The Wings of the Morning Part 25

"There!" he exclaimed, exultantly. "When I have driven stakes into the sand to the water's edge on both sides of the cove, I will defy them to land by night without giving us warning."

"Do you know," said Iris, in all seriousness, "I think you are the cleverest man in the world."

"My dear Miss Deane, that is not at all a Trades Unionist sentiment.

Equality is the key-note of their propaganda."

Nevertheless he was manifestly pleased by the success of his ingenious contrivance, and forthwith completed the cordon. To make doubly sure, he set another snare further within the trees. He was certain the Dyaks would not pa.s.s along Turtle Beach if they could help it. By this time the light was failing.

"That will suffice for the present," he told the girl. "Tomorrow we will place other sentries in position at strategic points. Then we can sleep in the Castle with tolerable safety."

By the meager light of the tiny lamp they labored sedulously at the rope-ladder until Iris's eyes were closing with sheer weariness.

Neither of them had slept much during the preceding night, and they were both completely tired.

It was with a very weak little smile that the girl bade him "good night," and they were soon wrapped in that sound slumber which comes only from health, hard work, and wholesome fare.

The first streaks of dawn were tipping the opposite crags with roseate tints when the sailor was suddenly aroused by what he believed to be a gunshot. He could not be sure. He was still collecting his scattered senses, straining eyes and ears intensely, when there came a second report.

Then he knew what had happened. The sentries on the Smugglers' Cove post were faithful to their trust. The enemy was upon them.

At such a moment Jenks was not a man who prayed. Indeed, he was p.r.o.ne to invoke the nether powers, a habit long since acquired by the British army, in Flanders, it is believed.

There was not a moment to be lost. He rushed into Iris's room, and gathered in his arms both her and the weird medley of garments that covered her. He explained to the protesting girl, as he ran with her to the foot of the rock, that she must cling to his shoulders with unfaltering courage whilst he climbed to the ledge with the aid of the pole and the rope placed there the previous day. It was a magnificent feat of strength that he essayed. In calmer moments he would have shrunk from its performance, if only on the score of danger to the precious burden he carried. Now there was no time for thought. Up he went, hand over hand, clinging to the rough pole with the tenacity of a limpet, and taking a turn of the rope over his right wrist at each upward clutch. At last, breathless but triumphant, he reached the ledge, and was able to gasp his instructions to Iris to crawl over his bent back and head until she was safely lodged on the broad platform of rock.

Then, before she could expostulate, he descended, this time for the rifles. These he hastily slung to the rope, again swarmed up the pole, and drew the guns after him with infinite care.

Even in the whirl of the moment he noticed that Iris had managed to partially complete her costume.

"Now we are ready for them," he growled, lying p.r.o.ne on the ledge and eagerly scanning both sides of Prospect Park for a first glimpse of their a.s.sailants.

For two s.h.i.+vering hours they waited there, until the sun was high over the cliff and filled sea and land with his brightness. At last, despite the girl's tears and prayers, Jenks insisted on making a reconnaissance in person.

Let this portion of their adventures be pa.s.sed over with merciful brevity. Both watch-guns had been fired by the troupe of tiny wou-wou monkeys! Iris did not know whether to laugh or cry, when Jenks, with much difficulty, lowered her to mother earth again, and marveled the while how he had managed to carry forty feet into the air a young woman who weighed so solidly.

They sat down to a belated breakfast, and Jenks then became conscious that the muscles of his arms, legs, and back were aching hugely. It was by that means he could judge the true extent of his achievement. Iris, too, realized it gradually, but, like the Frenchwoman in the earthquake, she was too concerned with memories of her state of deshabille to appreciate, all at once, the incidents of the dawn.

CHAPTER IX

THE SECRET OF THE CAVE

The sailor went after those monkeys in a mood of relentless severity.

Thus far, the regular denizens of Rainbow Island had dwelt together in peace and mutual goodwill, but each diminutive wou-wou must be taught not to pull any strings he found tied promiscuously to trees or stakes.

As a preliminary essay, Jenks resolved to try force combined with artifice. Failing complete success, he would endeavor to kill every monkey in the place, though he had in full measure the inherent dislike of Anglo-India to the slaying of the tree-people.

