“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.”
As he spoke, while the Lost Souls looked on eagerly, and while the three strangers looked on with no less keenness of apprehension, the priest thrust his hand into the open mouth of a large leather bag and began dropping handfuls of gold nuggets into the heated crucible of the tripod. So near were they, that they could see the gold melt into fluid and rise up in the crucible like the drink it was intended to be.
The little maid, daring on her extraordinary position in the Lost Souls Tribe, came up to the Sun Priest and spoke that all might hear.
“That is Da Vasco, the Capitan Da Vasco, the divine Capitan Da Vasco, who led our ancestors here the long long time ago.”
The priest tried to silence her with a frown. But the maid repeated her statement, pointing eloquently from the bust to Torres and back again; and the priest felt his grip on the situation slipping, while inwardly he cursed the sinful love of the mother of the little girl which had made her his daughter.
“Hush!” he commanded sternly. “These are things of which you know nothing. If he be the Capitan Da Vasco, being divine he will drink the gold and be unharmed.”
Into a rude pottery pitcher, which had been heated in the pot of fire at the base of the altar, he poured the molten gold. At a signal, several of the young men laid aside their spears, and, with the evident intention of prying her teeth apart, advanced on Leoncia.
“Hold, priest!” Francis shouted stentoriously. “She is not divine as Da Vasco is divine. Try the golden drink on Da Vasco.”
Whereat Torres bestowed upon Francis a look of malignant anger.
“Stand on your haughty pride,” Francis instructed him. “Decline the drink. Show them the inside of your helmet.”
“I will not drink!” Torres cried, half in a panic as the priest turned to him.
“You shall drink. If you are Da Vasco, the divine capitan from the sun, we will then know it and we will fall down and worship you.”
Torres looked appeal at Francis, which the priest’s narrow eyes did not fail to catch.
“Looks as though you’ll have to drink it,” Francis said dryly. “Anyway, do it for the lady’s sake and die like a hero.”
With a sudden violent strain at the cords that bound him, Torres jerked one hand free, pulled off his helmet, and held it so that the priest could gaze inside.
“Behold what is graven therein,” Torres commanded.
Such was the priest’s startlement at sight of the inscription, DA VASCO, that the pitcher fell from his hand. The molten gold, spilling forth, set the dry debris on the ground afire, while one of the spearmen, spattered on the foot, danced away with wild yells of pain. But the Sun Priest quickly recovered himself. Seizing the fire pot, he was about to set fire to the faggots heaped about his three victims, when the little maid intervened.
“The Sun God would not let the great captain drink the drink,” she said. “The Sun God spilled it from your hand.”
And when all the Lost Souls began to murmur that there was more in the matter than appeared to their priest, the latter was compelled to hold his hand. Nevertheless was he resolved on the destruction of the three intruders. So, craftily, he addressed his people.
“We shall wait for a sign.—Bring oil. We will give the Sun God time for a sign.——Bring a candle.”
Pouring the jar of oil over the faggots to make them more inflammable, he set the lighted stub of a candle in the midst of the saturated fuel, and said:
