While they ran they heard shouts in the distance, and then a high, shrill scream!
Cliff gritted his teeth.
“If you’d let me go back and get her——”
But they would not.
Never before had Nicky, Tom, or the older men, seen so much treasure as they found at the end of the passage. Cliff had seen the great room filled with gold and precious cloths and metals once before, when the king’s son took him there to inquire about the statuette.
“Where can Caya have left my father?” Cliff said anxiously when he had taken a swift glance around the treasure room; his chums almost forgot their danger, so awed and fascinated were they.
But Mr. Whitley hurried them all to the steps and up them.
The stairway into the ante-room, or rear portion of the Sun Temple were not straight; they curved like steps in a lighthouse tower.
At their top, emerging after spying carefully, the fugitives found themselves in a narrow room, a sort of Priests’ room, running across the back of the edifice, behind the huge placque on which was embossed and enscrolled the massive face with the Sun-rays around it. Therefore the rear room had two doorways, one on each side of the placque, looking into the main temple. Great tapestries screened these doorways. Bill lost no time in spying through into the main room; finding that deserted, he nodded and permitted the others to ascend into the back room, forbidding loud words in case anyone came into the front temple room by chance, though few had the privilege of entry there.
As they entered, single file, they all grew tense again—it seemed that they were betrayed! A huge curtain hung on the wall opposite to the doorways began to quiver.
Bill hurriedly produced his weapon. “Come forth!” he muttered in quichua; the curtain remained without further stir.
“Look out!” gasped Nicky, “he might have a bow’n arrow!”
Of course he spoke in English, and at the sound of the words there came a low whisper.
“Do not fire!”
From behind the curtain emerged a white man!
“Father!” gasped Cliff, forgetting all cautions. He and his father, so long separated, were at last rejoined.
Their meeting was joyful; but Cliff lost no time in presenting the gray-haired, weak old scholar to the others—except Bill, who had already visited Mr. Gray.
They were not left long without interruption, but, fortunately, when the tension of a steady step ascending the curved stairs was almost unendurable, a lithe, young soldier, hardly older than the chums, made his appearance, stopping before he reached the top step. He carried a short throwing spear, with its point toward himself, a token of his errand being peaceful.
He explained hurriedly that he was Caya’s older brother, belonging to the Palace guard of picked youths, a sort of picked reserve regiment, called out on occasions such as this.
They liked him at once; but they respected his refusal to come into the Temple. “It is forbidden!” he said, simply, to Bill, and told his story briefly from the steps.
Caya had been caught; she had managed to see him. She sent him to search for the white man, and then, if he found him, to convey him to the temple steps and bid him go up. But Mr. Gray, once free, had come there already.
“I go, then, to my duty,” said the young soldier. “Because you saved my sister—from—the sacrifice—and she is very dear to me, for we are twins!—I will try to save your lives tonight.”
“Do you know the secret way?” asked Bill. “So we can get out of the valley?”
The soldier shook his head.
“No. But I will ask to have ‘leave.’ I will pretend to be seeking for you—I hope I shall get to the hill path by following some soldiers secretly despatched to duty by a High Priest.”
“Yes,” Tom agreed. “He would know the secret ways and might send soldiers to guard them.”
But when they asked the young soldier about Caya, his sister, he became very sad.
“She is a captive,” he told Bill, who interpreted. “There is nothing that can be done. Even I, in the Inca’s junior guard, cannot see her.”
“Who can?” demanded Nicky.
“The Inca alone,” said the youthful brother.
He went down the stairway, promising to return after dark, if opportunity permitted. He was certain that they would not be molested because the ceremonies in the temple were finished and the feasting would continue as soon as the disturbance was ended.
“I think,” Nicky suggested, after the soldier went, “we ought to try to help Caya.”
“So do I!” declared Cliff and Tom echoed the fact that she had given up her liberty for their sakes. Cliff suggested a plan and although they hesitated at first, Mr. Whitley, Mr. Gray and Bill finally agreed to it.
