FOR A MOMENT OR MORE THERE WAS ABSOLUTE STILLNESS
IN THAT GRASSY ARENA
AS IT WAS
IN THE
BEGINNING
BY
PHILIP VERRILL MIGHELS
Author of The Furnace of Gold and Thurley Ruxton
New York
Desmond FitzGerald, Inc.
Copyright, 1912
By DESMOND FITZGERALD, INC.
All Rights Reserved
CONTENTS
AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING
CHAPTER I
A TRUSTED MESSENGER
Grenville was not the type to be readily excited, yet a glow of exceptional brilliance shone in his eyes as he met the searching gaze of his friend, and wondered if Fenton could be jesting.
That he had made no reply whatsoever to Fenton's proposition he failed to realize till Gerald spoke again.
"Well, Sid," demanded that impetuous lieutenant of finance, "gone dumb? Perhaps I haven't made it plain," and he particularized on his fingers. "You get an ocean trip of eight or ten weeks' duration, tropic sun at its best, leisurely business without a fleck of bother, absolute rest, good provender, thorough recuperation, your entire expenses cheerfully paid, vast service rendered to me, no time lost on your equilibrator, time for countless new inventions to sprout in your fertile brain—and the unutterable joy of escaping this abominable climate, practically at once!"
Grenville's smile, still brightly boyish, despite the many reverses and hardships of his six and twenty years, came creeping to his eyes. His wan face suggested a tint of color.
"Don't wake me up for a moment, Fen," he answered. "I haven't dreamed anything like it for years."
"Dreamed?" repeated Fenton, resuming his interrupted pacing up and down the rug, where the firelight reddened his profile. "Does that mean you like it?—you'll go?"
"Would Cinderella go to a ball?" replied the still incredulous Grenville, half seriously. "What's the joker, old chap? What is the worst that could happen at the midnight stroke of twelve?"
Fenton came at once and laid his hands on the broad, bony shoulders of his friend.
"Have I ever played a joker with you yet?" said he. "Never mind the apology. I forgive you. I understand the compliment. Proposal sounds too good to be true, and all that sort of rubbish. The fact is, old man, I want you to go to Canton, China, and bring home my affianced bride. That's absolutely all there is to the business. You need the change and voyage; I haven't the time to go out there and fetch her myself. Elaine is alone in that heathenish country, miserably heartsick over her uncle's sudden death. She wishes to return at once. I can't let the poor girl come alone. I've no one in the world but you I'd care to send—and there you are."
The glow departed from Grenville's eyes. His doubts of any proposition with a woman in the case lurked deep in his level gaze. His face became once more the rugged mask with which he had so long confronted a world persistently gray. The smile he summoned to his lips was more quizzical than mirthful.
"It sounds perfectly simple," he replied. "But—you know there are several tales, recorded in prose and verse, of kings who have sent a trusted messenger on precisely such an errand. The joker somehow managed to get into play."
"Just so," agreed Fenton, readily. "Three or four times in a thousand cases the girl and the—er—messenger rather thoughtlessly—well, a complication arises. The percentage, however, is excessively low. We'll consider that a negligible possibility. You see, I know both you and Elaine, and I am not a king. The question is—will you go?"
Grenville was always amused by Fenton's arguments.
"I have seen no statistics on the subject," he admitted. "In this particular instance you think there is not the slightest danger?"
"Of finding in old Sid a modern Launcelot?" Fenton turned his friend about till both of them faced down the length of the room. "Well," he added, "to be sure——"
Grenville's quick glance had sped to the massive mirror, ten feet away, where both himself and Fenton were reflected from heels to crown. He comprehended in a glance the ill-clothed, thin, ungainly figure he presented: his big hands hanging loosely down, his face too ruggedly modeled, too sallow for attractiveness, his hair too rebellious for order.
A Launcelot indeed! The irony of the situation struck home to his sense of humor.
"Have a look," continued Fenton, his nervous glance indifferent to his own athletic fitness, the perfect grooming of his person, the grace and elegance of his tailoring. "Do you discern anything of the disloyal ambassador in that hard-worked friend and comrade of my happiest years?" His eyes gleamed irresistibly. "You see, old chap, you have trusted an invention of perhaps incalculable worth to my honor, and must leave both your fame and possible fortune in my keeping while you are long away."
"Yes, but——"
"I know, exactly. This is the sort of thing you and I have always done by one another. I had no thought of refusing your trust in me, and so—I have booked your passage for Wednesday."
He turned again to the mantel and began to fill his pipe.
Grenville pivoted slowly and rubbed the corner of his jaw.
"You have—booked my passage—for Wednesday?"
Fenton nodded. "Elaine is quite desolate and lonely. You need immediate sunshine and warmth, and can do no good remaining here. Fine day all round for starting, Wednesday, and no boat sailing sooner. There are one thousand dollars in that wad by the statue of Anubis, for your outfit and incidental cash."
Grenville glanced mechanically at the dog-headed god of the ancient Egyptians, apparently guarding the money towards which Fenton had waved a careless gesture.
"One thou——"
"If it isn't enough, draw on my bankers for more," interrupted Fenton, puffing at his calabash industriously. "I have written Elaine so fully you'll have nothing to explain."
"By George!" said Grenville, more aggressively, "I like your nerve—the way you'd plunge me into trouble! Do you think I'm a mere senseless rack of wires and bones because I'm not my usual self? What's to prevent me from falling head over heels—— What's the rest of her name—Elaine what? And you probably have her photograph somewhere among your possessions."
"Her full name," Fenton answered, moving to the desk beside the mirror, "is Elaine Lytton—twenty-one this month. We've known each other seven years." He returned, extending a small-sized photograph. "Fine girl. That's her picture. Good likeness—sent me last winter from China."
Grenville studied the photograph superficially. He used it to tap on the table as he once more faced his host.
"About as I expected," he announced with his customary candor. "Nice-looking girl—nothing extra, perhaps, but nice enough. Now tell me how any healthy male friend of yours can guarantee not to fall in love with Elaine, on a long, lazy trip through the tropics," and he cast the picture from him towards the lamp.
Fenton relighted his pipe. "Well, suppose he did commit the folly you describe, what then?"
"What then?" echoed Grenville, incredulously. "By the long, curved lashes of Juno's eyes, if I were the man you'd certainly see what then!"
"All right," said the imperturbable Fenton. "I accept your conditions, fully, and about your outfit I'd suggest——"
"Hold on!" interrupted Grenville. "I haven't accepted your commission, much as the trip——"
"The trip!" said Fenton. "Ah! that's the point! I insist on your making the trip, you see, and taking the rest. Fetching Elaine from China is merely incidental—only don't forget her completely and come back here empty-handed." He sat down to wrestle with his pipe.
