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

vital center of his being before he at length was enabled to avoid a collision with the cliff. Then he sank exhausted, obliged for a moment to pause and rest, when the tide once more drifted him outward.

Before he could rouse his flagging sinews to another effort, he had floated by the cave. He was prodded to new desperation. The struggle he waged to regain that rocky niche—only to have the whirlpool cast him to the outside current as before, with his raft entirely submerged—-was enough to break his heart.

Nothing save the thought of Elaine could have availed to spur him yet once more to fighting vigor. He did fight again, till it seemed he must topple like a man of lead, and sink almost gladly in the sea, with a sense of welcome to its endless peace.

A weak and staggering figure he presented when the landing was finally achieved. He barely pulled his raft within the cavern. He had no strength left to conceal it in the passage.

Hugging his two heavy jugs of precious liquid, and also with the bottle weighing down his pocket, he groped and stumbled slowly up the gallery, pausing with ever increasing frequency to lean against the walls and recuperate his strength.

Elaine was aroused from a state of lethargy, where she watched and listened at the upper door, by sounds that for a moment filled her with alarm. That some noisily breathing animal was making its way up the passage from the sea was her first half-waking impression.

With a cry of relief and worry blended, she immediately understood. It was Grenville's labored panting she had heard, where he would not call for assistance for fear she should be alarmed. She caught up the torch she had kept so faithfully alight for his guidance, and ran hastily down to give him welcome.

He was leaning against the wall once more, his mouth a little open for the air his lungs demanded, his face drawn and white with his utter weakness and exhaustion. In one keen glance Elaine comprehended his condition.

"Sidney!" she cried. "Oh! but why did you go? Why would you work so hard to-night?"

He could conjure no smile to his lips. "I love you, Elaine," he answered. "It kills me to see you suffer."

"Oh please—please don't," she begged him. Her eyes were brimming with tears.

He sank on the floor of the passage as he tried once more to raise the jugs. And yet, when Elaine pounced eagerly upon the bottle full of water, and pressed it to his lips, his stubborn resistance was once more reasserted. He accepted a few sips only, then thrust it firmly away.

"That last little pull was steeper than I thought," he admitted, as he forced himself to rise and set his jugs more carefully in the rocks against the wall. "If you will oblige me by taking a drink of water——"

"Not now," Elaine interrupted, as self-denying as before. "I am not the least bit thirsty. If you'll only rest—if you'll go to sleep——"

"I shall go to no rest till you have taken a cup of water."

She knew he would not. She drank from the bottle, perhaps three ordinary swallows of the liquid, like nectar to her palate.

"Good-night," he said, with a touch of his old-time brusqueness, and, adding nothing more, he continued on to the barrier and out to his post of duty. There he sank on a rock before the door to guard Elaine from harm.

Elaine, softly crying, went back at last to her couch. And some time, deep in the silence of the night, she awoke sufficiently to creep to the door, where she listened to Grenville, deeply sleeping.

CHAPTER XL PLOT AND COUNTER PLOT

The smoke that for two forbidding days had veiled and grayed the headland, continued to drift from the jungle, when Grenville roused from his slumber.

He was much refreshed, yet had not entirely recuperated the strength so drained in the night. The aspect of the barren rock, engulfed in the fumes, was only what he had expected. He felt convinced that, like the mistral of the Riviera, this wind would continue for three full days at least. And the Dyaks were hardly likely to permit an abatement of the smoke while it brought no discomfort to themselves.

Apparently they had made no effort to bridge the gap that rendered the trail completely useless. It was clear to Sidney's mind, however, that so soon as they believed the adventure safe, they would swarm upon the terrace, if for nothing else, then in search of heads and the treasure.

With the possible development of an earlier plan in his mind, he crossed at once to his cannon, loaded and primed in its bed, and began to adjust a lot of loose stones above and upon it, to hide it completely from view. The fuse he drew, meantime, aside, where he meant to splice another length to its end.

Elaine came out from the narrow confines of her gallery in the hope of lending assistance. She was wearing the tiger's jeweled collar about her slender waist.

"I'm hiding the gun—masking our battery," Sidney informed her, quietly. "Its muzzle is still unobstructed and pointed as before. In case it seems wise to permit the Dyaks to climb up at last and look about, I prefer they shouldn't steal our thunder." If he noted the golden girdle, he made no unusual sign.

Elaine was considerably puzzled.

"But—why should we let them come?"

"To convince them their prisoners have flown. It may give us a chance to punish them harder, later on."

"If a steamer would only come!" she said, turning vainly to the sea, still shrouded from view. "Even a Chinese junk! Anything, almost, but more of these horrible fiends!"

"You see," continued Grenville, "I can make an imitation cannon, from one of my bamboo lengths, and leave it here to fool them. They may be led to think it the only gun we've had, and search no farther for our ordnance. The smoke is likely to lift, I think, which is why I'm at work before breakfast."

