As It Was in the Beginning

by Philip Verrill Mighels

CHAPTER XXXVIII

GRENVILLE'S DESPERATE CHANCE

At noon Elaine reluctantly consumed the last remaining drop of water. Grenville had taken a sip, and pretended to take a swallow. To refuse it longer, Elaine quite clearly comprehended, would be but to see it ooze away through the jar, to be drunk by the merciless heat.

"I shall get a new supply," said Sidney, attempting an accent of cheer, "but I'd rather avoid using that of the cavern, for fear it may not be wholesome."

Elaine, in her way of divining the truth, was only partially deceived. She felt that the water below in the cave was wholly unfit for consumption. She knew that if anything even remotely possible could be done to refill their vessels, Sidney would have filled them long before.

She made no discouraging comments, however, despite the fact her hope was succumbing to despair. The smoke continued to roll in sullen clouds across and about the terrace; the sun beat down through it redly, soaking the rock in caloric, that sank to the gallery itself.

The noonday meal had been slight and unrefreshing—a bit of fruit, too warm and too ripe for relish on the palate, and a few odd scraps of the meat. It was water that both insistently craved, and for which they grew fevered and distressed.

The smoldering brands in the furnace of rocks could not be permitted to die away in ash. Elaine had undertaken the maintenance of this, their altar spark, which rarely rose to a flame. She was safe enough to come and go from the passage entrance to the nearby furnace Grenville had moved to facilitate her duties, but the smoke seemed far more stifling and hot than it had the previous day, while, with headache, thirst, and a heaviness in all her weary being, the endlessly cheerful and courageous little companion of Grenville's maddening ordeal felt ready to drop and rise no more.

Again at his task of constructing a float that should bear him from the cavern to the inlet formed by the spring, Sidney toiled with no mercy to himself in the workshop far down in the rocks. He felt at times he must gulp down even the water of the sea, so parched was his throat, and so craving was his system.

At five o'clock his bamboo raft was completed, even with braces for his jugs. It had also been tried in the basin of the cave, and made finally ready for launching. But the tide would be low till eight. His blast had made the water more approachable than formerly, yet to fight his way against a powerful current would over-tax his strength. In any event he must wait for the darkness of night.

He returned to Elaine, and although he, too, was weary to the bone, her patient endurance of suspense and suffering aroused him to a state of anguish in which no exhausting task would have seemed too great for him to undertake. He was wrung by her wistful attempt at a smile.

"The day is nearly done," she said. "The night is sure to be cooler."

It was considerably cooler, but scarcely more fresh, since the smoke appeared to pour in even vaster volumes from the greenery below. That the Dyaks were keeping strict watch on the water supply there could be no reason to doubt. From time to time a weird bit of chanting arose from that fume-creating garden that had once been so fair as to win from Elaine the prettiest name she knew.

Grenville felt certain, in fact, the boatmen's camp had been made about the inlet or the spring. The short stretch of beach where he and Elaine had landed, and where he had later made a bower of the trees, would be certain to attract these half-amphibious savages, though their boats were moored behind the opposite hill.

For a time he wondered if he might not be more wise to pass entirely around the island, to approach the pool of fresh water from below. But reflecting that various currents of the tide would buffet and beset him, in addition to which he must run the gauntlet past the Dyak boats, he surrendered the suggestion without delay, and impatiently awaited the tide.

Three times he went down the passage, torch in hand, to examine the stages of the water. At length he bethought him of two short scoop-like paddles, to assist in propelling his craft, and feverishly set about their construction.

They were done in less than half an hour, since they consisted merely of two half-sections of bamboo cylinder, lashed to a pair of handles.

Elaine was aware he was making ready for more than an ordinary adventure, as she watched him with her wide and lustrous eyes.

"Perhaps relief may come to-morrow," she finally observed. "You are quite exhausted. Might you not be wiser to rest to-night? We can get along, I am sure."

But even her voice made a rasp in her throat, so distressed was her system for water.

"I need a bit of change," he said. "It is certain to do me good."

With a touch of his former brusqueness, he presently bade her seek her couch, during the time he expected to be gone, and vanished once more down the dark, steep passageway, with his paddles and torch in hand.

The torch was left in the gallery, extinguished. The concealing door was adjusted to its place. These were mere precautions against the cave's discovery, yet Grenville was certain no Dyaks would approach the place that night. His two best jugs were placed on the ledge; his cleaver was hung at his belt. He could take no bombs or lighted brands on such an expedition.

The task of launching his raft on the tide involved unexpected labor. Its lightness made it an easy prey to the swirl that always filled the cavern's walled approach. It was sucked once nearly under, its farther end disappearing entirely from view—and Granville withdrew it, desperately glad the jugs had not been placed upon it.

