I looked up at the blue sky and the hills in the distance, to the east, whence I had first looked down upon the Wood of the Red Fish, after my journey across the plain. And I remembered what I had then thought; how I was filled with the restless spirit of adventure; how the joy of life was strong within me, whilst I ran the danger of my life, all naked as I was, with my Indian blow-pipe in my hand and my quiver full of arrows. But now I had seen the very face of death. I had beheld a living terror. The mask of Romance had been removed from the forbidding face of Tragedy. And that Wood was now to me a dread, unholy place, wherein, I knew, I would never dare to venture again, in spite of the great Treasure that lay hidden in its midst.
"I would not go back," I cried to Bannister, "for all the Treasure of the Incas, for all the treasure in the world!"
My old friend looked at me, and smiled.
"You are right," he answered. "And there never will be a need to, Dick. As soon as we are rested, we must find our honest Rushby, and do what we can for him."
We camped that night in the open air, a mile or so to the south of the morass; and the following morning continued our journey, keeping the Wood to our left.
We had not gone far before we discovered the figure of a man, who came running towards us from the direction of the hills. I noticed that he advanced with a peculiar limp, and on this account, for the moment, I believed it to be Rushby, most marvellously recovered of his wound.
But when the runner had drawn quite near to us, I was surprised beyond measure to recognise my old friend, Atupo, the Peruvian priest, whom I had befriended in the vault beneath the Temple of Cahazaxa.
Though I called him by his name, he cast never so much as a glance at me or any of the others, save Bannister, at whose feet he threw himself, as pagans prostrate themselves before the idols that they worship.
"My master!" he exclaimed, and went on, in his quaint, broken English, in some such strain as this: "I never thought to live to set eyes on you again."
Bannister lifted him to his feet and, laying a hand affectionately upon his shoulder, asked him what news he had of his friends and brethren, who had fled from their dwellings before the wrath of Amos.