Grenville looked at him amusedly.
"Now, see here," he said, "don't you make the slightest mistake, you confident old idiot. If I should just happen to fancy Elaine, I wouldn't give you twenty cents in Mexican money for your chances at the wedding bells and trimmings."
"Then you'll go!" Fenton suddenly exploded, springing to his feet. "Come on, that's settled—shake."
But Grenville retreated from the outstretched hand, a queer smile playing on his features.
"Hang your infernal self-conceit," he answered; "you don't think I could win her if I tried."
"I don't believe you'll try."
"That isn't the point. I might. If I loved her I would, you can bet your final shoe peg! Your proposition isn't fair—subjecting a man, and a friend at that, to possible temptation, all kinds of treachery, and a war between love and duty. Rot that kind of duty! I want you to know that if I take the trip and happen to fall in this muddle with your girl, I'm going to pitch your infernal old duty game overboard in less than two seconds and go in and win her, if I can!"
"Well, what's all the row about, after that?" inquired Fenton as before. "Haven't I said I accept your challenge? Go out there and fetch her, that's all. As for the rest—win her, if you can!"
"I don't say I'll try to win the girl. I may not like her for a cent."
"Then why all this futile argument and waste of valuable time?"
"But I may—confound your egotistic nerve, and your insistence! And I warn you, Fen, I mean every word, in case——"
"I understand—I understand you fully, without repetition," Fenton once more interrupted. "For Heaven's sake, give me your hand, old man, and cease firing."
"You meant it, then—no strings on the proposition?"
"Not a string—absolutely not a string."
A strange new thrill of pleasure crept into Grenville's being, warming his thin, anæmic pulses suddenly, as he met Fenton's gaze and once more permitted his thoughts to dwell on all the proposal embraced. Since Fenton refused to be worried concerning himself and the girl who supplied the motive for the trip, then why should he consider it further? Elaine was, in fact, swiftly fading from his reflections.
All his nature yearned towards the tropic seas. All his overwrought frame and substance ached for the long, lazy days of indolence, rest, and recuperation that alone could restore him to himself. He had always longed for precisely this excursion to the far-off edge of the sphere. His faculties leaped to the new-made possibility of a contact with the ancient world, heretofore so wholly inaccessible.
Already new color had come to his face and a new blaze of fire to his eyes. Privations and toil, those two unsparing allies that had made such inroads on his health and strength, seemed fading harmlessly away. The prospect was far too alluring to be resisted. There was no good reason in the world for refusing this favor to a friend.
The brightness of face that had ever made him so lovable, came unbidden, there in the glow.
"I suppose I'll have to go," he presently admitted, "if it's only to win your girl."
"Shake," said Fenton; and they shook.
CHAPTER II
AN UNEXPECTED OUTBURST
The sea is an ancient worker of miracles in amazing transformation, but rarely does it bring about a more complete or startling metamorphosis than that which was wrought upon Grenville—trusted messenger for a friend.
Long before the shores of Cathay loomed welcomely upon his vision he had lost all sense of weariness or depression, and likewise all that worn and gaunt appearance of a large, thin frame inhabited by a dogged but thoroughly exhausted spirit.
He was once more his strong, bold, interested self, merry of speech, bright-eyed, untamed in his buoyant nature, lovable, thoughtful of those about him, impetuous, and never to be repressed. He had flirted uninterruptedly with all the old women and the children on the outward voyage, and was now as cheerfully repeating this gay performance on the steamship "Inca," homeward bound, on which he was certainly the favorite of the crew and his fellow-passengers.
The fortnight passed with Elaine upon the sea had been wholly uneventful, save for the vast commotion astir in Grenville's being. The worst that could happen, he told himself, had happened. His daily deportment towards his charge had baffled, piqued, and amused that young lady alternately, and convinced her that here was a brand-new specimen of the genus man with which she had never had a genuine experience.
She found him boyish, unexpected, apparently indifferent, and even unaware, at times, of her existence on the vessel, then fairly effervescent with deviltry that left her all but gasping. He was not to be classified, fixed, or calculated, save in certain traits of fearlessness, generosity, and kindness to those most needful of a helping smile, a merry word, or a spell of relief from daily cares.
He commanded a certain admiration from the puzzled girl, but as yet her actual feelings towards him were quite unanalyzed. She was constantly finding herself astonished at the scope and variety of his information; she was glad to listen when he talked; she was frequently touched to the very heart by his tender care of one or two frail little beings on the ship to whom much of his time was devoted.
There they were, with the situation between them apparently commonplace to dullness—till this one particular day.
It was not a common day on the ocean. Despite the fact he was neither mariner nor meteorologist, Grenville felt some vast disturbance impending in all the lifeless air, regardless of the fact the barometer was steady and the calm, rainless spell had been exceptionally prolonged. It was not precisely a premonition that addressed itself to his senses; it was something he could not explain.
A wave of heat passed swiftly through his body, leaving a strange excitement in its train, as he paused for a second to wonder if the "symptoms" he sensed were concerned not at all with sea or weather, but wholly with Elaine.
He admitted the love—the wild, free, passionate love that had swept him away, past all safe anchorage, with her entry into his existence. He had made no effort to conceal it from himself, to deny its overwhelming force. He had cursed Gerald Fenton most heartily and consistently for casting him into this maelstrom of conflicting emotions, and daily and nightly he had waged mighty war with that fortunately absent individual, who had calmly accepted his challenge.
The trouble had come unbidden. Elaine was so wholly different from the girl represented by Fenton's photograph! The picture had seemed so lifeless—and she was so gloriously alive! That one fact alone seemed sufficient excuse to Grenville for all that had happened to him since. He had not been fully informed, he argued, respecting her wondrous charms.
The two weeks mentioned, with Elaine at his side, had certainly accomplished the world-old complication once more, despite all his hard and honest struggling. When the fight had ceased he did not even know. What Elaine's private attitude was towards himself he had taken no time to inquire. That part mattered less than nothing at all—at least as concerned the present. He had warned old Fenton what to expect, but now—by the gods—how deeply he was mired in the quandary!
He was certainly mighty hard hit, he confessed, but meantime was equally positive that the singular something he plainly felt, invading the air and telling its message to some faint, imperfect sense of his being, had nothing whatsoever to do with this business of passionate emotions. Yet not a sign of uneasiness on the part of officers and crew could his keenest wit discover, in any quarter of the iron craft plowing steadily on across the sea.
