The Burning Bridge - Philip Verrill Mighels (best books for 8th graders TXT) 📗

much of the thickest wall was opposed to the pot-hole in the dam, while one or two extra-heavy fragments from the cliff were so lightly poised he could drop them in the breach. Despite these natural advantages, however, he labored hotly for fully half an hour before he could even lay his fuse.

Meantime, his torch was blazing smokily, against his final need of igniting the match and later exploring for results. At length he looped the fuse along a ragged line of broken honeycomb, where pits had been eaten in the tufa, and trailed it well down to the brink of the ledge, with its end propped high between two bowlders.

With one last look at all his careful arrangements, he slipped off his raft-line, caught up his torch, and was stepping down to board his float when a sharp piece of rock broke away beneath his foot and dropped him forward on his hand.

The torch was flung against the fuse, where it lay along the slope. He heard it hiss, where the powder had caught, and aware that, by three or four feet, it was shorter now than he had ever intended to light it, he lurched full-length upon his raft and fumbled to clutch up the oars.

But the swirl was on, and the catamaran seemed possessed to bump against the ledge.

In a final desperate outburst of strength, he sent the thing shooting outward. Its bow would have turned in the whirlpool then, but he drove it clear of the point.

Like a madman he pulled at the clumsy oars, to reach the protection where the wall all but folded the basin from the sea.

His raft was around it—half of the raft—and another good foot would have covered himself, when the blast abruptly boomed.

Even out of the tail of his eye he saw the dull-red flare behind a blot that represented ragged rock in motion.

A fragment no larger than a man's two fists came as straight as a cannon projectile and struck the pitted wall beside his head.

He had ducked instinctively forward, which doubtless saved his life. But dozens of smaller and barely less violent fragments were broken away from the edge of the wall by the piece with the meteoric speed. One of these struck him above the ear—and down he went, face forward, on the platform, to hang with arms and shoulders loosely supported on the bridge that was used for the sockets of his rowlocks.

A rain of loose pieces hissed about in the sea. The cave belched smoke like a suddenly active volcano. The tide took the raft, with its motionless burden, and floated it back whence the man had come, but not so close in the shore.

Then up on the cliff, when the shock and hail had subsided from all the air about her, Elaine came inquiringly over to the brink, to receive some word that all was well.

The smoke still rose from down below and obscured the face of the waters. There was nothing Elaine could discover. She waited a time that seemed very long, in her usual determination not to seem unduly alarmed or importunate concerning Sidney's safety.

But at last she called his name.

There was no response. Her uneasiness increased. She called again, and moved along the brink, staring eagerly down at the sea.

Then at last a sound like a stifled moan escaped her whitened lips. She had seen that prostrate, helpless figure drifting down by the shore on his raft.

CHAPTER XXVIII WHAT THE BLAST DISCOVERED

Grenville revived, with his characteristic pertinacity. An impulse to save himself was still alive in his brain. Actuated by its survival, he struggled galvanically to rise.

"Oh, please!" said a voice, that sounded remarkably familiar. "Please try to keep quiet for a little!"

Yet he had to sit up, with one hand to support him, if nothing more.

He was still on the raft, and there was Elaine, on her knees, pulling hard at his oars to drive the float ashore. She was dripping wet from head to foot.

For a moment Grenville regarded her blankly, while the situation cleared in his brain.

"What ho, skipper!" he said, a bit faintly. "You didn't swim out to this contraption?"

"You are bleeding," she answered, tugging no less stoutly at the oars. "I thought you might be dead. The tide was floating you away—and I don't see why—— Won't you please sit still and behave?"

Grenville had felt of his head, then arisen to take the sweeps from her hands, though the catamaran was about to ground on the beach.

"You did swim!" he said. "I should have warned you of the sh—— I'm an idiot!—trying to blow my head off!" He knelt on the edge of the platform and began to bathe his scalp.

"I hate that cave!" Elaine declared, with emphasis. "And I hate those awful bombs! I sha'n't have any clothing left, if you go on killing yourself like this every day!" She was tearing another bandage from her petticoat and felt obliged to scold.

Grenville was not at all certain it would not be decidedly pleasant to be wounded constantly. It was perilously joyous to be scolded and bandaged by Elaine. He certainly submitted most meekly as she now tied up his head. He was not deeply cut, and felt considerably aggrieved that the blow had rendered him unconscious.

"You'll find the skull isn't dented," he observed, "unless it's from the inside out."

"There's a great big swelling," said Elaine. "And suppose you had been killed?"

Grenville made no immediate reply. He was gazing abstractedly out across the water. His inner vision conjured up the picture of a brave, unselfish little comrade, swimming fearlessly out to board a raft whereon a helpless figure was lying—a pale-faced girl who would doubtless have had no hesitation had she known of all the sharks in the world. He could see her scramble on the float to ease him where he lay. And then her hot tussle with the clumsy oars, as she knelt on the wave-slopped platform, to urge it and him to the shore!

