THE HOUR OF CLIMAX
Grenville made no attempt to sleep as the long night went laggardly by.
He dozed, from sheer weariness, now and again, with his back against
the rocks, but two or three times in every hour he rose from his place
to go out on the ledge, where he listened to catch the slightest sound
that might be made above the ceaseless lapping of the water. He would
then return to the gallery, assure himself the smoldering brands were
ready for use at any moment, and once more sit down to wait and nod.
Elaine was equally sleepless. Far more than Grenville she feared night
treacheries on the part of the Dyaks from the jungle. The state of her
nerves, since the terrace was so readily accessible to the head-hunting
butchers, permitted no thought of sleep. Moreover, never since their
arrival on the island had Grenville so far exiled himself from her side
throughout a night. She had always felt protected heretofore, and upon
that protection had relied.
As restlessly as the man below she came to the door, times without
number, to listen for sounds the jungle might surrender, as well as to
watch through the darkness for the slightest inimical sign. Not a
sound, however, did the night vouchsafe her straining senses; not the
slightest movement in all the world of shadows, life, and tragedy about
and below her position could her blazing eyes detect.
She had never known a night so long, or one so haunted with fears. Her
imagination played cruelly upon her heart, picturing one dread scene of
butchery after another, with Sidney completely overwhelmed and finally
slain, while she, no longer desirous of life, awaited her fate in a
dumb and dulled indifference. She was certain the morning would never
dawn again, or, if it did, the one man pitted against these savages
might not even have time for one faint tug on the cord about her arm,
more like a farewell than a signal.
It was a red and troubled break of day that finally reddened the
eastern sky, where clouds were banked above the sea. Grenville had
dozed for perhaps as much as twenty minutes. He awoke with a start
from lurid dreams in which he had fancied himself awake after
criminally oversleeping, only to find himself and Elaine pinned down by
a horde of the merciless brutes to whom human heads are trophies.
The red of the sky for a moment confirmed some remaining disorder of
his thoughts. He had stumbled quickly to the cavern's mouth, from
which the sanguinary streaks and blotches, now painting the far horizon
and dully reflected in the sea, were confusedly presented.
The coolness of the haunting breeze, that crept like a presence about
the silent island, restored him soon and cleared the mists from his
brain. He stood for several minutes, gazing listlessly forth,
disgusted with the outcome of the night.
Once more he returned to the gallery to inspect his brands of fire.
And once again, on returning to the chamber, his inclination was to
prop his back against the wall and let himself sink in slumber.
The dawn-light was slowly increasing. He watched it dully for a moment
more, and yawned as he stumbled heavily towards the utter discomfort of
his resting-place.
Once more he adjusted his weary limbs upon the ledge, reflecting on
what expedient he must now adopt, since this, his _coup-de-main_, had
so egregiously failed. He thought he was planning brilliantly when he
once more fell asleep. The slightest of sounds that was foreign alike
to tide or breeze now failed to arouse his senses as his head came
forward on his breast.
Not another sound was made where that one had strangely risen from the
front of the shattered ledge. Even the sharpest eyes would have been
for a moment tricked by the shadows of the rocky niche, where the tide
was darkly swirling. A fragment of the lower cliff then appeared to be
detached.
It was simply Grenville's catamaran, with two or three natives upon its
deck, silently maneuvering to land. Back of it, just well off the
frowning headland wall, the bow of a larger Dyak craft appeared for the
fraction of a minute.
The head-hunting fiends had arrived! They had chosen the hour when
exhaustion finally culminates and claims the helpless sentinel, heavily
dreaming that all is well!
Aware that the slightest disturbance might warn their intended victims
in the cave, the Dyaks labored with the utmost caution to fetch the
float to the ledge. This they presently accomplished, fending it off
at a vital moment lest it scrape against the rock.
