Grenville went promptly to work, after breakfast, fetching clay in the basket from the pit. It was not brought up to the terrace, but dumped in a heap beside the hollow tree, in the burned space under the walls. This tree, he at last explained to Elaine, he intended to use as a smelter.
"It's a natural chimney I've annexed," was the way he presented the problem. "If I built a fire in it now, however, it would burn, and be destroyed. I intend to line it with clay—plaster it on, inside, some eight or ten feet high. Then when this fire-resisting substance dries, I can smelt my metal and run it in the molds. The draught will make a prodigious heat—far more than brass requires."
"I see," said Elaine. "Meantime I am utterly idle."
"I'll cut you those needles. You can knit," he said, "unless you prefer to go fishing."
He had come to the camp for one of the jugs in which to carry water for the clay. This task was temporarily abandoned while he sat in the shade, beside Elaine, and carved out the promised tools. These were made of wood, instead of bone, since the latter material was far too hard for his fragment of a blade, and one of the woods provided by the jungle was so straightly grained and elastic, that even a slender splinter would bend like steel before it broke.
For a short time after they were finished, he sat there to watch the craft displayed by Elaine's nimble fingers, as a slender bit of the fiber stuff began to accumulate in stitches.
"You were made for a home-builder's mate," he said, and arose and left her to her thoughts, and to certain inflammable emotions.
He carried his jug down the trail and to the spring, resuming the business in hand. The sight of the pool not only served to arouse his disgust anew, but he was likewise reminded of the documents, reposing still unread in his pocket. The bomb, he knew, should be carried back to camp, lest the fuse become dampened in the thicket. With this and his jug full of water, he hastened back to the foot of the trail—and forgot them both forthwith.
The half sheet of paper, readable at last, had enslaved him then and there.
He sat on a rock, with the paper on his knee, and was lost to all things else.