“Pray, Prince Huaca,” said Mr. Hampton, speaking for the first time, “may we not state our surprise to find that a powerful people exists here unknown to the world at large and unsuspected? Moreover, surpassing in my mind the mystery of how you have kept your secret through the centuries——”
“Eternal vigilance,” interrupted Prince Huaca.
“Well,” continued Mr. Hampton, “surpassing that mystery, I say, is that of how you have maintained a healthy and, doubtless, growing population within this restricted territory.”
“State supervision and control of families, lands, everything, but——”
Prince Huaca arose abruptly, and moved up and down before them, his face dark, his sandals making no sound. He paused before them.
“We need more land,” said he. “Some of us are for marching out with our armies to conquer. But some, like myself——Ah, you have come at a critical time in our life.” He paused, his eyes searching their faces keenly. “I do not know why I talk to you like this,” he said. “But something within bids me have faith, bids me trust you.
“Ah, I would know of the world beyond our mountain fastnesses. Without knowledge a man is like a worm crawling in the soil. But when he knows, it is like the Sun shedding his beneficent light into the gorges of our mountains and dispelling the gloom. You come from this outside world. You are not commoners, like the one or two we have captured in the Forbidden Land in other days. No, you are nobles, men of knowledge and power. This I can see from certain objects among your possessions.”
He waved his hand to a corner of the room, which hitherto had not been noticed. The boys and the older men looked whither he pointed. There stood all their luggage.
“In your possessions are many strange objects,” Prince Huaca continued. “Books in the royal tongue, for so,” he added, proudly, “we call the Spanish which only those of Inca lineage intermarried with de Arguello and his Conquistadores speak. These books puzzle me, for, though they are in Spanish, yet it is changed from the Spanish which I speak. In truth, as you note, we have some little difficulty in understanding each the other. It is only this,” and he held up the de Pereira manuscript, “which is in the tongue I learned.”
“And there are other objects. Strange threads that gleam and cannot be broken.”