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

She turned away, fairly ready to cry with vexation, and pretended to make herself busy with things already well prepared for their evening meal. But the new rebellion of her nature, partially begotten by the uncontrolled and uncontrollable impulses loosed in the jungle the previous night, when Grenville lay helplessly stunned, with his head loosely pillowed on her knee, was not to be longer contained. She presently fled from before the cavern, across, through the shadows of the terrace, to the hidden shelf where Grenville had angled for fish.

There she suddenly sank to her knees on the rocks and covered her face with her hands.

"I hate him!" she said, in a hot and passionate utterance, suggestive of a sob. "I hate him! I hate him! I hate every man that ever lived—and you, Gerald Fenton, as much as all the others!"

She snatched off the ring from her finger. It was Fenton's ring, with a single stone that gleamed in the failing light. It seemed to her to represent the man far absent from her side.

"It was you who brought it all about!" she continued, in her fiercely waging conflict, and, overwrought, she cast it down on the ledge as if it burned her palm.

It bounded lightly where it struck and, clearing the shelf, fell swiftly downward to the water. A gasp and a moan escaped her lips together. Vividly, of a sudden, she remembered Grenville's prediction that she would throw it away in the sea.

"Oh, Gerald, I didn't mean to!" she moaned. "I didn't! You've got to believe me!" She sank farther forward on the ledge, her face closely hidden in the curve of her loose brown arm. She wept and wept there, bitterly, in a mood of mixed emotions.

"I hate him! I hate him!" she said, as before. "It's not my fault in the least!"

And after a time, as Grenville did not come, she returned to the camp alone.

The following day was calmer for Elaine, and vastly interesting, since Grenville's smelting operations were begun. She told herself that interest only laid its hold upon her nature, and, being a woman, she knew.

The clay that lined his hollow tree was sufficiently dry at last for Grenville's fire. The other accessories, all more thinly coated, were likewise ready for his use. He began in the morning to heat his natural chimney against the actual needs of afternoon. The small fire kindled upon its hearth established at once the efficiency of the draught.

Not without a certain boyish eagerness in the culmination of his labors, Sidney began the assemblage of his various paraphernalia an hour at least before noon. His molds and crucibles he carefully brought from the summit of the terrace, disposing them as conveniently as his crude conditions permitted. All his rusted scraps and useless bits of brass and bronze were divided into parcels, while salt, some powdered charcoal, and an over-abundant supply of saltpeter were provided to be used as flux, according as the smelting might demand. He could not be certain of which he should use till experiment should determine which, if any, rendered good results.

The principal difficulty, he soon discovered, would be adding the fuel to his flames. His smelter-door was not well arranged for this essential business. He expected, however, to heap a considerable quantity of wood inside before the chimney should become too hot. Later he thought a lot of short material could be readily introduced, and against this need he gathered an impressive heap of branches, which he broke to a workable length.

Elaine was with him when at last the work began. She was far more excited than Grenville seemed, since it appeared to her no less than a miracle that any man, in a place like this, should dare assume such a mastery over Jovian metals and flame. She had never before seen anything of smelting. This intimate acquaintance with its mysteries seemed to her a privilege, greatly enhanced by the fact that the lord of it all pretended she was actually helpful.

She assisted when he bound the sections of his clay-made molds together. She handed him fuel when the furnace-door was opened and gushes of heat came voluminously forth.

The fire, which for a time had loudly roared, was now more intense and quiet. The volumes of smoke, which the "chimney" had belched, had likewise finally ceased. Only a quiver of superheated air and a greenish bit of gas and fume now ascended to the sky.

From time to time, Grenville opened the top of the door to peer within. He wrinkled his features, in the waves of heat, and held his hand before his face. At length he adjusted his "tongs" about a crucible and drew it entirely forth.

It was white with heat, its surface sparkling with a hundred tiny stars that died on its glowing surface.

"Just toss in some of that stuff there on the leaf," he quietly instructed Elaine. "It will soon be ready to pour."

The "stuff" was flux, and Elaine obeyed directions like the stanch assistant that she was. She wondered what was coming next.

It came very soon. She was certain no ruddier figure of Vulcan, employing mighty flame, had ever been presented than now when Grenville made ready for the climax of his work.

He removed the door as he had not previously done, and set it aside from his path. He thrust in his tongs, while flame and heat came pouring out to paint him a deep and glowing color. Then, seemingly hotter than ever before, and smoking goldenly above its blinding incandescence, the first of the crucibles, itself fairly dripping, where some of the flux had trickled down its surface, was supported over to the molds, to be quickly and vigorously skimmed of its oxidized matter.

But the molten brass, indescribably beautiful, with ruby and gold and silver gleams imbedded and breaking in its substance, was the wonder of it all. Elaine stood entranced, to see it flow and fill the hollows of the molds.

