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

"You saw them come up?" he asked her, eagerly.

"Four of them—after you fired the bombs. They put a bridge across the hole, as you thought, perhaps, they might."

"H'm," said Sidney, quietly, going to the door and peering forth on the jungle. "They haven't gone down since?"

"Not that I saw. I wasn't watching all the while."

"You haven't heard them talking, near the door?"

"No, oh no! I haven't heard a thing! I haven't known what to do—or whether you were alive or dead. I didn't know what my duty was when I saw them come up, and wanted to fire the cannon! I thought the day would never end! Have you had to give up at last?"

"Certainly not!" he assured her, cheerfully, aware from every accent of her voice what tortures she had suffered there alone. "I must soon return—and you must go to bed. I haven't the slightest idea they will come before next high tide, about eight, or later, in the morning. Meantime you did exactly right. They haven't the slightest notion of this secret passage, you may be sure, or nothing on earth could have kept them out. And they long since returned to their boats.... I suppose you have had neither food nor water. A little hurried supper for us both, and I must go down to the basement for the night."

Elaine had removed the cord from her arm, and secured it by the door. Sidney ignited a slender piece of torch-wood, by the smoldering brands maintained in the upper passage. He carried it promptly around the angle of the gallery, however, as an added precaution against the escape of one revealing beam through the chink that pierced the barrier facing the jungle world.

The dinner they ate was neither warm nor comforting. Cold fish is barely sustaining, while the tonic properties of water are scarcely worth describing. Elaine, however, was enormously reheartened, thus to have Sidney there again, and know he had suffered no hurt. She bade him good-night when their meager repast was finished, with the bravest cheer that Grenville had taken to heart for many a weary day. Then, with the cord once more on her arm, she resumed her place by the door.

Grenville made no attempt to sleep as the long night went laggardly by. He dozed, from sheer weariness, now and again, with his back against the rocks, but two or three times in every hour he rose from his place to go out on the ledge, where he listened to catch the slightest sound that might be made above the ceaseless lapping of the water. He would then return to the gallery, assure himself the smoldering brands were ready for use at any moment, and once more sit down to wait and nod.

Elaine was equally sleepless. Far more than Grenville she feared night treacheries on the part of the Dyaks from the jungle. The state of her nerves, since the terrace was so readily accessible to the head-hunting butchers, permitted no thought of sleep. Moreover, never since their arrival on the island had Grenville so far exiled himself from her side throughout a night. She had always felt protected heretofore, and upon that protection had relied.

As restlessly as the man below she came to the door, times without number, to listen for sounds the jungle might surrender, as well as to watch through the darkness for the slightest inimical sign. Not a sound, however, did the night vouchsafe her straining senses; not the slightest movement in all the world of shadows, life, and tragedy about and below her position could her blazing eyes detect.

She had never known a night so long, or one so haunted with fears. Her imagination played cruelly upon her heart, picturing one dread scene of butchery after another, with Sidney completely overwhelmed and finally slain, while she, no longer desirous of life, awaited her fate in a dumb and dulled indifference. She was certain the morning would never dawn again, or, if it did, the one man pitted against these savages might not even have time for one faint tug on the cord about her arm, more like a farewell than a signal.

It was a red and troubled break of day that finally reddened the eastern sky, where clouds were banked above the sea. Grenville had dozed for perhaps as much as twenty minutes. He awoke with a start from lurid dreams in which he had fancied himself awake after criminally oversleeping, only to find himself and Elaine pinned down by a horde of the merciless brutes to whom human heads are trophies.

The red of the sky for a moment confirmed some remaining disorder of his thoughts. He had stumbled quickly to the cavern's mouth, from which the sanguinary streaks and blotches, now painting the far horizon and dully reflected in the sea, were confusedly presented.

The coolness of the haunting breeze, that crept like a presence about the silent island, restored him soon and cleared the mists from his brain. He stood for several minutes, gazing listlessly forth, disgusted with the outcome of the night.

Once more he returned to the gallery to inspect his brands of fire. And once again, on returning to the chamber, his inclination was to prop his back against the wall and let himself sink in slumber.

The dawn-light was slowly increasing. He watched it dully for a moment more, and yawned as he stumbled heavily towards the utter discomfort of his resting-place.

Once more he adjusted his weary limbs upon the ledge, reflecting on what expedient he must now adopt, since this, his coup-de-main, had so egregiously failed. He thought he was planning brilliantly when he once more fell asleep. The slightest of sounds that was foreign alike to tide or breeze now failed to arouse his senses as his head came forward on his breast.