He did not complete the arrangements of his ruse before they broke their fast, however, since the making of an imitation cannon required at least an hour. The last of their meat, save a little intended for fishing-bait, was consumed with the insignificant remnants of their fruit supply, and Grenville took time to catch one silvery fish from the ledge in front of the cavern, as well as to gather a lot of the mussels, for luncheon and dinner, before he returned to the terrace.

Already the breeze was failing. There were streaks of highly acceptable air interspersed with the billows of smoke. Not without a certain impatience to have this business concluded before the veiling fumes should leave the terrace entirely exposed to the penetrative sight of the Dyaks, Grenville hastened the construction of his imitation gun, to be left by the heap of stones.

That a more convincing appearance of over-use might assist in creating the desired impression, he selected one of the bamboo sections already badly split. This he readily blackened by burning a handful of powder, loosely, inside its muzzle. With a rude vent cut and similarly treated, the affair was ready to be bound with discarded creepers, then lodged in the rocks above the genuine bit of artillery still ready for grim engagements.

All that remained of the powder in his cave was carefully moved to the passage, there to be most cautiously deposited, away from all possible fire, along with his coils of fuse. Somewhat to his disappointment, the northerly breeze seemed once more freshening as the morning hours advanced. He had hoped not only for a lifting of the smoke, but likewise to find the Dyaks' boat once more encircling the headland.

Beyond transferring his water supply from the jugs to a number of bamboo buckets, which permitted no waste by percolation, he had nothing further to employ his time as the day wore slowly on. The heat in the meantime was intolerable. The fish was roasted in an "oven" he fashioned of the heat-retaining tufa. The mussels were likewise "steamed" in their own exuding juices, occupying the large and basin-like sea-shell for the purpose.

It was not until nearly four in the afternoon that the wind definitely veered. Grenville had noted the coming alteration that would clear the hill of fumes in time to make all essential preparations for the Dyak watchfulness. His furnace of fire was duly banked, to continue a smoldering glow among the ashes without producing smoke. Elaine had retired within the passage, and the entrance door to this secret hiding-place was adjusted against the rock.

Grenville remained upon the terrace. No less a degree of vigilance than that previously exercised was, he felt, highly essential. Concealed in the caves or rocks comprised by the former camp he could not only guard against surprise by a bridging of the ruined trail, but his view of the sea, that might once more be haunted by the Dyak craft, was practicably without limit.

Apparently the Dyaks, too, had been aware the breeze would serve them no longer. The smudges in the jungle were extinguished. In a time comparatively brief, after the shifting of the wind, no smoke at all was visible. But during the final hour preceding sunset another phase of fiendish ingenuity developed.

The Dyaks began shooting arrows of fire all about on the summit of the terrace. They were shafts made highly inflammable by means of resin and pitch. Their flight through the air was not sufficiently violent to extinguish their glowing ends. If they did not blaze upon alighting on the rocks, they still retained sufficient heat and redness to ignite a pan of powder.

It was this that occurred to Grenville as he made up his mind that some genius of diabolism among the new arrivals was doubtless responsible for this effort to explode his magazine. His satisfaction with himself for his foresight in storing his powder anew was his one real joy of the day. He wondered how long this business might continue, and how many of the enemy must now be reckoned with.

As a matter of fact, with the four who had come under cover of the night, there were nine unscathed by previous engagements. Also, it was, as Grenville had suspected, one of the latest comers who had counseled the use of burning arrows. Since the terrace defenders were employing some dreaded explosive, the one course readily suggested was to reach his supply with a brand of fire—and, perhaps, thereby destroy its maker. In any event, deprived of this one deadly means of defense, the whites could be readily slaughtered.

Already the Dyaks had built a bridge, to be used, when the time should at last arrive, for spanning that gap on the trail. It was not impossible, many had urged, that the prisoners lodged on the headland's summit were already either dead or dying. How they had managed to survive so long, with no supply of water, was sufficiently mysterious. Should they still be found alive another day—all the greater the joy of bringing about the end!

The Dyak plan for reaching the magazine had been too hastily concocted. The supply of tarred and resined arrows was decidedly insufficient. Less than a score had been sent to the top of the terrace when the last was speeded on its way. But during the short remaining hour of daylight, and even by firelight, after dark, the shafts accumulated swiftly, against the coming of the dawn.

Meantime to Grenville had come an inspiration. His one clear hope for the morning was that more of the arrows might be shot from below to make his plans complete. If the Dyaks were busy after dark, they could scarcely have matched the fever with which he likewise toiled.

Down to the cool, dry chamber of the cavern he had carried no less than eight of his largest bombs, with coil upon coil of his fuse. Two mines of four bombs each