Two of the half-clad demons now landed, their movements as sinuous and
silent as a serpent's. Instantly flattening down upon the tide-lapped
shelf, while the third of their party skillfully guided the catamaran
once more to the larger craft without, they waited as patiently as the
shadows, of which they seemed a part.
The plans of the crew on the boat without had been matured with much
sagacity. The transfer of two more men to the raft was quickly and
noiselessly accomplished, and once again the catamaran was permitted to
swing on the tide's rotation into the open entrance of the inlet.
This second pair, with knives between their teeth and hands therefore
unencumbered, were a trifle overeager to gain the mouth of the cave.
One of them caught at the fissured edge of tufa with avid fingers,
while the float was responding to the force of the whirl. His hold was
rudely broken, yet so sharply had he dug in his nails that a fragment
of rock was broken away. It plumped with a gurgle in the water.
Grenville was suddenly awakened--not so much by the sound the bit of
rock had made as by something more subtle in the very air--a something
only to be interpreted by that instinct surviving from ages dark and
old.
He was suddenly alive to a sense of imminent danger lurking fearfully
close at hand. None too soon and none too silently he rose to his
feet, for there at the ledge the catamaran was halted and, even as the
two impatient Dyaks landed, their companions came worming up the shelf.
A moment more and all must have been too late, as Grenville clearly
realized. Indeed, with the utmost caution only could retreat to his
gallery be effected without a betrayal of his presence. He dared not
move swiftly from his post--and yet he must be quick!
Slowly and noiselessly withdrawing from his place beside the wall, he
took one long step inwards, towards the door he must place against the
open gallery entrance.
The dawn-light, redder and more intense, now cast an intangible shadow
in the chamber as a Dyak's head appeared above the ledge. The fiends
were all but on his heels!
He slipped within the passage, without creating the slightest sound,
save the loud, tumultuous pounding of his heart. Lifting the door no
less cautiously into its proper position, he left a crack, that was
barely a half-inch wide, through which to watch his visitors, writhing
like so many pythons over the shelf and into the ebon well of gloom.
Their plan was to crawl to the confines of the cave--unless they should
creep by chance upon their sleeping victims sooner, leaving a couple
crouched outside to prevent the quarry's escape. Torches were not to
be lighted until every man was posted, and then would be thrown to the
center of the cavern where their light would reveal the chamber's
occupants, while the outer rim of darkness still concealed the gleaming
knives. A counter attack would be rendered out of the question. The
cordon would be complete.
Three of those strangely-moving shadows Grenville plainly discerned.
There was nothing more to be seen--and nothing to be heard. That
several Dyaks were almost at his feet he felt, but could not have
proved. He had hoped for half a dozen at the least. He hoped for them
still, and deliberately waited, trusting they might arrive.
It seemed such a pity to waste his mines and not obliterate the lot!
He wondered if more of them might not come--then how he should know, if
they did.
Meanwhile, the three not included here in the cave-attacking party were
equally active above. The red of the dawn had seen them advancing
through the jungle where they meant to take the hill and block the
retreat of the victims to that eminence by any chance of extra ladders
or white man's baffling magic.
Elaine beheld them, through the strengthening light, so soon as they
crossed the clearing. They paused there as if for a signal, which they
may or may not have received. It gave the girl, who had watched with
an ever-increasing fever through the night and that blood-red dawn, a
long wild moment in which to imagine fates untold that must have
overtaken Sidney.
She was certain at last he was murdered in the cave, and that now, with
the passageway finally known, the fiends, whose passion was taking
human life, had come to complete their tale of butchery and plunder.
Why else should they once more visit the hill at such an hour of the
morning? They had barely waited for the dawn to make certain of their
work!
She saw them coming furtively up the trail, aware, she was sure, that
by means of the hidden gallery their movements might be seen. She had
held a wasting firebrand in her tense little fist for the past two
hours. And now--if only Sidney had told her what to do in such an
extremity as this! If only it might be her duty to fire the cannon!
