He had moved close to the barricaded doorway in the dark. But as the stone began to move and they all gathered their muscles for a dash, they were chained with surprise.
“I am Pizzara,” came the unmistakable voice of the Spaniard. “I come to help. Push there, you!”
The stone moved more and even the faint light from a torch jammed into a place made for it nearby in the tunnel wall was brilliant to their widened pupils. They blinked as they saw two figures, in the garb of the Inca’s soldiers.
“It is Caya’s brother and the stranger who spoke,” said one of the figures, in quichua dialect. “Come forth quickly!”
They filed out; Nicky and Bill and Cliff helped support Mr. Gray who was stiff and tottering from his long inactivity. They saw Caya’s brother tapping at several other door stones; finally he called to Tom and Cliff and the three managed to move a great barricade slowly a little way aside. Had it not been swung on a rude pivot this would have been impossible. As it was they got it far enough opened to allow Caya, shaking with excitement and eagerness, to come from her black prison.
“I meet this soldier,” explained Pizzara. “I have watch him and I think he is friend. I ask him and it is yes. Now we go quick’.”
“I certainly do beg your pardon,” said Mr. Whitley. “I thought you were an enemy and you have liberated us.”
The Spaniard showed his teeth in a curious grin.
“It is all a part of my plan,” he said mysteriously as they went hastily along the passage, the young Peruvian carrying the single torch in the rear with his sister. “When you are sleeping in the lake bottom I steal away with my men. I think then we get here before you. But the Indians fling stones upon us in the white pass and my natives know it is danger’.”
They kept careful watch but it seemed that no one was in the tunnels: the guards whom the Spaniard and the Indian had replaced had gone home or to their barracks and no one else was on guard, it seemed.