To understand what Dick and Maria-Teresa had been among the first to see, it is necessary for the reader to know that it was customary among the Incas to shape living skulls to any form they wished. This strange custom exists even in modern days, though in a far lesser degree, among the Basque inhabitants of the Pyrenees. The skulls of babies, set in vices or bound into various molds, were gradually deformed till they took the shape of a sugar-loaf, of a squarish box, of an enormous lime, and so forth. Phrenology was evidently a science known to the Incas, who, precursors of Gall and Spezhurn, thus sought to develop abnormally the intellectual or warlike qualities of a child by compressing or enlarging such and such a part of the brain. It has been proved, though, that this practise was allowed only in the case of children of the Inca himself, called upon in afterlife to take high position in the State. The common people kept their normal skulls and normal brains.
Of the three heads just brought to light, one was cuneiform—a monstrous sugar-loaf. It was horrible to see this nightmare face, like the head of a beast of the Apocalypse, framed in locks which seemed to be still living as they gently moved in the sea breeze. The second head was flattened out, cap-like, with a huge bump at the back.. The third was almost square, resembling nothing so much as a small valise.
Maria-Teresa shrank before this triple horror and, despite his evident curiosity, drew her fiancé away from the violated sepulchre. They strolled down to the beach, where the Pacific murmured gently as it came to rest on the sands. So peaceful is the sea at Ancon, so free from currents and gales, that it has become the great resort of the inhabitants of Lima. At this season, however, it was still deserted, so that Dick and Maria-Teresa met nobody during their walk to the Marquis’ villa.
It was dusk when they reached it, still under the depressing influence of the three strange heads, and vainly trying to joke the impression away. As the sun disappeared on the horizon, the wind rose and conjured up in the half-light pale sand-whorls which might have been so many phantoms dancing up from the huacas to reproach them for impiety and sacrilege. Though they were neither of them over-imaginative, the young people were glad to see the fat major-domo who came forward to announce that the Marquis and Uncle Francis had already arrived. He, at all events, was solid flesh and blood.
As Maria-Teresa entered the house, a little Quichua maid, Concha, literally threw herself at her mistress’ feet, protesting that she had been dead in the señorita’s absence, and had been brought to life again by her return.
“See what devotion we get here for eight soles a month!” she laughed, completely cured of her fears by the sight of the familiar objects about her. “Into the bargain, she cooks puchero, our native stew, to perfection. You must try it some day.”
“Señorita,” interjected the maid, her broad lips parting in an enormous smile, “I have prepared locro for to-night.”
Dinner was not a very long meal. Everybody was tired, and Uncle Francis was anxious to be up early in the morning. Dick and Maria-Teresa prosaically enjoyed their locro—a maize cooked with meat, spiced and served with the chicha which still further heightens the taste of all popular dishes in Peru—and, when they parted at the doors of their rooms on the first floor, were quite ready to laugh over the incidents of the afternoon. Maria-Teresa’s hand lingered in Dick’s.
“Good night, little Bride of the Sun,” he said, and bending down, kissed the disk on the bracelet. “But surely you are not going to keep that thing on?... A bracelet from the Lord knows where and the Lord knows whom?”
“It is dear to me now, Dick.... Now that you have kissed it, it shall never leave me.... Good night.”