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

The gun was finally charged and primed, after Grenville had rebound it to its "carriage." It was lodged in the rocks, where it covered the trail, and stones were piled abundantly about it. A fuse was laid to the vent.

From time to time both the exiles had crept towards the one lone tree on the wall, to observe the on-coming boat. By three o'clock of the afternoon the wind had practically failed, but the craft drifted slowly forward. It was plainly in sight by then—a fair-sized affair with a singular out-rigger and a queer, unmistakable sail. So far as Grenville could determine at the distance, there were three or four natives aboard.

"If none of them ever go back to tell the tale," he announced, a bit grimly to Elaine, "we may be all right for quite a time."

She understood at once.

"You think, if they leave, they may return here later—with a larger force—if they find we are ready for a fight?"

"If they do, we'll not be at home—provided the boat can be finished."

Elaine was evidently thinking much—of the battle that might presently ensue, with all its unknown results.

"They'd kill us if they could, I suppose, if only to cut—— They are not human beings, really—the kind we ought not to shoot?"

Grenville could hardly repress a smile.

"If they try to steal the gun, I think we'd be justified in firing. At any rate, I shall fire first and debate the question later."

Elaine was growing nervous, now that all they could do was practically accomplished.

"Oh, I wish it was over!" she declared. "Do you think they'll attack us soon after landing?"

"They may not land this evening."

Grenville was thinking of the tidal sounds that haunted the island's wall. These were still of considerable volume every day, and, according to his theory, frightened the ignorant natives away. He added, presently: "You see, they may be aware the tiger was living here before we disturbed his possession. In that event they might be cautious of landing after dark. They rarely take chances, I believe, by attacking in the night."

"But suppose they arrive an hour or two before sunset?"

"They might, if the breeze should freshen.... We can only wait and see."

But this waiting was an irritating business, so slowly did the craft appear to move against the tide and so fraught with possibilities was its visit to the place.

Sitting or stooping behind the rocks, Elaine and Grenville kept a constant watchfulness on the boat, now less than half a mile away. It was apparently becalmed. The day grew old and still it came no nearer.

The sun at length departed from the scene, with the riddle still unsolved. It appeared to Grenville the day-end breath would have wafted the stranger to the shore. He thought perhaps it did approach considerably closer, but of this he was not at all certain.

The brief, soft twilight soon began to wane. At Sidney's suggestion, their simple repast of island fruits was eaten. The fish they had captured in the morning was not cooked, in the absence of the customary fire. The calm that settled on the "Isle of Shalimar" was far from being reassuring. It seemed fraught with silent agencies of fate, moving noiselessly about the shadowed jungle.

When the darkness came down, the mysterious craft was no longer to be seen. Grenville had fancied it drifting rapidly in when he last discerned its form. No lights were displayed upon its mast or deck to indicate its presence off the headland.

Elaine was persuaded at last to retire, though she knew she should not sleep. Grenville remained on guard alone, pacing back and forth from the head of the trail to the lone tree reared above the cliff. His senses were strained to catch the slightest sound, but none came upward from the sea. From time to time he halted by their smoldering bit of coals to assure himself the last of the sparks had not been permitted to die.

At length, far in the silent night, the tidal wailing began, its weirdness increased an hundredfold by the tension of the hours. It seemed to Grenville unusually loud, so acute had the darkness made his hearing.

No sooner had the final note died out on the gently stirring air than answering cries, no less weird and shrill, arose from out upon the water. The visiting craft had drifted past the headland and was somewhere off on Grenville's right. The cries from its deck were like a response to some spirit of the island. They were rather more awed than exultant, Grenville felt, and he fancied some chanting, that came to him brokenly out of the heavy shades of night, was possibly a prayer.

When he came before her shelter again, Elaine was standing in the door. She had heard the cries from the boat.

"They haven't landed yet?" she said, in a whisper.

"They won't land now till daybreak, and perhaps not then," he answered. "Go back—and go to sleep."

"I'll try," said Elaine, and disappeared.

For Grenville, however, there could be no sleep, though the darkness rendered up no further sound. Like the outer sentry of a picket-line, with the enemy close, and his whereabouts unknown, he glided silently from one dark edge of the terrace to another, as the hours wore on, alert for the slightest alarm.

He finally sat by the head of the trail, convinced that the visitors would give him no trouble till morning, yet guarding the only way by which they could gain the summit of the hill.