Then they began, as is so often the case, to become enthusiastic and hopeful, and also added ideas of their own.
“We would need Tom, too,” Mr. Whitley hesitated.
“I’m not afraid,” Tom said. “If I can do anything to help! Tell me what it is.”
“We must get that rope that we hid at the ledge,” Bill told him. “My idea is for you to strip down to the sort of costume the Inca’s ‘chasquis’ or messengers, wear. I am going to make up a quipu like one that would be used to identify the Inca’s runners, and you are to take it and go to the place we left our rope, for we will need it in the mountain passes. If you meet anybody you can show the quipu and they won’t stop you. If you meet soldiers near the ledge, show the quipu and say ‘I go to get what the Inca has learned about.’ Then, even if they go with you they won’t take the rope away.”
“Can’t I go, too?” Nicky pleaded. “The chances would be better with two——”
“Oh, no,” Mr. Whitley decided. “Tom proved that he can run during the races, and—I must say this in frankness, Nicky—he can keep a quiet tongue and a level head if an emergency comes before him.”
Nicky was crestfallen, but had he been able to look into the future he would not have been depressed at his forced inactivity just for the time.
Tom rehearsed his quichua words, Cliff went over, again and again, the things he might be called on to do and to say. Bill, Mr. Gray and their leader revised and discussed their plan until they could see no possible emergency that could come up that they would not be prepared to meet.
With his fading flashlight, later replaced by Mr. Whitley’s, Bill fashioned a simple quipu of woven strands, taken from a raveled edge of a woolen wall hanging: he knotted it craftily.
Nothing happened to disturb the quiet of the old temple during the afternoon. The early feasting had been completed and, except for some soldiers whom a priest, evidently not quite convinced of miracles, was exhorting to find the vanished ones, all was quiet.
Soon after dark Tom slipped out into the deserted square, on his way to secure the rope.
Not long after that Cliff and Bill started on their mission.
The Inca was in his palace, the low building at one side of the public square: he was tired and worried.
Cliff, who remembered the way from the Palace to the treasure room, led Bill, counting the turns, for he had been observant by habit and had a retentive memory.
The Inca, listening to the conclusion of a report from one of his palace guards, turned back as the man went away. To his amazement he looked into that magic stick which, earlier in the day, he had held while the Spaniard groveled. Now its magic had turned on him. Thus he thought about Bill’s revolver.
Behind him in the passage, concealed by curtains, heavy and closely woven, Cliff made ready his part of the little tableau that was to follow. Their plan was to awe the Inca, perhaps to terrify him. They had tried to foresee every possible chance that could come up. As Bill held his “magic stick” he spoke. He used no quichua, but spoke the secret tongue of the nobles.
“A silent tongue lives long, O, Inca!” he said. “Call not!”
“Servant of Chasca,” the Inca used the same speech, “How came thy form to my palace? Or art thou Cupay?”—that was the Inca tribe word for an evil spirit.
“I come, thou who sayest thou art royal son of the Sun and who dost seek to destroy that other more royal one, Chasca. Can he be destroyed? Ask of thy son, Challcuchima, who strove with him and made a bargain that he might not go down in defeat—and then, like thy own evil self, did break his word to the youth of the bright and flowing locks!”
The Inca was a brave man but he hesitated between his desire to call out and his superstitious fear.
“Thou Inca—earth flesh and not from the skies—to the truth that Raymi is merciful and his messenger is even the same thou dost owe thy life. Look!”
As he spoke the last word in a low, sharp voice, Bill drew aside the hangings. Cliff had wedged a colored-fire stick in a crack of the stones of the corridor: at the approach of the agreed signal he struck a match and ignited it: it flared up in a vivid, weird green that lighted up the space brilliantly. Cliff quickly assumed a posture with arms folded, the light behind him picking out his glowing hair and coloring it strangely.
No wonder the Inca cringed: he had built up a cult of belief that now claimed his own mind. He fell back a step.
“Say on, Chasca!” said Bill, (“And make it quick!” he added in English).