This, then, is what he did. After filling a biscuit tin with good-sized pebbles, he donned a Dyak hat, blouse, and belt, rubbed earth over his face and hands, and proceeded to pelt the wou-wous mercilessly. For more than an hour he made their lives miserable, until at the mere sight of him they fled, shrieking and gurgling like a thousand water-bottles. Finally he constructed several Dyak scarecrows and erected one to guard each of his alarm-guns. The device was thoroughly effective. Thenceforth, when some adventurous monkey--swinging with hands or tail among the treetops in the morning search for appetizing nut or luscious plantain--saw one of those fearsome bogies, he raised such a hubbub that all his companions scampered hastily from the confines of the wood to the inner fastnesses.

In contriving these same scarecrows--which, by the way, he had vaguely intended at first to erect on the beach in order to frighten the invaders and induce them to fire a warning volley--the sailor paid closer heed to the spoils gathered from the fallen. One, at least, of the belts was made of human hair, and some among its long strands could have come only from the flaxen-haired head of a European child. This fact, though ghastly enough, confirmed him in his theory that it was impossible to think of temporizing with these human fiends. Unhappily such savage virtues as they possess do not include clemency to the weak or hospitality to defenceless strangers. There was nothing for it but a fight to a finish, with the law of the jungle to decide the terms of conquest.

That morning, of course, he had not been able to visit Summit Rock until after his cautious survey of the island. Once there, however, he noticed that the gale two nights earlier had loosened two of the supports of his sky sign. It was not a difficult or a long job to repair the damage. With the invaluable axe he cut several wedges and soon made all secure.

Now, during each of the two daily examinations of the horizon which he never omitted, he minutely scrutinized the sea between Rainbow Island and the distant group. It was, perhaps, a needless precaution. The Dyaks would come at night. With a favorable wind they need not set sail until dusk, and their fleet sampans would easily cover the intervening forty miles in five hours.

He could not be positive that they were actual inhabitants of the islands to the south. The China Sea swarms with wandering pirates, and the tribe whose animosity he had earned might be equally noxious to some peaceable fis.h.i.+ng community on the coast. Again and again he debated the advisability of constructing a seaworthy raft and endeavoring to make the pa.s.sage. But this would be risking all on a frightful uncertainty, and the accidental discovery of the Eagle's Nest had given him new hope. Here he could make a determined and prolonged stand, and in the end help _must_ come. So he dismissed the navigation project, and devoted himself wholly to the perfecting of the natural fortress in the rock.

That night they finished the rope-ladder. Indeed, Jenks was determined not to retire to rest until it was placed _in situ_; he did not care to try a second time to carry Iris to that elevated perch, and it may be remarked that thenceforth the girl, before going to sleep, simply changed one ragged dress for another.

One of the first things he contemplated was the destruction, if possible, of the point on the opposite cliff which commanded the ledge.

This, however, was utterly impracticable with the appliances at his command. The top of the rock sloped slightly towards the west, and nothing short of dynamite or regular quarrying operations would render it untenable by hostile marksmen.

During the day his Lee-Metfords, at ninety yards' range, might be trusted to keep the place clear of intruders. But at night--that was the difficulty. He partially solved it by fixing two rests on the ledge to support a rifle in exact line with the center of the enemy's supposed position, and as a variant, on the outer rest he marked lines which corresponded with other sections of the entire front available to the foe.

Even then he was not satisfied. When time permitted he made many experiments with ropes reeved through the pulley and attached to a rifle action. He might have succeeded in his main object had not his thoughts taken a new line. His aim was to achieve some method of opening and closing the breech-block by means of two ropes. The difficulty was to secure the preliminary and final lateral movement of the lever bolt, but it suddenly occurred to him that if he could manage to convey the impression that Iris and he had left the island, the Dyaks would go away after a fruitless search. The existence of ropes along the face of the rock--an essential to his mechanical scheme--would betray their whereabouts, or at any rate excite dangerous curiosity. So he reluctantly abandoned his original design, though not wholly, as will be seen in due course.

In pursuance of his latest idea he sedulously removed from the foot of the cliff all traces of the clearance effected on the ledge, and, although he provided supports for the tarpaulin covering, he did not adjust it. Iris and he might lie _perdu_ there for days without their retreat being found out. This development suggested the necessity of hiding their surplus stores and ammunition, and what spot could be more suitable than the cave?