He had climbed to the topmost deck of the ship, where he and a carpenter, who was hewing out a boat thwart with a gleaming adze, were temporarily alone. It was not Grenville's manner of wooing to hover beside Elaine throughout the day or evening. He had done no wooing, as a matter of fact, beyond assuming a somewhat bold but unoffending guardianship, which she might have found refreshing had it not so frequently taken her breath with its very matter-of-factness.
At the present moment, as Grenville was well aware, she was somewhere down on the shaded portion of the promenade, where the erstwhile stir of tropic air had ebbed to utter sluggishness and finally expired. One of the purser's young assistants, dressed in wrinkled white duck, was dumbly adoring at her side.
Impatiently banishing Fenton from his thoughts, Grenville gazed idly at the sultry sky, and as idly at the carpenter, wielding the polished adze. When a deckhand presently called this workman away, Grenville took up the implement left behind, felt he would like to swing it just once at the root of the complication now arisen between himself and his distant friend—on whose money he was voyaging—and whose sweetheart his nature demanded for a mate—and, replacing the tool on the weathered planks, he thrust both hands in his pockets and paced to and fro, beside a pair of inverted lifeboats and a raft, that occupied most of the deck.
He finally flung himself down on a hatch, in the shade of a white-painted funnel, and plunged his warring faculties into concentrated study of a problem in mechanics involved in a new invention. On the back of a letter, drawn from an inside pocket, he drew black hieroglyphics, that to him were wheels and levers that relieved his state of mind.
Absorption claimed him for its own. The swift, weird changes of the sky and atmosphere escaped his engrossed attention. He was not even aware of her presence till Elaine had been standing for fully five minutes, a few feet only from his side.
When he looked up at last and beheld once more that singular glow and beauty in the depths of her luminous eyes, and felt the subtle flattery involved in the fact she had come to the place to find him, seek him out, a flood of tidal passion surged to his outermost veins.
It was just the one straw too much, this unforeseen encounter, with the smile upon her lips. His sturdy resolutions all went down in utter confusion before the wild gladness of his heart. Yet he made no outward sign for Elaine to read.
Calmly, to all appearances, he placed the letter in his pocket.
"I hope," said Elaine, "I haven't disrupted anything important."
He arose and gazed at her oddly.
"You have, Elaine," he answered, in a voice he strove hard to control. "You've not only disrupted everything heretofore moving along its accustomed path of order, law, and calm, but you've also upset all sorts of established institutions and raised some merry Hades."
A spirit of the lively old Nick was infusing with his youthful blood as he stood there gazing upon her. Elaine, however, either failed to detect its presence, or she failed to understand.
"I?" she said, "Mr. Grenville. I'm sorry. What have I done?"
He could not have done the conventional thing, the deliberate, calm, or expected thing, to save his immortal soul. His nature was far too honest, too unabashed. He came a step nearer—and then she knew, but she could not have moved at the moment had death been the oncoming penalty for remaining where she stood. She had never been so startled in her life.
They two were absolutely alone and unobserved. Of this the impulsive Grenville was aware—and the knowledge had fired a certain madness in his being he was powerless to quell.
"Elaine," he said, as he suddenly caught her unresisting hands, "you've put old Fenton entirely out of the game. You're going to marry me."
She was dimly conscious of pain in her hands, where he crushed them in his ardor. But her shocked surprise was uppermost, as she faced him with blazing eyes.
"Mr. Grenville!" she said. "Mr. Grenville—you—— To say—to speak——"
"Elaine," he interrupted gayly, bright devils dancing in his boyish eyes, "it simply couldn't be helped. We were intended to meet—and were cut out for one another. So the hour must come when you'll pitch old Gerald's ring in the sea by order of the very Fates themselves!"
She snatched away her hands in indignation.
"For shame!" she cried in rising anger, her whole womanly being aflame with resistance to all his growing madness. "You haven't the slightest right in the world——"
"Right?" he repeated. "Right? I love you, Elaine! I love you! Haven't I said——"
"Oh, the treachery—the treachery to Gerald!" she cut in, with swiftly increasing emotion. "To say such things when your honor——"
"Wait!" he interrupted, eagerly. "I told him what he might expect from any such arrangement. I warned him precisely what might happen. He understood—accepted my conditions—made it a challenge—declared if I tried I couldn't win! And now——"
"You can't—you can't!—you can't!" she cried at him, angrily. "To think that Gerald—to think you'd dare——"
He suddenly caught her in his arms and crushed her against his breast. He kissed her on the mouth, despite her struggles.
"Elaine," he said, "you are mine—all mine—my sweetheart—my comrade—my mate!"
She finally planted her fists against his throat and thrust him from her in fury.
"You brute!" she answered, sobbing in her anger. "I hate you—I loathe you—despise you utterly! I wish I might never see your face again!"
"I'll make you love me, Elaine," he answered, white at last with intensity and deep-going passion. "I'll make you love me, as I love you—as madly—as wholly—as wondrously—before ever we two get home."
Already Elaine was retreating from the place.
"Never!" she answered, wildly. "Never, never, never!—do you hear?—not if it takes this boat a hundred years!" And gropingly, almost blinded by her sense of shame and rage, she fled from the deck and down the stairs, leaving him shaken where he stood.
CHAPTER III
A MIDNIGHT TRAGEDY
Not the slightest alarm had invaded the ship, when Grenville finally urged his senses back to the normal, notwithstanding the unaccustomed suddenness with which the aspect of the day had been reversed.
The storm broke at last, about one in the afternoon, with a deluge of rain and an onslaught of wind that seemed for a time refreshing. The huge steel leviathan appeared to elevate her nose, give her shoulders a shake that settled her firmly in the gray disorder of the elements, and then to accept the rude old contest with a certain indifference, born of well-established prowess.
By two o'clock there was nothing refreshing suggested. A dull, stubborn struggle was waging in the drab of a wild and narrow field of commotion. Chill, musty billows of air, made thick by something that was neither scud nor mist, pounced heavily upon the laboring "Inca" in a manner chaotic and irregular. The sea was rising sullenly, its waves, like tumultuous cohorts, with ragged white banners, ceaselessly advancing.
With an easy, monotonous assurance the great device of steam and iron plugged steadily onward. It could ride out a sea of tremendously greater violence. It knew from long experience every crest and every abyss of these mountains of air and water. It met huge impacts majestically, with a prow that cleaved them through, while its huge, wet bulk plowed up its mileage with a barely diminished speed.