Cliff spoke the lines he had practiced all afternoon.
“Inca,” he said in quichua, “twice today you have tried to slay. Raymi does not wish a sacrifice. I am sent to save your corn. Release, then, Caya—or my wrath shall smite!”
Bill saw that the short, green color-fire must go out. He dropped the curtain swiftly just as it did so. Cliff, aware of his part, snatched the wooden butt from its place and retired to the steps, out of sight.
“Chasca——” began the Inca.
“You speak too late!” Bill declared, again snatching away the concealing drapery. The Inca’s eyes bulged. Gone was the light and the bright-haired figure.
He stammered and gulped.
“Answer to me and Chasca will hear,” Bill said. “Say quickly, do you as Chasca commands?”
But a crafty light was in the Indian’s eyes.
“Let Chasca appear while the curtain is open,” he said.
In English Bill spoke to Cliff. What he said was not understood by the Inca, but it told Cliff they must use the second part of their plan—an emergency had arisen. Bill lifted a hand, calling, “Behold!” but as he did so, attracting the Inca’s eyes toward the curtains, he stepped back a pace. The curtain dropped. Instantly, suspecting a trap, the Inca whirled to face Bill—just as Bill had desired, for at that instant Cliff, who had thus been given time to reach the hanging, flung it aside and leaped upon the Indian from behind as Bill, with a simultaneous leap, flung a hand over the royal mouth.
Struggling, the Inca went down: the surprise helped them. Soon he was gagged with an end of the turban or llantu, the woven wool head dress which he wore when not covered by the crimson or scarlet borla. With an end of the long cloth they hastily cut bindings for hands and ankles. And not too soon.
Across the square came the measured tramp of many feet!
“Will you have time?” asked Cliff, breathlessly.
“I hope so.”
Bill ruthlessly stripped off the borla from the Inca’s head, snatched off his robe of state, and with Cliff’s help made hurried disposal of the inert and helpless body.
“Just in time——” Cliff whispered. “They are here.”
The tramping stopped suddenly at a sharp command. With only a brief delay to remove his sandals, an officer came into the doorway.
“O, royal son of the Sun,” he said, after he had bowed his head low in respect.
He looked around. On a stool on the side of the room far away from the single lamp, what looked to him like the form of the Inca bent over some turbans which he seemed to be sorting on a low bench over which the gaudy colored woolen and spun vicuna-fleece hung in thick folds.
There was no other in the room. Cliff had fled behind the curtain.
“Say on,” came a mutter.
“We have caught one of the servants of Chasca,” reported the soldier.
The form bent over the turban material straightened but only half turned.
“It is the one that Chasca called—‘Nee-kee!’”
Cliff, hiding in the tunnel stairway, heard the last speech and his hands clenched. Nicky was a captive!
He could not see and dared not show himself to get nearer: he must stay as he was and trust to Bill, masquerading as the Inca, to solve this really unexpected problem. They had gone over everything so carefully! There had not been a single point, possibility or chance that they had not covered—except this one!
They had instructed Nicky: they had made their own plans. But that Nicky should be brought to the Inca had not occurred to them.
How would Bill handle it?
If Nicky were brought in would he recognize Bill, or cause suspicion in the soldier’s mind by his look?
And Cliff could not see! He must hide.
“You are a good soldier,” Bill spoke as nearly as he could in the tones of the Inca. “I shall not forget your zeal. Let the servant of Chasca be set before me.”
There was an order, a commotion, and Nicky stood before him. How had he been captured? Then were the two older companions also captives? How could Bill discover the facts?
“Was he alone caught?” asked Bill, as the Inca.
“Oh light of the day, yes.”
Then the others might still be safe!
“I thought to seek once more through the tunnels,” explained the soldier. “I went with my men. Coming to the room beneath the great and holy Temple, Corrichanca——” the place of gold, or the greatest, holiest of the temples——“I thought there was a sound. I sought behind every tapestry and under piles of rich golden cloth—may Raymi forgive me that I did touch them with my poor hands!—and this Nee-kee did hide.”
