CHAPTER XXI
MOLTEN METAL AND HOPES
The following day was calmer for Elaine, and vastly interesting, since Grenville's smelting operations were begun. She told herself that interest only laid its hold upon her nature, and, being a woman, she knew.
The clay that lined his hollow tree was sufficiently dry at last for Grenville's fire. The other accessories, all more thinly coated, were likewise ready for his use. He began in the morning to heat his natural chimney against the actual needs of afternoon. The small fire kindled upon its hearth established at once the efficiency of the draught.
Not without a certain boyish eagerness in the culmination of his labors, Sidney began the assemblage of his various paraphernalia an hour at least before noon. His molds and crucibles he carefully brought from the summit of the terrace, disposing them as conveniently as his crude conditions permitted. All his rusted scraps and useless bits of brass and bronze were divided into parcels, while salt, some powdered charcoal, and an over-abundant supply of saltpeter were provided to be used as flux, according as the smelting might demand. He could not be certain of which he should use till experiment should determine which, if any, rendered good results.
The principal difficulty, he soon discovered, would be adding the fuel to his flames. His smelter-door was not well arranged for this essential business. He expected, however, to heap a considerable quantity of wood inside before the chimney should become too hot. Later he thought a lot of short material could be readily introduced, and against this need he gathered an impressive heap of branches, which he broke to a workable length.
Elaine was with him when at last the work began. She was far more excited than Grenville seemed, since it appeared to her no less than a miracle that any man, in a place like this, should dare assume such a mastery over Jovian metals and flame. She had never before seen anything of smelting. This intimate acquaintance with its mysteries seemed to her a privilege, greatly enhanced by the fact that the lord of it all pretended she was actually helpful.
She assisted when he bound the sections of his clay-made molds together. She handed him fuel when the furnace-door was opened and gushes of heat came voluminously forth.
The fire, which for a time had loudly roared, was now more intense and quiet. The volumes of smoke, which the "chimney" had belched, had likewise finally ceased. Only a quiver of superheated air and a greenish bit of gas and fume now ascended to the sky.
From time to time, Grenville opened the top of the door to peer within. He wrinkled his features, in the waves of heat, and held his hand before his face. At length he adjusted his "tongs" about a crucible and drew it entirely forth.
It was white with heat, its surface sparkling with a hundred tiny stars that died on its glowing surface.
"Just toss in some of that stuff there on the leaf," he quietly instructed Elaine. "It will soon be ready to pour."
The "stuff" was flux, and Elaine obeyed directions like the stanch assistant that she was. She wondered what was coming next.
It came very soon. She was certain no ruddier figure of Vulcan, employing mighty flame, had ever been presented than now when Grenville made ready for the climax of his work.
He removed the door as he had not previously done, and set it aside from his path. He thrust in his tongs, while flame and heat came pouring out to paint him a deep and glowing color. Then, seemingly hotter than ever before, and smoking goldenly above its blinding incandescence, the first of the crucibles, itself fairly dripping, where some of the flux had trickled down its surface, was supported over to the molds, to be quickly and vigorously skimmed of its oxidized matter.
But the molten brass, indescribably beautiful, with ruby and gold and silver gleams imbedded and breaking in its substance, was the wonder of it all. Elaine stood entranced, to see it flow and fill the hollows of the molds.
The second was hastily drawn from the flame, and then the third and last. But not till all lay finally empty and smoking on the earth, their surfaces rapidly dulling, did Grenville pause to look at Elaine and smile.
"Can't even tell what we've done," he said, "till the molds are cooled and opened."
"Must you wait very long till you know?"
"I couldn't wait long," Grenville answered. "I'm too much of a curious kid."
As a matter of fact, brass poured in a mold begins to harden at once. In less than fifteen minutes, Grenville was gingerly untwisting the hot copper wire that bound each mold together. Soon after that the first of his tools, a heavy and serviceable chisel, lay uncovered to the air.
It was still glowing hot, although no longer red. It was darker, less brassy in appearance than Elaine had expected to see, but it seemed to her a wonderful thing to be made of those useless bits of metal.
The tool next in importance was much like a butcher's cleaver—an implement intended for cutting or hacking wood or branches, either to clear a path in the jungle or to rough out anything of timber. The edge of this casting was imperfect, where the metal had failed to flow. Both it and the chisel had a thin fringe of brass along those sections where the halves of the mold had come together, but this would be readily broken away and was quite to be expected.