Not another sound was made where that one had strangely risen from the front of the shattered ledge. Even the sharpest eyes would have been for a moment tricked by the shadows of the rocky niche, where the tide was darkly swirling. A fragment of the lower cliff then appeared to be detached.

It was simply Grenville's catamaran, with two or three natives upon its deck, silently maneuvering to land. Back of it, just well off the frowning headland wall, the bow of a larger Dyak craft appeared for the fraction of a minute.

The head-hunting fiends had arrived! They had chosen the hour when exhaustion finally culminates and claims the helpless sentinel, heavily dreaming that all is well!

Aware that the slightest disturbance might warn their intended victims in the cave, the Dyaks labored with the utmost caution to fetch the float to the ledge. This they presently accomplished, fending it off at a vital moment lest it scrape against the rock.

Two of the half-clad demons now landed, their movements as sinuous and silent as a serpent's. Instantly flattening down upon the tide-lapped shelf, while the third of their party skillfully guided the catamaran once more to the larger craft without, they waited as patiently as the shadows, of which they seemed a part.

The plans of the crew on the boat without had been matured with much sagacity. The transfer of two more men to the raft was quickly and noiselessly accomplished, and once again the catamaran was permitted to swing on the tide's rotation into the open entrance of the inlet.

This second pair, with knives between their teeth and hands therefore unencumbered, were a trifle overeager to gain the mouth of the cave. One of them caught at the fissured edge of tufa with avid fingers, while the float was responding to the force of the whirl. His hold was rudely broken, yet so sharply had he dug in his nails that a fragment of rock was broken away. It plumped with a gurgle in the water.

Grenville was suddenly awakened—not so much by the sound the bit of rock had made as by something more subtle in the very air—a something only to be interpreted by that instinct surviving from ages dark and old.

He was suddenly alive to a sense of imminent danger lurking fearfully close at hand. None too soon and none too silently he rose to his feet, for there at the ledge the catamaran was halted and, even as the two impatient Dyaks landed, their companions came worming up the shelf.

A moment more and all must have been too late, as Grenville clearly realized. Indeed, with the utmost caution only could retreat to his gallery be effected without a betrayal of his presence. He dared not move swiftly from his post—and yet he must be quick!

Slowly and noiselessly withdrawing from his place beside the wall, he took one long step inwards, towards the door he must place against the open gallery entrance.

The dawn-light, redder and more intense, now cast an intangible shadow in the chamber as a Dyak's head appeared above the ledge. The fiends were all but on his heels!

He slipped within the passage, without creating the slightest sound, save the loud, tumultuous pounding of his heart. Lifting the door no less cautiously into its proper position, he left a crack, that was barely a half-inch wide, through which to watch his visitors, writhing like so many pythons over the shelf and into the ebon well of gloom.

Their plan was to crawl to the confines of the cave—unless they should creep by chance upon their sleeping victims sooner, leaving a couple crouched outside to prevent the quarry's escape. Torches were not to be lighted until every man was posted, and then would be thrown to the center of the cavern where their light would reveal the chamber's occupants, while the outer rim of darkness still concealed the gleaming knives. A counter attack would be rendered out of the question. The cordon would be complete.

Three of those strangely-moving shadows Grenville plainly discerned. There was nothing more to be seen—and nothing to be heard. That several Dyaks were almost at his feet he felt, but could not have proved. He had hoped for half a dozen at the least. He hoped for them still, and deliberately waited, trusting they might arrive.

It seemed such a pity to waste his mines and not obliterate the lot! He wondered if more of them might not come—then how he should know, if they did.

Meanwhile, the three not included here in the cave-attacking party were equally active above. The red of the dawn had seen them advancing through the jungle where they meant to take the hill and block the retreat of the victims to that eminence by any chance of extra ladders or white man's baffling magic.

Elaine beheld them, through the strengthening light, so soon as they crossed the clearing. They paused there as if for a signal, which they may or may not have received. It gave the girl, who had watched with an ever-increasing fever through the night and that blood-red dawn, a long wild moment in which to imagine fates untold that must have overtaken Sidney.

She was certain at last he was murdered in the cave, and that now, with the passageway finally known, the fiends, whose passion was taking human life, had come to complete their tale of butchery and plunder. Why else should they once more visit the hill at such an hour of the morning? They had barely waited for the dawn to make certain of their work!

She saw them coming furtively up the trail, aware, she was sure, that by means of the hidden gallery their movements might be seen. She had held a wasting firebrand in her tense little fist for the past two hours. And now—if only Sidney had told her what to do in such an extremity as this! If only it might be her duty to fire the cannon!

It seemed as if she must obey the impulse—and perhaps save both of their lives! The Dyaks were almost