Much later Nicky explained to his chums that he had crept down the stone stairway to watch for any possible hint of the return of his friends and then had been attracted by the gold and had been caught by the unexpectedly quiet approach of the soldier.
Nicky knew, or suspected at least, that the figure over in the shadows was his own friend, Bill. But he was, for once, master of his face: he did not betray his thoughts. He kept perfectly still, standing between two soldiers.
Cliff, in hiding, wondered what Bill could do, what he would say.
“Are soldiers now in the secret ways?” asked Bill.
“No, most powerful ray of the Sun’s light on earth,” replied the captain. “The search was completed when I discovered this one: no other could be found.”
“And yet,” and Bill raised his voice, determined that it must carry information to Cliff so that he could guide his own future by what he heard. “And yet we may find even Chasca in that tunnel unless he runs very fast. It comes to me as a prophecy that he may be near to liberate his servant. But if so, no doubt he will run away or disappear.”
Cliff, listening, heard that and determined that he would run very fast and get back to his father and Mr. Whitley and tell them what had happened, so that they would not go down to look for Nicky. But he hesitated. Perhaps Bill had more instructions for him!
Cliff crept a little way down the corridor, to be able to catch distinctly every word of Bill’s next speech, given in quichua.
“I must go to the dungeons. I will speak with Caya. She must be made to tell all. I take Nee-kee with me. Soldier, guard this palace—let no one enter here. The guards at the dungeon will help me take Caya to the temple, Corrichanca, of the god, Raymi, where, in front of those white ones in their dyed skins, she shall tell me the truth.”
Bill thus gave Cliff all the information he needed. Down the steps and back to the Sun Temple sped Cliff, quite sure of his way.
He identified himself to the watchful father, Mr. Whitley also, and explained breathlessly what had happened and what Bill had told him he would do. They must wait, they decided.
But where was Tom. Would he get the rope? Would he be caught?
And while they debated, in the palace the Coya, or queen, entered the audience room from another chamber. She looked around. Something strange about the pile of wool in the corner attracted her attention. Bill had already gone. But the queen saw the real Inca.
“Ho—guards!—hither!” she cried. “Help me! The Inca is bound beneath these wools!”
Tom did not go very far on his way before he saw a small troop of soldiers guarding the road.
He hesitated: if he tried to slip around them he might run into others: if he ran boldly past them it would test his nerve but it was really the safest course.
He kept on, running lightly, drawing his breath a little faster than usual, more from excitement than from weariness.
“Stop, chasqui!” commanded the officer in charge as Tom ran close to the resting soldiers. “Where run you so fast?”
Tom showed the quipu Bill had made up.
“I run for the Inca,” he said.
The officer studied his face: while the light was only that coming from the stars he peered closely.
“I do not know you,” he declared.
Tom drew himself up to his full height. He stared at the officer, trying to be haughty.
The officer was not impressed. At the same time, he did not quite dare to delay a messenger with the royal proof, the quipu that seemed to indicate Tom’s errand as genuine.
He did not release the grip he had taken on Tom’s arm.
A soldier stepped forward and made a salute.
“Let me run with the chasqui,” he said. “Thus the Inca’s message will not be delayed and if the fellow is carrying the royal token without warrant I can bring him back.”
This did not suit Tom but he said nothing. It flashed through his mind that this was no time to raise a disturbance: later on he might think of some way to elude the soldier.
“See that you do,” said the officer. Tom whirled, snatched his arm free and ran. The soldier ran as lightly, as swiftly as he.
Tom had been in the races during the ceremonies of naming Challcuchima successor to the Inca’s rule: it suited his present purpose to make the soldier at his side run his best, to tire him quickly.
But, as the road was spurned by his light feet, he realized that the soldier was not one to tire quickly: step for step, with easy breath and unwearied muscles, he kept the pace. Then Tom received a surprise.
