He broke the arm thus used as a leverage against the Dyak's weight, and literally slammed the shuddering creature down on the rocks, at the brink of the wall, where he poised but a moment over death.
If he tried to writhe backward to the solid ledge, the effort was belated. With a piercing scream he toppled over, flinging out his broken arm in a gesture grotesque and disordered. Then he suddenly grayed, in the limbo of smoke, and shot swiftly downward to his doom.
Grenville still bit upon the branch that glowed with fire. He searched about pantingly, found his end of fuse, and saw the powder sputter with ignition. He had barely stepped back when, from over at the trail, came a sudden and tremendous detonation.
That the Dyaks were there on the terrace, after all, destroying his bombs, was the one thought that flashed through the smoke in his brain, as his own sharp explosion shook the air and hollowed huge masses from the cliff.
He stumbled and groped laboriously across the uneven heaps of stone to reach the secret passage, where Elaine must be crouching in fear. In his ears rang her words "If it has to come, let's receive it here together."
Already he feared her one grim wish had been brutally denied her in this hideous pall of smoke. He saw a figure, dimly, through the reek, and crouched to take revenge.
CHAPTER XXXVI
THE LAST CUP OF WATER
The figure was Elaine's. Grenville was almost upon her, prepared for some swift and terrible deed of retaliation, when a swirl in the shroud that enveloped them both revealed her standing near the edge.