He was weary and doubtless he nodded, lulled by the softness of the breeze that came up at last, burdened with its ozone from the sea. And, despite the fact he was afterwards positive the nod was the briefest in the world, full daylight was spread to the ends of the world, and the sun was gilding the island's tufa walls, when at length he started to his feet.

It seemed to him then some sound from below had played through the fabric of his dream. But nothing disturbed the usual calm, save the morning cry of distant parrots. Stooping, he moved through the scattered rocks, to survey the waters far and wide.

There was nothing to be seen, in all that expanse, of the craft that had ridden near at midnight. All the round of the wall he made in this manner of caution. When he came at length above the blackened clearing, where for day after day he had toiled with fire and chisel, he gazed about the open space bewildered and incredulous.

His half-finished boat was gone!

The truth of his loss was hardly to be credited as Grenville continued to stare below where the hollowed log had been.

There was not a sign of a living thing in the clearing or near-by jungle. There had been no sounds of unusual movement in the thicket, he was sure, or otherwise he must have wakened. No voices had spoken, since his ears had all but ached to catch the slightest disturbance.

On the blue of the sea, so tremendously expanded from this particular point of vantage, there was not a hint of a sail. But the fact remained his boat was gone, with all the work it represented, and all the hope their situation had centered upon it for them both.

An utter sinking of the heart assailed him. His moment of sleep, he told himself, could have been no more treacherous had it been planned by a scheming enemy to complete their abandonment to some rapidly impending fate. And yet had he waked in the gray of the dawn, with his bombs and fuses still too damp for employment, and his cannon planted only to guard the trail, the boat could hardly have been saved. At most, his protest would merely have betrayed the fact he was camped there on the terrace.

A new line of thought sprang into his brain, as one suggestion after another was swiftly deduced from his loss. The natives who had landed and carried off his precious craft must certainly have found the wall with which he had barred the trail. He could hardly doubt they knew of his presence on the hill. They might even now be lying in wait to get him the moment he appeared.

His preconceived theory, that they dared not land while those tidal sounds still haunted this end of the island, received a shattering blow. Their craft was doubtless hidden now behind either one of the other lofty walls comprised by the neighboring hills. The thieves had cut off all possible hope of his escape with Elaine by means of his solid, if crude, canoe, and could finally starve them on the hill, if they had no courage for a battle.

Yet how had they happened on his boat and why had they removed it? That they must have carried it bodily down to the shore, through the jungle, was absolutely certain. And this, he thought, argued a half-dozen men, though it might have been done by four.

He remained there, stunned by this utterly defeating discovery, watching the thicket for the slightest sign that might betray the presence of the enemy and revolving the proposition over and over in his mind. When at last he admitted that the natives might have known the log was lying there, if they had not indeed prepared it with fire for some of their uses the previous year, he was more than verging on the facts. They had felled it solely for a boat—and much of their work he had completed.

This line of reasoning did not, however, serve to quiet further questions. The visitors must certainly have wondered how it came about that the log was so nearly hollowed. The clay, still plastered upon it, must have suggested to their minds the work of a craftsman minus tools. That the workman must be present on the island would be more than suspected, since his boat was not even launched.

They might suppose the tiger had captured and devoured him—always admitting they knew of the brute's former presence on the place. It seemed far more likely to Grenville they had found his tracks about the spring, his gate on the trail, and the signs of his recent fires and general activity about the region of his smelter, and would therefore conclude he was still encamped on the hill.

He could fancy a half-dozen pairs of maliciously glittering eyes fastened even now upon the crest and edges of the terrace, all hidden by the thickets. Had the poisoned dart from a blowpipe come winging swiftly up from the shadows of the foliage, he should not have been surprised.

But not a leaf below him was disturbed. Not a sound arose to warn his eager ears. With a sense of bitter rage and humiliation in all his system, he finally crept once more to the trail, and beyond it to the cliff's final shelving.

From this extremity of the heights new aspects of the island were in view, as well as different expanses of the sea. His keen eyes searched the jungle and the clearings first, with no more results than before.

It was not until he gazed afar, on the darkening silver of the waters, that his search was at all rewarded. Even then, for a moment he was not wholly convinced that what he saw was not a spearlike leaf of foliage projected beyond the clean-cut edge of the farthest of the island's tufa towers.

But the angle of color detached itself and receded in far perspective. It was plainly the sail of the visiting craft, previously hidden from his sight by the hill at the island's end. It was already far on a northern course, where he should not have thought to find it. The freshening breeze was heeling it over gracefully; it would vanish in less than half an hour.

He wondered instantly—had they towed away his boat? Or might they have left it moored in some inlet of the island,