The catamaran having been made thoroughly secure, he hastened away to the terrace. He missed Elaine. She was down at the "smelter," attending the fire that was roasting the new clay vessels.
With a bomb and his lighted torch in hand--held well apart and not for a moment handled carelessly--he hailed Elaine from the edge of the thicket by the wall.
"Just thought I'd drop around and drain out that water from the cave," he announced. "Everything's ready--and I've nothing else to do. When you hear the salute, you'll know it's a commonplace affair."
"Oh!" said Elaine, who had her doubts concerning his various explosions. "I'll watch to see you from the cliff."
"Well--er--I wouldn't stand just at the edge, you know--not till you know it's all over."
"You're not going to blow down the hill?"
"Hope not, I've taken a baby bomb, but I didn't wish to let it off till I'd told you what to expect. I'd keep away, in case of flying pieces."
"I will," said Elaine. "But I'll go up now, and perhaps you can call to let me know how well you have succeeded."
Grenville hastened to his raft. "Please God she may never have to hear me fire another!" he thought, as he went, reflecting on things that might happen. He could not have known that only a mild beginning had been made on their programme as scheduled by the Fates.
He was soon rowing eagerly and vigorously against the current of the tide, which would run with lessening velocity for perhaps another hour. When he came to the cave, he promptly discovered why the injunction to enter its mouth at high water only had been made a point in the mystic directions found with the map in the tube.
The ledge whereon he had landed before was deeply undercut. During a tide no more than two or three feet lower than this that would serve him to-day, the place could scarcely be approached, and could never be entered at all. The swirl, which was rarely ever absent from the place, increased in violence steadily with the lowering levels of the water.
It was not without some chance of catastrophe that he presently landed on the shelf. He lost little time in securing his painter to the rocks, the line so adjusted he could readily slip it from the crevice should a hasty retreat seem wise.