Smaller chisels, a blade that Sidney expected to notch along its edge to make a species of saw, and a number of smaller implements were contained in the other sets of molds. None of these was perfect, and one or two merely served to instruct the master-molder in the way to go to work another time. But the net results were highly satisfactory, and seemed to Elaine a veritable triumph.
The poorness of their quality as tools with which to accomplish swift results developed the following day. Grenville had melted a part of his lead and cast the head of a hammer. With this and the largest of his chisels he attacked the log chosen for a boat.
So long as his gouging was confined to the portions charred by the fire, the tool held well to the labor. Its edge soon went to pieces, however, when the solider substance was encountered. It was sharpened repeatedly. He early foresaw that, work as he might, the business of conjuring forth a boat from material so raw was certain to be slow, if not exhausting.
Indeed, at this time a tedious period began. There were days and days of dull, stupid repetition ahead like the ones that were presently past. Fire after fire he maintained beneath the log, which must always be newly plastered with the clay. Hour after hour he chiseled off the black and dusty flakes that the flames would leave behind, since it hastened the work to present a new surface to the heat. It seemed as if the task could never have an end.
But, if this was a season of dogged application to an uncongenial business, it was likewise the one long era of peace vouchsafed to the exiled pair. There was nothing to rouse a sense of alarm in any near portion of the jungle. And, if those fast succeeding days brought no welcome sign of a steamer approaching on the distant blue horizon, neither did their lengthening hours develop those craft upon the sea for which Grenville was constantly and apprehensively watching. They were happy days, as well as peaceful. Concerning the ring she had lost in the sea, Elaine could not force herself to worry. Grenville never, by any chance, gave her occasion for alarm.
There were many full afternoon vacations from his work when the fire was left to hollow out his log that Sidney spent at her side. He wove her a hammock of the creeper withes and built a shady bower by the shore. He had sawed her a comb from the tortoiseshell, bent hairpins of the copper wire, and made her a comfortable couch. Her tiger-skin robe he had worked with his hands to a soft and pliant finish. The skin of a cheeta he had killed he used to supplement his rapidly vanishing shirt. Sewing was strongly, if not prettily, accomplished with such needles and thread as his ready ingenuity provided.
They were busy days that were doomed, however, to pall. Elaine was assisting with a loom to weave a sail, while between times Grenville chipped out the stone for the bath he had promised on the ledge. He became a skillful marksman with his bow, and knew every animal trail the island afforded. In many of these his traps did deadly service. Their larder rarely lacked for meat, made tender by paw-paw leaves. Elaine caught many a silver fish that they roasted together in the sand.
But her gaze more frequently roved afar, for the ship that did not come. The days were growing sultrier, and constantly more monotonous.
The new moon had come and waxed to the full and was once more waning in the heavens. They were marvelous nights the old orb made upon the island, but always weird and exciting a sense, in Elaine at least, of loneliness and aloofness from the world. On their cliff above the murmurous tides, she and Grenville frequently sat for hours at a time without exchanging a word.
Such times were fraught with strangely exciting moments; and subtle tinglings came unbidden to her nature, giving her pleasures wildly lawless and precious beyond expression. Yet she feared them also when they came, and refused to give them meaning.
But to-night a new wistfulness burned in her eyes as she turned to her silent companion.
"I wonder," she said, "if we couldn't put a fresher flag on our pole to-morrow."
"Sure shot," said Sid, "the freshest flag that ever grew."
She was silent again for several moments. Then she said:
"What should we do if a year went by—two years, perhaps, or even more—and a ship should never come?"
"Do?" said Grenville. "Sail away."
"I know. But I mean, supposing we found no place to go—and had to come back every time."
"H'm!" said Grenville, rubbing the corner of his jaw, "you probably also mean to suppose we were always unmolested."
"Why, yes, of course. Who could come to molest us here?"
"Molesters," he said, "if anyone. But perhaps they never would."
He had given no answer to her question, which she hardly cared to repeat. It was one of the times, which frequently came, when she could not prevent herself from wondering if this strong, primal man she had once called a brute could have utterly forgotten the passionate declaration made on the steamship "Inca" the day before the wreck.