Few of the passengers were actually alarmed. A storm evolved so suddenly, they were confidently informed, would expend itself in one brief spasm of impotent fury and subside almost as it had come. It was all some mere local disturbance that the spell of dry, calm weather had accumulated too swiftly for any save a violent discharge.
Discomfort increased to a certain pitch; locomotion about the saloon became impracticable. The crew alone remained upon their legs. It seemed like the climax to the storm. But another stage swiftly developed.
It might have been somewhat after three P.M. when a shroud of darkness settled from the heavens, its substance foreign both to cloud and sea. It was thicker than before, and decidedly more musty. As black as night, but unrelated to all ordinary essences of darkness, it wrapped the stormy universe in Stygian folds with a suddenness strangely disquieting.
The cataclysm followed almost instantly, as if from behind a concealing curtain. It came in dimensions incredible, a prodigious wall of rumpled water, like a mobile mountain chain. It towered forbiddingly above the quivering vessel for one terrible moment of threat, then confusion, utter and seemingly eternal, plunged roaringly over and under the helpless ocean toy of steel, submerging the very sea itself in Niagaras of sound and weight and motion.
A hideous shudder quivered through the feeble plaything of the elements. Strange, muffled thunderings, sensations of oblivion sweeping miles deep across the ocean, and a horrible conviction of the ship's insignificance, impressed themselves pellmell upon the senses, while ebon blackness closed instantly down, like annihilation's swift accompaniment, and the hull seemed sinking countless fathoms.
Such a moment expands to an æon. Doom seemed an old acquaintance when a complex gyration, a sense of being flung through space, and a reassertion of the engine's throb preceded the struggle to the surface. Yet it seemed as if no miracle of buoyancy and might could survive till the great steel body rose once more to the air. Men held their breath as if they must drown if the top were not immediately achieved.
A stupendous lurch, an incredible list to starboard, another streaming by of immeasurable torrents, and the steamer wallowed pantingly out into daylight once again, to flounder like a thing exhausted till she steadied once more to the roll and pitch of the former storm-driven sea.
There had been no time for any man to act till the monstrous thing had come and gone its way. As helplessly as all the others, Grenville had clutched at the table, there beside Elaine, while death passed and roared in their faces. He had gone to her chiefly for appearances, yet quite as if nothing had happened, despite their scene above, while Elaine had issued from her stateroom in terror of the storm. It was not till new, sharp sounds of activity broke on his senses, from above, that Sid left her side and went to inquire concerning the sum of their damage.
His face had lost a shade only of its usual cheerfulness, when he finally returned. The ship was rolling heavily, fairly in the trough.
"Our rudder is gone, with six of the lifeboats and as many men," he told his charge, whose courage he had previously gauged. "The worst is undoubtedly over. We can steer with the screws, sufficiently to make the nearest port."
"Our rudder!—half a dozen men," Elaine faintly echoed, her brown eyes ablaze with dread and sympathy, as she steadied from the shock of Grenville's news. "What was it? How did it happen?"
"A tidal wave. There must have been a huge volcanic disturbance, doubtless under the sea. Or it may have been an earthquake, tremendously violent. Nothing else, according to the Captain, could account for a storm so sudden, or for all this strange thickness of the air. He is confident now of our safety. The storm may subside in an hour."
There was not the slightest cessation of the storm, however, till eight o'clock in the evening. Even then the night continued thick and wild.
Fortunately the sea was vast and deep. There was nothing known in two hundred miles on which the ship could blunder. Hour after hour the crippled "Inca" limped erratically onward, buffeted helplessly here and there, and scalloping angry abysses of darkness and water, as first one screw and then the other was driven full speed, or slowed to half, or reversed altogether, to hold her nose to the altered course that would finally fetch them to a port for highly essential repairs.
The rage of the elements, abating at last a trifle, had far exceeded the Captain's expectations. And when at length the center was passed, and comparative ease had supervened, the wind was still a considerable gale, while the sea would run high till nearly morning.
The passengers, however, were sufficiently assured to retire at a fairly early hour. Elaine had readily responded to Grenville's matter-of-fact instructions, and, long before midnight, was fitfully sleeping, although she had not undressed.
When eight bells struck from the bridge somewhere above him, Grenville still sat on the edge of his berth, rumpling his hair with one vigorous hand, while the other prisoned a book on his knee with a piece of white paper upon it. The paper was literally covered with mechanical designs and hieroglyphics, involved in his latest problem.
He arose at last, removed his coat, and began to fumble with his tie. His eyes were fixed upon his paper. The problem's spell was cast again upon him. He sank, as before, to his inconvenient seat, and drew yet another design.
How long he remained there, tranced by the lines that represented levers, gears, and eccentrics, the man could never have stated. He was dimly subconscious it was time to go to bed, and from time to time one hand would return to his collar. As a matter of fact, the hour was past one of the morning.
Then, of a sudden, apparently beneath his very feet, the frightful thing occurred.
It came all together—the grinding crunch, the colossal upheaval of the ship's great belly full of vitals, the scream of iron ripped from iron, the roar of steam from broken pipes, and the tremor of death-throes, shuddering thus promptly down to the canted bow and stern from the wedge-shaped split amidships.
They had struck on a rock, upheaved by the earthquake, where a hundred fathoms of crystal brine had existed the previous noon!
The hideous conviction of doom and horror sped as swiftly as the shiver of destruction to the farthest confines of the vessel. Screams far and near, hoarse bellowing, a shrill, high pæan of mortal fright, and sounds of disordered scurrying followed with a promptness fairly appalling.
Grenville waited for nothing. As well as the most experienced officer on board, he realized the significance of the impact, the ship's awful buckling, and the quiver stilling the creature's heart—the engines that had ceased at once to throb.
His door had been flung widely open. Before he could reach the turning of the corridor, the one electric bulb, left glowing for the night, abruptly blackened. But he knew the way to Elaine.
He seemed to be plunging through a torture hall, so hurtling full was the darkness of fearful cries and confusion. The broken hulk of the steamer slightly lurched, as the plates broke yet farther apart. Sidney was flung against a cabin wall, but he righted and pitched more rapidly down the already canted passage.
"Elaine!" he called. "Elaine!"
"Yes!" she answered. "Yes! I can't get out!" She was not at all in a panic.
Someone, a man, rushed headlong by and nearly bowled Grenville over. He was spilling golf clubs from a bag and calling for the steward.
