As It Was in the Beginning

by Philip Verrill Mighels

Back and forth through the smoke he moved upon the hill, seeking the better air that came occasionally through the billows, and listening intently for the faintest sound from the always ready alarm. When an hour had gone and no attack had developed, his heart underwent a new despair. He began to doubt that the Fates would supply him an opportunity for further retaliation on the fiends below, who could finally overcome him with the fumes.

The drift of smoke was intermittently broken, near the trail, where apparently a current of wind that assumed a rotation as it rose through a half-round niche of considerable dimensions in the wall, swept vertically upward to lift the billowing cloud. Thus for at least a portion of the time Grenville could glimpse the ledge behind the trail where besiegers must finally pass.

So dense became the reek, however, that he feared his post must soon become insupportable. There was neither time nor air in which to arrange a longer fuse, which, as a matter of fact, would be too long for accurate work with the gun.

He knew at last the hour was nearing sunset, and silence still seemed to roll with the smoke across the enveloped terrace. His eyes were burningly filled with water; his head had begun to ache. He went weakly over towards the gallery, intent upon breathing a little fresher air before resuming his duties.

Suddenly, above the ringing in his ears, came a sound from his gate alarm. Its deep hollow tone was strangely resonant in all that blanket of smoke. He darted back, where lay his bombs and the short fuse laid to the cannon.

The smudge had, unfortunately, fallen like a pall, concealing all the trail. It lifted slightly, however, as a fog may lift over waters, revealing one half-seen form upon the ledge.

Then, in the second that Grenville laid his fire to the powder, his second alarm, from the frame of bamboo buckets, hung behind him on the wall, rattled out its xylophonic warning. The head-hunting demons, front and rear, were practically upon him!

He fired the gun. Its orange flame shot out through the smoke in ragged spears, mingling the fume of imperfect powder with all that reek from the jungle.

A gap was apparently torn in the rolling cloud, to be filled with a denser substance. Nothing could possibly be discerned where the charge must have splattered on the wall. There were cries in the air, but whether from pain, or the Dyaks' exultation, Grenville could never have told.

Aware that the demons were capable of sacrificing some of their number to the gun, to beget its discharge, and thus clear the way for concerted attack by greater numbers, Grenville promptly lighted the fuse of a bomb and hurled it from him down the trail.