As he spoke he unwound the braided sling which bound his long black hair. It was the immemorial weapon of his people—even so I had taken it from the skulls of mummies of his ancestors far antedating the Conquest. Pablo gathered some smooth pebbles from the beach and began creeping toward the cove, sheltering himself whenever a bunch of totora offered. The water-fowl began to edge out, and a few nervous ducks rose. But the boy knew his business and kept on at the same gait. Suddenly straightening up, he whirled his right arm thrice around, and even from where I was I could hear a twang, and then the sh-oo-oo of the hurtling pebble.
There was a commotion among the birds, and a great white swan stretched and half rose from the water and dropped back in a shower of spray. Pablo was already in the water, keeping out of sight all but his head, and in a couple of rods that also disappeared. The swan suddenly redoubled its struggles, beating one wing till the water foamed, but without progress. Then it began to drift shoreward, still fighting; and in a moment I saw a dark object rise just in front of it. The swan saw, too, and aimed a stunning blow with its wing. But the head had already vanished and the screaming bird kept moving shoreward despite his struggles. Then I waited so long that it seemed impossible that one should so endure under water, when the swan’s violent pecking at his breast relieved me. Pablo, to keep out of the way of that heavy wing and beak, was holding the great bird firmly down upon the crown of his head, and when it was needful to take a breath he could thus get his nose out of water without seriously exposing himself. It was when he should come where the water was but a couple of feet deep that trouble would begin, and already I judged that he was lying upon his back and kicking along the mud. Time after time a dark fist came up to grapple that snake-like neck, but the bird was too smart and the captor got only savage bites for his pains. I ran out to help, and the swan met me with a peck that took a morsel off my hand; but a back sweep of the bowie sent the head flying twenty feet, and after a little more flopping the great fowl fell limp. The missile from the sling had shattered his left wing.
Well, when Pablo had warmed himself in the scorching sun, and we had gathered another bunch of dry weeds and more or less plucked the bird and half toasted thin strips of it in the embers, and devoured each a wolf’s share, we felt better. Perhaps we swallowed quite as much ashes as meat, and salt would have helped it—but it was a wonderful banquet, anyhow. We washed it down with drafts from the ill-tasting lake, and I dried a brown-paper cigarette on a sunny rock until it was smokable, and for a while we wallowed in the hot sun and watched the drift of shadows on Illampu, which had snared all the clouds from the sky.
“Pues, the pictures. And then, to get back to shore,” I said at last, getting up reluctantly. Pablo was greatly interested in that wonderful glass in its shining tube, and marveled at the unkinking of the tripod and how the whole artful box opened and swelled at a touch. We carried it to the top of the hill, and I made my pictures and showed him the inverted gem of color on the ground glass and explained it all to him in the formula I learned long ago for Indian friends, to whom one has to adapt one’s own point of view. Then he took me to the ruin—some fallen houses and a strong wall of great rocks wonderfully squared and carved, and we made a picture there, with tattered Pablo standing beside the noble handiwork of his fathers. Unhappily, the plate fell a victim to the abominable dampness of Lima.
“If we had but a spade,” sighed Pablo, who went scuffing his toes in the rubbish of the forgotten rooms. “What says the viracocha? Shall we come back one day and dig here? For surely there will be treasure. Over yonder, toward that island, is where they say the Incas sunk the chain of Huascar, that the Spaniards might not find it. And many have looked for it, and some even talk to drain the lake.”
“I can see them draining Titi-caca! But come, what was this chain of Huascar?” I asked, as seriously as if this were all news to me.
“Mppss! It was of gold, then—pure gold. For when Huascar Inca was born his father, Huayna Capac, ordered made this chain of gold, three hundred paces long and the fatness of my thumb, that the people might dance holding it. Ay, if one might find it! Sometimes, looking over the balsa, I have thought to see that shining on the bottom, but then it was only a boga turning to the sun.”
“Ea, and what wouldst thou, hijito, finding this chain of Huascar?”
“Yo? Mpps, Vueséncia, I would—mppss—I would buy the balsa of Jeraldo, which is very good; and three pigs and a cow for my mother, and a net; and—and—and—boots like those of your Excellency——”
“Good! And I hope thou’lt find it. I mind me that an Inca, Don Garcilaso de la Vega, who wrote a book two hundred and ninety years ago—sabes book? Well, it is much paper tied together—much spoiled paper, with words on it. And this Inca said that the chain of Huascar was thrown into the little lake in the valley of Orcos, which the Spaniards did indeed try to drain. But Garcilaso said many things—particularly in December when the days are long—and I fancy thou’rt as like to find the chain in this lake as in any other.”