Grenville caught at the knob of Elaine's hard-fastened door and threw his weight upon it. A stubborn resistance met his effort. The frame had been distorted by the splitting of plates and ribs. The wedging was complete.
"Stand back!" he called out sharply. "I must break it in at once!"
He knew they were late already—that swarms of beings, nearer the exits, were wildly pouring from the ship's interior, to be first to the boats, so fatally reduced in numbers.
With all his might he hurled his shoulder against the door, that merely creaked at his impotent assault. The hall was narrow. He could gain no momentum for his blow. The second and third attack made no impression.
A clammy sweat exuded from his forehead. That the sea was tumbling torrentially into the helpless vessel he knew by countless indications. Elaine must perish helplessly in her trap, could he not immediately force the barrier. He suddenly got down, full length, upon the floor, braced his shoulders against the opposite cabin, and, with knees slightly raised, placed both his feet against the door. Then he strained with superhuman strength. The door remained immovable, but its paneling slightly cracked.
Meantime the shrieks, the shouts, the roaring of steam, and the terrible chaos of destruction had increased to a horrifying chorus. The corridor was filling with hot, moist vapor from the burst pipes. A dozen stokers had perished. Fire had attacked a portion of the vessel abaft the midships section.
Once more, with a wild, fanatic conjuring of energy, Grenville spent himself upon the door—and a panel snapped out, flinging little splinters on Elaine. In a fury of desperate activity the man on the floor beat out more with his driving feet.
"It's large enough! It's large enough!" cried the girl as the orifice widened. "Don't wait to break it larger!"
She was now fully dressed, having swiftly prepared for any sort of emergency. A candle, provided from her bag, was glowing in her hand.
This she thrust forth for Grenville to take, and then, with deliberate care, she wormed her way out through the jagged hole with the confident skill of a child.
"Not there!" called Grenville, as she hastened ahead to gain the forward companionway. "Everybody's there, all fighting for their lives!"
He caught her actively about the waist, as a further lurch and settling of the "Inca" would have hurled her to the floor. Down through a shorter passage and up a strangely tilted stair he drew her rapidly, his heart assailed by a sickening fear of what their delay might have cost them. Yet less than five minutes had actually passed since the first vast shock of disaster.
They emerged to a portion of the slanted deck that seemed to be utterly deserted. A gust of wind blew out the candle. The sky was clear. An uneven fragment of the aging moon shone dully on the broken ship, whence fearful sounds continued to arise.
Only one of the boats had been dropped to the tide—to be instantly whirled inside the parting steamer, on the torrent filling her mighty belly, where the latest lurch had laid her widely open.
Grenville ran to the starboard rail for a glance towards the struggle farther forward. There, about the impotent crew, laboring hotly with people, boats and davits no longer adjusted to normal working order, the wildest confusion existed.
A boat that hung out above the sea was filled with screaming beings. Some madman arose and slashed with maniacal fury at the rope of the blocks, to hasten the craft's descent. Of a sudden its bow shot perpendicularly downward, its stern still high in the air. Its cargo dropped out like leaden weights, while the empty shell, like a pendulum, swayed to and fro above the smothered cries.
To join such a throng would be but to choose a larger company in which to perish. Grenville saw that the steamer must presently drop from her rock and sound illimitable depths. This could hardly be delayed for more than ten minutes longer.
A sickening qualm assailed his vitals at the thought of Elaine, doomed to drown thus helplessly, along with himself and the others. He knew that not only were the boats insufficient, but there was no time left to load and launch them!
Then, at length, he remembered the life-raft on the roof. Once more, with his arm supporting Elaine, he clambered up a tilted stairway. The place was deserted. The raft was there—but securely fastened to the planking, fore and aft and at the sides! The ropes that bound it down were thick and doubled!
With his knife the man attacked them desperately. The blade broke out of the handle when one strand only had been severed. His second blade was small and useless for such a labor.
He groaned, for a ghastly tremor was seizing the "Inca" as she hung above some crumbling abyss for a final plunge to the bottom. Then the moonlight gleamed on the carpenter's adze, which had slid down the deck to the railing. He darted upon it like an animal, and, hastening back, swung it with swift and savage blows that severed the ropes like cheese.
"Quick! Quick!" he shouted to Elaine, as he flung the implement from him; and, catching her roughly about the waist, he bore her face downward beside himself, full length upon the raft.
It was already slightly in motion, where the ship was toppling to her grave!
CHAPTER IV
THE NIGHT—AND MORNING
With a rattle and scraping along the deck, the device with the two prone figures desperately clinging to its surface, was halted and tilted nearly level as it struck a spar and partially mounted upon it.
A sudden glare lit up the scene where the fire had burst through shattered windows. Screams yet more appalling than those already piercing the gale arose with the movement of the vessel. A picture grotesque and monstrous was for one awful moment presented. The huge iron entrails of the vessel heaved up into sight with her breaking. Her funnels, masts, and superstructure pointed outward, strangely horizontal. Innumerable loose things rattled down the decks. She belched forth flame and clouds of steam, against which one huge iron rib, rudely torn on its end to the semblance of a giant finger, seemed pointing the way to inscrutable eternity.
The lantern, up at the "Inca's" masthead, describing an arc as it swept across the heavens, was the last thing Grenville noted. He thought how insignificantly it would sizzle in the sea! Then he and Elaine, with raft and all, were flung far out, by the suddenly accelerated velocity of the doomed leviathan, turning keel upwards as it sank. When they struck, their puny float dived under like a crockery platter, shied from some Titanic hand.
With all his strength the man clung fast to Elaine and the lattice-like planking of their deck. It seemed to Grenville, still submerged, he could never resist the force of the waves to wash them backwards to death. It appeared, moreover, the raft would never return to the top. A million bubbles broke about his ears. He felt they were diving to deeps illimitable.
With a rush of waters drumming on their senses, it shot precipitately upward at last, till air and spray greeted them together. Then, sucked deep under, anew, and backward, by the gurgling vortex where the ship had gone, and swirling about, pivoting wildly, as the raft now threatened to plunge edge downward to the nethermost caverns of the hungry sea, they met a counter-violence that forced it once more towards the surface.
The boilers had burst in the steamer's hold, with confusion to all those tides of suction. Erratically diving here and there, a helpless prey to chaotic cross currents in all directions, the float swung giddily in the mid abyss, while the water walls baffled one another.
Elaine, even more than Grenville, was bursting with explosive breath when, at length, the raft came twisting once more to the chill, sweet region of the gale. And even then strong currents drew it fiercely in their wake before it rode freely on the waters.