Awaiting a quieter mood of the whirlpool, half seen in the darkness, he launched the float again, and beheld it rest there, quietly, nosing against the ledge. He turned for the jugs, but, casting a quick glance backward, at the slightest of scraping sounds, saw the raft swinging outward from his reach.

His arm was too short for its recovery. Leaping wildly out in the water, he caught it again, and was washed against the jagged wall before he once more returned it to the landing. He was soaked to the skin, but his pulses throbbed with heat and dogged energy that would think of no defeat.

With his jugs finally laid flat between the bamboo supporters, front and rear, and with paddles in hand, as he lay at full length on the light but half-submerged platform, he rowed the raft out with a motion as if he were swimming.

Indeed, like a giant oar-bug, more or less helplessly carried by the current that it rides, he spun slowly about in the maelstrom of the gathering tide before he could escape past the portal and head for the inlet below.

He soon discovered that to continue far in this fatiguing attitude would abominably strain his neck, if not his entire body. Not without considerable difficulty, in balancing the craft, he effected a change of position, and knelt upon the supports.

The waves washed up about his knees and feet, but of this he was practically oblivious. Assisted now by the current, and with eyes intent on the darkened shore, beyond the uprise of the cliff, he propelled himself much farther out than formerly, with the purpose of avoiding the possible vigilance of Dyaks on the beach.

The night was not exceedingly dark, so brilliant was the light from the stars. Once the region of smoke was left behind, the blurred and blended features of the island were sufficiently well revealed for his purposes, since he knew its every silhouette as well as the contours of the coast.

He had rowed and drifted, perhaps, half the distance essential to land at the estuary mouth, when the sound of voices, floated out from the shore, abruptly halted his movements. The Dyaks were there. Either motion or any unusual disturbance would suffice to betray his presence off the land.

And now, as if every fate had become malignant, the current drifted him inward, where he knew he should keep well away. At the risk of exciting curiosity, if nothing more, he dipped his paddles, with a slow and silent expenditure of strength, and swept the float powerfully outward again, till the shore seemed a part with the sea.

For a time that seemed interminable he hung about that outer stretch, awaiting a further sound of the voices. They did not come. Once more at last he paddled silently inward, finally worming, as before, to a prostrate position on the raft. The chant of the head-hunters came again, as if from the depths of the jungle.

"Now, if ever!" muttered Grenville, half aloud, and impelled by a new and reckless desperation, increased by his thirst and his impotent rage at the creatures still feeding the fumes that Elaine could not avoid, he sent his craft swiftly landward, thankful, at least, for the mild disturbance of breaking ripples on the shore that would drown what slight noises he might make.

Tempted to moor his float outside the estuary, he readily agreed it might thereby lead to his discovery, and must, as a matter of fact, be completely concealed in the shadows of the pool. Excited now by the possibility that his catamaran, with the oars and rowlocks, might still remain in its former harbor, he was doomed to prompt disappointment on gaining the estuary basin. There was nothing whatsoever in the place.

His jugs and paddles he had placed upon the sand. It was only the work of a moment to draw his float across the bar and gently thrust it away from sight beneath the overhanging verdure. Then he stood there, knee-deep in the water, straining his ears for the slightest sound of the Dyaks stirring in the thicket.

Only the drone of a halting voice was wafted to the place. In silence he concealed his paddles, and took up his jugs, to wade with the utmost caution up the pool, towards the spring that formed its source. The water about him was brackish, from its mixture with the tide.

Deeper and deeper grew the basin. The water had risen to his waist. He sank in steadily with every step, despairing now with the sickening thought he might be compelled to swim. Such a task, with two filled jugs, would be impossible, as he bitterly realized. But on he went, as noiselessly as before.

The water was now about his breast, and he held his jugs above it. Something gently nosed against him—and gave him a start. Thoughts of the tropic serpents so frequently inhabiting the water, chilled a thin channel down his spine. Then he saw that the thing which might have been a reptile head was the cork and neck of a bottle. He dipped down and caught it between his teeth, more gratified in all his being than if it had been a thing of gold.

It almost seemed to the man like a sign that the tide of ill-fortune had turned—the tide of luck. He had certainly passed the deepest section of the estuary; he was rising on higher ground.

To avoid the soundings of dripping water, ready to fall from his clothing, he proceeded more slowly than before. When at length he came to a strip of barren sand, he rested his jugs, withdrew the cork from his bottle, and was gratified to detect the odor of stale beer, or stout, which the thing had formerly contained. He rinsed it then and there, to make it sweet, and crowded it into his pocket.

