He spent some time investigating all the mute signs of former activity expended at the pit, and finally glancing up at the cliff above, abandoned all thought of conquering its summit, and retraced his steps along the trail. Where the path to the spring made a second fork, he continued straight on through the jungle. One glance only of the estuary, tortuously penetrating the waist of the island, was vouchsafed him through the thicket. Beyond this point, in swampy ground, flourished a forest of giant bamboo. The creepers and vines in that immediate section were particularly varied and abundant. The bird life was equally impressive. Hundreds of swallows were skimming in the air, a number of argus pheasants wildly fled from the visitor's presence, parrots screamed and wheeled in huge flocks above the light green bamboo foliage, and several fine flamingoes made shift to find concealment in the reeds. "It's a haunted paradise," Grenville muttered to himself, his thought having gone for a moment to the wails and moans that had startled himself and Elaine. Regretting that his broken knife was a wholly inadequate implement with which to assail such a bamboo stem as he would gladly have taken to the camp, he was once more making his way from the thicket when his foot crashed audibly through something brittle, on the earth. He parted the shrubbery and uttered a low exclamation. He had stepped upon a human skeleton, white and suggestively huddled, every fragment of it perfect--except that it lacked a head. In a certain sort of anxiety Grenville searched about to find the missing member. The skull was not to be discovered. Persuading himself this might be accounted for by many natural explanations, and resolving to keep his discovery entirely to himself, he forced his way around this grewsome inhabitant--and came upon another. This one he did not strike with either foot. It lay outstretched before him, in company with scattered and broken bits of rock--and, like its neighbor, it was headless. Had some monstrous head-hunter written "Dyaks" on all the empty lattice of those human ribs, Grenville could not have been more convinced of what this business meant. He returned to the trail accompanied by a sense of dread that all but sent him back to Elaine. His thought was entirely of her, and of their helplessness, cast thus alone upon this unpeopled island, clean stripped of weapons and of all things else save their wits and bodily strength. "We've got to escape," he told himself in a new, swift fever of impatience. "There is not an hour to lose!" He continued on through the jungle towards the hill at the farther end. CHAPTER VII A GREWSOME GUARDIAN Apparently the trail, that had once been formed through the axis of the island, had been found of little use. It was overgrown by all manner of plants well-nigh to extinction.