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

You see, the worst of it is, no stone I've discovered on the place is fit to use for a tool."

Elaine avoided the boyish gleaming of his gaze. "Are we thrust so far back as the stone age, then? It's really as bad as that?"

"Bad?" he said. "It's tremendously diverting. I've got to begin, as it were, with my naked hands. But fortunately, I believe, for us, the bronze and stone ages lap," and he drew from his pockets some bits of the heterogeneous collection he had brought from the rotting barque.

"You have found some metal?" Elaine inquired, excitedly. "But where?"

"In a wreck that must have arrived here years ago." He related as much as he thought advisable and undisturbing to the thoroughly wondering girl.

She could see no possible use for all the rusted bronze and brass he had earned away from the wreck so strangely discovered, but she made no discouraging comments to dampen an ardor which to her was not precisely comprehensible.

"I hope I can help," she told him, as she had before. "I'm afraid I'm not very clever."

"We'll see," he answered, cheerfully. "Necessity is rather a strict instructor."

But she could not assist him with the wall, at which he was presently perspiring. The stones he rolled and carried to the narrowest shelf or ledge that was scaled by the trail were far too heavy for her delicate hands and muscles.

"Can't I do something else?" she begged, eager for any employment. "There must be some work I could do."

"You might plait a basket of some sort," he said. "We shall need some presently."

He thereupon went below again, cut all he could carry of tough and limber creepers, and, fetching them up to the shade of her cave, instructed Elaine in such of the rudiments of basket-weaving as he himself could readily invent, and left her busily employed.

The wall he required to prevent any possible night attack on the part of the beast that was already inclined to stalk either one of them, or both, was not of any considerable length, owing to the narrowness of the pass he had chosen to block with bowlders. He had, however, to make it thick and high. By taking advantage of three large blocks, which he rolled down hill to the place selected, he secured a substantial foundation with comparative ease. After that it became a matter merely of carrying stone after stone, from their inexhaustible supply on the summit, to lodge in rough, uneven tiers to the height desired.

He had left a narrow gateway next the natural wall that made his structure complete. This he could block with a heavy log, or even more stones, for the night.

For fully three hours he wrought prodigiously, returning from time to time to Elaine, to guide and assist her with her basket. Between them they managed to produce from their rough material a crude, misshapen receptacle, coarse of mesh and clumsy, yet strong and not to be despised. Grenville expected to use it to fetch his clay from the pit.

It was not until this product of their combined ingenuity was fairly complete that Grenville discovered he could split the bark of the creepers readily, and tear out a smooth white core, like a withe, far more suitable to their uses. He then not only stripped out several full-length cores, but he also found that the bark or covering thus removed was constructed of numerous thread-like strands amazingly tough and long. These fibers were not so readily separated as the core had been from the covering with which they were incorporated, although their recovery was not a difficult operation. His inventive mind saw ample employment for them later.

The wall was not entirely finished when, at length, he left it for the day. He was weary in all his bone and sinew, despite the prodding of his will. He had made no attempt at kindling fire, and none towards procuring a mast to erect for a flag of distress. These were tasks that must wait for the morrow, with the others he was eager to attack.

The dinner at sundown was necessarily a repetition of the previous meals of the day. It could not be followed by the cheer and comfort of a fire, and the darkness, that drew on rapidly, brought a sense of chill and depression to Elaine, notwithstanding her bravery of spirit.

The wind had ceased, except for the merest intermittent puffs of breath that floated upward from the sea. Not even the lapping of the tide against the wall arose to break the silence. The stillness was painfully profound, though Elaine's imagination depicted a hundred nocturnal brutes of the jungle, prowling in every trail and clearing, in a savage quest for blood.

As a matter of fact, the nightly tragedies were already well begun. But it was not until some victim shrilly voiced its animal fear and agony, just beneath the towering wall, that Elaine had a realizing sense of her nearness to these creatures of the darkness, or the working of life's inexorable laws.

Her mind reverted, by natural process, to all the terrible occurrences crowded into her life within the last couple of days—occurrences that seemed so needlessly tragic, and all the alarms excited in her breast, not only by the frightful accident to the "Inca," but likewise by the almost unknown man upon whom she was now dependent.

She recalled with singular vividness every accent, every gesture, look, and deed that had accompanied Grenville's declaration. She burned again, with shame and indignation, to think of the things he had dared to say and do—the treachery done to his friend—the indignity done to herself.

She hated him now more intensely than before, since he seemed, by some enormity of purpose, to have been in some manner responsible for the fate that had brought her here in his company, absolutely at his mercy. That his promptness of action had saved her life she willingly and justly conceded—but to fetch her here, all by herself, to an island unpeopled and awful, far from the track of ocean-going steamers—with his threat to compel her love still ringing in her ears—this seemed to outweigh any possible service he had done or could ever accomplish.