They were passing the outskirts of the city of Quichaka and had come to a small house; it was not of the splendid stone, matched and sturdy, that marked the noble palaces; it was built of the sticky earth mixed with rushes or reeds and grasses, of which the Peruvians made bricks to use in their homes for the more humble people.
“Turn with me,” said the soldier.
Tom hesitated. What was the fellow’s purpose? He saw that his companion was young, but he had not recognized him.
But, as they came into the dimly lit room wherein an aged couple squatted, he stared.
His soldier companion was Caya’s brother!
The youth wasted little time explaining to his parents: the woman began to mutter: she was afraid of what could happen if they shielded these lads from the world beyond their mountains. But the youth’s father was different: he understood his son’s explanation readily and nodded. The soldier told Tom to remain there when Tom had explained his errand.
“There is no need to run so far,” he said. “I will find a rope that will be strong and light.”
“It will save time,” Tom said.
“Yes—and time is precious!”
The old man listened. Finally he spoke.
“What of Caya?”
“I think she is safe,” Tom told him, and in what quichua he could master, aided by signs, he detailed what he knew of the plan to save her. The old woman was horrified at what she understood of the plan to go to the Inca, but the man laughed with a hoarse, hearty chuckle.
“Shame!” cried his old wife. “That you laugh at the son of the Sun.”
“But he has brought it upon himself,” the man assured her. “If he were a true descendant of the old line of rulers I would not dare to laugh: but you know he is not of the true line and when we of his council advised him to free the white stranger who would, I think, write in his papers but not tell others how to find us, he refused. This is therefore his punishment for being vain of his own counsel!”
Meanwhile Tom and the young soldier discussed plans. The latter was certain that Caya’s shepherd would never be able to come to see her tonight: the secret ways were all guarded by many soldiers and the hills were full of the searching natives.
“But there is a way, I think,” he said. “I know of an old aqueduct that has not been filled with water for years. It was built to take water to flood the secret tunnels if any came to steal our treasure; but most people, I believe, forget what it is for and how to operate its old water gate. Stay you here until I look at the gate to be sure it is not open and that we can get into its deep bed: also I will hide a strong rope there and come back. Then we will get your friends. Caya, if she is free, must leave the city. I think the mother of her shepherd in the hills will care for her until the Inca has forgotten.”
He hurried away and Tom, resting and waiting, wondering what was happening and how his comrades fared, listened to much that would have been interesting under other circumstances.
The old man told him the history of the hidden valley: told how the race began, for he was a student and a quipucamaya, or reader of the records, and knew much of the legend and history: but while Tom listened respectfully, his mind was far away.
He was glad when the young soldier came back.
He had all in readiness and after thanking the older people and being assured by the man that he would get bundles of food ready so that they could be picked up by his son later, Tom and his companion set out for the city, going in ways that took them safely past all guards.
But when they reached the square they stopped. A crowd was clamoring and shouting outside the Temple to the Sun and it was easy to tell that their angry shouts meant dire danger for the persons who might be within its walls.
And Tom did not know who was there, or what to do!
Within the rear chamber of the Sun Temple Cliff, his father and Mr. Whitley heard the roar of the furious people. The Coya had discovered her husband, the Inca, and soldiers had released him: from them the news had spread swiftly among the populace. The chief priest and other nobles had been summoned.
In the passages Bill and Nicky finally reached the golden room, ignorant of this failure of all their carefully laid plans.
In the square Tom, with Caya’s brother, saw the procession going toward the Sun Temple. Only the Inca and his highest priests had the privilege of entering there—and they were going in!
“There is but one place we have not sought,” Huamachaco had said. “That temple so sacred! Those men and youths with dyed skins, as the Spaniard has told us—they would profane its very sanctuary with their vile presence. Come—you shall see!”
Tom proposed, in his halting quichua, that he and Caya’s brother press through the throng; but the young soldier had a better plan. “No,” he said. “I have learned the way. We go to the lower level from the Inca’s palace—even that I dare for you!—and then we shall see if the way is clear to the old water way. I will wait there and you shall bring your friends. Come. I show the way.”
