The Burning Bridge by Philip Verrill Mighels (the best novels to read TXT) 📕

small section inside his natural smelter to cover before he could undertake the melting of his metal, but his heap of clay was gone.

Once more, as he had on the previous occasion, he informed Elaine in the late afternoon of his intentions for the night. Her look of alarm was the only sign that escaped her resolute being. She had silently noted his earlier activity with the bomb and his fire-preserving wood; she was not surprised by his plans.

"I shall not be down at the spring," he said, "but over there nearer the clay pit. I have found a place where I rather expect our friend to arrive at a decently early hour."

Her eyes were startled and wide.

"Do you mean he sleeps where you have been walking every day?"

"No—certainly not. But I'm sure he was there last night—and I hope he'll come again."

She was quick to divine the unpleasant truth that Grenville was striving to avoid.

"You mean—he's been eating there—and left some awful——"

"Good pork," he agreed, as he took up his bomb; "a fine wild boar—enough to have done us for a week."

She resumed her work of knitting, on a small, round basket-like affair.

"I hope there are more of those hogs for him to get," she told him, quietly. "I hope they are easy prey."

"Right ho! But I trust he'll not be off with the old pig before he is on with the new. I want him to come to the party there to-night."

Elaine looked up for a moment, and thrilled to the look in his eyes.

"Yes," she said, "I suppose you do."

CHAPTER XVIII AT THE TIGER'S KILL

The island twilight was brief. When the sun departed from that speck of verdure in the purple sea, the covetous darkness seemed to form like a presence that had crouched to bide its time.

Grenville was early on the scene of the tiger's previous feast. He had no idea how soon after sundown the jungle monarch might appear. It was not such a place as inspired hilarious joy in the heart, in any circumstances. Moreover, one last examination of the bomb and fuse, and one clear impression of the features beneath and about his tree, seemed to Sidney a wise precaution.

The day had, therefore, barely ended when he climbed aloft to his perch. The end of the fuse was tied to a limb a little removed from his feet. He closed his eyes and found it with his hand, by way of making certain it should not be missed in the dark. The larger and denser of the forms below, created by shadows and growing plants, he noted in their relation to the kill. The latter was not to be clearly seen, since a screen of leaves he had purposely left to conceal his presence from the banqueter, served to shield it from his view.

Finally, closing his eyes again, he practiced retreating behind the trunk itself, as he knew he must do when nothing could be seen and his fuse was finally lighted. This was rather a delicate operation to manage in the dark. He made up his mind it must be calmly done, for ample time would be provided by the generous length of fuse.

This length, by the way, was considerably less than he had formerly employed. The bomb was, therefore, nearer to his stand. Yet the bulk of the tree-trunk was, he thought, an entirely adequate protection should he have the delight of hearing his powder explode.

Through the lattice of leaves he presently beheld the last of the day's dying splendor. The army of shadows, already on the march, was taking rapid possession of all the jungle deeps. The same impatience he had felt before, the same vague dread and loneliness previously experienced, and the same slow drag of time impressed themselves upon his senses.

He wondered how long his brand would last, although it was longer than the other. He wondered about Elaine, on the hill, and how tedious the hours would seem to her. But the constant, underlying worry was—when would the tiger arrive?

Elaine's suggestion was a bother. Might there not be hogs so plentiful, quarry so readily captured, that the overdisdainful monarch would prefer warm meat to cold?

There was no mysterious cipher to be studied here to-night. There was nothing, in fact, with which to pass the time. Not even a new speculation concerning the cave and the rotting barque arose to give him entertainment. The haunting, suggestive stillness engulfed him where he sat. The world below had merged in one featureless gloom. Except for a few fringed patches of sky between the leaves and branches, there was nothing but velvety blackness to be seen above or below.

He waited and waited, a time that seemed eternal. His resting-place was hard and uneven. One of his legs was cramped. To shift about and make no noise was not an easy matter.

Without the slightest warning, suddenly down below him something leaped and crashed through the thicket with a most unexpected sound. Whatever it was, it went bounding off, recklessly parting the jungle. Some creature in fright it undoubtedly was—and Grenville was instantly rigid and alert for the next development.

He was certain the tiger, coming to his feast, had thrown some timid creature into a panic of blind and desperate fear. He listened, with all his powers of concentration, for the sounds that should presently succeed.

But save for another plunging, far beyond, there was absolute silence as before. For fully half an hour after that the stillness was well-nigh insupportable, so fraught was it all with the tragic sense of noiseless life where both hunted and hunters moved about with the cushioned feet of shadows.

Far off towards the spring, or the estuary, a disturbance finally arose. It was neither loud nor clear. It seemed to interpret some struggle for life, or pursuit of the weak by the strong. It approached for a time, then ceased for nearly half a minute, only to break into clearer accents of some brute's agony, poignant but mercifully brief.

