As It Was in the Beginning Part 38

Elaine could still feel her heart pounding heavily in her bosom. She returned to her original query.

"If we go on like this for a week, what then? Is there anything in the world to prevent them from waiting and waiting and waiting, till----"

She did not finish her sentence, but the slightest shudder shook her frame.

"They were goaded to action to-night," said Grenville, hopefully.

"They may feel sufficiently aggrieved to return for more. If not--they must be invited."

"But surely you'll not attempt such a venture as this again?"

Grenville rubbed at his jaw. "I wish it might be duplicated! No such luck is likely. But I feel very certain we'd both rather cash in fighting than to starve like rats in a trap."

"Yes," Elaine faltered, in her quiet way of courage, "but--if it has to come--let's try to--receive it here together."

CHAPTER x.x.xIV

DYAK DARTS AND METHODS

Long-distance fighting began an hour after sunrise in the morning. It was rather a long-distance attack, since Grenville, armed only with the cannon, was powerless to retaliate, except at great expense of ammunition, and with questionable results.

One of the Dyaks had stationed himself on the central hill of the island with some sort of ancient rifle. He took a deliberate shot at Sidney the moment that unsuspecting thorn in their sides chanced to make an appearance on the western section of the terrace. The bullet went wide, having struck among the rocks some fifteen feet away, arousing Grenville's contempt.

Not even Elaine was greatly frightened by this overture from the enemy, whose marksman could have but a limited view of that unused section of the headland.

But the first small dart that sped lightly up from the jungle, to drop almost at Grenville's feet, was another affair altogether. He knew the thing was not only sharp, but literally soaked with poison. It had only to p.r.i.c.k through the skin of one's hand, or even, perhaps, through the thinness of their garments, to perform its deadly function. The merest chance shot was thus extremely likely to achieve what the rifleman could not.

These hideous little messengers of agony and death were rained all morning on the terrace. They fell near the furnace for keeping fire; they dropped by the door of the shelter. A few even sped as far as the powder magazine, where Grenville found them on the rock and gravel roof.

Ample protection was afforded by remaining under cover, but this was not altogether wise or safe, except, perhaps, for Elaine. Grenville felt he must constantly watch the clearing. In the light of day his alarm could be discovered and removed, to permit an attack too sudden to be opposed.

He, therefore, constructed a bamboo s.h.i.+eld, with which to protect his head and a part of his body, as he moved about among the rocks, or concealed himself near the cannon.

Not more than twice in all the morning did he see so much as one of the tubes--the long, slender blowguns of the hidden foe--while this silent bombardment continued. It was useless to think of slewing about his little bra.s.s piece for a shot at mere motionless jungle. It was equally impossible, he confessed, to excite the Dyaks to another charge until they should finally make up their minds a sudden a.s.sault would succeed.

He was rather surprised they had made no attempt to rush him at earliest dawn. The ledge was, however, very narrow. It afforded the one and only approach, and the dire disaster of the night before had rendered far more cowardly the set of treacherous and utterly craven murderers these boatmen undoubtedly were.

All afternoon the darts continued falling, intermittently--and Grenville made no response. His silence, indeed, was a mystery which the Dyaks not only failed to understand, but, likewise, a little dreaded. That he had no rifle they were thoroughly convinced. But that roar of his cannon they had understood, and to hear it again they had no appet.i.te. Moreover, its deadly hail and detonation had come so unexpectedly, from the erstwhile silent terrace, that they knew not what to expect concerning the future.

Not without hopes of actually slaying some of the unknown forces on the crest of the hill, they shot an exceptional number of their darts from the nearby thicket as the sun at last declined. Grenville, having at length established what he thought to be a line of the little missiles'

flight, hastily made and bound up a bomb of no more than two pounds'

weight.

This, with a fuse too short for ordinary safety, he finally carried to the westward brink with one of his glowing coals of fire.

The patient rifleman, waiting on his hill, immediately blazed away, as before--and missed the entire bulk of rock. Grenville paid not even the tribute of a glance at the opposite summit, as he thrust his fuse down upon his coal.

The hiss of the powder gave him a start, so swiftly did it travel towards the bomb. With all his might he threw the thing outward at the shadowed spot whence he thought the darts were flying.

The quick, sharp bark and the patch of flame behind the design of a palm leaf, came like a clap of thunder, just before the second when the bomb would have struck on the earth.

A yell of dismay, or anguish, or both, and a scattering shower of shredded greenery supplied the only report of results that Grenville was destined to receive. The flight of darts was ended. A few hurried movements in the thicket, and a groan that Sidney felt was smothered, were the only signs vouchsafed him that the powder had not been cheaply wasted.

"It's a poor way to fight the hidden devils," he told Elaine, as he came once more to the shelter, "but it may possibly serve to keep them further away, and force them to different tactics."

