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

Early in the afternoon there was ample evidence of exceptional activity down in the heavy jungle growth, though none of the Dyaks was seen. The movements of birds and animals, as well as the swaying of branches or trees in various thickets under the cliff, sufficiently advertised the facts.

Grenville was puzzled to understand what might be occurring, till, at length, he discovered that some of the fruit-bearing trees, on which he had counted for supplies, had been quietly denuded of their burdens, or even altogether destroyed. One large banana palm with fruit of exceptional quality, he even beheld as it toppled to the earth, where some fiendish head-hunter hacked through its fibrous trunk.

Something sank in his breast as he witnessed this atrocious vandalism, and realized his helplessness to avert the oncoming famine of himself and the girl in his charge. That the spring would be guarded, night and day, was, of course, a foregone conclusion. And not even a plan for goading the Dyaks to another attack came in working order to his brain.

That was a thoroughly disheartening day, sultry, and fraught with menace from all directions, as the Dyak craft continued to hover about upon the sea, and the pillaging continued in the thickets. All the work was, moreover, silent, grim, and ominous, with once in a while a dart spinning swiftly up from the tangle below, or, from time to time, an echoing shot coming from the opposite height with a bullet singing crazily by, or ripping along the rocks.

Sidney made no attempt to descend that night, aware of the folly of an exploration into the enemy's lines, and the utter impossibility of discovering fruit in a nearer portion of the jungle. His entire wild hog had been roasted. For, perhaps, two days the meat might keep, in the coolness of the passage to the cave.

Once more the night was uneventful, and silent. Once more came the day, and a blazing hot sun poured unveiled caloric on the summit of the terrace, where sultriness drank up the water that oozed through the substance of the jugs.

"I've got to do something," Sidney declared. "We can't go on like this." Elaine was already denying herself the food and water she required. "I shall try to invent some means of enticing the creatures to the cave below—and, perhaps, explode a mine. If the watchers on that hovering ship saw me disappear in the hole, it is rather more than likely they would follow, thinking they had me bottled."

Elaine always manifested interest, no matter what his scheme.

"But how could that possibly be managed, now that you haven't your raft?"

"I think by a ladder and platform, the ladder anchored as we had it the day I came up with your assistance, and the platform arranged of bamboo poles, which I can carry down through the passage. It will take me some time to get it ready—but something has got to be done."

Elaine's eyes brightened with hope.

"Please say there is something I can do to help," she begged. "You work so hard and constantly."

"There will be rather warm employment for us both," he assured her, in his former way of cheer, "particularly towards the end."

He brought his neglected ladder to the shelter, where Elaine was presently as busy as himself, rewinding the rungs in the creepers, and testing it all for strength. Just what his final plan would be she did not understand, but her confidence in his ability and resourcefulness was almost wholly without bounds.

The usual vigilance was not for a moment neglected, but nothing occurred in the world below, save a repetition of the former day's activity on the part of the unseen natives. It was not until well in the afternoon that the Dyaks' plan developed.

A breeze had sprung up from the north, bringing gushes of heat and jungle fragrance across the summit of the hill. Then, at length, as if this steadying wind was the final agency for which they had waited, the Dyaks set up a queer, wild chant from various places in the thicket.

A few minutes later a cloud of smoke arose from one of their centers. This was followed by several more. A huge, thick smudge was soon rising upward from the earth, and rolling on the breeze to envelop all the headland.

The Dyaks had gathered enormous quantities of resinous wood, and had deliberately fired the jungle!

No doubts could be for long entertained as to what the smudge was expected to accomplish. Its dense and suffocating fumes not only rendered a further watch upon the clearing or the trail practically useless, but it seemed to Grenville highly improbable that he or Elaine could for long survive the pungent reek they were soon obliged to breathe.

There were two slight elements only in their favor. One was the passageway, through the rock, where clean fresh air was constantly flowing upward; the other was the very breeze itself that swept the smoke upon them. It frequently split the cloud of black and gray upon two juttings of the headland, or even beat it down and mingled its own overheated but acceptable ozone with the otherwise stifling fume.

Anger and horror together had lodged in Grenville's being. That the Dyaks would soon attempt a sneak upon them, under cover of the cloud, he felt was as certain as that hideous death must be their portion, were this business sufficiently prolonged. Even retirement to the cavern could avail them nothing but a short delay of the fate they must finally face when their food and water should be presently exhausted.

Under cover of the drifting smudge, he sent Elaine to the passage. As long as a breath remained in his lungs he resolved he would not desert his post, where he waited for attack by the trail. To permit the fiends to swarm upon the terrace, destroy or capture his powder and the gun, and prison himself and Elaine in the narrow gallery, was a thought that aroused him through and through.

