Grenville, however, clutched the wiry wrist with all his might, and tried to fetch it upward for a quickly planned maneuver. It slipped from his grip, and together he and the native froze more savage than before. The Dyak once more attempted a stabbing pass, and Sidney again caught the sinewy hand, in a clutch that he knew must fail. The wrist left his impotent fingers like a snake. The whole arm writhed backward for the stroke. Sidney abruptly leaned forward, turning his head, and jabbed the red-hot firebrand against the Dyak's eye. With a shriek of pain the fellow lurched galvanically, to stab with demoniacal might. But the blow went wide, in his agony, and when Grenville had caught the wrist in a grip that a serpent could scarcely have broken, he instantly laid hold of it with his second hand, with a motion incredibly swift. Then turning his back with the skinny brown arm across his shoulder, and abruptly stooping forward, Sidney hoisted the scoundrel free from the rocks, on his shoulders, and, moving quickly towards the cliff, ended the fight then and there. He broke the arm thus used as a leverage against the Dyak's weight, and literally slammed the shuddering creature down on the rocks, at the brink of the wall, where he poised but a moment over death. If he tried to writhe backward to the solid ledge, the effort was belated. With a piercing scream he toppled over, flinging out his broken arm in a gesture grotesque and disordered. Then he suddenly grayed, in the limbo of smoke, and shot swiftly downward to his doom. Grenville still bit upon the branch that glowed with fire. He searched about pantingly, found his end of fuse, and saw the powder sputter with ignition. He had barely stepped back when, from over at the trail, came a sudden and tremendous detonation. That the Dyaks were there on the terrace, after all, destroying his bombs, was the one thought that flashed through the smoke in his brain, as his own sharp explosion shook the air and hollowed huge masses from the cliff. He stumbled and groped laboriously across the uneven heaps of stone to reach the secret passage, where Elaine must be crouching in fear. In his ears rang her words "If it has to come, let's receive it here together." Already he feared her one grim wish had been brutally denied her in this hideous pall of smoke. He saw a figure, dimly, through the reek, and crouched to take revenge. CHAPTER XXXVI THE LAST CUP OF WATER The figure was Elaine's. Grenville was almost upon her, prepared for some swift and terrible deed of retaliation, when a swirl in the shroud that enveloped them both revealed her standing near the edge.