When he once more took up his jugs, to resume his quest of drinkable fluid, he was presently confronted by an exceptional tangle of the shrubbery, arching the tortuous windings of the estuary's head. Here he found himself obliged to pause and noiselessly bend back or break a number of the slender branches before he could wade as before.

He started some small nocturnal animal out through the growth, and the rustling disturbance made by the beast was heard by the Dyaks beyond. One of them called out sharply. To Grenville's complete astonishment and dismay another man, barely a few yards off, replied with a species of grunt. The fellow had come there, either to visit or to set a snare, and must have believed he had frightened the animal himself.

Sidney could hear him working now, as he leaned a bit closer to the foliage, incapable of moving further while the hunter delayed in the thicket. The fellow presently arose, as if to go. Instead, however, he approached even closer to Grenville's place of concealment, and Sidney oozed cold perspiration, helplessly occupied, as he was, with a jug in either hand, and his cleaver still swung at his waist.

To have moved, or attempted to place either jug in the water at his feet, must have been fatal to his mission. Yet he felt convinced the Dyak must fairly run against him, unless he could move to the side. One of his shoes, moreover, was sinking deeply in slimy mire.

That his balance must be overcome seemed well-nigh inevitable. A branch from one of the larger trees that grew above him on the bank now swept so forcibly against the other foliage as the Dyak hauled it downward, to sever a twig for his trap, that Grenville's face was lightly brushed. When the limb sprang upward a moment later, he pulled his foot from the hole.

It seemed to the man a quarter of an hour at least that the trapper remained there, a few feet away, making one more sound, from time to time, when it seemed at last he must have departed. When he finally went, there could be no assurance he would not return again. Notwithstanding this possibility, Grenville slipped furtively along once more, disturbed to find how far towards the spring this narrowing, sea-level neck of the inlet continued through the growth.

When he came at length to a rise of the island, down which the trickle from the spring had made its course, he found himself at the edge of a small, grass-grown clearing, that could hardly be more than a stone's toss away from the Dyaks' temporary camp. A small, deep basin, filled with the precious water he sought, reflected a star at the zenith of the heavens. It some way gave him hope. Of courage he had no lack.

Noiselessly, but without hesitation, he crept forward to the place and bent to drink, then to fill his bottle and jugs. At a snap that came from the shadows beyond he looked up alertly, beholding through the leaves a bright bit of fire upon the earth, with two of the Dyaks at its side. Every accent of their halting conversation came clearly to his ears.

With his three receptacles filled at last, he began his retreat from the place. He had barely vanished from the clearing, and come to the cover of the growth once more, when the man who was laying the snare in some pathway of the small jungle animals came back to complete his work.

Grenville thought his arms must relinquish the holds in their sockets before the unsuspecting hunter was content to leave the neighborhood. The jugs, so long and silently held, were rested a moment on the bank, when, at last, the moment did arrive when Sidney could dare retreat. Then down through the stubborn tangle, once more, he moved like a silent shade. With every yard thus placed between himself and the natives by the spring, the hope in his breast increased.

He came once more to the deeper estuary pool and, lifting his jugs to his shoulders, waded cautiously forward, nearly up to his throat in the tepid brine that smelled too rank for anything but swamp. He paused by his raft, for a moment undecided as to whether he should place his jugs in the braces lashed upon it, before he pushed it past the bar, or after it should float on the tides.

While he stood there, with a sense of exultation daring to warm in his soul—an exultation centered on Elaine and the joy it must presently be to see her thirst allayed—he suddenly stiffened at the sound of Dyak voices, alarmingly near at hand.

Retreating instantly, under the shadow of the foliage and against the end of his raft, he placed one jug upon it, noiselessly, and put out his hand to grasp at a branch to draw himself further from sight.

But the branch on which he laid his grip was suddenly alive. It writhed and lashed sharply at his knuckles until, with a shudder of comprehension that he had clutched the tail of a snake, he flung it off and knew it had glided away.

He had no choice but to try again, and this time met with better fortune. Out through the foliage, arranged thus hurriedly about him, he peered towards the low bit of beach. There was no one in sight, but beyond, on the sea, suddenly looming before him, and coming about to face the protected inlet, a third of the Dyak sailing-boats, a new arrival, manned by an additional group of head-hunters, nosed gracefully up against the tide.

Her anchor was cast, and there she rode, not twenty yards out from the shore.

Like shadowy demons from some world beyond, arrived on some mission mysterious and tragic—some service of the foulest fiend in Hades—four half-seen figures moved along the railing of the craft, destroying the hope in Grenville's bosom.