The accounts of how Mr. Hampton and Don Ernesto and Carlos, and of how
Jack, Ferdinand and Pedro were captured, differed little from the tale
of the capture of the camp. Each party had been surrounded by an
overwhelming number of the Incas, and had seen the folly of putting up a
fight and so had surrendered.
As they moved in the midst of their captors down the sloping meadow to
the shore of the great lake, sparkling and calm under the mid-morning
sun, these stories were quickly told. At the shore, the Incas embarked
in several great canoes holding a score of men each. The prisoners,
however, were placed aboard a state barge in which Prince Huaca also
embarked. The barge rowed forty oars, twenty to a side.
Paddles dipped in unison, and the canoes were off. The oars of the great
barge flashed in and out in perfect time, and it, too, moved away in
stately fashion, with the prisoners left to themselves on the half-deck
at the bow, while Prince Huaca took his post on the other half-deck at
the stern. The rowers could be seen bending back and forth, back muscles
rippling under their tunics, in the waist of the barge.
"Am I dreaming?" said Frank.
Mr. Hampton nodded.
"It is hard to believe, isn't it, Frank?"
"Hard? It's impossible to believe. Why, this is like stepping back
thousands of years to the shores of the Mediterranean and the Greek
galleys of the days before Christ."
"These fellows seem like Greeks or Romans, too," mused Mr. Hampton. "The
commoners, with their bobbed hair, their tunics and sandals, and Prince
Huaca, proud and stately as a Roman noble, are not exactly what one
would expect to find in the world of today."
Don Ernesto agreed. The remark opened another line of thought.
"See how openly they operate on this lake, and in this valley," he said.
"Look around you, too. So far as I can observe, there is only the one
entrance of the pass through which we were brought. Can it be that the
Incas maintain frontier guards, so to speak, on perpetual watch to
capture any intruders into this wild region who threaten discovery of
their secret? I begin to believe so. Perhaps guards are on duty on the
mountain tops about us, and others in the valley beyond the pass."
This, they later learned, was the actual state of affairs. Not only were
frontier guards kept on constant duty about the great valley in which
they now found themselves, but also about the inner valley holding the
Enchanted City, to which they were being taken. Moreover, such watch had
been maintained down the centuries.
The prospect that greeted their eyes was wonderfully beautiful. The lake
itself was some five miles long, but only one in width. As they now
approached the shore opposite, they descried a stone jetty, for one side
of which the canoes headed, while the barge was brought up on the other.
They were disembarked and marched ashore under escort of Prince Huaca
and twenty men. The others remained by their craft.
At the end of the jetty a guard house of stone was passed. What
surprised the boys beyond measure was to see the half dozen sentries
drawn up in military formation, present arms with their silver-mounted
muskets as Prince Huaca passed.
"I can't believe it," muttered Frank. "Incas presenting arms!"
Mr. Hampton offered a solution.
"Perhaps some adventurer captured by them, as were we, has instructed
them in military tactics."
Ahead through a copse of trees lay a country home of stone, and toward
this Prince Huaca bent his steps. On nearer approach they could see the
stone was beautifully chiselled, and the house nobly proportioned with a
broad portico in front, through the supporting pillars of which they
could see a courtyard, around the sides of which the dwelling was
constructed.
At the command of Prince Huaca, the guard halted at the foot of a broad
flight of stone steps with the prisoners, while the prince mounted and
disappeared into a door on the left of the courtyard. The captives now
had a chance to look about them. Although about the house, or, better,
the mansion itself, no figures were to be seen, there was a constant
coming and going in what they took to be the servants' quarters which
lay considerably to the left.
Horses were being watered in one spot, out of a great trough, and then
led back to the fields which stretched on every hand. Don Ernesto
exclaimed at this sight.
"Those are Argentinian horses," said he, with conviction. "The early
Spaniards who colonized the region of La Plata were enjoined by their
monarchs to bring over a certain number of head of horses and of cattle
for their own use, and a certain number to be turned loose to breed.
Thus the great herds of wild horses and cattle which used to thunder
over the Pampas, but since have been largely exterminated or brought
under herd, came into existence."
"And you think----"
"Yes, Senor Hampton, that is what I believe. These horses either
wandered thus far across the mountains, which seems preposterous, or, as
is more likely, were captured by scouting parties and brought hither.
The intermixture among the Incas of Spaniards in de Arguello's early
expedition or of adventurers captured since, as is more likely, told the
Incas of these horses, and mayhap even helped to capture them."
"This valley is certainly marvellous," declared Mr. Hampton, shading his
eyes with his hand, as he gazed about him in the bright sunlight.
"Notice those irrigation ditches, carrying water to the fields
everywhere from the lakes. Why, this is so intensively cultivated, it
can raise sufficient food for a great city without difficulty."
Don Ernesto nodded.
"The ancient Incas were fine agriculturists," said he. "They practised
irrigation, and had a very good knowledge of culture of the soil. These,
their descendants, seem to be no whit behind them."