It seemed as if she must obey the impulse--and perhaps save both of
their lives! The Dyaks were almost at the bridge. They must soon come
fairly in range of the gun! After that--it would be too late!
Below, in the cavern, during this time, Grenville was haunted with
doubts. He had waited in hopes other Dyaks would come, and not a sound
had rewarded his straining senses. He began to fear he had waited too
long--that the creatures whose shadows had crept within had searched
all the place and departed.
Yet he knew that they could not have passed him and left him unaware.
The light was now all in his favor, and steadily increasing. With a
sudden determination to take what toll the Fates had offered, he groped
his way back to his brands of fire, and then to the ends of his fuse.
Elaine, with her heart all but bursting, with excitement for which she
had no vent, saw the head-hunters pause on the slender bridge before
they crept upward as before. Her weight was leaned against the door
till it moved a little from its bearings.
She was sure it had made some far-reaching sound that the Dyaks could
not fail to hear. They had paused again--and again moved up the
trail--and found her helpless. The cord on her arm!--if Sidney would
only pull the cord----
The sharp little tug that suddenly came now startled a cry from her
lips. Instantly thrusting away the door and bounding from the narrow
ledge to the upper level of the terrace, she ran towards the fuse with
her cone of fire, just as Grenville, down in the gallery of rock, came
madly plunging upward.
He had lighted the fuse, and was groping towards the top, a fear that
he might be buried pursuing at his heels. He stumbled across the heavy
load of treasure, left in its basket by the wall.
As one in an earthquake or fire clutches up something to save it,
instinctively, so he laid hold of this useless dross and tugged it
hotly up the passage. He reached the upper angle thus before he
realized the folly of his action. He was certain then, as he dropped
the load, that something had happened to his mines.
Before this time----
With the thought half finished in his swiftly-working brain came the
thud and shock of his explosion--a tangible movement in the bulk of
rock--and then the cataclysm.
Almost as one with Elaine's small detonation, the mighty jar, the
air-confounding concussion, the smothered boom, and the dizzying tremor
that swayed the hill, shook down the girl's bewildered senses. She saw
the red leap from the cannon's mouth--and saw three men, surprised to
inaction on the deadly angle of the trail--then down she went, her mind
convinced she had rended the island asunder.
Sounds of colossal destruction stormed through the air for a time that
seemed to have no end. The roar of a cataract of broken stone,
confusedly toppling from estates erected by the ages, was lost in a
tumult of other sounds where the headland seemed to fill the sea.
Dust of the rock and smoke of the rock ascended with fumes of the
powder. Tidal disturbances splashed and seethed where the sea, having
split to receive those tons of chaos, surged back with augmented
violence at this displacement of its waters.
The cave had been blotted from existence! Its walls and its ceiling
had crashed from their several places. to leave only an ugly scar.
Whole towers of rocks, cleaved from the hill's main mass in sudden
violence, had hung in disordered ruin against the quaking air for a
second, then rioted downward on the Dyak boat to plunge it, rent and
shivered, to the bottom.
Not a man of that murderous group below had survived the climax of that
second. The place that had once been a treasure tomb, with a wailing
"spirit" at its portals, was at last a very tomb indeed; but nevermore
would its tidal wail arise on the air to render the cavern sacred.
Like a veritable spirit of underground destruction, Grenville emerged
from the passage, unaware of all he had done. His thought was only of
Elaine. He called, as he climbed to the terrace, but no glad little
cry made response.
Then, abruptly, he saw her prostrate figure on the rocks--and beyond
her two men, with one limberly inert, limping blindly down the trail.
To dart to his store, snatch the last of his bombs, and pursue these
three who had threatened Elaine was the first wild impulse of his
being. Just one such blow, to follow up his victory, and perhaps they
should need no more!
But he ran instead to the helpless figure near the cannon. He knew
what she had done. He took her up swiftly, calling on her name, and
carried her back to the former cave, where a rosy light from the risen
sun made it seem like a haven of promise.