission. Yet he felt convinced the
Dyak must fairly run against him, unless he could move to the side.
One of his shoes, moreover, was sinking deeply in slimy mire.
That his balance must be overcome seemed well-nigh inevitable. A
branch from one of the larger trees that grew above him on the bank now
swept so forcibly against the other foliage as the Dyak hauled it
downward, to sever a twig for his trap, that Grenville's face was
lightly brushed. When the limb sprang upward a moment later, he pulled
his foot from the hole.
It seemed to the man a quarter of an hour at least that the trapper
remained there, a few feet away, making one more sound, from time to
time, when it seemed at last he must have departed. When he finally
went, there could be no assurance he would not return again.
Notwithstanding this possibility, Grenville slipped furtively along
once more, disturbed to find how far towards the spring this narrowing,
sea-level neck of the inlet continued through the growth.
When he came at length to a rise of the island, down which the trickle
from the spring had made its course, he found himself at the edge of a
small, grass-grown clearing, that could hardly be more than a stone's
toss away from the Dyaks' temporary camp. A small, deep basin, filled
with the precious water he sought, reflected a star at the zenith of
the heavens. It some way gave him hope. Of courage he had no lack.
Noiselessly, but without hesitation, he crept forward to the place and
bent to drink, then to fill his bottle and jugs. At a snap that came
from the shadows beyond he looked up alertly, beholding through the
leaves a bright bit of fire upon the earth, with two of the Dyaks at
its side. Every accent of their halting conversation came clearly to
his ears.
With his three receptacles filled at last, he began his retreat from
the place. He had barely vanished from the clearing, and come to the
cover of the growth once more, when the man who was laying the snare in
some pathway of the small jungle animals came back to complete his work.
Grenville thought his arms must relinquish the holds in their sockets
before the unsuspecting hunter was content to leave the neighborhood.
The jugs, so long and silently held, were rested a moment on the bank,
when, at last, the moment did arrive when Sidney could dare retreat.
Then down through the stubborn tangle, once more, he moved like a
silent shade. With every yard thus placed between himself and the
natives by the spring, the hope in his breast increased.
He came once more to the deeper estuary pool and, lifting his jugs to
his shoulders, waded cautiously forward, nearly up to his throat in the
tepid brine that smelled too rank for anything but swamp. He paused by
his raft, for a moment undecided as to whether he should place his jugs
in the braces lashed upon it, before he pushed it past the bar, or
after it should float on the tides.
While he stood there, with a sense of exultation daring to warm in his
soul--an exultation centered on Elaine and the joy it must presently be
to see her thirst allayed--he suddenly stiffened at the sound of Dyak
voices, alarmingly near at hand.
Retreating instantly, under the shadow of the foliage and against the
end of his raft, he placed one jug upon it, noiselessly, and put out
his hand to grasp at a branch to draw himself further from sight.
But the branch on which he laid his grip was suddenly alive. It
writhed and lashed sharply at his knuckles until, with a shudder of
comprehension that he had clutched the tail of a snake, he flung it off
and knew it had glided away.
He had no choice but to try again, and this time met with better
fortune. Out through the foliage, arranged thus hurriedly about him,
he peered towards the low bit of beach. There was no one in sight, but
beyond, on the sea, suddenly looming before him, and coming about to
face the protected inlet, a third of the Dyak sailing-boats, a new
arrival, manned by an additional group of head-hunters, nosed
gracefully up against the tide.
Her anchor was cast, and there she rode, not twenty yards out from the
shore.
Like shadowy demons from some world beyond, arrived on some mission
mysterious and tragic--some service of the foulest fiend in Hades--four
half-seen figures moved along the railing of the craft, destroying the
hope in Grenville's bosom.