Читать книгу As It Was in the Beginning - Philip Verrill Mighels - Страница 20

It was not until the entire cycle of haunting sounds had been repeated for its final time that Elaine could consent to return to her pallet of grasses. And even when she had once more knelt upon this improvised bed, she could not consent to resign herself to the mercies of the night without one more glance towards Grenville's cavern.

She returned, unseen, to her door, and peered forth through the starlit night, discerning his dimly outlined figure, as he sat before his door.

He even arose as she paused there, uncertainly. She noted his listening attitude, the alertness of his pose. Then he sat once more upon the stone at his threshold, where she knew his club lay ready to his hand.

A sense of security, despite her bitterness of feeling, came slowly stealing upon her. She went back to her couch and slept.

Sidney, for his part, sat there alone, while hour after hour went silently by, and the constellations hung in higher arches. A thousand ramifications of thought he pursued in his active brain. But through them all, like an ever recurrent motif, stole a troubled reminder of the tiger, twice encountered in the day.

To slay this contemptuous, savage beast that already drooled about the jaws at thoughts of a human morsel, was the one imperative business to be promptly executed. Elaine and himself could live on fruits, and neglect all else, without serious results, for a week, or even a month, but this affair was not to be delayed.

He thought of pitfalls, giant traps, and automatic engines of destruction by the score, each deadly device absurdly impracticable and beyond all power of his achievement. His mind, accustomed to civilized ways, ran in higher ingenuities that were absolutely useless in this primal state of their existence.

When at length he leaned back against his wall and began to wonder if, in the end, he must arm himself with primitive man's crude bow and arrow, and thus engage the master prowler of the jungle, he was ready for Nature's claims. He slept there, too utterly exhausted to drag himself in to his bed. And there Elaine found him in the morning.

That day was a long one, of varied and wearying employments. The wall was finished across the trail, Elaine's too widely opened cavern was partially blocked up with stone, and, at length, in addition to searching the jungle for something particularly downy and inflammable for tinder, to use in making fire, Grenville went with his basket down to the clay pit and fetched sufficient of this moist and plastic material to mould a number of vessels.

This last useful art was not, however, immediately attempted. Unfired jugs and basins were absolutely useless—and as yet they had no fire. The search for tinder had resulted only in producing a silken, fluffy material that grew in a fat green pod. It was moist, when found, with the natural juices of the plant.

While it dried in the sun, under Elaine's supervision, Grenville worked at a stout, elastic tree-branch to taper out a bow. His stub of a knife-blade served indifferently against the close-grained wood, which, nevertheless, was obliged to yield to his persevering efforts.

At noon the weapon, save for the cord, was rudely finished. No arrows had been as yet provided. Obliged at this hour to replenish the camp supply of water, Grenville once more visited the spring. So fresh were the tracks of the tiger here, in the mire about the trickling stream, that he felt they must almost be warm. The brute was undoubtedly near at hand, but, perhaps, well fed, as before.

"There is nothing quite so important now as fire," was Grenville's remark, as he once more rejoined Elaine. "Without it we are practically helpless. With it—there is almost nothing we may not hope to achieve."

He had thought of a number of extraordinary and highly important implements and arts that only flame and glowing heat could render possible.

Elaine brought the fluff she had thoroughly dried, while Grenville cleaned his flint and steel. For an hour, then, he strove in vain to ignite his bit of tinder. It was not at all an easy matter to strike a spark from the stone. What few brilliant specks of incandescence sped occasionally downward like vigor transmuted into swiftly fading stars from Grenville's varied and over-eager strokes, either died on the air or missed their mark or struck it and found it uncongenial.

"This must be a vegetable asbestos," he finally declared. "If I had just a pinch of powder, this flint might recognize—— By Jove!" and he started at once to his feet. "I'm the greatest fool on legs!"

"What seems to be the trouble?" said Elaine, who could not possibly comprehend his meaning. "Have you made some sort of mistake?"

"I've been asleep—my brain defunct! Excuse me half a minute!"

He started madly down the trail, running like a boy. Before Elaine could do more than stare in wonder at his antics, he had reached the bottom of the wall, darted across the clearing, and disappeared in the jungle growth beyond.

He smashed his way hotly to the wrecked old barque, and, pawing deeply beneath the surface of the wasting saltpeter, that had been for long somewhat protected in the hold, promptly filled two pockets with the mineral, and went racing back as he had come.

