For all that, he lingered for many days betwixt life and death; and it was the delay caused thereby that gave Atupo time to regain the temple.
He had intended to give warning to his brother priests, and for this purpose he arrived none too soon. Many were so alarmed at the news of the disaster that they departed instantly, seeking shelter in the forest and taking with them their wives and families. But three remained, to collect the sacred lamps and vessels that were within the Temple, meaning to set forth the following day. And these were caught at midnight by Amos, who turned assassin then and there; for it was he who killed them with his own hands, in the great vault beneath the ruins.
Atupo, too, he shot, though the man lay wounded on the ground, exhausted after the effort of his long journey across the grassland, and left him there for dead, his already wounded leg fractured a few inches below the hip.
All this I learned from the man himself, while I nursed him under the Temple--all save the story of the fortitude of Mr. Forsyth, of which I heard afterwards, as in due time I will tell.
[CHAPTER XIV--THE GLADE OF SILENT DEATH]
When I had heard the story of Atupo, it seemed to me that I knew all there was to know concerning the "Big Fish." And a feeling of restlessness at once possessed me; I desired to be up and doing, to venture myself across the grassland, to find the Wood of the Red Fish, for which the bold Spaniards of a bygone century had searched so often and in vain.
But I stood in the debt of charity and honour, and in consequence I felt for all the world like a kennelled dog that tugs barking on his chain. For some weeks, at least, I must stay by the side of the wounded man, whom I could now call my friend. And if those days were something idle, we were by no means out of danger; for any day Amos Baverstock might return when, of a certainty, it would go ill with Atupo and myself.
I found ample time throughout this period of my adventuring to explore the neighbourhood of the Temple, and many things I found of the greatest interest. About a mile distant from the ruins was the village where the Peruvians had lived, and here also was a great convent built of stone and thatched with straw, after the fashion of the palaces in ancient Quito. In this convent--so Atupo told me--had dwelt some score of nuns, vestal virgins, whose lives were dedicated to the Sun, just as there had been such maidens in the service of Jupiter and Mars in the great temples of Rome; for in many respects did the ancient Peruvians resemble the Romans: they were great builders of roads, bridges, and forts; every man must serve the state; and the Inca, on returning from his victories, would march in public triumph through the chief city of the land.
I found both the village and the convent quite deserted; for--as I have said--on hearing of the approach of Amos and his friends, the Peruvians had fled into the forest, preferring to run the risk of death at the hands of the wild men with their poisoned arrows, or from starvation in the midst of that unending wilderness, to finding themselves once again face to face with that implacable and murderous villain who had sworn to put them all--woman, man, and child--relentlessly to death.
I learned afterwards that few of these poor fugitives survived; for Amos burned their homes to the ground and left not one stone upon another; and this he did in wrath and malice, since it served him no better purpose than to waste his time, and that at a moment when his fate was jeopardised and he himself stood betwixt life and death.