Dripping and gasping, Grenville half rose to scan the troubled billows for companions in distress. Not a sound could he hear, save the swash of the waves. Not a light appeared in all that void, save the distant, indifferent stars.
Elaine, too, stirred, and raised herself up to a posture half sitting. She was hatless. Her hair was streaming down across her face and shoulders in strands too wet for the wind to ravel. Her eyes were blazing wildly.
"The ship?" she said. "What happened?"
"Sunk." He stood up. Their platform was steadying buoyantly as it drifted in the breeze. "I can't even see the spot," he added, presently. "We couldn't propel this raft to the place, no matter who might be floating."
"It's terrible!" she whispered, faintly, as one afraid to accuse the Fates aloud. "Couldn't we even—— You think they are all—all gone?"
"I'll shout," said Grenville, merely to humor the pity in her breast. His long, loud "Halloo" rolled weirdly out across the wolf-like pack of waves, three—four—a half dozen times.
There was not the feeblest murmur of response. Yet he felt that, perhaps, one boatload at least might have sped away in safety.
"God help them!" he said, when the silence became once more insupportable. "He only knows where any of us are!"
"After all we'd been through!" she shivered in awe. "If only we two were really saved—— Oh, there must be land, somewhere about, if the Captain was trying to reach a port! But, of course, this isn't even a boat, and, perhaps, it will finally sink!"
He tried to summon an accent of hope to his voice.
"Oh, no; it will float indefinitely. It's sure to turn up somewhere in the end."
"We haven't food—or even water," she answered him, understandingly. "What shall we do to-morrow?"
"We are drifting rapidly northward. We may arrive somewhere by to-morrow.... You'd better sit down. It taxes your strength to stand."
"God help us all!" she suddenly prayed in a broken voice, and, sinking lower where she sat, was shaken by one convulsion of sobbing, in pity for all she had seen. She had no thoughts left for their earlier, personal encounter.
For a time Grenville stood there, braced to take the motion of the raft. The wind continued brisk and undiminished. Aided by tides, which had turned an hour earlier, to flow in its general direction, it drove the raft steadily onward over miles of gray, unresting sea.
The water slopped up between the slats whereon Elaine was sitting. She was cold, despite the tropic latitude. She was hopeful, only because she wished to contribute no unnecessary worry to the man.
Grenville at length sat down at her side, but they made no effort to converse. Elaine was exhausted by the sickening strain and the shock of that tragic end. For an hour or more she sat there limply, being constantly wet by the waves. She attempted, finally, to curl herself down and make a pillow of her arm, and there she sank into something akin to sleep.
Gently Grenville thrust out his foot and lifted her head upon the cushion of flesh above his ankle. The night wore slowly on. Three o'clock came grayly over the world-edge, where the waves made a scalloped horizon.
Slowly the watery universe expanded, as the dawn-light palely increased. By four Grenville's gaze could search all the round of the ocean, but nothing broke either sky or sea.
Five o'clock developed merely color on the water, but no sign of a sail or a funnel. Elaine still slept, while Grenville, cramped almost beyond endurance, refused to move, and thereby disturb her slumber.
But at six, as he turned for the fiftieth time to scan the limited horizon, he started so unwittingly, at sight of a tree and headland, flatly erected, like a bit of sawed-out stage scenery, above the waste of billows, that Elaine sat up at once.
"It's land!" he said. "We're drifting to some sort of land!"
She was still too hazy in her mind, and puzzled by their surroundings, to grasp the situation promptly.
"Land?" she repeated. "Oh!" and a rush of hideous memories swept confusedly upon her till she shivered, gazing at the water.
Grenville had risen to his feet, and Elaine now rose beside him. Somewhat more of the flat, wide protrusion from the sea became thus visible to both. It still appeared of insignificant extent, a blue and featureless patch against the sky, with one half-stripped tree upon its summit.
"I should say it's an island," Grenville added, quietly, restraining an exultation that might prove premature. "It is still some miles away."
"There must be someone there," Elaine replied, with an eagerness that betrayed her anxious state of mind. "Almost anyone would certainly help us a little."
What doubts he entertained of some of the island inhabitants in this particular section of the world, Sidney chose to keep to himself.
"It's land!" he said, as he had before. "That means everything!"
"Do you know of any island that ought to be in this locality?"
"I haven't the remotest notion where we are—except we are somewhere, broadly speaking, in the neighborhood of the Malay peninsula. The steamer must have drifted tremendously out of her course after we lost our rudder."
"Have you been awake for long?"
"I haven't slept."
"Have you seen or heard anything of any of the others?"
"Not a sign.... We may find some of them, landed on this island."
He had no such hope, and this she felt. She summoned a heart full of courage to meet the situation, however, and gazed off afar at the misty terra incognita enlarging imperceptibly as they drifted deliberately onward.
"It's fortunate," she said, "the steamers pass this way."
"Yes," he said, unwilling to shake this solitary hope that brightened her uncertain prospect, but he knew they were leagues from the nearest track that the ocean steamers plowed. "And I trust we'll find it entirely comfortable while we're waiting," he added. "We're sure to get dry and find something fit to eat."
She was silent for a moment. A sense of constraint was returning at last for their scene of the previous day. "It seems to be rather far away," was all she said.
"About another hour—if the breeze and tide continue favorable."
It was nearer an hour and a half, however, before they were finally abreast the headland with the tree, and swinging and turning slowly by the island's coast on the surface of a complicated tide.
The features of the land had developed practically everything usual to this latitude except habitations of men. That it was entirely surrounded by water was convincingly established. Indeed, it was not an extensive outcrop of some ocean-buried range, and, despite the luxuriance of its various patches of greenery and jungle, it was decidedly rugged in formation.
The edge past which the raft was leisurely floating was a broken and cavern-pitted wall of rock affording no promise of a landing. Above this loomed the solitary tree that Grenville had seen from a distance. Nothing suggestive of hearth smoke arose against the sky from one end of the place to the other.
This one vital fact, in her excitement, Elaine entirely overlooked. She likewise failed to note the look of concern that Grenville could not have banished from his eyes. The prospect of reaching a dry, firm soil outweighed her immediate worries.
"Couldn't we paddle in closer?" she said. "Where do you mean to land?"
"Where the Fates shall please," he answered, grimly. "Without even a line for me to take ashore we must not be over fastidious."
"We could swim—if we have to," she told him, bravely. "We seem to be floating farther out."
They were, at that particular moment. The powerful current carried them swiftly seaward a considerable distance, till at length the raft was drawn to a species of whirlpool, some two hundred yards in diameter, the inner rim of which was depositing weed at the edge of something like an estuary, indenting the shore of the island.
