“It’s the Spanish of the conquistadores pretty badly gone to seed,” Torres contributed. “You see I was right. The Lost Souls never get away.”

“At any rate they must give and be given in marriage,” Francis quipped, “else how explain these three young huskies?”

But by this time the three huskies, having reached agreement, were beckoning them with encouraging gestures to follow across the valley.

“They’re good-natured and friendly cusses, to say the least, despite their sorrowful mug,” said Francis, as they prepared to follow. “But did you ever see a sadder-faced aggregation in your life? They must have been born in the dark of the moon, or had all their sweet gazelles die, or something or other worse.”

“It’s just the kind of faces one would expect of lost souls,” Leoncia answered.

“And if we never get out of here, I suppose we’ll get to looking a whole lot sadder than they do,” he came back. “Anyway, I hope they’re leading us to breakfast. Those berries were better than nothing, but that is not saying much.”

An hour or more afterward, still obediently following their guides, they emerged upon the clearings, the dwelling places, and the Long House of the tribe.

“These are descendants of Da Vasco’s party and the Caribs,” Torres affirmed, as he glanced over the assembled faces. “That is incontrovertible on the face of it.”

“And they’ve relapsed from the Christian religion of Da Vasco to old heathen worship,” added Francis. “Look at that altar——there. It’s a stone altar, and, from the smell of it, that is no breakfast, but a sacrifice that is cooking, in spite of the fact that it smells like mutton.”

“Thank heaven it’s only a lamb,” Leoncia breathed. “The old Sun Worship included human sacrifice. And this is Sun Worship. See that old man there in the long shroud with the golden-rayed cap of gold. He’s a sun priest. Uncle Alfaro has told me all about the sun-worshipers.”

Behind and above the altar, was a great metal image of the sun.

“Gold, all gold,” Francis whispered, “and without alloy. Look at those spikes, the size of them, yet so pure is the metal that I wager a child could bend them any way it wished and even tie knots in them.”

“Merciful God!—look at that!” Leoncia gasped, indicating with her eyes a crude stone bust that stood to one side of the altar and slightly lower. “It is the face of Torres. It is the face of the mummy in the Maya cave.”

“And there is an inscription——” Francis stepped closer to see and was peremptorily waved back by the priest. “It says, ‘Da Vasco.’ Notice that it has the same sort of helmet that Torres is wearing.—And, say! Glance at the priest! If he doesn’t look like Torres’ full brother, I’ve never fancied a resemblance in my life!”

The priest, with angry face and imperative gesture, motioned Francis to silence, and made obeisance to the cooking sacrifice. As if in response, a flaw of wind put out the flame of the cooking.

“The Sun God is angry,” the priest announced with great solemnity, his queer Spanish nevertheless being intelligible to the newcomers. “Strangers have come among us and remain unslain. That is why the Sun God is angry. Speak, you young men who have brought the strangers alive to our altar. Was not my bidding, which is ever and always the bidding of the Sun God, that you should slay them?”

One of the three young men stepped tremblingly forth, and with trembling forefingers pointed at the face of Torres and at the face of the stone bust.

“We recognised him,” he quavered, “and we could not slay him for we remembered prophecy and that our great ancestor would some day return. Is this stranger he? We do not know. We dare not know nor judge. Yours, O priest, is the knowledge, and yours be the judgment. Is this he?”

The priest looked closely at Torres and exclaimed incoherently. Turning his back abruptly, he rekindled the sacred cooking fire from a pot of fire at the base of an altar. But the fire flamed up, flickered down, and died.

“The Sun God is angry,” the priest reiterated; whereat the Lost Souls beat their breasts and moaned and lamented. “The sacrifice is unacceptable, for the fire will not burn. Strange things are afoot. This is a matter of the deeper mysteries which I alone may know. We shall not sacrifice the strangers ... now. I must take time to inform myself of the Sun God’s will.”

With his hands he waved the tribespeople away, ceasing the ceremonial half-completed, and directed that the three captives be taken into the Long House.

“I can’t follow the play,” Francis whispered in Leoncia’s ear, “but just the same I hope here’s where we eat.”

“Look at that pretty little girl,” said Leoncia, indicating with her eyes the child with the face of fire and spirit.

“Torres has already spotted her,” Francis whispered back. “I caught him winking at her. He doesn’t know the play, nor which way the cat will jump, but he isn’t missing a chance to make friends. We’ll have to keep an eye on him, for he’s a treacherous hound and capable of throwing us over any time if it would serve to save his skin.”

Inside the Long House, seated on rough-plaited mats of grass, they found themselves quickly served with food. Clear drinking water and a thick stew of meat and vegetables were served in generous quantity in queer, unglazed pottery jars. Also, they were given hot cakes of ground Indian corn that were not altogether unlike tortillas.

