CHAPTER XVI
A DEAD MAN'S SECRET
That was a long, weird night in the jungle.
What hour it was the tiger finally departed was more than Grenville could have told. And whether the daylight, finally approaching, or a royal disgust, or some easily captured morsel, had served to urge the brute upon his way, was equally unknown.
Grenville descended from his perch at last, when the palms and ferns had darkly emerged from the velvety blackness of the thicket. He took up his club, left the bomb in its place, and, searching about, recovered the sheet of parchment dropped in the darkness. Aware that the silently moving enemy might still be lurking by the pathway, he made his way no less boldly from the shadows, and came duly to the hill.
His chagrin was complete when he told Elaine that his night had been spent in vain. She had scarcely slept, as he could see, for her face was still pale with worry, while her eyes showed her lack of rest.
"I shall try again to-night," he said, but from that he was dissuaded.
The strain was too great upon Elaine, if not upon himself. He presently promised to wait a day, and see what might develop. He could not subject his companion to another such session of agonizing worry as Elaine had undergone until he felt more certain of results.
But to wait a day in idleness, while he felt that every hour that passed might bring new dangers upon them, could scarcely accord with his intentions.
He declared the tiger an arrant coward, who dared not confront him in the day.
"We have faced far greater perils than this," he told her, as they ate their simple breakfast, "and we may be called upon to face the like again. We're enormously fortunate to have nothing more than this striped beast to limit our freedom on the island."
Elaine could have thought of countless other animals, including snakes, that would amply curtail her roaming inclinations, but she was not in the least in the habit of rehearsing her many dreads.
Grenville went promptly to work, after breakfast, fetching clay in the basket from the pit. It was not brought up to the terrace, but dumped in a heap beside the hollow tree, in the burned space under the walls. This tree, he at last explained to Elaine, he intended to use as a smelter.
"It's a natural chimney I've annexed," was the way he presented the problem. "If I built a fire in it now, however, it would burn, and be destroyed. I intend to line it with clay—plaster it on, inside, some eight or ten feet high. Then when this fire-resisting substance dries, I can smelt my metal and run it in the molds. The draught will make a prodigious heat—far more than brass requires."
"I see," said Elaine. "Meantime I am utterly idle."
"I'll cut you those needles. You can knit," he said, "unless you prefer to go fishing."
He had come to the camp for one of the jugs in which to carry water for the clay. This task was temporarily abandoned while he sat in the shade, beside Elaine, and carved out the promised tools. These were made of wood, instead of bone, since the latter material was far too hard for his fragment of a blade, and one of the woods provided by the jungle was so straightly grained and elastic, that even a slender splinter would bend like steel before it broke.
For a short time after they were finished, he sat there to watch the craft displayed by Elaine's nimble fingers, as a slender bit of the fiber stuff began to accumulate in stitches.
"You were made for a home-builder's mate," he said, and arose and left her to her thoughts, and to certain inflammable emotions.
He carried his jug down the trail and to the spring, resuming the business in hand. The sight of the pool not only served to arouse his disgust anew, but he was likewise reminded of the documents, reposing still unread in his pocket. The bomb, he knew, should be carried back to camp, lest the fuse become dampened in the thicket. With this and his jug full of water, he hastened back to the foot of the trail—and forgot them both forthwith.
The half sheet of paper, readable at last, had enslaved him then and there.
He sat on a rock, with the paper on his knee, and was lost to all things else.
For a moment he thought, perhaps, he had dreamed of obtaining the key to the hidden message. But one hurried glance at the words he had read convinced him the trick had been done.
On the back of the sheet he began at once to jot down the signs of which he felt most certain. The results, as he made them, were these:
The next word, according to his deductions, should be "Island." This, he felt, was indisputably confirmed by the fact it contained precisely the required number of "letters," with the sign for L, A, and D, already discovered, occupying their proper positions. He, therefore, added:
to his growing collection of letters, and promptly produced the following results by the process of substitution:
There could be so little doubt, after that, concerning such words as "Under," "High," "Important," and "Water," which supplied the characters, U, G, M, P, W, and O, which was also suggested in "Or," before "Haunted," that a bit of additional substitution very promptly cleared the entire affair.
Grenville jotted it down, to make sense, in the following fashion:
"Under tree, Three-Hill, or Haunted Island, Cave. Get in (during) high water (in) Spring time when noise loud. Important. Make no mistake. Map on Buli shows same."
The one word which he felt to be doubtful was "Buli," which, he confessed, might as readily be "Zuli," "Juli," or "Quli," but this was of no significance, one way or another. Its meaning was still obscure.
There were several things in the message or statement, however, that confirmed his earlier uneasiness. The principal of these was the statement that it was important for the possible seekers of some cavern under the greater wall of rock to visit the island only during the time when the hideously haunting sounds were at their height. This argued, he thought, that the sounds would finally subside, or altogether cease, when complications—doubtless in the form of visitors—might be expected to develop.
That the visitors would be natives and, probably, Dyaks, Grenville could have no doubt. As to what there was in the cave beneath the rock, he had small curiosity only, since it was hardly likely such tools as he desired would be so concealed from a prying world, and tools alone had value for him now.
He could not doubt, however, that something there was in the cave here described, for which men had risked their lives. He thought of the headless skeletons, and then of the mummy in chains.
Suddenly, at thought of that guardian of the barque, his heart gave an added leap. He snatched from his pocket the parchment referred to as a map. He could instantly see, by the light of day, that the leathery substance was leather, indeed, of the most grewsomely repellent description! It was simply tanned human skin!
And abruptly he understood that phrase—"Map on Buli shows same." The pyramids represented the island's three great hills, and other signs the cave. The pole with a knob, on the tallest hill, was the tree so near his camp.
Aye, the thing was a map in very truth—and once it had been ON Buli! For Buli was he who sat in the barque, chained fast to prevent his escape!
This map he had borne, tattooed on his breast, from which it had finally been stripped!