As It Was in the Beginning Part 21

The night surrendered no response, save some animal cry far off where the barque was rotting.

"If he's dead!" she moaned. "If he's dead!"

But he might be wounded and helpless, she thought, with no one to come to his side. He might not be hurt unto death itself--if aid could reach him now!

If he died--if he left her thus alone---- A thousand times she preferred to die beside him!

"Sidney!" she cried, as before.

With a strange dry note, choked back between her lips, she fled once more to the fire.

Meantime the man by the tiger's kill continued to lie without motion on the earth. Not even the glow of his cheering brand remained like a sign of life in that silent theater.

The jungle cat, smitten and addled in its brain, had dragged itself painfully away to the cover of the thicket, its instinct feebly alive.

There was not a sound in all the place, where crash and roar had been so tremendously expended for one prodigious second.

A vague, weird dream came finally creeping intangibly through Grenville's brain, resuming an intermittent function. When at length it began a little to clear, he dreamed he was trying his utmost to rise, but something held him down.

Consciousness poured a trickle through his being, and he felt he was partially awake. Then a flood, a cataract of surging life, rus.h.i.+ng back to its centers, brought confusion and tumult to his thoughts. He was still only partially aroused.

His eyes at length were opened. The darkness which their gaze encountered seemed more complete than that of his region of dreams. He attempted to rise, but his muscles and nerves refused their customary obedience to his will. He tried to remember what had happened, but the glancing blow sustained on his chin had blotted him out, temporarily, like a stroke of death itself. And, had the stroke been more direct, his jaw or his neck must have broken.

When he raised his head a bit from the ground and propped himself up on his elbow, the sense of dullness and leadlike weight in both his feet and legs continued unabated. He was battling to retain his consciousness.

He began to remember, slowly. The process was only well started, however, when it was singularly interrupted. He was staring blankly through the jungle, which he partially recollected. It was funny, he thought, how a star should fall and wander through all those aisles of trees.

It was a star, he was fully convinced, coming haltingly through the gloom. Its course was erratic. He lost it at times, but still it persisted in approaching. How beautiful it was--the largest star he had ever known--with its flames divinely ascending.

He sat up stiffly, his will momentarily gaining strength to resume the sway of his body. Some mantle partially fell from his brain, to accompany his physical rousing. Then he knew, not only what had happened, but also what was happening.

"Elaine!" he tried to call aloud, vainly striving to rise or regain the use of his limbs, then once more he sank in oblivion.

A strange, wild note broke from her lips as Elaine came plunging along the trail with a torch redly blazing in her hand, held well above her face.

She saw, before she could reach his side, that the tiger lay lifeless upon him. She feared the man was dead, but, with wits exceptionally clear and ordered, she thrust her torch-end firmly in the earth, laid hold of the huge, limber beast she so fearfully dreaded, and tugged and dragged it feverishly off with all her fine young strength.

The face of the inert man beside the tree was redly smeared with blood.

He lay horribly loose and still upon the gra.s.s. She knelt at his side and placed her hands upon him, feeling above his heart.

"Sidney!" she said to him. "Sidney! You cannot--you shall not die! I never meant the things I said--or thought--or anything! Oh, please, please don't--don't look like that! You've got to come back--you've got to!"

She tore at the band about his neck and lifted his head on her knee.

She wiped the red from his pallid face with the hem of her briar-torn skirt.

"I'll find the spring!" she told him eagerly, starting as if to rise, but the still form moved, and, dully at first, the two heavy eyes were opened.

"Oh!" she said. "Oh, you're hurt. Don't try to do anything but rest.... You didn't come--you didn't come home!"

Despite her entreaty, Grenville weakly raised his head and propped himself, half sitting. The weight being gone from his outstretched legs, his normal circulation was returning. He regained his strength with characteristic swiftness.

"Hurt?" he said. "No--I don't believe---- I must have got a knockout blow. The tiger? Did I get the tiger?"

He sat up uncertainly and, glancing about, saw the huge striped form where Elaine had dragged it from his body. She still remained on her knees, fixedly gazing on his face. Her strength was ebbing rapidly, as Grenville's now returned.

"You didn't come home," she repeated, by way of explaining her presence at his side. "I couldn't live here alone."

Grenville arose and a.s.sisted her weakly to her feet. She stumbled to and leaned against the tree.

"By George!" he said, "I'll bet a hat you could!"

He knew what courage had come to her aid before she could make her excursion. "I went down like a dub," he added, in his customary manner. "No good excuse, but I do apologize. Better get out of this, I'm thinking."

He took up the torch she had planted in the earth, to examine the tiger, dead and mangled in the gra.s.s, One of the creature's great front paws had been rudely torn from his body. He could only have escaped instantaneous death by having moved from the bomb at the moment of its explosion.

"Your robe looks mussed," Grenville continued, with a gesture towards the animal's motionless body. "But I think it can be washed."

Elaine slightly s.h.i.+vered at sight of the frame now done with life.

"You've killed him," she said. "I'm glad!"

He took her firmly by the arm and led her away through the thicket.

When they reached the camp, Elaine was not yet fully convinced that Grenville was uninjured. She brought him a rag she had torn from some of her clothing and begged him to wash his reddened jaw. Even the restoration of his former stubbled complexion could not suffice to bring her that sense of certainty and calm essential before she could sleep.

She remained beside him at their fire till long past the midnight hour.

Indeed, she had made no move to retire when at length the weird, unwelcome disturbance made by the tide had begun its uncanny chorus.

Perhaps she had waited for the conclusion of this added feature of the night's long ritual of nerve-attacking events, for she seemed to be considerably cheered when its final wail had died upon the air.

"It seems to me that doesn't continue quite as long as it did at first," she said to Grenville, as she rose at last to go alone to her cavern.... "I think you ought to rest. I wish you would."

"I will," said Sidney. "Good-night."

But, for some time after she had gone, he sat there wondering if those abominable but protective cries, that haunted the island's solitude, were actually on the wane.

"G.o.d help us if they are!" he said, to himself, but he went to bed and slept.

CHAPTER XX

A GIRDLE OF GOLD

Elaine had not yet appeared on the scene when Grenville went down to the jungle. The morning hour was still decidedly early, but plans and impatience to be up and at work had prodded the man from his rest. The la.s.situde that should have followed his night of excitement had not yet laid its weight upon him.

Apparently nothing had come to the jungle scene where the tiger had met his end. The great form lay there, torn and rigid, but no sign of the cat could be discovered.

Grenville pa.s.sed his trophy, presently, to examine the s.p.a.ce beyond.

The spot where the bomb had exploded was a gaping hole in the earth.