The palace was deserted: all minds and all eyes were focused on the temple.
“Let’s lose no time!” whispered Tom, and the two youths made all the haste they could. They were already in the passages when from the mob around the Sun Temple came a deep, throaty roar—the throaty, deep lust-cry of a mob thirsting for vengeance for a seeming insult to their temple!
The Inca had gone in with his aide and then had hurried to the doorway again to signal that they had found their prey.
At the foot of the steps in the treasure room Bill sent Nicky up to tell his friends to be ready, to see if Cliff had returned to them safely and to learn what they knew of Tom.
Nicky walked up the steps, cautiously, and found himself facing the Inca and his chief priest and the Spaniard. In their fury the nobles had overlooked the insult of the Spaniard’s entry into the sacred chamber.
Nicky saw at once that he had blundered into a trap. John Whitley, Mr. Gray, and Cliff faced the angry noble and the Inca, desperately, not knowing what to do. The crowd in the square gave them no chance to escape that way. They could not know that the passages were not already invaded by soldiers. Indeed, there were detachments already coming from the palace.
Far away down a lateral passageway Caya’s brother showed Tom the place where, when the tunnels were made, an opening had been left into an old waterway; in case of menace to the treasures, a former Inca had provided a way to flood the tunnels.
The young soldier began as quietly as he could to tear away the old debris that had collected, while Tom hurried back along the tunnel, making careful note of the way, planning to tell his friends to hurry, that the way for escape was found!
At the foot of the steps he found Bill.
“Something has gone wrong!” Bill whispered. “Nicky went up the steps five minutes since. He hasn’t come down. I haven’t heard from anybody. But I think I hear sounds in the tunnels. Don’t you?”
Tom listened.
“Yes, I do,” he said, under his breath. “Bill, I’ll slip up the stairs—and see what’s what!”
“Too late!” Bill whispered.
Far away down the passages came shouts. Once they saw a light flash. They were being cornered, surrounded. If there was no way from the temple they were helpless.
Tom told his story in hurried words.
Yet the news had come too late, it seemed. Unless quick thinking could get them out of the toils, they were doomed.
Up above, in the temple, the Inca was delivering his words of doom. “You can no longer be free!” he said sharply. “Escape is not possible. You have profaned our temples! You have deceived us! You shall go to the dungeons.”
Cliff looked from one to the other of his friends. If only Tom was there—he knew from Nicky where Bill was!—they could make one desperate effort! Perhaps they might use his remaining smoke pot. But Tom was not there!
Nicky gripped his arm.
From the lower levels came a muffled report! Bill had fired into the air as a body of soldiers came, in their light cotton quilted armor, carrying bows and arrows and short spears; they had to stop in face of his “magic stick” that spat out fire and sudden death.
“We must go to Bill!” whispered Cliff. “We can’t get out through the square! If we can get through the passages we may be able to hide.” The others agreed. With the Inca, Huamachaco and Pizzara in hot pursuit, but unarmed, they almost leaped down the curving steps.
Bill stood at their foot, his back to them, his weapon leveled. Before him half a dozen soldiers hesitated.
“We’re here!” cried Cliff. Then he saw Tom, just around the edge of the wall, tense and alert, his own light, and in this emergency almost useless weapon held ready.
If only they had known Tom was there, two minutes sooner!
Before they could make any concerted plan Pizzara, with his quick cunning serving him, caught old, weakened Mr. Gray by an arm: he saw that Bill could possibly daunt the soldiers; with merciless cruelty he dragged the old scholar past Bill before the others quite knew what he meant to do. Immediately he swung Mr. Gray, who was not strong enough to resist the surprise attack: Pizzara swung him so that his own body was shielded.
Bill saw, too late, the ruse. His weapon was useless: in that narrow place he could not fire without endangering the old student of ancient civilizations.
“Down, Father!” Cliff cried. “Drop down!”
