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

had made no move to retire when at length the weird, unwelcome disturbance made by the tide had begun its uncanny chorus. Perhaps she had waited for the conclusion of this added feature of the night's long ritual of nerve-attacking events, for she seemed to be considerably cheered when its final wail had died upon the air.

"It seems to me that doesn't continue quite as long as it did at first," she said to Grenville, as she rose at last to go alone to her cavern.... "I think you ought to rest. I wish you would."

"I will," said Sidney. "Good-night."

But, for some time after she had gone, he sat there wondering if those abominable but protective cries, that haunted the island's solitude, were actually on the wane.

"God help us if they are!" he said, to himself, but he went to bed and slept.

CHAPTER XX A GIRDLE OF GOLD

Elaine had not yet appeared on the scene when Grenville went down to the jungle. The morning hour was still decidedly early, but plans and impatience to be up and at work had prodded the man from his rest. The lassitude that should have followed his night of excitement had not yet laid its weight upon him.

Apparently nothing had come to the jungle scene where the tiger had met his end. The great form lay there, torn and rigid, but no sign of the cat could be discovered.

Grenville passed his trophy, presently, to examine the space beyond. The spot where the bomb had exploded was a gaping hole in the earth. This was not the place where Grenville had placed the deadly tube, which he knew must therefore have been moved—doubtless when the fuse was pulled and broken by the creature taking refuge in the tree.

All about the spot where the kill had been the shrubbery was shredded. The boar's remains had been blown away when the gap was made in the sod. The trail, Grenville saw, must be repaired or a new one must be made about the place.

He returned to the tiger, and was suddenly elated to behold the metal collar, half-hidden by the fur about his neck. He had quite forgotten this bauble, thus singularly employed, and, kneeling down to inspect it closely, not only found it was massive gold and set with costly jewels, but also discovered he must break or force a heavy link to take it from the creature.

It was not until he had brought two sharp-edged rocks to his needs that the collar was finally freed. Its weight and worth then amazed him. The band was fully two inches in width, with the edges curved up and turned under, in a simple and hammer-marked finish. It was all hand-wrought, each blow that the smith had struck with his tool being faintly recorded in the metal. The jewels—three sapphires, three rubies, and one diamond—were simply and solidly set with bands that barely clasped their bases. The rubies only were cabochon cut, the other stones gleaming with facets.

There was not a mark upon the collar's outer surface to show what was meant by its presence here in such extraordinary keeping. But Grenville presently bethought him to glance at the inner circumference. He was not in the least astonished, but he was a bit concerned, to discover a number of those mystic symbols, deeply graved in the gold, that had once been tattooed on the man sitting dead in the barque.

Here were the three hills, bounded by the water, and one with the tree on its summit, while on either side the cartouch appeared, bounded by crude drawings of the tiger. That the brute had been liberated here upon the island as a sort of sacred guardian of the cave that was mentioned by the writing found secreted with the map, Grenville could not, or did not, doubt. There was nothing more to be found engraved on the gold.

He finally slipped the heavy band about his own smooth, sun-tanned neck and went at the task of securing Elaine's promised robe. This toil was far more difficult than even his lack of proper appliances had led him to anticipate. Although he had sharpened his stub of a knife-blade to a very respectable cutting-edge, it was far too small for the business.

His doggedness and application were the assets on which he had most to count, and without them here he must have failed. As it was, he remained so long away that Elaine, who was up, was alarmed. And, when at last he appeared below with the heavy, striped skin across his shoulder, she started abruptly, till she saw he was not another tiger.

"I thought you might like to see the size of his hide," he said, as he brought it to the terrace, "before I take it down by the shore for tanning. I shall soak it a while in a mixture of brine and saltpeter. Both are highly preservative—-and the best the island affords."

"He was simply tremendous!" Elaine replied, when the skin had been spread on the rocks. "What have you got about your neck?"

"Oh, this?" said Grenville, removing the golden collar. "This is a symbol of royalty that his Bengal highness wore—your property now, as a trophy of the hunt."

She took it a little uncertainly as he held it forth in his hand.

"Why—it's gold!" she said. "These jewels—— The tiger was wearing this?"

"About his kingly neck."

"But how—unless someone put it on?"

"Undoubtedly someone did. He must have been a captive once, and probably escaped."

It could serve no good end to acquaint her with his actual suspicions, which might be ill-founded, after all.

"It's beautiful," she continued, gazing in admiration on the collar's simple massiveness. "But it's not for me, I'm sure." She held it out for him to take. But he bent above the skin.

"Then pitch it away," he instructed, laconically. "Toss it into the sea."

She colored, looking at him strangely. She could not throw away his property—anything of such great intrinsic value. She was baffled again, as he managed so frequently. Her hand and the golden circlet fell at her side. She could think of no appropriate speech of final rejection. A whimsical notion only arose to her groping mind.