What would he do, she wondered, on the morrow? When would he speak of his passion again? What means, in this situation, might he presently adopt to coerce the love she knew she should never bestow?

There could be no answer to her questions—least of all from the man himself. He, too, had fallen into silence, and a study of the vast and merciless problems, not only of existence till their escape could be effected, but likewise as to how that escape could be attempted, in safety, and where they must steer their ocean course to come to a land which should not prove inhospitable.

He seemed, for the time, to have quite forgotten the presence of the girl at the cave. This she finally observed. She wondered, then, what sinister outcome his brooding might presage.

Keyed to a pitch of nervous sensibility she had never experienced before, she retired at length within her shelter like a child thrust alone in the dark. Much as she felt she disliked the man, she found herself most reluctant to move very far from his presence, or refuse his protecting care. She was certain her dread of all it meant to be hopelessly cast upon this island, with one doubtful human being only for comfort and companionship, would haunt her to sleeplessness throughout the night. Yet she fell into slumber almost at once, and only dreamed she was still awake and worried.

It was still quite early in the evening. Elaine was finally approaching a thoroughly restful oblivion, when a low, moaning wail, and then shrill screams, abruptly ushered once more into play that hideous chorus of the morning, produced by some phenomenon of the tides.

"Sidney! Sidney!" came an answering cry; and Grenville arose, to see Elaine running wildly towards him from her cave.

CHAPTER IX THE MOTHER OF INVENTION

It was not until the entire cycle of haunting sounds had been repeated for its final time that Elaine could consent to return to her pallet of grasses. And even when she had once more knelt upon this improvised bed, she could not consent to resign herself to the mercies of the night without one more glance towards Grenville's cavern.

She returned, unseen, to her door, and peered forth through the starlit night, discerning his dimly outlined figure, as he sat before his door.

He even arose as she paused there, uncertainly. She noted his listening attitude, the alertness of his pose. Then he sat once more upon the stone at his threshold, where she knew his club lay ready to his hand.

A sense of security, despite her bitterness of feeling, came slowly stealing upon her. She went back to her couch and slept.

Sidney, for his part, sat there alone, while hour after hour went silently by, and the constellations hung in higher arches. A thousand ramifications of thought he pursued in his active brain. But through them all, like an ever recurrent motif, stole a troubled reminder of the tiger, twice encountered in the day.

To slay this contemptuous, savage beast that already drooled about the jaws at thoughts of a human morsel, was the one imperative business to be promptly executed. Elaine and himself could live on fruits, and neglect all else, without serious results, for a week, or even a month, but this affair was not to be delayed.

He thought of pitfalls, giant traps, and automatic engines of destruction by the score, each deadly device absurdly impracticable and beyond all power of his achievement. His mind, accustomed to civilized ways, ran in higher ingenuities that were absolutely useless in this primal state of their existence.

When at length he leaned back against his wall and began to wonder if, in the end, he must arm himself with primitive man's crude bow and arrow, and thus engage the master prowler of the jungle, he was ready for Nature's claims. He slept there, too utterly exhausted to drag himself in to his bed. And there Elaine found him in the morning.

That day was a long one, of varied and wearying employments. The wall was finished across the trail, Elaine's too widely opened cavern was partially blocked up with stone, and, at length, in addition to searching the jungle for something particularly downy and inflammable for tinder, to use in making fire, Grenville went with his basket down to the clay pit and fetched sufficient of this moist and plastic material to mould a number of vessels.

This last useful art was not, however, immediately attempted. Unfired jugs and basins were absolutely useless—and as yet they had no fire. The search for tinder had resulted only in producing a silken, fluffy material that grew in a fat green pod. It was moist, when found, with the natural juices of the plant.

While it dried in the sun, under Elaine's supervision, Grenville worked at a stout, elastic tree-branch to taper out a bow. His stub of a knife-blade served indifferently against the close-grained wood, which, nevertheless, was obliged to yield to his persevering efforts.

At noon the weapon, save for the cord, was rudely finished. No arrows had been as yet provided. Obliged at this hour to replenish the camp supply of water, Grenville once more visited the spring. So fresh were the tracks of the tiger here, in the mire about the trickling stream, that he felt they must almost be warm. The brute was undoubtedly near at hand, but, perhaps, well fed, as before.

"There is nothing quite so important now as fire," was Grenville's remark, as he once more rejoined Elaine. "Without it we are practically helpless. With it—there is almost nothing we may not hope to achieve."

He had thought of a number of extraordinary and highly important implements and arts that only flame and glowing heat could render possible.

Elaine brought the fluff she had thoroughly dried, while