As It Was in the Beginning

by Philip Verrill Mighels

Elaine, in her way of divining the truth, was only partially deceived. She felt that the water below in the cave was wholly unfit for consumption. She knew that if anything even remotely possible could be done to refill their vessels, Sidney would have filled them long before.

She made no discouraging comments, however, despite the fact her hope was succumbing to despair. The smoke continued to roll in sullen clouds across and about the terrace; the sun beat down through it redly, soaking the rock in caloric, that sank to the gallery itself.

The noonday meal had been slight and unrefreshing—a bit of fruit, too warm and too ripe for relish on the palate, and a few odd scraps of the meat. It was water that both insistently craved, and for which they grew fevered and distressed.

The smoldering brands in the furnace of rocks could not be permitted to die away in ash. Elaine had undertaken the maintenance of this, their altar spark, which rarely rose to a flame. She was safe enough to come and go from the passage entrance to the nearby furnace Grenville had moved to facilitate her duties, but the smoke seemed far more stifling and hot than it had the previous day, while, with headache, thirst, and a heaviness in all her weary being, the endlessly cheerful and courageous little companion of Grenville's maddening ordeal felt ready to drop and rise no more.

Again at his task of constructing a float that should bear him from the cavern to the inlet formed by the spring, Sidney toiled with no mercy to himself in the workshop far down in the rocks. He felt at times he must gulp down even the water of the sea, so parched was his throat, and so craving was his system.

At five o'clock his bamboo raft was completed, even with braces for his jugs. It had also been tried in the basin of the cave, and made finally ready for launching. But the tide would be low till eight. His blast had made the water more approachable than formerly, yet to fight his way against a powerful current would over-tax his strength. In any event he must wait for the darkness of night.

He returned to Elaine, and although he, too, was weary to the bone, her patient endurance of suspense and suffering aroused him to a state of anguish in which no exhausting task would have seemed too great for him to undertake. He was wrung by her wistful attempt at a smile.

"The day is nearly done," she said. "The night is sure to be cooler."

It was considerably cooler, but scarcely more fresh, since the smoke appeared to pour in even vaster volumes from the greenery below. That the Dyaks were keeping strict watch on the water supply there could be no reason to doubt. From time to time a weird bit of chanting arose from that fume-creating garden that had once been so fair as to win from Elaine the prettiest name she knew.

Grenville felt certain, in fact, the boatmen's camp had been made about the inlet or the spring. The short stretch of beach where he and Elaine had landed, and where he had later made a bower of the trees, would be certain to attract these half-amphibious savages, though their boats were moored behind the opposite hill.