Part 12 (2/2)

This clung so close to the tube's metal walls he wetted his finger to remove it. The light then shone opaquely through its substance. It was ordinary foolscap paper, the half of a sheet, gone yellowish with age, but otherwise very well preserved.

It was covered with roughly scrawled characters.

Grenville glanced it through--and irrelevantly longed for a pipe. He felt he should like some good tobacco to a.s.sist in the puzzle's solution.

He felt convinced, however, that a crude example of the simplest, most primitive cipher was contained upon the sheet. Should the words later prove to be in English he could finally read it all. He began to compare the recurrence of the various symbols at once, discovering that the sign in the form of a cross had been used no less than fourteen times, and was therefore almost certainly E. The next in importance was the figure 3, which he felt might be either A, or N, or S, since these, after E, are among the characters in English spelling most frequently employed.

[Ill.u.s.tration: second message]

On another clean chip of whittled wood he jotted down a few of the ”words” with E's in each instance subst.i.tuted for the crosses, and then began attempting to make clear sense by subst.i.tuting A's, N's, and S's for the figure three, the figure one, and open squares, which, he found, had been often represented.

It was a blind and tedious business. His fire burned low, in his absorption, and the midnight constellations marched past the zenith of the heavens before he finally realized the folly of his quest.

”It's not a bit of good in the world, if I knew all about it,” he finally confessed, ”no matter what it means.”

He went to bed. But he did not sleep. Those singular pyramids and the cipher still lingered before his inner vision. What was the mystery hidden behind the dead man chained in the rotting barque, the headless skeletons lying near the swamp, and now these doc.u.ments, found in the tube and so carefully concealed?

”I give it up,” he told himself at last, in an effort to dismiss it all and compose his active brain. ”I wish I had a stouter tube to make a good bomb for the tiger.”

He thought perhaps he could use the oxidized cylinder as it was, and began thereupon to wonder how he should make a fuse by which its powder contents might be ignited. Thus he drowsed off at last, with fantastic dreams swiftly solving the sum of his problems.

CHAPTER XII

AMBITIOUS PLANS

Grenville awoke with a brilliant idea, born in his brain as he slept.

It was not concerned with the doc.u.ments found in the old bra.s.s receptacle, but entirely with the tiger. He knew how to fas.h.i.+on a fuse.

The creepers had answered this latest need, with their bark so readily hollowed. He had burned up yards of the drying stuff with the core removed, all of it shrunk and twisted tight, like long coils of vegetable tubing. He had only to fill it with his powder while green, and then let it dry in the sun.

He could likewise fill the useless cylinder, wrap it about to increase its resistance to the powder--and thereby render its explosion far more violent. If, after that, a chance were presented to ignite it under the tiger----

It was possible always, he confessed, the tiger might prove unwilling.

However, both the cannon and bomb should be immediately prepared.

There could be no peace upon the island while the brute remained alive.

All thoughts of the cipher were postponed for evening recreation. The day's work began after breakfast in preparing large quant.i.ties of powder.

At this Elaine a.s.sisted. She was glad of any employment. No less in her veins than in Grenville's the promptings of being in the primitive were daily surging stronger. Like himself, she was hungry for meat; and while she had no thoughts of turning Amazon herself, she felt an increasing interest in all that Grenville was attempting in his task of coping with nature.

Meanwhile Sidney was daily a.s.suming a wild and unkempt aspect that he could not possibly avoid. His beard was an unbecoming stubble that he was powerless to shave; his hair was uncombed and a trifle long; his clothing was not without its rents. But what an active, muscular being he appeared, as he moved about at his work! He seemed so thoroughly fearless, so competent and at home with naked Nature. His thoughtfulness, moreover, had no limits, and neither had his cheer. He had made no further disquieting advances, but seemed rather to have forgotten, utterly, the lawless emotions to which he had one day given way.

This day it was he started the fires to bake his vessels of clay. They were all sufficiently dry for the purpose, and, huddled together, a bit removed, in a rudely constructed furnace made of rock, were piled about with abundant fuel to provide an even heat.

The morning was sped between the various duties. Some ten or more pounds of powder Grenville finally stored in his cave. The labor of grinding and mixing had undergone many interruptions while he attended the fire about his jugs. He finally fetched some creepers from the growth and, stripping out the pliable cores, poured powder in several of the hollow coverings, bound them together, here and there, with fibers, and placed them out on the rocks to dry.

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