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

Grenville continued around the edge, to a point directly above them. But here, as before, there was nothing in all the sea suggestive of boats or beings. The tide, Grenville thought, ran in and out with particular force, reversing at a certain point, and performing singular movements in a basin of hollowed stone.

Elaine had paused behind him, a rod or more from the brink. He waited deliberately for all the cycle of sounds to be repeated, then turned away with a smile.

"I think we have come upon the explanation of the island's uninhabited condition," he informed the girl, as he came once more to her side. "Those noises are made by the sea, forcing air to some cavern in the cliffs. It is doubtless repeated twice a day at a certain stage of the tide."

"It's horrible!" Elaine replied in dread, as a feebler rehearsal of the chorus filled all that tropic breeze, "simply horrible!"

"It may be our greatest bit of good fortune," Grenville informed her, sagely. "I much prefer those sirens to a colony of Dyaks who might otherwise live on the place."

"We shall have to endure it twice a day?"

"Possibly not. I may be entirely mistaken, concerning that. I can only be certain it is caused by the tide, and is, therefore, not to be dreaded."

For fully ten minutes, however, the tidal conditions were favorable to the sound's continuance. It subsided by degrees, the last moaning notes possibly more suggestive than the first of beings perishing miserably.

Meantime Grenville had gone indifferently about the business of cutting huge armfuls of the tall grass and ferns abundantly supplied in the clearing. This moist and not unfragrant material Elaine in silent helpfulness carried to the top of the terrace, where she spread it about on the rocks. She was certain Grenville was providing far more than they could use in reason, yet although his stubby knife-blade was a poor tool, indeed, for the business, he toiled away unsparingly, blithesomely whistling at his task.

"You may be glad by nightfall to burrow into a stack of this hay," he told Elaine as he brought the last load up the trail. "If you wouldn't mind turning it over from time to time I think I'll look about again to get an idea of the island."

Elaine had as little inclination to remain on the terrace alone, with all manner of worries respecting Grenville's safety, as she had to follow where he would lead through the shades and thickets of the jungle. She was aware, however, her presence at his side would be more of a care than assistance; while the necessity for his explorations addressed itself clearly to her mind. She made no confession of her natural wish to see him returning promptly.

He departed, with his club in hand, quite certain he should not be gone above an hour. He had not, however, reckoned with the jungle.

Despite the fact he had set his mind on the region about and beyond the spring, the flow of which formed the estuary, some wonder respecting the area once blackened and cleared by fire attracted his attention immediately upon his descent from the hill.

Through a fringe of scrub he forced his way to this region close under the walls, discovering old, charred stumps, many dead saplings, and quantities of half-consumed branches, affording a large supply of fuel. There could be no doubt the fire had raged within the previous year. Human visitors of some complexion had come, left this scar, and departed.

Hopeful of some enlightening sign as to who or what they might have been, he searched the earth about and between the shrubs and grasses with considerable care. Not so much as a bone, however, rewarded his scrutinizing gaze. He came to the tree trunk left hollow by the flames, and paused to marvel at its size. Above his head it was four feet through, while the base was certainly eight. An arch had been formed in its substance, near the ground, and into this he curiously peered.

Kneeling thus on the earth, he was readily enabled to look straight up through and out at the top. The hollow in the stout old jungle champion was fully two feet in diameter, and almost perfectly round. There was nothing else of interest to be found about the place, save a huge, smooth log, lying with one end resting on a rock, and long enough to make a splendid boat.

Attempting the passage of the jungle from this point across to the midway wall of tufa, Grenville expended fully fifteen minutes of the toughest sort of effort, and was then obliged to retreat once more to the trail. He encountered here the first wild animal discovered since his meeting with the tiger.

It was a porcupine, bristling with trouble for any attacking beast. Grenville could have slain it with his club. He was fairly on the point of providing this much meat for the sadly empty larder, when the fact that he could ignite no fire deterred his ready weapon. He thought, in that extremity, of his watch, the crystal of which might serve to give him a white-hot spark from the sun.

Trusting the porcupine might await the result of his quick experiment, he lost no time in submitting the glass to a trial. It formed a ring of brilliant light on the back of his hand, but the rays would not come to a focus.

"Go thy ways," he said to the porcupine, and he continued at once on his own.

Observing the trail more closely than he had on his earlier excursion, he presently discovered a divergence to the left that led towards the central wall of stone. Here he frightened a considerable troop of monkeys that swung in a panic of activity through the avenues of foliage overhead. There were likewise sounds of heavier beasts that escaped observation on the moist and thickly cumbered earth.

