"It's too heavy to wear," she told him, a trifle coldly. She once more accepted the girdle, however, despite herself, from his hand. "The tiger that wore it," she concluded, "met with a lot of trouble."
"You've met with some yourself," he answered, candidly, and he shouldered the skin and started off for the estuary's mouth.
Elaine burned suddenly scarlet, interpreting his speech in some manner of her own. Helplessly she carried the girdle to her cave, and left it there in a hollow of the rock.
The incident concerned with the tiger was practically closed. A new, bright era of security and liberty thereupon commenced, particularly for Elaine. She could not take immediate advantage of the comfort thus vouchsafed in moving about the island, but at least her worry was lessened when Grenville was obliged to venture in the jungle.
His return to the work so frequently interrupted was delayed but the briefest time. So eager did he constantly feel to accomplish his boat's completion that he had grudged every hour the tiger had cost him from his labors.
With no thought of sparing his tireless strength, he promptly resumed the task of digging and fetching the clay. Elaine might have joined him in the clearing now had not some task she was eager to complete engrossed her attentions at the shelter.
That day the remaining surface of his prostrate log was plastered by Grenville's eager hands. He likewise mixed sufficient clay to finish his furnace in the morning. The fire that was helping to hollow his log was once again ignited. Much of the old charred substance, left from previous operations, Grenville knocked away with an improvised tool of brass, in order to daub more clay inside the shell before the flames could continue removing the wood as he required.
On the following day, while the walls in his smelter were drying, Sidney wove a two-piece door of wattle—framework of creepers, plastered with clay—to fit across the orifice at the bottom of his tree. With this he felt he could regulate the draught and protect himself while removing his crucibles of metal. The top door only would be tossed aside to accomplish this latter purpose.
He likewise plastered the edges and sides of the hole that pierced his smelter. He knew the heat, when he came to melt the brass, would spread at once to all unprotected wood. After that he had still to contrive a clay-covered implement for lifting out his crucibles, and a tripod affair to be placed inside the furnace to support these crucibles upon.
What with more work done upon the boat-to-be, and a goodly portion of the afternoon expended in killing and preparing another of the pheasants for their dinner, Grenville's hours sped swiftly away.