The old man had recovered his balance. With all his small strength he tried to fling off Pizzara’s grip, to lower his body. At the same instant the high priest and the Inca caught hold of Mr. Whitley and Bill. Cliff and Nicky in turn grasped them. Tom broke past Bill and caught a tackle around Pizzara’s legs. His balance thus disturbed the Spaniard lost his grip on Mr. Gray.
Cliff tripped his adversary and with Mr. Whitley fighting with all his skill and science, soon was free to go to Tom’s side.
Bill was there already, and a short-arm blow dazed the Spaniard. Down he went. But in that brief scuffle the soldiers had leaped forward.
Outnumbered, there was little that the desperate party could do. Pizzara shielded himself; a soldier wrestled with Bill for possession of the magic stick. It exploded once, but its muzzle was pointed toward the roof and no one suffered. During a lull in the scrimmage, for Cliff thought, in a passing flash, how like a football game was this scrimmage, the youth thought he saw Caya’s brother holding a torch. But he was not sure.
Panting, perspiring, choked by the resinous smoke of the torches, the three men and their three youthful companions were soon overpowered. Bill’s, and Tom’s weapons, as well as those of Mr. Whitley—their only three pistols—had been flung to the floor.
Cliff made one valiant effort, rolling about with a soldier on his back, to grasp a revolver. But Pizzara kicked it aside.
“Into the dungeons!” cried the Inca.
Held by a soldier at either side, the six captives had no chance to try to make a break for liberty, even if such a try could have succeeded: with soldiers everywhere there was no chance for success.
Sombre and dejected, they were led to a place where guards moved aside great stones.
Into blackness, all together, they were flung!
Their dungeon was dark and it had the smell of an underground place, musty, damp, stuffy. When it seemed to Cliff that hours must have passed since they had all been flung into the single unlighted cubicle he looked at the radiumited face of the watch on his wrist: hardly half an hour had elapsed.
“This is truly a terrible situation,” said Mr. Gray. “I feel very badly when I think that in coming here to help me you have all fallen into a worse situation.”
“Please don’t feel that way, Father,” Cliff begged, touching the hand that trembled a little on his knee. “You always taught me that no good intention and no act done with a good motive could ever bring anything but good.”
“It does not seem to work, this time,” said his father.
“But it will!” Tom said. “Didn’t you notice the soldier who walked with me? No, you didn’t: I remember, we were behind you. Well, it was Caya’s brother and he whispered to me to give him the quipu supposed to be the Inca’s token.”
“I didn’t know that,” Mr. Whitley spoke through the darkness. “He may try to help us.”
“Mr. Whitley,” said Nicky, “why can’t we all push on that big stone across the door? It is on some sort of a pivot: we could all push together and move it.”
“Yes, two of us could move it—the soldiers did,” Bill took a part in the talk. “But the guards are outside. By the time we could get the stone moved they could use their swords.”
“I guess we are helpless,” Mr. Whitley said remorsefully. “And it is all my fault for letting you lads come here: you should have camped on the ledge: Bill and I should have taken the risks of danger.”
“I still have faith that an Almighty Power watches over us,” Cliff declared. “We have gone through a great deal of danger and not one of us has been hurt.”
“I am proud of you, my son,” said Mr. Gray. “And it is a rebuke to us who are older. I know, deep down in my heart, that you are right. After years among these people, unharmed, made nearly well when I thought my feebleness would destroy me, I should be thankful to that Great Power—and I am!”
“Let’s all think ‘we are going to get out all right,’” Nicky suggested. “Think as hard as we can.”
No one replied. Perhaps, with all other help apparently denied them, they all had a mind to do as Nicky urged: at any rate the black room, with its air rapidly growing more stale and heavy, was so silent that they heard, through the place where the upper end of the barrier failed to touch the door frame, the muttering of several guards in the tunnel.
Ages passed, or so it seemed. In fact, hours did go slowly into the past, and nothing happened.
“Listen!” whispered Tom, finally, when the air had become so oppressive that they all began to feel heavy and dull. “Did I hear somebody walking?”
