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

extinct, were lying there in the clinging embrace of the creepers. He decided, then, it was a boat, but dismissed this notion as preposterous, so high above the water's edge, and so near the island's center, did it lie. About ready to conclude that certain giant shadows contributed much to round out a half-imagined form, his gaze encountered a bowsprit thrust through all the foliage, its identity not to be mistaken. The hull of a ship was undoubtedly there. He hastened down, expectantly, to make its better acquaintance.

The wonder when he came there was—how it came to be stranded so high and far above the water. As for the vessel itself, it was merely a rotted old shell, with its cargo bursting through its ribs.

So far as Grenville could judge from its fast-decaying remains, it had been an inferior type of the old-fashioned barque, and of very modest dimensions. Its masts, however, were gone, together with every accessible piece of metal that eager hands could remove. Its moldy and slimy old cabin had partially collapsed. Without effecting an entrance through the treacherous deck, Sidney could discover nothing respecting its interior.

He could peer through the ribs at several places along the hull, and even near the keel, by stooping low, but the most he could determine by such a superficial examination was that there was nothing even here that he could use. The cargo he thought for a moment to be chalk, or lime. He scraped a clean sample from the weathered heap, and rubbed it in his palm. Its crystalline structure was not that of either lime or chalk. When he placed a particle on his tongue, he dropped all he held with no further interest.

The stuff was common saltpeter. That the vessel had been westward bound, perhaps from Borneo, with this mineral common to so much of that tropical section, he understood at once. But to find her stranded thus so loftily was amazing. He scraped at the soil with the toe of his boot to dig below the surface.

As he had rather expected, seashells and pebbles of a former beach were readily brought to view. Some old upheaval had undoubtedly lifted beach, vessel, and all to this altitude above the tides, and left it there to decay.

Considerably disappointed to find the hulk so completely stripped of the metal furnishings of which he might have wrought some sort of tools or weapons, Grenville hesitated between an impulse to continue home to Elaine without greater delay, and a strong desire to investigate the cabin of the barque. The latter temptation was not to be resisted.

He grasped the branch of an overhanging tree and, by dint of much active scrambling, clawing, and thrusting his toes into various chinks, at length gained the planks of the slanted deck and broke his way into the one-time sanctum of the captain and his mates.

This, too, had been pillaged with exceptional thoroughness. There was, however, a passageway leading to another apartment beyond, where a door, half open, was revealed by sunlight streaming through the broken roof. Thither Grenville made his way—to behold an extraordinary sight.

The place was a room, partitioned off from considerably larger quarters. It contained one object only—a form, half mummy, half skeleton, that had once been a powerful man. And this was chained to the wall!

It was sitting propped against the lintel of a second door, a panel of which was raggedly broken out. It had never been robbed of its head. A strong, black beard still remained upon the emaciated face, and the eye-sockets stared straight forward at the door by which the visitor had entered.

Grenville was not to be easily dismayed, yet the attitude of this grewsome thing was very far from being pleasant. The being had been almost naked when he perished here alone with a heavy iron band about his waist. All this his visitor swiftly discerned while inclined to turn about and flee the place. He discovered, then, an additional mystery.

The skin, in a patch fully six inches square, had disappeared from the helpless being's breast. That it had not wasted away by a natural process was, moreover, perfectly obvious, since the square-cut edges of parchment, which the remainder of his cuticle had become by the mummifying process, were distinctly to be seen. It had been removed with a knife. It appeared to Grenville that the captive had been propped artificially where he sat, as if to guard the passage. A trickle of water, saturated with saltpeter, had served to embalm both his flesh and skin, in part.

That the cabin beyond had likewise been despoiled of its treasure was almost a foregone conclusion. However, Sidney stepped closer to the silent form and peered through the broken panel.

The room into which he was gazing was dimly lighted by the rays of daylight filtering through a number of cracks which the weather had opened in its ceiling. When his sight grew accustomed to the darkness, he saw that the place had evidently served not only as quarters for the former crew, but likewise as a storage hold for ropes, paints, extra furnishings, and, doubtless, victuals.

Its contents lay scattered about in confusion and decay, yet promised more "treasure" for Grenville's needs than all the rest of the vessel. He drove his shoulder against the door, and its lock broke the rotted woodwork away with a suddenness the man had not expected. He passed the mummified guardian at the portal somewhat hurriedly, as he lurched inside the chamber; and he nearly fell across a box that had spilled out a dozen old pieces of brass.

Upon these he pounced with avidity, despite the fact they were greenly incrusted with "rust." Among other articles of plunder thus provided to his hand were several row-locks, a broken turnbuckle, a dozen at least of useless hinges, and a hatful of screws more or less cemented together.

