Leaning back once more, and long since weary of his fruitless adventure, Grenville stared at the glowing cone of fire slowly eating away his brand. It was lasting far longer than he had believed would be possible--yet certainly less than one hour more could the consuming substance serve to give him a spark.
He could almost fancy he saw a face, in the film of ash upon its surface. He was sure the face was developing a likeness to Elaine. Even the soft clear radiance of her cheek---- How eagerly she had asked concerning his coming "home"--but how far it seemed away.... He could hear her saying "You'll come home ... come home ... come back...."
He awoke with a start, for something had burned him on the wrist.
The firebrand, all but consumed in his relaxing fingers, had dropped and deposited a blister. In his sudden move to rid himself of the torture to his flesh, he threw off the red-hot candle of wood, and it fell straight downward, sizzling once where it struck in a trickle of the water.
Reviling himself for a stupid blunderer, and arousing vividly to a sense of where he was, and why, he began to question the expediency of returning at once to the terrace. He was still debating the wisdom of the move, when the question was decided by the tiger.
That belated midnight reveler--the old roué of the jungle--was ushered in with questionable pomp--the panic of lesser brutes in flight. And when he drank, beside the useless bomb, there was no mistaking his presence. He presently paused, half satisfied, and lifted his head, against the shudder of the water, to sniff at the jungle breeze.
The wind had betrayed the presence of the man, and the great brute voiced his satisfaction.
That was a long, weird night in the jungle.
What hour it was the tiger finally departed was more than Grenville could have told. And whether the daylight, finally approaching, or a royal disgust, or some easily captured morsel, had served to urge the brute upon his way, was equally unknown.
Grenville descended from his perch at last, when the palms and ferns had darkly emerged from the velvety blackness of the thicket. He took up his club, left the bomb in its place, and, searching about, recovered the sheet of parchment dropped in the darkness. Aware that the silently moving enemy might still be lurking by the pathway, he made his way no less boldly from the shadows, and came duly to the hill.