"Greeting, my brave comrades!" he cried to them. "I am glad to find you alive. I feared that you might all succumb to heart failure."
Sullen silence greeted his raillery, and no one spoke until he had approached and seated himself near them.
"What detained you?" demanded Zveri presently.
"I wanted to see what was beyond the inner wall," replied the Mexican.
"And you saw?" asked Abu Batn.
"I saw magnificent buildings in splendid ruin," replied Romero; "a dead and moldering city of the dead past."
"And what else?" asked Kitembo.
"I saw a company of strange warriors, short heavy men on crooked legs, with long powerful arms and hairy bodies. They came out of a great building that might have been a temple. There were too many of them for me. I could not fight them alone, so I came away."
"Did they have weapons?" asked Zveri.
"Clubs and knives," replied Romero.