CHAPTER XV
A NIGHT IN THE JUNGLE
It was not the tiger Grenville heard above the pounding of his heart.
The squealing of some little insignificant beast, apparently more in sport than apprehension, betrayed very soon the fact that no sinister visitor was even prowling near. So heavy a sound as the little brute had made would doubtless be avoided when the master of the jungle should arrive.
All the excitement unduly engendered in Grenville's system rapidly subsided. He listened as intently as before, and peered below in an effort to pierce the densest shadows, but could not detect the form or whereabouts of his early visitor. He doubted if this small creature drank, since the pool of the spring was still quite clearly visible, like a surface half of ebony and half of tarnished silver.
At length the absolute silence prevailed as it had before. Save for the lightest of zephyrs, that barely sufficed to fan the topmost foliage, not even the slightest stir could be detected. The darkness below became absolute, where shadows, tree-trunks, and thicket all blended into one. A portion only of the pool was now discernible, and in this, clearly mirrored, were two bright stars, that burned dull gold in the ebon.
Grenville sat back in his lumpy perch and blew, as before, on his coal. Its slender wreath of invisible smoke ascended pungently. The hour was still very early for nocturnal business to begin. The tiger might not come till midnight. Sidney reflected that the brute would doubtless eat before a drink would be desired.
He regretted, vainly, that no bait had finally been provided. Even the fish they had only partially eaten for dinner might have been attractive to the tiger. Any price now would be cheap enough to rid themselves of this terror.
His reflections ran the gamut of their island world, and sped far over seas. He thought of that day with Fenton, and of what this friend would think. Had they heard the news, in that far-away home, of the steamer gone down with every soul?
He thought of the morning he had greeted Elaine—and the something that had happened to his nature. He remembered in detail every hour of every day they had spent together on the steamer. Then the hideous details of all that last experience, in the storm and night, paraded by for his review.
One after another the swiftly moving procession of events brought him back to this present hour. He was, then, confronted once again by the questions—how long would it last?—how might it end? The island's mystery impinged once more on his varied cogitations, making him wish he might have had a torch, by which to study the documents reposing in his pocket.
Mentally picturing forth the signs on the leathery piece of parchment, he busied himself for above an hour for a clew as to what they could mean. They suggested nothing to his mind that made the slightest sense. He tried to recall the characters on the "explanatory" sheet. But this was a hopeless task.
Aware of the value of deduction, he began on a reasoning line. Anything to occupy his thoughts and time till the hour when the tiger might have fed, and would come for his evening drink, was highly welcome.
He began by a natural presumption that both the documents, found together in the tube, and so carefully concealed, related to this particular island. Did they not, then of what possible value would be their final decipherment and solution?
Granting this premise, then what should follow next? Certainly some mention of the island—with its name—in the written message, at least. There would naturally be, in these circumstances, some word in the cipher spelling "Island"—but what would the place be called?
Such places, he knew, were frequently named quite unofficially, by wandering sailors, adventurers, and drifters on the sea. Attempting to level his state of mind to that of such human beings, he wondered what he, if left to himself, would christen this bit of rock and jungle.
So often, he reflected, a place was named for its appearance. This one, for instance, might aptly be called "Three Rocks," "Three Walls," or "Three Towers." He remembered, finally, the abominable sounds produced by the tides twice daily—sounds he had thought might have frightened the natives away. The cognomen, "Haunted Island," might not seem wholly inappropriate to a superstitious mind.
The more he reflected, the more certain he felt that some one of the names suggested to his mind might also have occurred to those of others. Considerably aroused in his centers of curiosity, and convinced that even by the dull cherry glow of his firebrand he might be enabled to confirm or confute his theory, he moved sufficiently to draw from his pocket the closely folded documents, and held them up to his torch.
The one with the inexplicable signs he promptly returned as of no immediate avail. At that instant his attention was arrested, by a sound below him on the earth.
Something, he thought, was lapping at the water!
He leaned far forward, tense and rigid on the limb, shielding his spark in one of his hands, while he peered about the pool.
There was nothing he could possibly discern—no form of a head projected out to obliterate his stars. Yet the sounds at the edge of the silent basin rose distinctly to his ears.
All but ready to bend to the end of his fuse, and touch his fire upon it, he paused, looked closer, saw ripples move to disturb his mirrored planets—and then beheld some form darkly limned on the waters.