"I'm a thoughtless brute," he told her, finally. "But I felt the work was important."

"It is important! I'm sure of that," she answered, at once all contrition. "But perhaps next time—you might take me along—— If anything should kill us both—why, that would be simple and easy."

He understood her thoroughly.

"Quite an idea," he answered, briefly. "I was sure you understood the situation—— To-morrow I'll go and see what the blast accomplished. I shall have no more explosions, however—so I may not need a chaperon."

She was slightly hurt. His offhand speeches were not always absolutely welcome, despite her former attitude and declarations. After all, it was God, she told herself, who had brought this partnership into being. It was He who had cast her into exile with the bravest man she had ever known.

"You mean," she said, "you do not want me along."

"It's the tide that's ungallant," he said. "It objects to anyone's landing on the ledge."

"But you said I might be obliged to hide there later."

"I did, and till then—let's enjoy the sunshine—while it lasts."

Elaine said no more. The hint of inimical things to come sufficed once more to carry her thoughts away from all personal emotions.

They returned in silence to the terrace, Grenville first having urged his catamaran within the estuary, to secure it with the line. The commonplace duties of their daily existence were promptly resumed, and the cave as a topic was forgotten.

The following day, while he waited for the tide to rise to its highest level, Grenville completed the labor at the furnace, where additional vessels for water were being permitted to cool. The importance of being enabled to store an unusual quantity of water, should the need arise for such a storage, had early been presented to his mind. He was therefore particularly gratified to find this present firing of jugs considerably more successful than the first.

Elaine was engaged in weaving two nets, in which these clay vessels could be carried. With a yoke for Grenville's shoulders, or even for her own, a pair of the jugs could thus be fetched at once and the labor thereby materially hastened, should a moment arrive in which such haste would be wise.

It was ever disturbing to her mind to reflect on this possible need. The thought was never wholly absent from her as she watched the horizon, far and near, for the steamer that did not come. Not even in her happiest moments—and many were happy, she confessed, despite all the hardships of their daily life, as they two toiled together, an exiled pair alone in this tropical garden—not even in these was that sinister, underlying motif too indistinct to be acknowledged. It hung like a thing in vague suspense above their every occupation, throughout the day and night.

A tremor more tangible played through her breast as Elaine watched Grenville take a torch as before and depart for the third of his visits to the cave.

Without consulting the lord and master of the island, she moved her work from the shelter of her "house" to the cliff-edge, from which she could watch him a time before he should come to the cavern itself and so be lost to sight.

She was thus enabled, unobserved, to inspect him, to her heart's content, as Grenville came rowing his raft along the tide, far down below her rocky aerie.

The man was absorbed in the task thus set to be accomplished. He did not look up, as Elaine thought he might, as he skimmed along under the wall.

When he came to the cave he was somewhat surprised at the wreckage his blast had accomplished. Not only was the former ledge completely shattered, but much had fallen below in the sea, while the wall to the right, where the bomb had expended its energy, was agape with new-formed fissures.

Chiefly concerned with the dam of rock, Grenville secured his raft with boyish impatience and carried his torch ashore. A moment afterwards he walked through the breach in the erstwhile solid ledge, and could readily imagine the roar with which the water, formerly behind the barrier, had tumbled torrentially into the swirling tide.

There was still a tiny trickle flowing down the channel made by the bomb. The basin formed by the bottom of the cavern was still exceedingly damp, and here and there it retained a shallow pool of water too low for the gateway to drain. He walked about freely, pausing here and there to hold his torch aloft and measure the cave's dimensions by means of the light from both the open entrance and his blazing, yellow flame.

He was struck, in gazing at the wall he had broken near the cavern's mouth, with the size of one of the fissures there, where the blast had wrought its havoc. So black and significant appeared this new-formed aperture that, although a certain eagerness to proceed forthwith to the treasure niche was upon him, he returned at once to investigate the hole.

What he found upon his first superficial examination was merely a crevice, half as wide as his body, where a plinth of rock had been split from the mass and dropped towards the breach in the dam. Into this crevice he thrust his torch, and was instantly interested to note that its flame blew decidedly from him, in a draught of air that was flowing unmistakably upward. Moreover, on lifting himself sufficiently high to look about in the dimly lighted space, he became convinced that either a second chamber or a passage like a hall existed just back of the principal cavern, from which it was partitioned by the wall.

He planted his torch between some loosened fragments and shook at the piece that blocked this auxiliary cave. He thought he could topple the slab out forwards on the ledge. But, when he rocked it with his customary vigor, it fell abruptly backwards and disappeared in the gloom.

The hole he had thus created was quite large enough to admit him, squeezing in