Pandemonium reigned in the square. This was sacrilege unspeakable! Did not the Coya already belong to the gods! Muera la Coya! Death to the stranger! There was a huge rush, a scramble of raging Indians along parapets, over rocks and the ruins of temples, while the golden litter was hurried away by the Guards of the Sacrifice and the amautas. Maria-Teresa closed her eyes, carrying to the tomb that supreme farewell which was perhaps to cost Dick his life.

“You must be mad,” said the madman Orellana, when he saw Dick lean over and call to Maria-Teresa, and when she answered, asked almost angrily: “How did you come to know my daughter?”

The roar of the angry crowd surged up to them, surrounded them, and drew nearer. It was with the greatest difficulty that Orellana shook Dick out of his strange torpor, dragged him through the gap from which they had emerged, and finally to the labyrinth below the Temple. Apparently familiar with every twist and turning of the place, he led him through a mile of passages, their darkness relieved here and there by round, square or triangular patches of light sifting down between thousand-year-old stones from the world above. Occasionally he stopped to tell Dick what temple, what palace, they were passing under.

“Yaca-Huasi, which they also call the House of the Serpent, is over our heads now.”

“Perhaps they have taken her there!”

“No, no! That’s against all the rules. The Temple of Death is the next place.”

“Where are we going to? Where are you taking me?”

“To the Temple of Death, of course!”

Dick followed him without another word, but expressed his surprise when they emerged into the open country.

“Where is the Temple, then?” he asked.

“On the Island of Titicaca. You needn’t be afraid. We shall get there before them.”

They hired horses at a wayside inn and rode to Sicuani. Here they took a train which, turning onto a branch line at Juliaca, then ran to Puno, on the shores of Lake Titicaca. On the way, Orellana babbled ceaselessly about the country through which they were passing and the ceremony they were to witness.

No stranger has ever seen it. But he, Orellana, asked nobody’s permission, and since his daughter was to be wedded to the Sun, it was the least of things that he should be present at the marriage, and particularly as he had planned it all so carefully! It had taken him years to find the Temple of Death, but with patience all things could be done. There was not one dried-up river-Red underground, not a deserted goldmine which he did not know so well that he could find his way about it with his eyes shut. |

And what fortunes he had discovered under the earth; a fortune equal to all the fortunes on earth! It was obvious that the Incas must have got their gold somewhere. Well, he had discovered where! There was plenty of it left, plenty of it left!... One day, some clever young engineer would find out, and he would only have to stoop to be as rich as Croesus. (A bitter smile from the young engineer, whose thoughts were far from such things.)... But he, Orellana, did not give a fig for all the gold in creation.

He loved only his daughter, whom the Indians had taken to the Temple of Death, and it was only the Temple of Death which he had sought.

It had taken him years, but now everything was; ready and he was going to save her. He had waited long enough to kiss her again! Ten whole years!

So the old man wandered on, while Dick listened eagerly, striving to guess how much was truth, and how much madness.

“But how do they get from Cuzco to the Temple of Death?”

“Don’t you worry about that.... By the Corridors of Night, by the Corridors of the Mountains of Night, by the Corridors of the Lake of Night.... By the way, do you know anything about fishing?”

Dick did not have time to answer this extraordinary question, for the guard had come through to their carriage, and was inviting them to the luggage-van to see the samacuena danced. Everybody else seemed to be going there, and they accepted so as not to draw attention to themselves. They found the van peopled with Indians, dancing, playing the guitar, and drinking hard. At each step, the guard, to celebrate Garcia’s victories, fired a volley of cohetes, the mountains throwing back the echo of the explosions.

Then some of the Quichua soldiers in the train gave themselves up to the pleasures of the chase. Spying flocks of vicu?as in the hills, they went to the observation-car and tried their luck. One of them, something of a marksman, brought down a vicu?a, the train stopped with a grinding of brakes, and the guard himself went off to retrieve the bag.

Dick, wild with impatience, would have liked to club the engine driver and take charge of the locomotive himself, but Orellana calmed him down.

“We’re sure to get there before them. You’ll see! Why, we shall even have time to do some fishing!”

Leaving their fellow-travelers to cut up the vicu?a, they returned to their carriage, where the stove had been lighted. It had become intensely cold, for they were now in the snow regions, more than fourteen thousand feet above sea-level. Soroche, or mountain fever, threw the young engineer, and after bleeding violently at the nose, he fell into a semi-comatose condition. He did not recover until Punho, when he again remembered the horrible nightmare through which he was living, and savagely demanded to be shown the way to the Temple of Death.

“We’re going there,” replied his strange guide, but first took him to the main square, where about a hundred Indian girls, wearing skirts of a dark material and the low-cut bodices of their race, squatted in orderly rows, selling fruits and vegetables dried in the cold.

“There are usually two hundred of them,” explained Orellana, “but the Red Ponchos have been this way and chosen the best-looking half for the ceremony. It’s the same thing every ten years.”

He made a few purchases with Dick’s money, and after adding a flask of pisco to his stores, led the way out of the city. At nightfall they reached a huge marsh, alive with water-fowl. Next they crossed a heath, llamas and alpacas fleeing at their approach, and finally came to a dismal little bay on the shores of th............