As It Was in the Beginning

by Philip Verrill Mighels

All afternoon the darts continued falling, intermittently—and Grenville made no response. His silence, indeed, was a mystery which the Dyaks not only failed to understand, but, likewise, a little dreaded. That he had no rifle they were thoroughly convinced. But that roar of his cannon they had understood, and to hear it again they had no appetite. Moreover, its deadly hail and detonation had come so unexpectedly, from the erstwhile silent terrace, that they knew not what to expect concerning the future.

Not without hopes of actually slaying some of the unknown forces on the crest of the hill, they shot an exceptional number of their darts from the nearby thicket as the sun at last declined. Grenville, having at length established what he thought to be a line of the little missiles' flight, hastily made and bound up a bomb of no more than two pounds' weight.

This, with a fuse too short for ordinary safety, he finally carried to the westward brink with one of his glowing coals of fire.

The patient rifleman, waiting on his hill, immediately blazed away, as before—and missed the entire bulk of rock. Grenville paid not even the tribute of a glance at the opposite summit, as he thrust his fuse down upon his coal.

The hiss of the powder gave him a start, so swiftly did it travel towards the bomb. With all his might he threw the thing outward at the shadowed spot whence he thought the darts were flying.

The quick, sharp bark and the patch of flame behind the design of a palm leaf, came like a clap of thunder, just before the second when the bomb would have struck on the earth.

A yell of dismay, or anguish, or both, and a scattering shower of shredded greenery supplied the only report of results that Grenville was destined to receive. The flight of darts was ended. A few hurried movements in the thicket, and a groan that Sidney felt was smothered, were the only signs vouchsafed him that the powder had not been cheaply wasted.

"It's a poor way to fight the hidden devils," he told Elaine, as he came once more to the shelter, "but it may possibly serve to keep them further away, and force them to different tactics."

It certainly had this latter effect, but not immediately.

There was no attack that night, and no disturbance in the jungle, though Sidney descended to the thicket and returned, not only with more fresh fruit he had located during the day, but also with a small wild hog he had captured in one of the older traps which the Dyaks had failed to discover.