It seemed to him then some sound from below had played through the fabric of his dream. But nothing disturbed the usual calm, save the morning cry of distant parrots. Stooping, he moved through the scattered rocks, to survey the waters far and wide.
There was nothing to be seen, in all that expanse, of the craft that had ridden near at midnight. All the round of the wall he made in this manner of caution. When he came at length above the blackened clearing, where for day after day he had toiled with fire and chisel, he gazed about the open space bewildered and incredulous.
The truth of his loss was hardly to be credited as Grenville continued to stare below where the hollowed log had been.
There was not a sign of a living thing in the clearing or near-by jungle. There had been no sounds of unusual movement in the thicket, he was sure, or otherwise he must have wakened. No voices had spoken, since his ears had all but ached to catch the slightest disturbance.
On the blue of the sea, so tremendously expanded from this particular point of vantage, there was not a hint of a sail. But the fact remained his boat was gone, with all the work it represented, and all the hope their situation had centered upon it for them both.
An utter sinking of the heart assailed him. His moment of sleep, he told himself, could have been no more treacherous had it been planned by a scheming enemy to complete their abandonment to some rapidly impending fate. And yet had he waked in the gray of the dawn, with his bombs and fuses still too damp for employment, and his cannon planted only to guard the trail, the boat could hardly have been saved. At most, his protest would merely have betrayed the fact he was camped there on the terrace.
A new line of thought sprang into his brain, as one suggestion after another was swiftly deduced from his loss. The natives who had landed and carried off his precious craft must certainly have found the wall with which he had barred the trail. He could hardly doubt they knew of his presence on the hill. They might even now be lying in wait to get him the moment he appeared.
His preconceived theory, that they dared not land while those tidal sounds still haunted this end of the island, received a shattering blow. Their craft was doubtless hidden now behind either one of the other lofty walls comprised by the neighboring hills. The thieves had cut off all possible hope of his escape with Elaine by means of his solid, if crude, canoe, and could finally starve them on the hill, if they had no courage for a battle.