“Yes,” answered Bill. “They are changing the guard, I guess.”
“Poor Caya,” said Cliff. “I feel sorry for her. She is all alone, in some hole as dark as this: and all on account of us.”
“Yes,” said Tom. “But she is alive—and so is her sister—because of us.”
“I wonder where her brother is,” Nicky mused.
“Sh-h-h!” warned Bill. “Be quiet and if the stone moves, let’s all make a rush. I hear somebody fumbling at the stone.”
He had moved close to the barricaded doorway in the dark. But as the stone began to move and they all gathered their muscles for a dash, they were chained with surprise.
“I am Pizzara,” came the unmistakable voice of the Spaniard. “I come to help. Push there, you!”
The stone moved more and even the faint light from a torch jammed into a place made for it nearby in the tunnel wall was brilliant to their widened pupils. They blinked as they saw two figures, in the garb of the Inca’s soldiers.
“It is Caya’s brother and the stranger who spoke,” said one of the figures, in quichua dialect. “Come forth quickly!”
They filed out; Nicky and Bill and Cliff helped support Mr. Gray who was stiff and tottering from his long inactivity. They saw Caya’s brother tapping at several other door stones; finally he called to Tom and Cliff and the three managed to move a great barricade slowly a little way aside. Had it not been swung on a rude pivot this would have been impossible. As it was they got it far enough opened to allow Caya, shaking with excitement and eagerness, to come from her black prison.
“I meet this soldier,” explained Pizzara. “I have watch him and I think he is friend. I ask him and it is yes. Now we go quick’.”
“I certainly do beg your pardon,” said Mr. Whitley. “I thought you were an enemy and you have liberated us.”
The Spaniard showed his teeth in a curious grin.
“It is all a part of my plan,” he said mysteriously as they went hastily along the passage, the young Peruvian carrying the single torch in the rear with his sister. “When you are sleeping in the lake bottom I steal away with my men. I think then we get here before you. But the Indians fling stones upon us in the white pass and my natives know it is danger’.”
They kept careful watch but it seemed that no one was in the tunnels: the guards whom the Spaniard and the Indian had replaced had gone home or to their barracks and no one else was on guard, it seemed.
“All but one,” the Spaniard went on. “My men are escape. I have gun and I make them go forward, but we go in old water way.” The same one, Cliff mused, that they had used to get around the ambush; then he listened as Pizzara continued, “We find the ledge as it is on the map and there is your camp where you have leave some thing and the cord to haul the rope. It is very clever, si.”
“You left your natives there,” Bill said. “That’s my guess. Then you came down into this valley. But how did you expect to get any gold—or much!—all alone?”
“Ah!” grinned Pizzara, “this one is clever, as you. I plan all this and as I plan so it is come out—just exactly.”
“Plan?——” Cliff was puzzled. “How could you expect we would get into a dungeon and that you would save us—and what has that to do with your plan to get gold?”
“It is all simple,” Pizzara grinned. “I come and see that you are here: then I find ways to make Inca suspect you, and high priest to make you prisoner. You help that by what you do. So then I have you where I wish to have you! It is good fortune of my patron Saint that this soldier and his sister are mix up with you. It make two more to carry for me.”
“To carry?” demanded Mr. Whitley. “What do you mean?”
They had come to the place where the tunnel branched away in the direction of the break where the aqueduct used to flood the tunnels was situated: by common impulse they all swung after Tom who had memorized that way.
“Halt!” snapped Pizzara. They all stopped and looked at him. In the torchlight his face was a leering, triumphant mask of lustful delight. In his hand was the very “magic stick”—the small revolver—which he had caused the high priest to take from Bill when they were captured: Bill had not been able to use it, even in self rescue, for fear of shooting his friends; he had surrendered it with a scowl for his rifle, as he now knew, was in the hands of Pizzara’s natives, waiting, at the camp on the ledge.
“We can’t stop,” Mr. Whitley said. “Some one may discover us.”