To this we all agreed willingly enough, and so Joyful Star had the big room cleared out and installed herself there with all the comforts and luxuries that the inexhaustible wealth which was now at my command could provide her with, so that Golden Star should find her new world as beautiful as might be. Meanwhile the professor, with a trusty guide that I had provided him with from among my own people, plunged afresh into his beloved studies with such ardour that he seemed to have almost forgotten all else that had brought us to Peru.
Francis Hartness had gone with Tupac—who, in the sight of the Spaniards, was only his Indian servant and guide—on a mission of importance to the South, where the first rumblings of the coming war-storm were already making themselves heard. As for Djama, who, as you know, had no more interest in the work that now lay before Francis Hartness and myself than the professor had, he went about for some days gloomy and silent, and seemingly ill at ease, like a man who for a time has lost his interest in life; and at last—it was on the twentieth day after Golden Star had awakened—he came to me when I was alone in my room and said abruptly,—
'Vilcaroya, do you think I have fairly earned my reward for what I have done?'
'Yes,' I said, looking into his eyes and reading, though he knew it not, the thoughts that were moving in his mind. 'You have done all that you promised to do, but we have yet said nothing of the price. How much do you ask for?'
'As much as I can get!' he said, with a laugh that pleased me but little. 'But, of course, I know the work that you yourself have come here to do, and I see that it will be expensive, so you will find me reasonable.'
'And you, I hope, will not find me ungenerous. Do you remember what you saw in the Hall of Gold?' As I said this, his self-command left him for an instant. I saw his hands close, and his lips tremble, and the fierce fire of the gold-lust spring into his eyes as he replied,—
'Yes; how could I forget it?'
'And do you remember, too,' I said, 'the words that you heard me speak when I stood before the pyramid?'
'Yes,' he replied, with a faint flush coming into his pale cheeks. 'It is not likely that I should forget them either. Why do you ask?'
'Because,' I said, speaking slowly as a man who weighs his words well, 'saving only the sacred emblems of the Sun, which it is not lawful for me to give away, all that you saw there shall belong to you and to him who made it possible for you to do what you have done. You will share it as you please—that is no care of mine—but I have conditions to make for my own sake and that of my people.'