In silence, Kirby took from his pocket a strip of the sacred Peyote and bit off one end of it. Suddenly the hush in the amphitheatre became complete. As he watched Kirby chewing, the Duca gasped and choked.
“Moreover,” Kirby announced with slow emphasis, “I have taken possession of the weapons which you took from men of the upper world, and which have already sent men of your race to their death. I have no wish to kill either you or your caciques, but if you do not presently discuss peace with me, you will certainly find yourself embroiled in a struggle more bitter than the mild one of this morning.”
With that said, he swung on his heel, and taking Naida’s hand again, started with her up the steps.
“I have nothing more to say,” he called over his shoulder to a Duca whose white haired majesty had been stripped from him.
“We’re getting on,” he whispered to Naida a moment later. “The best thing for us is just to sit still now, and wait.”
With the questions he wanted to ask Naida about her world becoming insistent, he found himself, as a matter of fact, glad for the prospect of further respite. As both of them rejoined the girls in the Duca’s prayer chamber, the first thing he did was to take from his tunic the cylinder of gold which he had found in the canyon.
“What is this, Naida?” he asked, hoping to start talk that would make all of them forget the Duca and politics, and at the same time help him to learn much that he wished to know.
But a queer thing happened. Naida’s reaction to the carven gold was as unexpected as it was marked.
“Oh!” she cried in a voice which suddenly trembled with surprise, with blank dismay. Somehow, the cylinder 396 of gold brought to her face things which not even the Serpent’s head of the diamond had evoked.