On the huge circumference of this whirlpool they were finally rounding towards the one bit of beach that Grenville had been able to discover. Yet when they approached within almost touching distance of this sunlit strand, the current failed, permitting the breeze to waft them again towards the center.
"Stand by to go ashore," said Grenville, resolving suddenly on his course, and overboard he slipped, at the float's outer edge, and, using his legs like a powerful frog, he pushed at the raft with sufficient force to overcome the action of the wind.
For a moment his efforts seemed in vain—and then the clumsy affair nosed reluctantly shoreward an inch, and was once more assisted by the tide. Ten feet out he found the water shallow and, planting his feet on the solid sand, drove the raft at once to the estuary's edge, where Elaine leaped lightly ashore.
Some startled creature slipped abruptly into the pool that the tiny harbor formed. This escaped Elaine's attention. A moment later the raft rode scrapingly over a bar that all but locked the inlet, and Grenville stood dripping on the sand.
"Welcome to our city," said he, an irrepressible emotion of joyousness and relief possessing him completely at the moment, and, going at once to the near-by growth, where a long stout limb had been broken from a tree, he dragged this severed member forth to the beach and across the estuary's mouth, where it effectually blocked the channel against the raft's escape. Then he folded a couple of large-sized leaves with his hands, secured each with a slender twig, and, giving one to Elaine for a cap, placed the other upon his head.
Elaine was no less relieved than he, so elastic and buoyant is youth.
"The villages must be on the farther side," she said. "What language do you suppose the natives speak?"
"Well—doubtless some Simian, in any case," he answered, having fancied one movement half seen in the trees beyond was made by an ape or a monkey. "I'd suggest you recall your fondness for fruit for breakfast."
She comprehended his meaning with amazing promptness. Her face took on its serious expression.
"You don't believe we shall find the island inhabited? We shall have only fruit this morning?"
"I am sure we shall find some fruit," he said, "and we must certainly look for water."
A sense of helplessness and despair attacked Elaine momentarily. She began to wonder, with alarm, how long they might be stranded on the place—and what attitude Grenville might assume. She had thoroughly comprehended the passion of his nature in the outburst she had seen. A sense of distrust she dared not show came creeping to her mind.
"We must make the best of it, of course," she said, as calmly as possible. "We can't even light a fire, I suppose."
"I certainly have no matches," he answered, cheerfully. "All I had were in my coat. Suppose we explore the island first and leave despair till after breakfast."
She met his gaze with fearless eyes that set his heart to pounding.
"I shall never despair," she answered, more bravely than she felt,—"at least, I shall try to do my part, till we are taken off."
He understood the challenge in her attitude.
"I felt that from the first," he answered, easily. "Perhaps we'd better begin by climbing up to the headland."
He caught up a short, heavy stick and turned about to force a way up through the rocks and tangled growth between the shore and summit.
And what a figure he presented—even to the frightened girl, whose anger still lingered in her veins—stripped, as he was, to his shirtsleeves, a powerful, active being, masterful and unafraid. With a strange, dreadful sense of isolation and the primitive, aye, even primal, conditions in which they had been cast, she followed helplessly at his heels for their first real look at the island.
CHAPTER V
THE ISLAND
The ascent was steep and difficult, so unbroken was the undergrowth, except where jagged and pitted rocks rose grayly on the slope. Bananas, nut palms, and mangoes Grenville promptly noted. Indeed, every tropical tree, shrub, and fruit of which he had ever learned was represented in the thicket, together with long, snake-like creepers, huge ferns, and many plants with which he had no acquaintance.
There was abundant life in all directions. Here, with a grunt, and beyond with a bound of startled surprise, some animal scuttled to cover in alarm at their approach. A small flock of parrots abruptly arose, flashing their brilliant plumage in the sunlight and screaming raucously. Half a dozen leeches, clinging firmly to the fat, green leaves next the ground, where all was moist and shaded, attracted Grenville's notice as they lifted their heads and groped about for flesh upon which to fasten.
Here and there in the tree tops a monkey obscured a patch of sky for a moment and chattered or squeaked a warning to his kind. Grenville, almost wholly convinced that man seldom or never visited the place, and puzzled to account for a fact so extraordinary, now emerged at the edge of a natural clearing and promptly discovered a small patch of sugar cane, reared above the grass and vines. He was certain that man had brought it to the island.
A half minute later he underwent a decidedly complex set of emotions. He was barely five feet ahead of Elaine, who was following blindly in his trail, a prey to new dreads of all the sounds about them, when he halted in a tense and rigid attitude of alertness. Elaine glanced quickly ahead.
Apparently a patch of orange sunlight was lifting from the grass. Then Elaine, too, saw the black, irregular stripes, the huge, topaz eyes, and the lazy movement of a mighty shoulder muscle, as the beast before them arose and blocked their path.
It was not the fact that he had rarely if ever seen a tiger so large that most impressed the man, thus unexpectedly confronted by this unfrightened monarch of the island—the brute bore a collar about his neck, gleaming with gold and the facets of some sort of jewels!
He had obviously once been a captive! He knew the form of man, if not his nature!
For a moment or more there was absolute stillness in that grassy arena, where two world-old enemies stood face to face in their first, preliminary contest of courage. A certain arrogance, a contempt of all possible adversaries, here in his undisputed realm, shone unmistakably in the eyes of the motionless brute. His paunch was rounded significantly. He had recently dined.
Grenville could think of but one thing to do, unarmed as he was, and unwilling to compromise an encounter so vitally important.
He let out a shout such as a demon might have uttered, and, rushing madly forward, with his club upraised, yelled again and again, his aspect one to strike terror to the heart of a giant. He was almost upon the astonished tiger when the brute abruptly fled. The roar the great beast delivered, as he bounded from sight in the jungle, was the sullen note of a creature that obeys, reluctantly, the command of one superior to himself.
"Now, then, a little discretionary haste," said Grenville, quickly returning to Elaine. "I prefer the top of the rocks."
But she did not move, so helpless was her will and so rigid all her being. Once more, with his arm about her waist, Sidney firmly urged her forward, on a beaten trail he took no time to study.
It led in a tortuous manner up the last steep acclivity, where, with every rod, the growth became less luxuriant, and the rocks more thickly strewn. Thus they presently came upon a second natural clearing, a sort of uneven terrace, some fifty feet lower than the dominating headland crowned by the solitary tree.
