his
command. The top of the rock sloped slightly towards the west, and
nothing short of dynamite or regular quarrying operations would render
it untenable by hostile marksmen.

During the day his Lee-Metfords, at ninety yards' range, might be
trusted to keep the place clear of intruders. But at night--that was
the difficulty. He partially solved it by fixing two rests on the ledge
to support a rifle in exact line with the center of the enemy's
supposed position, and as a variant, on the outer rest he marked lines
which corresponded with other sections of the entire front available to
the foe.

Even then he was not satisfied. When time permitted he made many
experiments with ropes reeved through the pulley and attached to a
rifle action. He might have succeeded in his main object had not his
thoughts taken a new line. His aim was to achieve some method of
opening and closing the breech-block by means of two ropes. The
difficulty was to secure the preliminary and final lateral movement of
the lever bolt, but it suddenly occurred to him that if he could manage
to convey the impression that Iris and he had left the island, the
Dyaks would go away after a fruitless search. The existence of ropes
along the face of the rock--an essential to his mechanical
scheme--would betray their whereabouts, or at any rate excite dangerous
curiosity. So he reluctantly abandoned his original design, though not
wholly, as will be seen in due course.

In pursuance of his latest idea he sedulously removed from the foot of
the cliff all traces of the clearance effected on the ledge, and,
although he provided supports for the tarpaulin covering, he did not
adjust it. Iris and he might lie _perdu_ there for days without
their retreat being found out. This development suggested the necessity
of hiding their surplus stores and ammunition, and what spot could be
more suitable than the cave?

So Jenks began to dig once more in the interior, laboring manfully with
pick and shovel in the locality of the fault with its vein of antimony.
It was thus that he blundered upon the second great event of his life.

Rainbow Island had given him the one thing a man prizes above all
else--a pure yet passionate love for a woman beautiful alike in body
and mind. And now it was to endow him with riches that might stir the
pulse of even a South African magnate. For the sailor, unmindful of
purpose other than providing the requisite _cache_, shoveling and
delvin