After the women who served had departed, the little girl, who had led them and commanded them, remained. Torres resumed his overtures, but she, graciously ignoring him, devoted herself to Leoncia who seemed to fascinate her.

“She’s a sort of hostess, I take it,” Francis explained. “You know—like the maids of the village in Samoa, who entertain all travellers and all visitors of no matter how high rank, and who come pretty close to presiding at all functions and ceremonials. They are selected by the high chiefs for their beauty, their virtue, and their intelligence. And this one reminds me very much of them, except that she’s so awfully young.”

Closer she came to Leoncia, and, fascinated though she patently was by the beautiful strange woman, in her bearing of approach there was no hint of servility nor sense of inferiority.

“Tell me,” she said, in the quaint archaic Spanish of the valley, “is that man really Capitan Da Vasco returned from his home in the sun in the sky?”

Torres smirked and bowed, and proclaimed proudly: “I am a Da Vasco.”

“Not a Da Vasco, but Da Vasco himself,” Leoncia coached him in English.

“It’s a good bet—play it!” Francis commanded, likewise in English. “It may pull us all out of a hole. I’m not particularly stuck on that priest, and he seems the high-cockalorum over these Lost Souls.”

“I have at last come back from the sun,” Torres told the little maid, taking his cue.

She favored him with a long and unwavering look, in which they could see her think, and judge, and appraise. Then, with expressionless face, she bowed to him respectfully, and, with scarcely a glance at Francis, turned to Leoncia and favored her with a friendly smile that was an illumination.

“I did not know that God made women so beautiful as you,” the little maid said softly, ere she turned to go out. At the door she paused to add, “The Lady Who Dreams is beautiful, but she is strangely different from you.”

But hardly had she gone, when the Sun Priest, followed by a number of young men, entered, apparently for the purpose of removing the dishes and the uneaten food. Even as some of them were in the act of bending over to pick up the dishes, at a signal from the priest they sprang upon the three guests, bound their hands and arms securely behind them, and led them out to the Sun God’s altar before the assembled tribe. Here, where they observed a crucible on a tripod over a fierce fire, they were tied to fresh-sunken posts, while many eager hands heaped fuel about them to their knees.

“Now buck up—be as haughty as a real Spaniard!” Francis at the same time instructed and insulted Torres. “You’re Da Vasco himself. Hundreds of years before, you were here on earth in this very valley with the ancestors of these mongrels.”

“You must die,” the Sun Priest was now addressing them, while the Lost Souls nodded unanimously. “For four hundred years, as we count our sojourn in this valley, have we slain all strangers. You were not slain, and behold the instant anger of the Sun God: our altar fire went out.” The Lost Souls moaned and howled and pounded their chests. “Therefore, to appease the Sun God, you shall now die.”

“Beware!” Torres proclaimed, prompted in whispers, sometimes by Francis, sometimes by Leoncia. “I am Da Vasco. I have just come from the sun.” He nodded with his head, because of his tied hands, at the stone bust. “I am that Da Vasco. I led your ancestors here four hundred years ago, and I left you here, commanding you to remain until my return.”

The Sun Priest hesitated.

“Well, priest, speak up and answer the divine Da Vasco,” Francis spoke harshly.

“How do I know that he is divine?” the priest countered quickly. “Do I not look much like him myself? Am I therefore divine? Am I Da Vasco? Is he Da Vasco? Or may not Da Vasco be yet in the sun?—for truly I know that I am man born of woman three-score and eighteen years ago and that I am not Da Vasco.”

“You have not spoken to Da Vasco!” Francis threatened, as he bowed in vast humility to Torres and hissed at him in English: “Be haughty, damn you, be haughty.”

The priest wavered for the moment, and then addressed Torres.

“I am the faithful priest of the sun. Not lightly can I relinquish my trust. If you are the divine Da Vasco, then answer me one question.”

Torres nodded with magnificent haughtiness.

“Do you love gold?”

“Love gold!” Torres jeered. “I am a great captain in the sun, and the sun is made of gold. Gold? It is like to me this dirt beneath my feet and the rock of which your mighty mountains are composed.”

“Bravo,” Leoncia whispered approval.

“Then, O divine Da Vasco,” the Sun Priest said humbly, although he could not quite muffle the ring of triumph in his voice, “are you fit to pass the ancient and usual test. When you have drunk the drink of gold, and can still say that you are Da Vasco, then will I, and all of us, bow down and worship you. We have had occasional intruders in this valley. Always did they come athirst for gold. But when we had satisfied their thirst, inevitably they thirsted no more, for they were dead.”