All further contemplation of his scheme for alluring the Dyaks to the cavern was necessarily abandoned. The most he could do was to watch as before, and, perhaps, convey his bombs and stores to the passage, as time and his highly essential vigilance permitted.

Back and forth through the smoke he moved upon the hill, seeking the better air that came occasionally through the billows, and listening intently for the faintest sound from the always ready alarm. When an hour had gone and no attack had developed, his heart underwent a new despair. He began to doubt that the Fates would supply him an opportunity for further retaliation on the fiends below, who could finally overcome him with the fumes.

The drift of smoke was intermittently broken, near the trail, where apparently a current of wind that assumed a rotation as it rose through a half-round niche of considerable dimensions in the wall, swept vertically upward to lift the billowing cloud. Thus for at least a portion of the time Grenville could glimpse the ledge behind the trail where besiegers must finally pass.

So dense became the reek, however, that he feared his post must soon become insupportable. There was neither time nor air in which to arrange a longer fuse, which, as a matter of fact, would be too long for accurate work with the gun.

He knew at last the hour was nearing sunset, and silence still seemed to roll with the smoke across the enveloped terrace. His eyes were burningly filled with water; his head had begun to ache. He went weakly over towards the gallery, intent upon breathing a little fresher air before resuming his duties.

Suddenly, above the ringing in his ears, came a sound from his gate alarm. Its deep hollow tone was strangely resonant in all that blanket of smoke. He darted back, where lay his bombs and the short fuse laid to the cannon.

The smudge had, unfortunately, fallen like a pall, concealing all the trail. It lifted slightly, however, as a fog may lift over waters, revealing one half-seen form upon the ledge.

Then, in the second that Grenville laid his fire to the powder, his second alarm, from the frame of bamboo buckets, hung behind him on the wall, rattled out its xylophonic warning. The head-hunting demons, front and rear, were practically upon him!

He fired the gun. Its orange flame shot out through the smoke in ragged spears, mingling the fume of imperfect powder with all that reek from the jungle.

A gap was apparently torn in the rolling cloud, to be filled with a denser substance. Nothing could possibly be discerned where the charge must have splattered on the wall. There were cries in the air, but whether from pain, or the Dyaks' exultation, Grenville could never have told.

Aware that the demons were capable of sacrificing some of their number to the gun, to beget its discharge, and thus clear the way for concerted attack by greater numbers, Grenville promptly lighted the fuse of a bomb and hurled it from him down the trail.

It burst in the smoke, its red blot of fire a lurid illumination in the black and gray billows from the smudge. Again a cry succeeded, this one unquestionably voicing some wretch's mortal agony in the all-concealing fume.

Without for a moment pausing, Grenville plunged swiftly through the drifting envelope, to gain the brink at the rear. He caught up a rock as he stumbled half blindly onward, and blew on the fire of his brand.

A thicker shroud of the reek revolved about him, halting him there to gasp for breath, which he stooped in the hope of finding. He dropped the stone as a useless burden. Once more he staggered onward—and blundered against a Dyak, more blinded than himself!

The creature had scaled the wall despite the bamboo framework and its cups, or wooden bells! He and Sidney were instantly locked in a fierce and deadly embrace!

A battle as silent as it was swift and ferocious was curtained there in the smoke.

That the edge was near was a knowledge equally shared, as each man wrestled in desperate violence to overcome his antagonist and hurl him down to the sea.

More by instinct than design, Grenville had paused to grip his firebrand hotly between his teeth. He had seen that the head-hunter held a knife, which was instantly turned, as the boatman writhed in Sidney's arms, in an effort to sink it to the hilt.

Grenville, however, clutched the wiry wrist with all his might, and tried to fetch it upward for a quickly planned maneuver. It slipped from his grip, and together he and the native froze more savage than before. The Dyak once more attempted a stabbing pass, and Sidney again caught the sinewy hand, in a clutch that he knew must fail.

The wrist left his impotent fingers like a snake. The whole arm writhed backward for the stroke. Sidney abruptly leaned forward, turning his head, and jabbed the red-hot firebrand against the Dyak's eye.

With a shriek of pain the fellow lurched galvanically, to stab with demoniacal might. But the blow went wide, in his agony, and when Grenville had caught the wrist in a grip that a serpent could scarcely have broken, he instantly laid hold of it with his second hand, with a motion incredibly swift. Then turning his back with the skinny brown arm across his shoulder, and abruptly stooping forward, Sidney hoisted the scoundrel free from the rocks, on his shoulders, and, moving quickly towards the cliff, ended the fight then and there.

He broke the arm thus used as a leverage against the Dyak's weight, and literally slammed the shuddering creature down on the rocks, at the brink of the wall, where he poised but a moment over death.

If he tried to writhe backward to the solid ledge, the effort was belated. With a piercing scream he toppled over, flinging out his broken arm in