The Burning Bridge by Philip Verrill Mighels (the best novels to read TXT) 📕

at the bridge. They must soon come fairly in range of the gun! After that—it would be too late!

Below, in the cavern, during this time, Grenville was haunted with doubts. He had waited in hopes other Dyaks would come, and not a sound had rewarded his straining senses. He began to fear he had waited too long—that the creatures whose shadows had crept within had searched all the place and departed.

Yet he knew that they could not have passed him and left him unaware. The light was now all in his favor, and steadily increasing. With a sudden determination to take what toll the Fates had offered, he groped his way back to his brands of fire, and then to the ends of his fuse.

Elaine, with her heart all but bursting, with excitement for which she had no vent, saw the head-hunters pause on the slender bridge before they crept upward as before. Her weight was leaned against the door till it moved a little from its bearings.

She was sure it had made some far-reaching sound that the Dyaks could not fail to hear. They had paused again—and again moved up the trail—and found her helpless. The cord on her arm!—if Sidney would only pull the cord——

The sharp little tug that suddenly came now startled a cry from her lips. Instantly thrusting away the door and bounding from the narrow ledge to the upper level of the terrace, she ran towards the fuse with her cone of fire, just as Grenville, down in the gallery of rock, came madly plunging upward.

He had lighted the fuse, and was groping towards the top, a fear that he might be buried pursuing at his heels. He stumbled across the heavy load of treasure, left in its basket by the wall.

As one in an earthquake or fire clutches up something to save it, instinctively, so he laid hold of this useless dross and tugged it hotly up the passage. He reached the upper angle thus before he realized the folly of his action. He was certain then, as he dropped the load, that something had happened to his mines.

Before this time——

With the thought half finished in his swiftly-working brain came the thud and shock of his explosion—a tangible movement in the bulk of rock—and then the cataclysm.

Almost as one with Elaine's small detonation, the mighty jar, the air-confounding concussion, the smothered boom, and the dizzying tremor that swayed the hill, shook down the girl's bewildered senses. She saw the red leap from the cannon's mouth—and saw three men, surprised to inaction on the deadly angle of the trail—then down she went, her mind convinced she had rended the island asunder.

Sounds of colossal destruction stormed through the air for a time that seemed to have no end. The roar of a cataract of broken stone, confusedly toppling from estates erected by the ages, was lost in a tumult of other sounds where the headland seemed to fill the sea.

Dust of the rock and smoke of the rock ascended with fumes of the powder. Tidal disturbances splashed and seethed where the sea, having split to receive those tons of chaos, surged back with augmented violence at this displacement of its waters.

The cave had been blotted from existence! Its walls and its ceiling had crashed from their several places. to leave only an ugly scar. Whole towers of rocks, cleaved from the hill's main mass in sudden violence, had hung in disordered ruin against the quaking air for a second, then rioted downward on the Dyak boat to plunge it, rent and shivered, to the bottom.

Not a man of that murderous group below had survived the climax of that second. The place that had once been a treasure tomb, with a wailing "spirit" at its portals, was at last a very tomb indeed; but nevermore would its tidal wail arise on the air to render the cavern sacred.

Like a veritable spirit of underground destruction, Grenville emerged from the passage, unaware of all he had done. His thought was only of Elaine. He called, as he climbed to the terrace, but no glad little cry made response.

Then, abruptly, he saw her prostrate figure on the rocks—and beyond her two men, with one limberly inert, limping blindly down the trail. To dart to his store, snatch the last of his bombs, and pursue these three who had threatened Elaine was the first wild impulse of his being. Just one such blow, to follow up his victory, and perhaps they should need no more!

But he ran instead to the helpless figure near the cannon. He knew what she had done. He took her up swiftly, calling on her name, and carried her back to the former cave, where a rosy light from the risen sun made it seem like a haven of promise.

CHAPTER XLIV A LOTUS BLOSSOM

It was still very early in the morning when Grenville finally discovered, afar out northward on the sea, two Dyak boats making swiftly away from the island.

He feared for a moment, when the sails were first discerned, they were new craft about to arrive. He could not have known that his mines sunk the third of the boats formerly at anchor in the inlet, and was in no way enabled to determine how many of the enemy had perished at the cave.

It was almost too much to credit, this apparent retreat of the fiends so bent upon his capture. He made no positive report to Elaine of the fact he felt he must verify, lest he find himself obliged to retract it later.

She had quickly responded to his ministrations, having fainted as much from lack of food and rest as from shock in that final moment. Concerning the final effect of her shot, she was destined never to know. Grenville was far too wise to let her believe she had taken the life even of a fiend in human semblance.