It certainly had this latter effect, but not immediately.

There was no attack that night, and no disturbance in the jungle, though Sidney descended to the thicket and returned, not only with more fresh fruit he had located during the day, but also with a small wild hog he had captured in one of the older traps which the Dyaks had failed to discover.

The morning developed nothing aggressive, save the presence of the marksman on hill number two with the rifle that Grenville said would only be deadly around a corner. Some plan of patient waiting appeared to have been matured in the Dyaks' mind, since one of their boats issued forth at last from its place, to circle about the headland like a vulture atilt for prey, while down in the cover of the greenery other natives undoubtedly lurked.

They affrighted a flock of parrots here and there, from time to time, or set the timid monkeys to chattering and leaping through the upper foliage, apprising Grenville thus that the thickets were haunted below.

No darts sped upward from the jungle edge, however, which, Sidney argued, might signify that the men with the deadly blow-guns possibly hoped to excite over-confidence in the keepers of the terrace, who might finally expose themselves to fewer, but more accurate, shots.

In his forced inactivity, Grenville once more waxed impatient. He felt the heat of the blazing sun, which was daily growing more intense. He chafed at the thought of doing nothing while their water supply was steadily diminis.h.i.+ng, and the Dyaks apparently planned to subdue him by thirst or famine. He dared not risk an exposure of the door to the secret pa.s.sage by going for water to the cave below, especially as all his jugs were porous and permitted the water's escape by percolation, whereas the supply in the basins below might be better preserved where it was.

A hundred useless plans for taking the war to the enemy's camp were presented to his mind, always to be promptly abandoned. He could only utilize his artillery for defense, and could not even hasten an attack.

He could devise no means of ascertaining how many of the natives had either been killed or disabled. That fully ten survived, however, he felt was probable. One or two at the most was all the little cannon would be likely to rake in a charge.

Early in the afternoon there was ample evidence of exceptional activity down in the heavy jungle growth, though none of the Dyaks was seen.

The movements of birds and animals, as well as the swaying of branches or trees in various thickets under the cliff, sufficiently advertised the facts.

Grenville was puzzled to understand what might be occurring, till, at length, he discovered that some of the fruit-bearing trees, on which he had counted for supplies, had been quietly denuded of their burdens, or even altogether destroyed. One large banana palm with fruit of exceptional quality, he even beheld as it toppled to the earth, where some fiendish head-hunter hacked through its fibrous trunk.

Something sank in his breast as he witnessed this atrocious vandalism, and realized his helplessness to avert the oncoming famine of himself and the girl in his charge. That the spring would be guarded, night and day, was, of course, a foregone conclusion. And not even a plan for goading the Dyaks to another attack came in working order to his brain.

That was a thoroughly disheartening day, sultry, and fraught with menace from all directions, as the Dyak craft continued to hover about upon the sea, and the pillaging continued in the thickets. All the work was, moreover, silent, grim, and ominous, with once in a while a dart spinning swiftly up from the tangle below, or, from time to time, an echoing shot coming from the opposite height with a bullet singing crazily by, or ripping along the rocks.

Sidney made no attempt to descend that night, aware of the folly of an exploration into the enemy's lines, and the utter impossibility of discovering fruit in a nearer portion of the jungle. His entire wild hog had been roasted. For, perhaps, two days the meat might keep, in the coolness of the pa.s.sage to the cave.

Once more the night was uneventful, and silent. Once more came the day, and a blazing hot sun poured unveiled caloric on the summit of the terrace, where sultriness drank up the water that oozed through the substance of the jugs.

"I've got to do something," Sidney declared. "We can't go on like this." Elaine was already denying herself the food and water she required. "I shall try to invent some means of enticing the creatures to the cave below--and, perhaps, explode a mine. If the watchers on that hovering s.h.i.+p saw me disappear in the hole, it is rather more than likely they would follow, thinking they had me bottled."

Elaine always manifested interest, no matter what his scheme.

"But how could that possibly be managed, now that you haven't your raft?"

"I think by a ladder and platform, the ladder anch.o.r.ed as we had it the day I came up with your a.s.sistance, and the platform arranged of bamboo poles, which I can carry down through the pa.s.sage. It will take me some time to get it ready--but something has got to be done."

Elaine's eyes brightened with hope.

"Please say there is something I can do to help," she begged. "You work so hard and constantly."

"There will be rather warm employment for us both," he a.s.sured her, in his former way of cheer, "particularly towards the end."

He brought his neglected ladder to the shelter, where Elaine was presently as busy as himself, rewinding the rungs in the creepers, and testing it all for strength. Just what his final plan would be she did not understand, but her confidence in his ability and resourcefulness was almost wholly without bounds.