The trail to this final eminence was plainly scored along a narrow, crumbling ledge, where the volcanic tufa, comprising the ancient upheaval, had for years disintegrated in a honeycomb fashion that left all the bowlders and even the walls deeply pitted.
When they turned about together on this dominating mount, the island lay mapped irregularly beneath them in the purple sea, revealed well-nigh in its entirety.
In all its expanse there was not a sign of a human habitation.
They knew, without a word of argument, they were absolutely alone on this tropic crumb of empire, sole survivors of the frightful wreck, completely ignorant of their whereabouts, and surrounded not only by savage and inimical jungle brutes, but also by some mystery that was not to be understood.
"Well," said Grenville, presently, "such as it is, it's ours."
"Ours," said Elaine. A cold little shiver ran along her nerves, at thoughts of her plight between the man she had called a brute, and the still more savage creatures of the jungle. "Where are you going?" she added, as Grenville moved away.
"To look about for a moment," he replied, "and then I must pick some breakfast."
The examination of the hilltop was promptly concluded. It proved to be a flat, uneven plateau of small dimensions, with precipitous walls on every side, except where the trail led downward. Much loose rock was scattered on its surface. Three-quarters of its boundary rose perpendicularly out of the sea. The remainder plunged down into jungle greenery, and the natural clearing that lay between two dense, rank growths on either side. Not far from the center of the table-rock a fair-sized cave, that bore unmistakable signs of former occupancy and fires once ignited on its floor, afforded a highly acceptable shelter, both from the sun and the elements. It occupied, of course, a position that could be readily and easily defended.
There were other, smaller caverns close at hand, but none with a whole or unpierced roof. Fragments of broken clay utensils lay scattered about, together with the whitening bones of small-sized animals that had one time served some denizens for food. There was nothing in or about the principal cave of which Grenville could make the slightest use.
The view of the island from this point of vantage was not particularly encouraging. Midway of its rugged bulk, that jutted from the azure tides, and on the side directly opposite the estuary, another wall of rock loomed, gray and barren, above the tops of the trees. Behind this, at the island's farthest, left-hand extremity, a third "intrusion" of volcanic stuff rose to a height only barely lower than this whereon the raftmates stood. It was not, however, flat.
A portion only of the estuary was visible—the outer bay, where the raft was plainly floating. Save for areas covered with rock and brush together, the remaining surface of the island appeared to be thickly grown to jungle, the forest comprising foliage of infinite variety.
With Elaine walking silently at his side, afraid to be with him, yet more afraid to be alone, Grenville passed from this hasty examination of the island's general topography to a closer inspection of the perpendicular scarp of the terrace. On the seaward side it rose about one hundred feet above the mark of high water. Its right front appeared to overhang its base, a reassuring distance above the highest tree. Across its entire bulk at this place the cliff had once been cracked, and a "slip" had formed a ragged shelf. Then came the slope where the trail was worn, beyond which forty feet or more of unscalable tufa was reared above a section of the jungle once devastated by fire.
In the midst of this section, being rapidly reclaimed by vines and creepers, stood the shell of a huge old tree, the heart of which had been consumed, from the roots to its blackened top, leaving walls still thick and solid.
"Well," said Sidney, returning again to the principal cave, which he reinspected critically, "it doesn't take long to overlook our possessions. You'd better begin to make yourself at home, while I go below for fodder," and, taking up his club from a ledge where he had let it fall, he went at once down the long-abandoned trail and out across the clearing.
Elaine had followed to the scarp, where she watched till he disappeared. How helpless she was in the hands of this man, whose declaration and deeds had so aroused her indignation and hatred, she thoroughly understood. A sickening conviction that days might elapse before she could hope to escape, increased her sense, not only of alarm, but also of distrust in Grenville. His action in taking up his stick had not escaped her attention. Strangely enough, a horrible pang went straight to her breast as she suddenly thought of that tiger again—and of what it might mean if Grenville never returned. Whatever else might happen, nothing could be so terrible as to perish here alone. She tried to assure herself, however, that Grenville was thoroughly competent to cope with the dangers of the place.
Yet the silence of the jungle where she had seen him disappear, oppressed her unendurably. Not even a tree was shaken, to indicate where he had gone. Summoning all her resolution, she returned to the cavern, alone.
A slab of rock, once doubtless employed for a table, lay with one end resting on the earth, while the other leaned upon a second rock, against the wall of the cave. She lifted this slab to a second prop, then blew the last fragment of dust and sand from its surface, by way of preparing it for breakfast. She looked about, longing for further employment, but, inasmuch as two rude fragments of the rock already reposed beside her table for seats, there was absolutely nothing more she could add, either by way of utensils or furnishings, from the boulders scattered loosely on the terrace.
When she thought of leaves, whereon to serve what fruits the jungle might surrender, she started briskly for the trail—but halted at its summit. A horror of unknown things that might be lurking at the thicket's edge impressed itself upon her. Nevertheless, she shook it off, and, descending rapidly, soon filled her arms with large, clean "platters" from a rankly growing plant of the "elephant's ear" variety, then clambered back to her aerie.
Two of the leaves she dropped at the bend of the trail and left them there in the sun. Twice after that she returned to the edge, to search all the greenery for Grenville. Her uneasiness respecting his long absence was rapidly increasing when she turned once more toward the cave. He emerged at that moment from the farther thicket of the clearing, came unobserved to the winding trail, and discovered the leaves she had abandoned.
He was amazingly "loaded" with similar leaves for breakfast purposes, as well as with fruits, and a singular bowl of water, yet he paused, with a smile upon his lips, to discard every leaf he had provided, in order that Elaine's thoughtful effort at assistance might not be in the least belittled.
She met him just as he came to the top, and began to take a portion of his burden.
"Oh," she said, "you've found water—or is it the juice of the melon?"
"Water," he answered, moving towards the cave. "The bowl is half of a paw-paw, which, next to that spring itself, is the welcomest thing I've discovered."
She was glad to note bananas among his several fruits, but she made no further observations. More and more her sense of constraint increased, as she clearly foresaw her dependence upon and intimate association with this man, who had overstepped the bounds of honor to his friend, and to whom she had spoken in such anger.
Breakfast was soon begun. Elaine consumed all she could relish of the fruits, although neither the loco (loquet, a yellowish sort of plum), the guava—green and full of seeds—nor the custard apple, which was somewhat sickishly sweet, appealed irresistibly to her fancy.
She drank from a leaf, curled up to form a cup, and found the water decidedly refreshing and agreeable, despite the fact it was slightly flavored by the juices of the paw-paw shell in which it had been served.