But beyond the clearing he altered his course to enter the region once blackened by fire. Here he went directly to the hollow tree he had once before examined, and, wriggling inside, through the ample orifice burned out by the flames, he attacked the charred interior with his knife as if his very life depended on his haste.

In the briefest time he had chipped off more than a double handful of crisp, but inferior, charcoal. Retreating no less promptly than he had entered, he gathered this carefully in a giant leaf, and hastily rejoined Elaine.

"Powder!" he said, belatedly explaining. "Everything lying here and ready, and my brain a howling blank!"

To Elaine this was not precisely clear.

"There is gunpowder here on the island?"

"No! The ingredients merely. But any child—— Ah! here's my bit of sulphur! There's a ton of it ready to be gathered. Powder? I can make enough to blow a dozen tigers into ribbons! The wreck is full of niter and, once we have a fire, I can burn all the jungle into charcoal!"

The mystery had not entirely lifted for Elaine, but this she hardly expected.

"How can I help?" she asked him, quietly. "There must be something I can do."

"It's a matter of grinding these materials," he answered, more calmly, depositing sulphur, saltpeter, and charcoal on a rock before them. "It's a simple composition, after all."

Barely less feverishly than before he began a search for suitable stones to employ as mortars and pestles. There were many small bowlders slightly hollowed by the elements, but a number of these had surfaces ready to crumble, and were, therefore, reluctantly discarded. In throwing about some loosely huddled fragments, to liberate a smooth, hard slab of stone that was dished from its edges to its center, Grenville was doubly rewarded by coming upon a large, thick seashell, practically perfect.

With this and the basin of harder rock, he returned at once to the shade. He was soon reducing the charcoal, while Elaine no less industriously attacked the lump of sulphur.

"We need a little only for a trial," he said, as he presently sifted out his powdered product, and began to grind the niter. "I wish I remembered the proportions."

In his haste to obtain results as soon as possible, he finally shook up and ground together a large-sized pinch from each of the three materials, producing thereby a grayish, unpromising mixture, decidedly too rich in both the charcoal and sulphur.

This he placed on a rock, a safe distance away, and attacked with his flint and steel. Elaine had ceased her grinding operations, to stand at his side and watch. He struck, perhaps, a dozen times before he produced a shower of sparks—and nothing occurred. He looked at the stuff for a moment, helplessly, discouragement swiftly lodging in his bosom. Half-heartedly he struck the steel again.

A single spark flew hotly from the flint. It seemed to curve to the outside edge of the powder. Instantly, however, the mixture was ignited.

It did not burn in a quick, fierce flash, but more with a sputtering, imperfect combustion, productive of stifling fumes. Grenville's hand was slightly scorched—but his joy in the triumph was complete.

"We're kings!" he cried, sublimely indifferent to genders. "We're monarchs of all we survey!" He leaped up, waving his flint about his head, his face outbeaming the sun.

Elaine was vaguely glad of his results.

"I'm afraid I don't understand it in the least."

"Not at all necessary," he informed her, candidly. "It's the very worst powder ever made. My charcoal is poor and my proportions wrong, and I only half ground it all together. But it burned! That's enough for me—it burned! It assures us a fire, and I'll make a new batch, that will go off like a Spanish revolution!"

He went below at once to gather twigs and fuel, bits of dried grass, and other kindling, and brought a large bundle to the terrace. More carefully, then, he mixed and ground his succeeding sample of the powder. Recalling more clearly the accepted formula, he increased the proportion of saltpeter to something nearer seventy-five per cent. of the whole, approximating thus the standard long since established.

Aware that, when he finally came to manufacture an explosive of higher efficiency, he would do much better to wet the ingredients and later dry the finished product, he now proceeded, as before, merely to try for a fire.

Thus he presently laid a train of his grayish mixture from one small heap to another, in a place selected for his trial. Over one of the powder pyramids he arranged his combustible straws, twigs, and branches with the nicest care. And when, at length, he struck a white-hot star, divinely potential, into the midst of the second heap, a hissing snake of incandescence and smoke darted swiftly along the surface of rock—and his fire leaped into being.

On the towering rock, as on an altar, the flames that meant life to the exiled pair rose goldenly bright and clear.

A strange exultation in Grenville's prowess possessed Elaine, as she stood by in wonder, looking on his face.

"It shall never go out," he told her, presently, "not if I can prevent it."