"Friend?" said he; and though he pronounced the word in the strangest fashion, I at once took his meaning.
I assured him of my good intentions, that I was no friend of those who had committed so dastardly an outrage. And at that, though in the greatest pain--as I could see--he smiled and thanked me.
I will not repeat word for word the childish broken English that he talked. He knew nouns enough to express his meaning, but this was all of our language that he had, and for verbs he was obliged to fall back upon grimaces and gesticulations. These, however, were so forcible and graphic that I was never at a loss to understand him: and during the six weeks that this man and I lived together in the ruins, whilst his broken leg was mending, he came to speak quite fluently in my language, whereas--to my shame, be it confessed--I learned not a dozen words of his.
I asked him how he had picked up his English; and since I had already guessed his answer, the familiar sound of that fond name was no less pleasant in my ears.
"John Bannister," said he; and then asked me eagerly where Bannister now was.
I shook my head, telling him as simply and as briefly as I could the whole of my adventures, from the time when I was kidnapped a few miles from my home beyond the seas to the day when I took my departure from the habitations of the wild men of the woods.
His story I got from him by degrees, after I had tended to his wounds. I had no knowledge of surgery, but I knew that a broken leg must be made fast to a splint; and, borrowing a knife, I returned that very evening to the forest, and cut a straight branch from a tree, as well as a long coil of liana, which I wound about my shoulders like a garden-hose.
I peeled the bark from two sides of the branch to make it as smooth as possible, and then bound it tightly to the poor man's leg by means of the liana. I bathed his wound daily with the clean water from the spring within the vault; and in a few days the blood ceased to flow and the wound--a rough, ugly rent from a leaden bullet--began to heal.
There was a plentiful supply of food within the chamber--bananas, dried berries, and manioc; and together we lived, this man and I, in uneventful idleness, he flat upon his back on a bed of rushes, I attending to his daily wants.
He claimed direct descent from the incas of Old Peru. He told me much that I already knew: that in the great land which had been discovered by Pizarro there had been two races, the common Peruvians and those of inca stock. The latter was the nobility of the land, being of royal blood; and it was they who had held the important offices of state and formed the priesthood.