What he made was a series of bamboo buckets, or cuplike sections of the
hollow tube, with stones suspended inside to knock against the walls
when the things were lightly shaken. These he intended to hang, one
beside another, in a line from the brink of the wall, where a climber
must strike them unawares and sound a resonant warning.
But he found, on hanging a pair some ten feet down along the face,
where the man had climbed in the night, that the wind would sway them
to and fro against the rock and constantly ring their hollow tones.
This defect he presently remedied by forming a frame, some ten feet
long and one foot wide, in which all his cups were suspended, or
moored, both top and bottom. They were thus so lightly hung that the
smallest jar against the frame would joggle them all to musical
utterance, while the wind could have no effect on any single one.
The entire frame was lowered down till it rested a bit unevenly on two
projecting shelves of rock, where it leaned a trifle outward like a
picture on a wall, as the creepers that held it from falling were
finally made secure. When Grenville, by way of a trial, nudged it once
with a pole thrust down against it for the purpose, it rattled out a
decisive alarm that one could have heard from the trail.
Grenville thereupon brought out a bomb from his store and lowered it
down below the frame, and six or eight feet to the side. This was
secured not only by the fuse, but likewise by more of the creeper.
Elaine, who during his absence had maintained the watch of the trail,
now ran to the place, at Grenville's signal, for a moment's inspection
of the whole arrangement and instruction concerning its use.
It was while they were there that the haunting wail arose for a gasping
spasm. It had practically failed. Sidney doubted if its loudest note
could have been heard as far as the spring. But still the end of the
tiresome day developed no attack.
Grenville was completely puzzled by the tactics the boatmen had
adopted. That they knew Elaine was present on the terrace there could
be not a shadow of doubt. Even if the man she had thrust away from the
cliff-edge fell to the sea and was dashed to pieces, or drowned, his
friends who had brought him around to the place must have heard her
voice and recognized its feminine quality.
They would likewise know she could hardly be alone, and would guess her
companions were not numerous or likely to be armed. No plundered
wreckage lay about the shore from which castaways could have drawn
ammunition or rifles. It was utterly impossible for any ignorant
natives to imagine the loading of a cannon or the making of bombs from
materials on the place.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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