THE TEMPLE OF THE SUN
Never before had Nicky, Tom, or the older men, seen so much treasure as
they found at the end of the passage. Cliff had seen the great room
filled with gold and precious cloths and metals once before, when the
king’s son took him there to inquire about the statuette.
“Where can Caya have left my father?” Cliff said anxiously when he had
taken a swift glance around the treasure room; his chums almost forgot
their danger, so awed and fascinated were they.
But Mr. Whitley hurried them all to the steps and up them.
The stairway into the ante-room, or rear portion of the Sun Temple were
not straight; they curved like steps in a lighthouse tower.
At their top, emerging after spying carefully, the fugitives found
themselves in a narrow room, a sort of Priests’ room, running across the
back of the edifice, behind the huge placque on which was embossed and
enscrolled the massive face with the Sun-rays around it. Therefore the
rear room had two doorways, one on each side of the placque, looking
into the main temple. Great tapestries screened these doorways. Bill
lost no time in spying through into the main room; finding that
deserted, he nodded and permitted the others to ascend into the back
room, forbidding loud words in case anyone came into the front temple
room by chance, though few had the privilege of entry there.
As they entered, single file, they all grew tense again—it seemed that
they were betrayed! A huge curtain hung on the wall opposite to the
doorways began to quiver.
Bill hurriedly produced his weapon. “Come forth!” he muttered in
quichua; the curtain remained without further stir.
“Look out!” gasped Nicky, “he might have a bow’n arrow!”
Of course he spoke in English, and at the sound of the words there came
a low whisper.
“Do not fire!”
From behind the curtain emerged a white man!
“Father!” gasped Cliff, forgetting all cautions. He and his father, so
long separated, were at last rejoined.
Their meeting was joyful; but Cliff lost no time in presenting the
gray-haired, weak old scholar to the others—except Bill, who had already
visited Mr. Gray.
They were not left long without interruption, but, fortunately, when the
tension of a steady step ascending the curved stairs was almost
unendurable, a lithe, young soldier, hardly older than the chums, made
his appearance, stopping before he reached the top step. He carried a
short throwing spear, with its point toward himself, a token of his
errand being peaceful.
He explained hurriedly that he was Caya’s older brother, belonging to
the Palace guard of picked youths, a sort of picked reserve regiment,
called out on occasions such as this.
They liked him at once; but they respected his refusal to come into the
Temple. “It is forbidden!” he said, simply, to Bill, and told his story
briefly from the steps.
Caya had been caught; she had managed to see him. She sent him to search
for the white man, and then, if he found him, to convey him to the
temple steps and bid him go up. But Mr. Gray, once free, had come there
already.
“I go, then, to my duty,” said the young soldier. “Because you saved my
sister—from—the sacrifice—and she is very dear to me, for we are
twins!—I will try to save your lives tonight.”
“Do you know the secret way?” asked Bill. “So we can get out of the
valley?”
The soldier shook his head.
“No. But I will ask to have ‘leave.’ I will pretend to be seeking for
you—I hope I shall get to the hill path by following some soldiers
secretly despatched to duty by a High Priest.”
“Yes,” Tom agreed. “He would know the secret ways and might send
soldiers to guard them.”
But when they asked the young soldier about Caya, his sister, he became
very sad.
“She is a captive,” he told Bill, who interpreted. “There is nothing
that can be done. Even I, in the Inca’s junior guard, cannot see her.”
“Who can?” demanded Nicky.
“The Inca alone,” said the youthful brother.
He went down the stairway, promising to return after dark, if
opportunity permitted. He was certain that they would not be molested
because the ceremonies in the temple were finished and the feasting
would continue as soon as the disturbance was ended.
“I think,” Nicky suggested, after the soldier went, “we ought to try to
help Caya.”
“So do I!” declared Cliff and Tom echoed the fact that she had given up
her liberty for their sakes. Cliff suggested a plan and although they
hesitated at first, Mr. Whitley, Mr. Gray and Bill finally agreed to it.
Then they began, as is so often the case, to become enthusiastic and
hopeful, and also added ideas of their own.
“We would need Tom, too,” Mr. Whitley hesitated.
“I’m not afraid,” Tom said. “If I can do anything to help! Tell me what
it is.”
“We must get that rope that we hid at the ledge,” Bill told him. “My
idea is for you to strip down to the sort of costume the Inca’s
‘chasquis’ or messengers, wear. I am going to make up a quipu like one
that would be used to identify the Inca’s runners, and you are to take
it and go to the place we left our rope, for we will need it in the
mountain passes. If you meet anybody you can show the quipu and they
won’t stop you. If you meet soldiers near the ledge, show the quipu and
say ‘I go to get what the Inca has learned about.’ Then, even if they go
with you they won’t take the rope away.”
“Can’t I go, too?” Nicky pleaded. “The chances would be better with
two——”
“Oh, no,” Mr. Whitley decided. “Tom proved that he can run during the
races, and—I must say this in frankness, Nicky—he can keep a quiet
tongue and a level head if an emergency comes before him.”
Nicky was crestfallen, but had he been able to look into the future he
would not have been depressed at his forced inactivity just for the
time.
Tom rehearsed his quichua words, Cliff went over, again and again, the
things he might be called on to do and to say. Bill, Mr. Gray and their
leader revised and discussed their plan until they could see no possible
emergency that could come up that they would not be prepared to meet.
With his fading flashlight, later replaced by Mr. Whitley’s, Bill
fashioned a simple quipu of woven strands, taken from a raveled edge of
a woolen wall hanging: he knotted it craftily.