So Jenks began to dig once more in the interior, laboring manfully with pick and shovel in the locality of the fault with its vein of antimony.

It was thus that he blundered upon the second great event of his life.

Rainbow Island had given him the one thing a man prizes above all else--a pure yet pa.s.sionate love for a woman beautiful alike in body and mind. And now it was to endow him with riches that might stir the pulse of even a South African magnate. For the sailor, unmindful of purpose other than providing the requisite _cache_, shoveling and delving with the energy peculiar to all his actions, suddenly struck a deep vein of almost virgin gold.

To facilitate the disposal at a distance of the disturbed debris, he threw each shovelful on to a canvas sheet, which he subsequently dragged among the trees in order to dislodge its contents. After doing this four times he noticed certain metallic specks in the fifth load which recalled the presence of the antimony. But the appearance of the sixth cargo was so remarkable when brought out into the sunlight that it invited closer inspection. Though his knowledge of geology was slight--the half-forgotten gleanings of a brief course at Eton--he was forced to believe that the specimens he handled so dubiously contained neither copper nor iron pyrites but glittering yellow gold. Their weight, the distribution of the metal through quartz in a transition state between an oxide and a telluride, compelled recognition.

Somewhat excited, yet half skeptical, he returned to the excavation and scooped out yet another collection. This time there could be no mistake. Nature's own alchemy had fas.h.i.+oned a veritable ingot. There were small lumps in the ore which would need alloy at the mint before they could be issued as sovereigns, so free from dross were they.

Iris had gone to Venus's Bath, and would be absent for some time. Jenks sat down on a tree-stump. He held in his hand a small bit of ore worth perhaps twenty pounds sterling. Slowly the conjectures already pieced together in his mind during early days on the island came back to him.

The skeleton of an Englishman lying there among the bushes near the well; the Golgotha of the poison-filled hollow; the mining tools, both Chinese and European; the plan on the piece of tin--ah, the piece of tin! Mechanically the sailor produced it from the breast-pocket of his jersey. At last the mysterious sign "32/1" revealed its significance. Measure thirty-two feet from the mouth of the tunnel, dig one foot in depth, and you came upon the mother-lode of this gold-bearing rock. This, then, was the secret of the cave.

The Chinese knew the richness of the deposit, and exploited its treasures by quarrying from the other side of the hill. But their cra.s.s ignorance of modern science led to their undoing. The acc.u.mulation of liberated carbonic acid gas in the workings killed them in scores. They probably fought this unseen demon with the tenacity of their race, until the place became accursed and banned of all living things. Yet had they dug a little ditch, and permitted the invisible terror to flow quietly downwards until its potency was dissipated by sea and air, they might have mined the whole cliff with impunity.

The unfortunate unknown, J.S.--he of the whitened bones--might have done this thing too. But he only possessed the half-knowledge of the working miner, and whilst shunning the plague-stricken quarry, adopted the more laborious method of making an adit to strike the deposit. He succeeded, to perish miserably in the hour when he saw himself a millionaire.

Was this a portent of the fate about to overtake the latest comers?

Jenks, of course, stood up. He always, stood square on his feet when the volcano within him fired his blood.

"No, by G.o.d!" he almost shouted. "I will break the spell. I am sent here by Providence, not to search for gold but to save a woman's life, and if all the devils of China and Malay are in league against me I will beat them!"

The sound of his own voice startled him. He had no notion that he was so hysterical. Promptly his British phlegm throttled the demonstration.

He was rather ashamed of it.

What was all the fuss about? With a barrow-load of gold he could not buy an instant's safety for Iris, not to mention himself. The language difficulty was insuperable. Were it otherwise, the Dyaks would simply humbug him until he revealed the source of his wealth, and then murder him as an effective safeguard against foreign interference.

Iris! Not once since she was hurled ash.o.r.e in his arms had Jenks so long forgotten her existence. Should he tell her? They were partners in everything appertaining to the island--why keep this marvelous intelligence from her?

Yet was he tempted, not ign.o.bly, but by reason of his love for her.