“Riding on a beast that flies,” said the old priest, “even as the oracle declared. Glory to Pachacamac, even though we die to-day!”
“In what can I help my people?” said Prigio.
“Thou knowest; why should we instruct
thee? Thou knowest that on midsummer-day, every year, before the shadow shrinks back to the base of the huaca [190] of Manoa, we must offer a maiden to lull the Earthquaker with a new song. Lo, now the shadow shrinks to the foot of the huaca, and the maid is not offered! For the lot fell on the daughter of thy servant the Inca, and he refuses to give her up. One daughter of his, he says, has been sacrificed to the sacred birds, the Cunturs: the birds were found slain on the hill-top, no man knows how; but the maiden vanished.”
“Why, it must have been Jaqueline. I killed the birds,” said Ricardo, in Pantouflian.
“Silence, not a word!” said the king, sternly.
“And what makes you bear arms against the Inca?” he asked the old man.
“We would slay him and her,” answered the priest; “for, when the shadow shrinks to the
foot of the stone, the sun will shine straight down into the hollow hill of the Earthquaker, and he will waken and destroy Manoa and the Temples of the Sun.”
“Then wherefore would you slay them, when you must all perish?”