As It Was in the Beginning

by Philip Verrill Mighels

Sidney could hear him working now, as he leaned a bit closer to the foliage, incapable of moving further while the hunter delayed in the thicket. The fellow presently arose, as if to go. Instead, however, he approached even closer to Grenville's place of concealment, and Sidney oozed cold perspiration, helplessly occupied, as he was, with a jug in either hand, and his cleaver still swung at his waist.

To have moved, or attempted to place either jug in the water at his feet, must have been fatal to his mission. Yet he felt convinced the Dyak must fairly run against him, unless he could move to the side. One of his shoes, moreover, was sinking deeply in slimy mire.

That his balance must be overcome seemed well-nigh inevitable. A branch from one of the larger trees that grew above him on the bank now swept so forcibly against the other foliage as the Dyak hauled it downward, to sever a twig for his trap, that Grenville's face was lightly brushed. When the limb sprang upward a moment later, he pulled his foot from the hole.

It seemed to the man a quarter of an hour at least that the trapper remained there, a few feet away, making one more sound, from time to time, when it seemed at last he must have departed. When he finally went, there could be no assurance he would not return again. Notwithstanding this possibility, Grenville slipped furtively along once more, disturbed to find how far towards the spring this narrowing, sea-level neck of the inlet continued through the growth.

When he came at length to a rise of the island, down which the trickle from the spring had made its course, he found himself at the edge of a small, grass-grown clearing, that could hardly be more than a stone's toss away from the Dyaks' temporary camp. A small, deep basin, filled with the precious water he sought, reflected a star at the zenith of the heavens. It some way gave him hope. Of courage he had no lack.

Noiselessly, but without hesitation, he crept forward to the place and bent to drink, then to fill his bottle and jugs. At a snap that came from the shadows beyond he looked up alertly, beholding through the leaves a bright bit of fire upon the earth, with two of the Dyaks at its side. Every accent of their halting conversation came clearly to his ears.

With his three receptacles filled at last, he began his retreat from the place. He had barely vanished from the clearing, and come to the cover of the growth once more, when the man who was laying the snare in some pathway of the small jungle animals came back to complete his work.

Grenville thought his arms must relinquish the holds in their sockets before the unsuspecting hunter was content to leave the neighborhood. The jugs, so long and silently held, were rested a moment on the bank, when, at last, the moment did arrive when Sidney could dare retreat. Then down through the stubborn tangle, once more, he moved like a silent shade. With every yard thus placed between himself and the natives by the spring, the hope in his breast increased.

He came once more to the deeper estuary pool and, lifting his jugs to his shoulders, waded cautiously forward, nearly up to his throat in the tepid brine that smelled too rank for anything but swamp. He paused by his raft, for a moment undecided as to whether he should place his jugs in the braces lashed upon it, before he pushed it past the bar, or after it should float on the tides.

While he stood there, with a sense of exultation daring to warm in his soul—an exultation centered on Elaine and the joy it must presently be to see her thirst allayed—he suddenly stiffened at the sound of Dyak voices, alarmingly near at hand.