He told her the Dyaks had fled from the place, which flight he had personally witnessed. He was certain, moreover, they would hardly return again that day, if they did not quit the island. Assured of the safety of the adventure, he descended to the jungle and returned with an armful of fruit. He proceeded later to the spring for a fresh supply of water.

Estimating the final fighting force of the Dyaks at ten, and conceding that five, at the least, must have perished at the cave, since one or two must have guarded the boats while three were searching the chamber, he concluded that no more than four at the most could still remain uninjured.

He had gone to the edge of the ruin, above the obliterated cave, and, having discovered no boat either near or far, had arrived at a fairly accurate conjecture respecting the fate of the craft the Dyaks had employed. One more calculation, respecting the number of able seamen required to navigate the retreating vessels, convinced him the island was deserted to the uses of Elaine and himself.

It was not, however, till that afternoon that he cautiously explored their former possessions and confirmed the hope in his breast. There was ample evidence about the spring, and in the jungle, of the methods of living the Dyaks had employed, but neither at the western inlet, back of the central hill of rock, nor at the friendly estuary, was anything boatlike to be found. His catamaran had vanished, along with the larger craft, and its fate he could readily surmise.

He lost no time in arranging a number of his snares and traps for the meat of which they were in need. Their camp was made as before on the terrace proper, despite the heat of the sun.

It was not until many of these essential comforts had been once more established that Sidney explored the gallery to determine what destruction had been wrought by his double mine.

Everything stored in the lower depths had been hopelessly buried by the rock. The passage was open for no more than half its former length. His bamboo raft was among the possessions sacrificed to the ruse that had finally succeeded beyond even his wildest dreams. Not ten feet back of his basket-load of treasure the last of the caving had been halted.

When Elaine's robe and couch, their water-jugs, and his last remaining bomb had been once more returned to the earlier camp, practically nothing but the gold and precious stones remained in the gallery. Elaine was aware the trinkets were lying there on view, but so vast was her relief at the vanishment of danger—though it might be temporarily only—she had no desire for gauds and baubles, and no particular curiosity respecting their worth or appearance.

Indeed, these two had endured too much to dwell upon jewels and gold. They were free from menace for a time, but—the future still loomed before them, inimical and obscure. Their life in this tropic exile was still to be faced, day after day.

That morning and long sweet afternoon, however, they passed in restful inactivity, possessed by ineffable thankfulness and a sense of relief that was utterly relaxing to their racked and exhausted nerves. It seemed a strange, impossible state, this peacefulness, security, and freedom to move about once more, alone in their Shalimar. And Grenville knew it was far too good to last.

Yet for several days it seemed as if the propitiating Fates made every possible endeavor to erase from the tablets of their memory all records of the agonies and apprehensions they had recently undergone.

They were wonderful days, for sheer inspiriting beauty. A cool, spicy breeze was wafted, with the sunshine, across the smiling ocean. The jungle was redolent of fragrances of intoxicating sweetness. Down on the beach her leafy bower once more found Elaine idly resting in her hammock, or busily preparing a tempting repast from the once more generous larder.

The girdle of gold she continued to wear in happiness that stole unbidden to her heart—a happiness as subtle and welcome as the perfumes that stole to her senses on the breeze. And when she finally found and plucked a solitary lotus blossom, floating near the estuary's edge, it seemed as if the ecstasy possessing all her nature must bring about some miracle of untold joy and bliss.

Grenville was hardly less transported by the hourly pleasures that day and night alike seemed bearing to this island world, like argosies from Eden. Subconsciously, beneath it all, he knew the boats that had sailed away would one day return, perhaps with more of their species, and better prepared for a swift and merciless revenge. Yet even then he was slow to employ his wits and energies to prepare for another siege, his disinclination for more revolting ordeals casting a lethargy on all his fighting attributes, while days like these, voluptuously serene and toxicant, suggested vast contentment to his spirit.

Indeed, his spirit as well as his body needed rest. To this he was constantly urged by Elaine, who understood, far better than himself, how unsparingly he had drained the vital essences of his being through all these uncounted weeks.

She, too, was aware they were only secure for a moment, that untold dangers must be lurking just beyond the rim of their purple horizon. She had finally learned from Sidney's lips how the vessels had sailed away. She had, however, seen this sign of security previously fail—and felt it would fail again.

The future her soul avoided. Darkness and tragedy were only too readily imagined. At best it was all uncertain, rife with shadows, peopled with ghosts of doubt and haunting dreads. Meantime, their own green Shalimar was once more fresh with sunny smiles that enticed her spirit to song.

She sang to herself through many hours of joyous "household" duties. The songs she chose were happy little fragments wherein she imagined Grenville set, with herself always traipsing at his side. She sang her songs to and of him, watching him shyly when he was near, and sending her thoughts to seek