THE LAST BOMB
It certainly was a modern yacht that the two of them saw, straining
their eyes to identify the stranger roving afar in their waters.
A trick of the sun, or perhaps her paint, had concealed both masts and
funnel for a time, presenting only a rakish angle of her prow and
quarter, incredibly like a sail of the shape the Dyaks employ.
But, if eager excitement surged uninterruptedly through the pulses of
the two ragged exiles, there on the barren headland, the bitterness of
vain disappointments promptly began their inroads to its centers. The
yacht was not only in great apparent haste, but was heading far off to
the eastward, with not the slightest curiosity respecting the tiny
island of whom no one could give a good report.
The flagpole was gone--and a new one had been neglected. There was no
time now to erect another, as Grenville realized. He stood with Elaine
on the brink of the rock, frantically waving his arms and cap, and even
a large banana leaf, while the slender distant visitor came abreast
them and continued straight ahead.
"They've got to see! They've got to!" he cried, in the desperate
plight of mind begotten by this promise thus mercilessly snatched away.
Suddenly abandoning all other possible devices, he ran to his powder
"magazine," where the last of the bombs was stored. He came with it
hugged against his breast, in thoughtless and dangerous proximity to
the firebrand clutched in his fist.
"Run back!" he said. "I haven't time to make it thoroughly safe!"
But Elaine remained to see him lower it down on the broken rocks, where
the cave had formerly existed. She waited, indeed, till he lighted the
fuse and drew her away towards the shelter.
His eyes were on the distant yacht, fast fading once more from their
vision. The bomb must have failed. The fuse was deficient, he was
sure. He started back to recover the thing and make it certain of
explosion.
Then it burst, and flung shattered fragments along all the face of the
wall.
Grenville was watching the distant yacht with fixed, almost frenzied,
expression.
"They haven't heard!" he groaned, despairingly. "They're going faster
than before!"
It certainly seemed as if the hurried stranger would no more halt than
would a fiery meteor overdue at some cosmic appointment.
Then of a sudden, from its bow, broke a pure-white cloud of smoke. She
had answered with the small brass piece employed to fire a salute. Her
prow was turned before the sound came dully across the waters. Sobbing
and laughing together, in sudden relief, Elaine sank down on her knees,
among the bowlders, to watch this deliverance come.