The second was hastily drawn from the flame, and then the third and last. But not till all lay finally empty and smoking on the earth, their surfaces rapidly dulling, did Grenville pause to look at Elaine and smile.

"Can't even tell what we've done," he said, "till the molds are cooled and opened."

"Must you wait very long till you know?"

"I couldn't wait long," Grenville answered. "I'm too much of a curious kid."

As a matter of fact, brass poured in a mold begins to harden at once. In less than fifteen minutes, Grenville was gingerly untwisting the hot copper wire that bound each mold together. Soon after that the first of his tools, a heavy and serviceable chisel, lay uncovered to the air.

It was still glowing hot, although no longer red. It was darker, less brassy in appearance than Elaine had expected to see, but it seemed to her a wonderful thing to be made of those useless bits of metal.

The tool next in importance was much like a butcher's cleaver—an implement intended for cutting or hacking wood or branches, either to clear a path in the jungle or to rough out anything of timber. The edge of this casting was imperfect, where the metal had failed to flow. Both it and the chisel had a thin fringe of brass along those sections where the halves of the mold had come together, but this would be readily broken away and was quite to be expected.

Smaller chisels, a blade that Sidney expected to notch along its edge to make a species of saw, and a number of smaller implements were contained in the other sets of molds. None of these was perfect, and one or two merely served to instruct the master-molder in the way to go to work another time. But the net results were highly satisfactory, and seemed to Elaine a veritable triumph.

The poorness of their quality as tools with which to accomplish swift results developed the following day. Grenville had melted a part of his lead and cast the head of a hammer. With this and the largest of his chisels he attacked the log chosen for a boat.

So long as his gouging was confined to the portions charred by the fire, the tool held well to the labor. Its edge soon went to pieces, however, when the solider substance was encountered. It was sharpened repeatedly. He early foresaw that, work as he might, the business of conjuring forth a boat from material so raw was certain to be slow, if not exhausting.

Indeed, at this time a tedious period began. There were days and days of dull, stupid repetition ahead like the ones that were presently past. Fire after fire he maintained beneath the log, which must always be newly plastered with the clay. Hour after hour he chiseled off the black and dusty flakes that the flames would leave behind, since it hastened the work to present a new surface to the heat. It seemed as if the task could never have an end.

But, if this was a season of dogged application to an uncongenial business, it was likewise the one long era of peace vouchsafed to the exiled pair. There was nothing to rouse a sense of alarm in any near portion of the jungle. And, if those fast succeeding days brought no welcome sign of a steamer approaching on the distant blue horizon, neither did their lengthening hours develop those craft upon the sea for which Grenville was constantly and apprehensively watching. They were happy days, as well as peaceful. Concerning the ring she had lost in the sea, Elaine could not force herself to worry. Grenville never, by any chance, gave her occasion for alarm.

There were many full afternoon vacations from his work when the fire was left to hollow out his log that Sidney spent at her side. He wove her a hammock of the creeper withes and built a shady bower by the shore. He had sawed her a comb from the tortoiseshell, bent hairpins of the copper wire, and made her a comfortable couch. Her tiger-skin robe he had worked with his hands to a soft and pliant finish. The skin of a cheeta he had killed he used to supplement his rapidly vanishing shirt. Sewing was strongly, if not prettily, accomplished with such needles and thread as his ready ingenuity provided.

They were busy days that were doomed, however, to pall. Elaine was assisting with a loom to weave a sail, while between times Grenville chipped out the stone for the bath he had promised on the ledge. He became a skillful marksman with his bow, and knew every animal trail the island afforded. In many of these his traps did deadly service. Their larder rarely lacked for meat, made tender by paw-paw leaves. Elaine caught many a silver fish that they roasted together in the sand.

But her gaze more frequently roved afar, for the ship that did not come. The days were growing sultrier, and constantly more monotonous.

The new moon had come and waxed to the full and was once more waning in the heavens. They were marvelous nights the old orb made upon the island, but always weird and exciting a sense, in Elaine at least, of loneliness and aloofness from the world. On their cliff above the murmurous tides, she and Grenville frequently sat for hours at a time without exchanging a word.

Such times were fraught with strangely exciting moments; and subtle tinglings came unbidden to her nature, giving her pleasures wildly lawless and precious beyond expression. Yet she feared them also when they came, and refused to give them meaning.

But to-night a new wistfulness burned in her eyes as she turned to her silent companion.

"I wonder," she said, "if we couldn't put a fresher flag on our pole to-morrow."

"Sure shot," said Sid, "the freshest flag that ever grew."

She was silent again for several moments. Then she said:

"What should we do if a