The dawn-light was slowly increasing. He watched it dully for a moment
more, and yawned as he stumbled heavily towards the utter discomfort of
his resting-place.
Once more he adjusted his weary limbs upon the ledge, reflecting on
what expedient he must now adopt, since this, his _coup-de-main_, had
so egregiously failed. He thought he was planning brilliantly when he
once more fell asleep. The slightest of sounds that was foreign alike
to tide or breeze now failed to arouse his senses as his head came
forward on his breast.
Not another sound was made where that one had strangely risen from the
front of the shattered ledge. Even the sharpest eyes would have been
for a moment tricked by the shadows of the rocky niche, where the tide
was darkly swirling. A fragment of the lower cliff then appeared to be
detached.
It was simply Grenville's catamaran, with two or three natives upon its
deck, silently maneuvering to land. Back of it, just well off the
frowning headland wall, the bow of a larger Dyak craft appeared for the
fraction of a minute.
The head-hunting fiends had arrived! They had chosen the hour when
exhaustion finally culminates and claims the helpless sentinel, heavily
dreaming that all is well!
Aware that the slightest disturbance might warn their intended victims
in the cave, the Dyaks labored with the utmost caution to fetch the
float to the ledge. This they presently accomplished, fending it off
at a vital moment lest it scrape against the rock.
Two of the half-clad demons now landed, their movements as sinuous and
silent as a serpent's. Instantly flattening down upon the tide-lapped
shelf, while the third of their party skillfully guided the catamaran
once more to the larger craft without, they waited as patiently as the
shadows, of which they seemed a part.
The plans of the crew on the boat without had been matured with much
sagacity. The transfer of two more men to the raft was quickly and
noiselessly accomplished, and once again the catamaran was permitted to
swing on the tide's rotation into the open entrance of the inlet.
This second pair, with knives between their teeth and hands therefore
unencumbered, were a trifle overeager to gain the mouth of the cave.
One of them caught at the fissured edge of tufa with avid fingers,
while the float was responding to the force of the whirl. His hold was
rudely broken, yet so sharply had he dug in his nails that a fragment
of rock was broken away. It plumped with a gurgle in the water.
Grenville was suddenly awakened--not so much by the sound the bit of
rock had made as by something more subtle in the very air--a something
only to be interpreted by that instinct surviving from ages dark and
old.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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