"Fancy me wearing this priceless band of splendor," she said, "and eating with a stick!"

"It will just about fit around your waist," he conjectured, taking it from her as he rose. With easy strength he bent it in his hands, to make it more snugly conform to her slender and graceful little body.

Why should he not bend it thus, she thought, who had wrenched it from a tiger? She felt how weak and inadequate was her own diminishing struggle. But to wear this band—a symbol, almost, of Grenville's ownership—— A hot recurrence of her former pride came surging to her bosom.

"It's too heavy to wear," she told him, a trifle coldly. She once more accepted the girdle, however, despite herself, from his hand. "The tiger that wore it," she concluded, "met with a lot of trouble."

"You've met with some yourself," he answered, candidly, and he shouldered the skin and started off for the estuary's mouth.

Elaine burned suddenly scarlet, interpreting his speech in some manner of her own. Helplessly she carried the girdle to her cave, and left it there in a hollow of the rock.

The incident concerned with the tiger was practically closed. A new, bright era of security and liberty thereupon commenced, particularly for Elaine. She could not take immediate advantage of the comfort thus vouchsafed in moving about the island, but at least her worry was lessened when Grenville was obliged to venture in the jungle.

His return to the work so frequently interrupted was delayed but the briefest time. So eager did he constantly feel to accomplish his boat's completion that he had grudged every hour the tiger had cost him from his labors.

With no thought of sparing his tireless strength, he promptly resumed the task of digging and fetching the clay. Elaine might have joined him in the clearing now had not some task she was eager to complete engrossed her attentions at the shelter.

That day the remaining surface of his prostrate log was plastered by Grenville's eager hands. He likewise mixed sufficient clay to finish his furnace in the morning. The fire that was helping to hollow his log was once again ignited. Much of the old charred substance, left from previous operations, Grenville knocked away with an improvised tool of brass, in order to daub more clay inside the shell before the flames could continue removing the wood as he required.

On the following day, while the walls in his smelter were drying, Sidney wove a two-piece door of wattle—framework of creepers, plastered with clay—to fit across the orifice at the bottom of his tree. With this he felt he could regulate the draught and protect himself while removing his crucibles of metal. The top door only would be tossed aside to accomplish this latter purpose.

He likewise plastered the edges and sides of the hole that pierced his smelter. He knew the heat, when he came to melt the brass, would spread at once to all unprotected wood. After that he had still to contrive a clay-covered implement for lifting out his crucibles, and a tripod affair to be placed inside the furnace to support these crucibles upon.

What with more work done upon the boat-to-be, and a goodly portion of the afternoon expended in killing and preparing another of the pheasants for their dinner, Grenville's hours sped swiftly away.

A weary but elated craftsman he was that day-end when at length he returned for the final time to the terrace. He had been to the shore, where the tiger-hide was curing in a strong solution of brine and saltpeter, mixed in a hollow in the sand, and, having there turned it over, had washed himself to a fresh and ruddy color.

Notwithstanding the unbecoming growth of beard upon his face, he appeared to Elaine the most commanding figure she had ever taken time to inspect. He looked every inch a master of the island, if not also of his fate and her own. But she was more than usually excited that evening, as she disappeared within her shelter.

She presently emerged with such an air of uncertainty and diffidence about her as had never before appeared since their coming to the island. But she did not hesitate in the task she had set herself to perform.

"I have finished my first bit of knitting," she said, "and there it is."

To Grenville's thorough amazement, the clean, new article held in her hand, and shyly offered for his acceptance, was a cap she had made for his head. It was not unlike a golf-cap in shape, but the visor was considerably wider, to protect his eyes from the sun.

She had woven this of finely divided creeper-core on a frame neatly made of the same. Its meshes had then been filled by fibers, snugly and neatly plaited back and forth to make it opaque to the light. The frame was firmly knitted to the cap.

"Pretty good," said Grenville, busied with several arrows. "Thanks;" and, placing it carelessly on his head, continued with his employment.

Elaine, who had conjured all her resolution to make of the presentation the merest commonplace affair, was wholly confounded in her thoughts by the man's unheard-of conduct, after all she had recently undergone before she could make him such a gift.

She had feared some demonstration of the passion shown on the ship—or at least some disturbing outburst she had armed herself to quench. But this—such scant courtesy or gratitude as this—left her absolutely impotent and baffled.

She was piqued, disappointed, chagrined. It was horrid of anyone, she was sure, to be so outrageously unfeeling. There was nothing, however, she could do, and nothing she could say. Standing there, mortified, almost angry, and conscious she was burning guiltily red with various emotions that he did not even notice, was such a footless and irritating proceeding, with the situation