At this moment they were interrupted by an exclamation from Frank, who
pointed to two figures approaching them across the lawn. They were
Prince Huaca and another young man dressed as he, evidently a noble. He
was regarding them with curiosity. He did not address them, however, but
the two halted at a little distance and concluded their conversation,
during all of which time the stranger regarded them with bright quick
glances.
Then he bowed to Prince Huaca, and the latter issued a command at which
the guard started forward with the prisoners in their midst. They moved
down the great driveway from the mansion to a highroad crossing the
valley to the encircling mountains. Jack looked back as they reached the
highroad, and saw the figure of the young noble, immobile, staring after
them.
"He certainly was curious," he commented.
Frank, who marched beside him, shook his head.
"I believe I know what was in his mind," said he.
"What?" Jack glanced at him curiously.
"I don't know--maybe I'm wrong--but it seemed to me there was a look of
longing in his eyes--as if he wondered about the great outside world,
perhaps, from which we came."
Mr. Hampton, who had overheard, threw Frank an understanding and
approving glance.
"You have an observant mind, Frank," he said. "It is not unlikely that a
gallant young fellow like that noble would wonder about the world
beyond, and think at times that he would like, perhaps, to penetrate it.
And your words give me an idea. We will bear in mind the possibility of
young blood becoming irked at this self-immurement, no matter how
idyllic the conditions. Perhaps, if no other way of escape suggests
itself, we may induce some such young fellow to aid us by painting to
him the wonders of the world to which we can introduce him."
The party moved along in silence, until Bob declared:
"Fellows, did you ever see a finer road?"
The highway upon which they had entered from the estate drive was,
indeed, a fine thoroughfare. It was made of concrete, and so broad that,
a procession of farm carts drawn by horses, approaching from the
opposite direction, was enabled to pass, although they moved three
abreast.
"Ah, these Incas once more resemble their ancestors," said Don Ernesto.
"Yes, they were great road-builders," said Mr. Hampton.
"Great road-builders, indeed," Don Ernesto rejoined. "When the
Conquerors entered the Peruvian empire under Pizarro, they found the
Incas had built a road not then equalled in any part of the world,
perhaps not even equalled today. It was a road even finer than anything
built by Rome. For more than twelve hundred miles it extended, bringing
into communication all the provinces of the empire.
"Moreover, it must be remembered that road was built at a great
elevation through the mountains, all of which added to the difficulty of
the enterprise. At some places it was more than 12,000 feet above sea
level. It went northward from Cusco to a point beyond Quito, in the
province of Guaca, and southward from Cusco to Chuquisaca, not far from
the mines of Potosi.
"You boys," he added, "can better appreciate the magnitude of this road,
if I tell you it was as far as a road from Calais to Constantinople, and
through mountainous country immeasurably more difficult to travel than
any country in Europe. In some places, the beds of concrete or mezcla,
of which the road was formed, went down from 80 to 100 feet. The rains
have since washed the earth away from under the concrete, for, I am
sorry to say, the Conquerors and the later Viceroys of Spain did not see
fit to care for this highway. Yet masses of it today are left suspended
over washouts like bridges made of one stone, as the historian Velasco
said.
"There was also a lower road, about forty leagues distant from the
other, which traversed the plains country near the sea. And along both
these roads, at equal distances, were built stone inns, called tambos by
the natives. The word has persisted, and is still used throughout the
Inca country, to describe a post house on a highroad.
"In fact," he concluded, "it was the existence of these roads which,
ironically, helped to destroy the Inca Empire. For over them the
invading armies of the Spaniards were able to move with speed."
As Don Ernesto had talked, they had continued moving forward at a brisk
pace, and had drawn close to the base of a lofty mountain. Now the road
began to mount, in some places the going being so steep that concrete
stairways were built. Up this the guards with the prisoners, and with
Prince Huaca at the head, moved steadily. With each upward step, they
were enabled to see more of the valley outspread below them, the great
lake, the three smaller bodies of water, the irrigation ditches like a
network of bright ribbons, the little clumps of trees surrounding other
country mansions like that they had stopped at, and everywhere laborers
were at work in the fields.
"Truly a marvellous sight," said Mr. Hampton, as they came to a halt at
length on a wide concreted terrace with a low stone wall at the front,
very thick, and loopholed, and with a stone building of fortress-like
strength built at the back, seemingly into the side of the mountain.
Here the path up which they climbed appeared to end.
"Senor," said Prince Huaca to Don Ernesto, in his archaic Spanish, "here
you will be blindfolded, your hands will be tied, and we enter the
mountains. Fear not. There is no evil intended."
"Very well," said Don Ernesto with a shrug.
Guards tied each man's hands behind his back, blindfolds were adjusted,
shutting out all light, and then, with a man on each side to act as
guide, they were led up a flight of steps, into what they took to be a
fortress, and presently, after treading across a wide room, passed
through a doorway and, by the cool and slightly earthy feel of the air,
surmised they were in a tunnel.