As It Was in the Beginning

The ascent was steep and difficult, so unbroken was the undergrowth, except where jagged and pitted rocks rose grayly on the slope. Bananas, nut palms, and mangoes Grenville pro...

At noon Elaine reluctantly consumed the last remaining drop of water. Grenville had taken a sip, and pretended to take a swallow. To refuse it longer, Elaine quite clearly compr...

The following day was calmer for Elaine, and vastly interesting, since Grenville's smelting operations were begun. She told herself that interest only laid its hold upon her nat...

A number of twigs that he could not have passed without creating a disturbance he cut away with his knife. His ladder was also badly caught and stubbornly refused to be adjusted...

Grenville made no attempt to sleep as the long night went laggardly by. He dozed, from sheer weariness, now and again, with his back against the rocks, but two or three times in...

The creepers had answered this latest need, with their bark so readily hollowed. He had burned up yards of the drying stuff with the core removed, all of it shrunk and twisted t...

With a rattle and scraping along the deck, the device with the two prone figures desperately clinging to its surface, was halted and tilted nearly level as it struck a spar and...

Not the slightest alarm had invaded the ship, when Grenville finally urged his senses back to the normal, notwithstanding the unaccustomed suddenness with which the aspect of th...

The ladder that Grenville constructed in the morning was not entirely new. He had found upon testing the original contrivance, made for his séance with the tiger, that, although...

There were woods in abundance about the base of the tufa cliff that would burn almost as slowly and retain their glow about as long as the hardest of anthracite coal.

The island twilight was brief. When the sun departed from that speck of verdure in the purple sea, the covetous darkness seemed to form like a presence that had crouched to bide...

Grenville came running across the rock-strewn terrace as if guided by superinstinct. He fancied a sound like a heavy splash arose from the base of the shadowy wall, and momentar...

Elaine had not yet appeared on the scene when Grenville went down to the jungle. The morning hour was still decidedly early, but plans and impatience to be up and at work had pr...

He had brought their supply of water in the sea-shell, so variously employed. Before providing fruits for their breakfast, he went to his furnace with Elaine. The firing was com...

The morning dawned in beauty, a few clouds riding with thistle-down lightness athwart the illimitable dome of blue, as intense as that of the sea. A light breeze stirred in the...

The symbols and trinkets of solid metal and glistening stones were arranged not only on rudely-hewn shelves about the cavern's walls, but likewise in several stone receptacles,...

He was still on the raft, and there was Elaine, on her knees, pulling hard at his oars to drive the float ashore. She was dripping wet from head to foot.

Grenville was glad she knew what a head-hunter means. He loathed the necessity of making revolting explanations. He vainly wished he might spare her now--that his judgment might...

Long-distance fighting began an hour after sunrise in the morning. It was rather a long-distance attack, since Grenville, armed only with the cannon, was powerless to retaliate,...

The tiger had turned his blazing eyes on the man he but partially feared. Sidney was coming less at him than towards the helpless, prostrate form that lay upon the grass.

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 wak...

Grenville returned for his jugs and the torch, impatient to be employed. The clay receptacles were useless on the hill, but he carried them back to the gallery, to leave them on...

Alone on the hill, and already strung to the highest tension of dread by Grenville's long absence, after what he had said of a prompt return, Elaine had been struck with alarm t...

The squealing of some little insignificant beast, apparently more in sport than apprehension, betrayed very soon the fact that no sinister visitor was even prowling near. So hea...

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.

A species of horror attacked the man on whom the truth had flashed. What abominable cruelties and crimes lay back of the business thus finally to some extent revealed, he could...

The figure was Elaine's. Grenville was almost upon her, prepared for some swift and terrible deed of retaliation, when a swirl in the shroud that enveloped them both revealed he...

The native ship, that had sailed unobserved within almost hailing distance of the headland, was not the one that had come to the island before. It was larger. Six men at least c...

He was much refreshed, yet had not entirely recuperated the strength so drained in the night. The aspect of the barren rock, engulfed in the fumes, was only what he had expected...

His belated discovery that one of his fuses was deficient had somewhat shaken his nerves. Except for this timely restoration, his whole project must have been weakened, perhaps...

Not only had Grenville to a small extent succeeded in smudging the outside terminal of the passage discovered through the rock, but also Elaine had discovered the smoke so stran...

The yacht was the "Petrel," luxurious hobby of Sir Myles Kemp, diverted from her homeward course by the merest whim of her owner to run up northward for a day while Sir Myles sh...

The sea is an ancient worker of miracles in amazing transformation, but rarely does it bring about a more complete or startling metamorphosis than that which was wrought upon Gr...

The sound had no sooner died on the air than a second, far louder, and far more uncanny in its suggestiveness of someone in mortal pain, followed piercingly, up around the rock,...

It was not until the entire cycle of haunting sounds had been repeated for its final time that Elaine could consent to return to her pallet of grasses. And even when she had onc...

He feared for a moment, when the sails were first discerned, they were new craft about to arrive. He could not have known that his mines sunk the third of the boats formerly at...

Grenville was not the type to be readily excited, yet a glow of exceptional brilliance shone in his eyes as he met the searching gaze of his friend, and wondered if Fenton could...

It was merely a cylinder, made of brass, fully three inches in diameter, and, perhaps, eight inches long. Its cap was rusted so firmly in place that he could not possibly remove...

The boatmen thus newly arrived off the estuary's mouth were proceeding in a leisurely and confident manner to make themselves and their vessel snug for the night, and Grenville...

That one more shock of surprise could overtake the returning castaways before the final landing could be accomplished would have seemed incredible to either Grenville or Elaine-...

It was far too hot to be handled carelessly. And when he broke away the earthy covering and leaves, and arranged the steaming pieces on the platter Elaine had prepared, it was p...

Her alarm could know no bounds. It had come so suddenly and unexpectedly; it had been such a cataclysmic destruction of the island's haunting calm! She was certain some hideous...

What it was that happened when he felt the waters swiftly rising all about him Grenville could never have told. He was almost certain his foot had come in contact with a heavy,...

Nearly a week of high-pressure application appeared to have accomplished so little. Yet a hundred pounds at least of his liveliest powder had been mixed and stored away, either...

No doubts could be for long entertained as to what the smudge was expected to accomplish. Its dense and suffocating fumes not only rendered a further watch upon the clearing or...

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 m...

A trick of the sun, or perhaps her paint, had concealed both masts and funnel for a time, presenting only a rakish angle of her prow and quarter, incredibly like a sail of the s...