At this the discouragement in Grenville's breast was unavoidably increased. He was certain the tiger had taken fresher prey, and would now ignore his former kill. So intent were his senses on that far-off bit of jungle drama that he failed to detect a nearer sound repeated beneath his feet.

When his sharp ears abruptly warned him that something was moving down below, an extraordinary climax to his adventure was swiftly coming to a focus.

Some creature had come to the tiger's kill—of that there could be no doubt. It was lapping, or chewing at the meat!

Unable to distinguish the slightest thing in all that Stygian darkness, Grenville paused, with his brand slightly shielded from the creature's possible notice, waiting a moment to confirm the fact that a banqueter was present before he touched the fuse.

A tremendous roar instantly startled the silence, a few feet beyond the boar's remains. Before the man could move a hand, either to light the ready fuse or steady himself in the branches, some heavy form was hurled against the tree in which he sat—and that something was climbing madly upward!

Only a tremor had shivered through the trunk, but the limbs were bent and the foliage stirred as if from a breath of heavy wind. That the creature might run against himself and turn to fight, in its double fear and desperation, Grenville was keenly aware.

Subconsciously, also, he was equally sure the tiger was below. The catlike thing in the tree with himself had undoubtedly dared to sit down at the huge brute's kill, to flee for its life a moment later.

Instinctively turning to protect himself and thoroughly disturbed by this unforeseen complication, Grenville heard his unwelcome companion utter one sudden whine, of surprise and added terror, as it came abreast him in the branches.

It dared not retreat, and, therefore in a wilder panic, clawed its way higher up the tree. The limbs continued to shake their leaves for another protracted moment. Then the beast found a place to halt above his head, and doubtless glared down upon the unknown peril which man supplies to all the brutes.

Grenville recovered his wits as best he might. He had no particular dread of the animal crouched somewhere in his neighborhood, but neither did he relish its presence. What effect the affair would have on the creature he had come there to engage he could not, of course, determine.

He bent to listen for sounds from the space below. Not the faintest suggestion of a moving or feeding animal could his focused senses detect. He thought perhaps the tiger might have smelled him or seen him in the tree. It occurred to him, also, the brute might be waiting for the catlike thief to descend and be slain at the kill.

But a far more likely supposition was that the tiger, having sniffed the taint of some beast without caste, now left on the meat that was sacred to himself, had disdained to touch it, and had gone away, to return to the place no more.

Ready to curse the despicable animal now sharing the tree's security with himself, Sidney was all but resigned to another long night, spent in vain and in utter discomfort, when once again a lapping sound came crisply to his attention.

His brute was at the feast!

With heart abruptly pounding and senses suddenly tense, Grenville leaned down, with his glowing brand, to complete his work for the night.

His hand felt blindly along the limb, to pick up the end of the fuse. But someway the place was lost. More eagerly then, and telling off each twig like a sign that blazed the trail, he explored the branch anew.

He found the fiber that had held the fuse—but the fuse itself was gone! The panic-stricken creature that had climbed the tree had clawed or broken it down!

A bitterer disappointment to Grenville could scarcely have been planned. He was sickened all through by disgust, and a sense of the utter uselessness of all he had striven to accomplish. With fire in hand, the bomb all laid, and the tiger actually present—he was helpless, after all!

It was futile to rage at the cowering beast, above him somewhere in the darkness. He glanced up once and saw its eyes—two blazing coals of fear and malice, like near-by sinister stars!

"By Heavens! I'll not be cheated!" he murmured to himself. A mad new thought had possessed him.

The fuse had been drawn about the tree before it could be fastened near his perch. Had it fallen straight down, when torn from its hold, it would still lie close at hand.

His ladder was hidden from the tiger's position by the tree. Any sounds he must make might be thought to be those of the cat. There was no particular danger in descending to the ground—with the ladder near with which to regain a safe position.

Noiselessly, yet not without excitement, he began his retreat from the branches. With every step he paused for a bit, to listen to the sounds of the tiger.

The brute was seemingly quite engrossed in the business of filling his belly. But, despite his utmost efforts at silence, the leaves of one of the branches loudly rustled as Grenville's weight was intrusted to the ladder.

He halted and held his breath. The tiger continued his eating. Holding his firebrand firmly in his teeth, Grenville slowly and cautiously descended, with the furtive alertness of a thief.

When he reached the earth, he was certain his heart would betray his presence with its pounding. He leaned there, heavily, against the tree, to still the mad leap of his pulses. Then, at length, he began to feel about for the fuse that should be at his feet.

It was not to be found—and he moved a little outward. His hand came in contact with a long, slender thing—but it proved to be a creeper.

Further and further out he moved, blindly groping with his fingers. He encountered a shrub, and, fumbling between it and the tree, bethought him