She wondered also, had he meant it at the time? Or had one of his many inscrutable moods possessed him, barely for the moment? She had never dared recently confess to herself what feelings might instantly invade her tingling nature should she learn he had only pretended, perhaps on some wager with Gerald, as a test of her faithfulness and love.
It was womanlike, merely, on her part, to desire to know his mind. No woman may long resent being loved by a strong and masterful man. And Elaine was delightfully typical of all her delightful sex.
"Well," she presently said, "we've been here now much longer than we ever expected that day when we arrived."
His gaze, which had been averted, now swung to a meeting with her own. She had never seemed lovelier, braver, more sweetly disposed than now. The moonlight deepened her luminous eyes till the man fairly held his breath.
"Elaine," he said, finally, glancing once more towards the silvered sea, "what is your notion of love?"
The shock of the word threw all her wits into confusion.
"My notion?" she stammered, helplessly, feeling the hot flames leap like floods of his molten metal to her neck, her face, and her bosom. "I don't believe—I have—any notions."
"Your convictions, then?" he amended. "Or, if you like, your principles?"
"My—my principles of—of all that—are—just about like—everyone else's, I suppose," she managed to answer, fragmentarily, "—being honest—and true—and faithful—unto death."
"To the one that you really love?"
"Why—certainly—of course." The heat in her face increased, so significant had she felt his words with that low even tone of emphasis.
He stared so long at the sea after that she began to suspect he had not even heard her reply. After a time she was tempted to play, just a trifle, with the fire. She added, "Why did you ask?"
"Wanted to know." Once more he fell dumb, and again she waited, afraid he would, and more afraid he would not, continue the delicate topic. Once again, also, she was tempted.
"And what," she inquired, "is your—notion?"
He did not turn. "Of love or crocodiles?"
"Of—of love—was what you asked me."
"I believe I did," he responded. "Oh, about the same as yours!"
Elaine had received but scanty satisfaction. After another long silence she ventured to say:
"We might have to be here a year—or even longer."
He turned to her directly. "Do you like it here, Elaine?"
She would not reply, and therefore demanded, "Do you?"
"I'm a savage," he admitted. "This sort of thing appeals to something in my blood."
"I know," she answered, understandingly, "—building up an empire with your naked hands, unaided—conquering metals and elements—wresting the island's dominion from the brutes. Naturally you love it!"
He reddened. "I can't make an apple dumpling and make it right! This island's dominion? Great Cæsar's frying-pan—this is a regular picnic-ground, with everything on earth provided!"
She smiled. "And things all made and ready, including tools and powder, not to mention a tiger-skin rug.... You refuse to admit you like it for itself?"
"Like it or not," he answered, "we must get away—and home."
"Home," she repeated, oddly. "Home.... I wonder if home will ever seem—— It certainly would be wonderful, a miracle, I think, to see a steamer really coming—and to go on board and have it take us back to—everything—somewhere home—— But we'd sometimes think of this—a little?"
"Probably."
To save his life, he could not banish thoughts of Fenton.
"I'm sure we would," murmured Elaine. She gazed away, to the jungle's softened shadows. She wanted to cry out abruptly that she loved it to-night, with a love that could never die. She wanted the comfort of something, she hardly dared wonder what. After another long silence, she finally said, with eyes averted and excitement throbbing in her veins:
"I know the name of this little place—do you?"
"No," he said, wondering what she might have discovered. "What do you think it is called?"
It seemed to Elaine her heart pounded out her reply.
"The Isle of Shalimar."
If Grenville knew the Indian name for Garden, he made no sign that she could read. He made no reply whatsoever, but gazed as before at the sea.
He was turning at last when a low, but distinctly briefer, recurrence of the island's haunting wails arose to disturb the wondrous calm—as well as his peace of mind. There could be no doubt the tidal phenomenon was gradually but steadily failing.
What might occur when it altogether ceased was more than the man could divine. He felt a vague dread of that approaching hour and of what it might develop.
"It must be after midnight," he said, at last, "—time for night's ordinary dreams."
Yet, when he was finally stretched on his bed, he did not lose himself in slumber. Instead he lay thinking of the island's haunting sounds and the cave somewhere underneath the headland.
He had meant to attempt an inspection of this place, if only to gratify a natural curiosity. The thought occurred to him now that, in case of dire necessity, it might afford such a shelter as was not to be found on any other portion of the island. It was not a thing to be neglected. He made up his mind that the following day he would make an exploration.