“I am choking,” Ted suddenly muttered, clutching at his throat; tears streamed down his cheeks. “And I can’t see either.”
Stanley was blindly groping his way toward the door. The two were rapidly losing consciousness in the suffocating fumes that seemed completely to fill the building. As they painfully and aimlessly stumbled through the growing darkness a harsh voice half aroused them to their senses. It was the high priest’s. At the same time they could make out his form, faintly outlined in the haze, while in back of him were other dim figures.
“Drag them out of the holy place,” cried Villac Umu, “and take them before the throne of judgment.”
A dozen hands seized them by the shoulders and legs and carried them, limp and unconscious, out of the temple.
CHAPTER XII
THE VILLAINY OF VILLAC UMU
A few breaths of the fresh, outer air restored the two prisoners to their senses, although it was some time before the stupor caused by the suffocating fumes left them entirely; this was followed by severe spells of coughing and a choking sensation. They asked for water but none was given them.
If Quizquiz had looked upon them before with a triumphant gleam in his eyes, he now regarded them with utter disdain. An insect or a reptile could not have been treated with greater contempt. His lips were set. Cruelty and the desire for revenge showed in every line of his face. He had suffered what he considered an unspeakable indignity; the captives had actually dared touch his sacred person, and none too gently at that. The temple had been desecrated. It was only by sheer luck that he had succeeded in escaping them. In the secret underground passage into which he had disappeared he had taken enough time to collect his composure and to straighten out his dishevelled clothes and diadem before appearing to the multitude that awaited him. Halting an instant he had spoken quickly and in a whisper to Villac Umu, whereupon an officer and a squad of soldiers, accompanied by one of the priests, entered the labyrinth of galleries that undermined the holy edifice to start the smudges. Then, without referring to his experience, the Inca calmly seated himself on the throne and proceeded with the business for which the assembly had been called. As king he owed explanations to no man; and, besides, he was in no humor to recall or to make known to others the humiliation he had suffered. However, his scathing remarks to the unfortunate ones who were called before him gave evidence to his state of mind; the rage that boiled within him found an outlet and an antidote in the denunciations and sentences he hurled at those of his nobles who had been chosen to forfeit their lives for no other reason than that it pleased him that it should be so.
This gruesome work finished, the high priest followed the soldiers into the temple and soon returned with the captives. For Quizquiz that was the supreme moment.
“I am the most luckless of kings,” he began, feigning deep sorrow and unclasping his hands in despair, “for when it is my pleasure to call upon the members of my court for advice or assistance, even the highest fail me miserably. What have I done to deserve such punishment? Slaves all, you do not deserve to have a king to rule and to protect you; better by far that I return to the glory of the Sun, whence I came, and leave you to perish miserably without my wise guidance than remain among you. Is there not a single man of intelligence in my whole nation?”
This was no doubt the cue for the high priest. It was inconceivable that the plan had not been prearranged, and judging by the looks of several in the crowd, Ted and Stanley were not the only ones to see through the wily monarch’s tactics.