The trail under foot was rather well worn, and not, the man was certain, by the hoofs or feet of brutes. The explanation was presently forthcoming, at least in part, for the path emerged at a clay pit that lay against the frowning tower of stone.

Grenville could have shouted for joy as he took a bit of the smooth, sticky substance in his hand, and began thus promptly, in his fancy, making pots and jugs innumerable to meet their every need. The deposit had been previously worked. The evidence of this was unmistakable. But none of the tools employed by former craftsmen had been left for Grenville to discover.

He spent some time investigating all the mute signs of former activity expended at the pit, and finally glancing up at the cliff above, abandoned all thought of conquering its summit, and retraced his steps along the trail.

Where the path to the spring made a second fork, he continued straight on through the jungle. One glance only of the estuary, tortuously penetrating the waist of the island, was vouchsafed him through the thicket. Beyond this point, in swampy ground, flourished a forest of giant bamboo. The creepers and vines in that immediate section were particularly varied and abundant. The bird life was equally impressive. Hundreds of swallows were skimming in the air, a number of argus pheasants wildly fled from the visitor's presence, parrots screamed and wheeled in huge flocks above the light green bamboo foliage, and several fine flamingoes made shift to find concealment in the reeds.

"It's a haunted paradise," Grenville muttered to himself, his thought having gone for a moment to the wails and moans that had startled himself and Elaine.

Regretting that his broken knife was a wholly inadequate implement with which to assail such a bamboo stem as he would gladly have taken to the camp, he was once more making his way from the thicket when his foot crashed audibly through something brittle, on the earth.

He parted the shrubbery and uttered a low exclamation. He had stepped upon a human skeleton, white and suggestively huddled, every fragment of it perfect—except that it lacked a head.

In a certain sort of anxiety Grenville searched about to find the missing member. The skull was not to be discovered. Persuading himself this might be accounted for by many natural explanations, and resolving to keep his discovery entirely to himself, he forced his way around this grewsome inhabitant—and came upon another.

This one he did not strike with either foot. It lay outstretched before him, in company with scattered and broken bits of rock—and, like its neighbor, it was headless.

Had some monstrous head-hunter written "Dyaks" on all the empty lattice of those human ribs, Grenville could not have been more convinced of what this business meant. He returned to the trail accompanied by a sense of dread that all but sent him back to Elaine. His thought was entirely of her, and of their helplessness, cast thus alone upon this unpeopled island, clean stripped of weapons and of all things else save their wits and bodily strength.

"We've got to escape," he told himself in a new, swift fever of impatience. "There is not an hour to lose!"

He continued on through the jungle towards the hill at the farther end.

Apparently the trail, that had once been formed through the axis of the island, had been found of little use. It was overgrown by all manner of plants well-nigh to extinction.

The region hereabout was obviously the final retreat of many beasts, both timid and bold. Grenville found signs of at least one Malay bear and of many wild hogs in the thickets. He fancied he saw one flash of moving orange, where either his tiger or another of his ilk moved silently through the growth behind him. Of the monkeys there appeared to be no end; and the snakes were amply represented.

He was glad for every clearing that he came upon and crossed, and felt a decided sense of relief on achieving his hill at last. This worn old eminence of rock and substances volcanic was far more steep and rugged than the one where he had left Elaine. It possessed no caves, and no particular flatness at the summit.

Grenville explored it rapidly, considerably disappointed to find nothing of special utility upon its broken surface. He had hoped for some hard and useful stone at least, if not for actual flints. Completing its round in a haste that the rapidly increasing heat of the day considerably accelerated, he presently came upon an unusual ledge protruding from the slope's unpromising surface.

Here he halted in idle curiosity. The ledge was of sulphur—a blow-out from the hill's once molten interior, lying untouched and useless in the sun for the elements to wear away and sluice at last to the sea. With no particular purpose in view, he broke away a fragment, dropped it carelessly into his pocket, and continued on his way.

His gaze returned with a certain steadfast eagerness to the hill and camp beyond. He was not precisely disappointed on failing to discover Elaine, who might have been waiting to wave him a signal from the heights; he was somewhat concerned to know if all was well upon her rock. She was not to be seen at all about the place. He clambered to the top of a broken bowlder for a view more comprehensive.

This, too, appeared a wasted effort, at least as concerned Elaine. The island map, however, was laid out before him in a manner to complete his former survey of the place. There were several clearings thus revealed that could never be seen from the farther point of vantage.

Acknowledging each of these in turn, Grenville was once more about to direct his footsteps homeward when one of the smaller, near-by breaks in the jungle, quite at the top of a species of rift in the island's ruggedness, down upon his left, attracted a second glance.

For a moment he fancied some colossal remains, as of an animal long since