For a moment he was certain his insolent tiger was there. Some huge blunt muzzle seemed inkily contrasted with the dull gray surface of the spring. Then the muzzle suddenly detached itself from the imagined form behind. The entire figure of some little beast was seen as it waded the pool.
Once more, disgustedly, Grenville reclined and relaxed the strain on his nerves. It was some time, then, before he thought to return to his quest of the cipher. He remembered, finally, he had meant to count the characters in some of the words to see if the number of signs thus used might not correspond with the number employed in "Island," "Three," "Haunted," "Wall," or "Tower."
A dull red glow, of most unsatisfactory dimensions and illuminative capacity, was the most he could procure from his brand. It barely sufficed to present the "writing" to his vision. For a moment, indeed, he despaired of discriminating clearly between the ending of one word and the beginning of the next. Fortunately, however, the writer had used large periods between his every word.
Considerably to Grenville's satisfaction, the third word thus denoted he was almost convinced was "Three." Not only had it the proper number of letters, or signs, but the two final characters were exactly alike, and both were the crosses he had previously selected as probably representing E.
The next word along, he was equally certain, was either "Wall" or "Hill." Its two final characters were the same particular sign repeated, while its meaning, in conjunction with the preceding word "Three," fulfilled his logical deduction.
A word of two characters followed this, and then, to Grenville's intense delight, occurred a word of seven letters, which not only met the numerical requirements of "Haunted," but, also, in proper sequence, employed the various letter-signs already somewhat proved by the word he felt certain was "Three."
This was more than sufficient evidence on which to base a test of the message's sense, if it were not, indeed, enough of a key with which to decipher the entire inscription.
Eagerly fumbling in his pocket for his pencil, with the intention of attempting a bit of substitution of letters for the signs contained upon the sheet, Grenville shifted his position—and the paper fell from his fingers, fluttering obliquely from his sight.
He leaned quickly forward, as if to follow the flight of the missive through the darkness so densely spread beneath him. But it disappeared almost instantly—with its mystery still unsolved.
On the point of descending, at whatever cost, to recover the important bit of foolscap, Sidney was halted in movement and impulse by some new arrival at the spring.
As a matter of fact, two animals were there, as he presently discovered. That neither was his tiger he was presently persuaded, but that one or both were fairly large seemed equally assured.
It was certainly not a time to leave the tree. And while the reflection that, perhaps, the silent visitors were leopards was presented to Grenville's mind, and a momentary thought of slaying the pair by igniting his fuse became a strong temptation, he contented himself by staring more or less blindly down upon the place where they seemed to be, and bided his time as before.
At nine o'clock it seemed, to the cramped and impatient hunter in the tree, that ages had passed since he bade good-night to Elaine and came to this lonely vigil. There were sounds in abundance about him now, arising from time to time. Some were the cries of the lesser beasts, in the clutches or jaws of their captors; some were sounds of munching. All of them indicated rather grimly the tiger's absence from the scene. There would be no petty murderers thereabout when the arch brute came for his drink.
Leaning back once more, and long since weary of his fruitless adventure, Grenville stared at the glowing cone of fire slowly eating away his brand. It was lasting far longer than he had believed would be possible—yet certainly less than one hour more could the consuming substance serve to give him a spark.
He could almost fancy he saw a face, in the film of ash upon its surface. He was sure the face was developing a likeness to Elaine. Even the soft clear radiance of her cheek—— How eagerly she had asked concerning his coming "home"—but how far it seemed away.... He could hear her saying "You'll come home ... come home ... come back...."
He awoke with a start, for something had burned him on the wrist.
The firebrand, all but consumed in his relaxing fingers, had dropped and deposited a blister. In his sudden move to rid himself of the torture to his flesh, he threw off the red-hot candle of wood, and it fell straight downward, sizzling once where it struck in a trickle of the water.
Reviling himself for a stupid blunderer, and arousing vividly to a sense of where he was, and why, he began to question the expediency of returning at once to the terrace. He was still debating the wisdom of the move, when the question was decided by the tiger.
That belated midnight reveler—the old roué of the jungle—was ushered in with questionable pomp—the panic of lesser brutes in flight. And when he drank, beside the useless bomb, there was no mistaking his presence. He presently paused, half satisfied, and lifted his head, against the shudder of the water, to sniff at the jungle breeze.
The wind had betrayed the presence of the man, and the great brute voiced his satisfaction.