As It Was in the Beginning

by Philip Verrill Mighels

"Some," said Grenville, reluctant to use his remaining metal in such an extravagant manner. "I have nothing else that will answer, hang the luck! ... They can't see us yet, but we'll move about with caution.... I wish I had made more powder! I have only a few feet of fuse. I must get some additional creepers at once and let them dry out in the sun."

He went down to the jungle immediately for a fresh supply of this highly essential growth, leaving Elaine at the shelter, a prey to dread that had utterly obliterated her bitter disappointment. She stooped, to steal forward on the rocks and look for the sail again. It was still so far on the sun-lit surface of the ocean that it seemed no nearer than before. She returned once more to the cave.

Grenville came up, fairly laden with freshly severed creepers.

"I've thought of a means for making bombs!" he told her, triumphantly. "Perhaps you can split these creepers and take out the cores while I go to fetch some bamboo poles."

"Couldn't I fill them with powder?" Elaine inquired, anxiously. "I watched you before. I am sure I would make no great mistakes."

He knew she was nervous, eager to be employed.

"Sure shot you could," he answered, briskly, and, going to the cave employed as his "powder magazine," he brought her a jar of explosive. "Don't be afraid to put in all that the creeper tube will carry," he instructed. "And tie it with fibers here and there, to keep the edges together."

With his heaviest tools he descended at once to the bamboo growth, where he was presently toiling hard. Elaine, no less industriously, was hotly assailing the creepers, held firmly down with heavy rocks, to make their manipulation easy.

She had filled and bound a considerable length of this simply manufactured fuse when Grenville returned to the terrace. For his part, he bore across his shoulder three great long steins of green bamboo that were three inches through at the base.

"I can cut this stuff at its divisions," he explained, "fill the smaller sections with powder, and fit the larger ones over them, like a shell within a shell. A natural growth plugs each one up at the end, and I'll also cap each end with a rock, and wrap the whole contraption about with creepers. Of course, the fuse will go in first. I wish the stuff were dry!"