With vague ideas of employing the metal somehow, he filled his pockets with the smaller articles and looked about for possible tools. From a broken locker in a corner much similar scrap stuff had fallen. Here was a large brass porthole rim, parts of a broken binnacle, half of the brazen cap from a towing-bit, two heavy bronze handles of swords now fallen to pieces with decay, an old brass lantern with a useless lamp, a large coil of excellent copper wire, a ball of lead, and remains of several iron marlinespikes, mere effigies now in flaky rust.

From beneath a heap of rotted cordage a greenish cylinder protruded. Grenville drew it forth. It proved to be a small brass cannon, unmounted, and apparently filled with mud. Near by he discovered the rapidly disintegrating remnants of an old-time flintlock musket. This was a priceless treasure, for the flint, which was still intact. He likewise saved a bit of the steel that the cordage had protected.

The thin and wasted skeleton of a hand-saw hung upon a hook. When he took the blade between his fingers it fell apart like paper, charred, but still holding its original form. Not an object he found of iron was worth removing to the camp. Resolved to return at an early date, to annex the old cannon and such other heavy bric-à-brac as he could not conveniently carry away to-day, Grenville finally left the mysterious dead man still sitting in chains beside the door, and once more regained the wholesome earth.

He finally glanced at his watch. The time was nearly twelve! He had been for at least three hours away from Elaine, who was waiting alone upon the hill! Back to the trail, and then along its sinuous windings through the jungle, he strode at his swiftest pace.

When he came to the final clearing before the towering rock, he was all but paralyzed with dread at a bit of drama being there enacted.

At the edge of the jungle stood Elaine, her arms and jacket filled with fruits she had gathered against his coming. By the foot of the trail that ascended to their camp, posed in a waiting attitude, his long tail only in motion, gracefully sweeping his great tawny side, was the tiger that wore the golden collar.

Not a sound escaped from Elaine's white lips, as she turned to glance across at Sidney. Then she limberly sank on the earth.

CHAPTER VIII PRIMITIVE CONDITIONS

A short, sharp cry was the only note that Grenville uttered.

The tiger had turned his blazing eyes on the man he but partially feared. Sidney was coming less at him than towards the helpless, prostrate form that lay upon the grass.

The man had forgotten his danger in his greater concern for Elaine. He reached her side before he confronted the jungle beast, who still remained undecided. Slowly then, deliberately, the malignant animal, superb not only in his strength and splendid proportions, but also in his arrogance, his indifference to man, the master butcher of the world, ran out his tongue to lick his chops, stretched his terrible mouth in a fang-revealing yawn, and trod his way into the thicket.

The fruits she had gathered were scattered all about as Grenville lifted Elaine in his arms and carried her up the steep ascent. Not having actually swooned, she had fairly begun to revive once more before he reached the cave.

When he placed her down on a heap of half-dried grass she had thrown together while awaiting his return, a faint tinge of color was returning to her face, and her eyes dimly focused upon him.

"You've worked too much, that's what it means," he said. "You see you're tired."

"I'm—sorry," she faltered, faintly. "I really—didn't mean to be—so weak."

"Never mind," he said. "I'll kill the brute. His skin is certainly a beauty." With the utmost apparent indifference to Elaine's recovery, he went at once to the clearing for the bits of old junk he had dropped.

When he returned, his mind was still on the tiger.

"We've got to live—move about—and not be annoyed," he said. "If I had a single rifle! But I'll get him somehow, soon!"

Elaine still remained upon the hay.

"If he doesn't get us sooner," she replied, a little grimly, but not as one in fear.

"I shall wall up the trail," mused Grenville, aloud, looking about at the quantity of rock so readily afforded. "That much I can do this afternoon."

She sat up a bit more sturdily.

"I dropped our luncheon, I suppose.... I hope to do better, later on, when I get more used to conditions." She was mortified to think he had been thus promptly obliged to carry her "home" in his arms.

"You are doing fairly well," he said, in his off-hand manner. "We shall soon be all right. It's a fine and tight little island."

Her one idea was to get away as soon as possible.

"Shouldn't we put up a flag, or something, in case a steamer should happen to be passing?"

"As soon as I can cut a long bamboo. I must have both tools and fire as promptly as possible."

"You must be hungry," she remarked, arising rather weakly and going to the end of her cave, where all the water that remained in the half of the paw-paw shell had been carefully stored, in Grenville's absence. Then, emerging with her burden, she added, "I meant to have your luncheon ready, but we have almost nothing left."

"All that you gathered was left by the tiger," he answered, cheerfully. "The beast prefers more solid diet." Once more descending the trail, he presently returned with the fruits that had fallen from her arms.

They ate, as before, in the shade of her cave, for the sun on the rocks was becoming hot.

"The wall this afternoon," said Grenville, as he finally concluded his simple repast with a drink of tepid water. "Then our mast and signal of distress must be erected. I shall try for fire directly. I must make a bow and some arrows. A clay pit I found will provide us with earthenware utensils, and then—if only I could manage to melt some brass——