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It is indeed true that I know not where my Lord Huanacocha is to be found, for he did not deign to tell me his business when he went out last night; but I believe I can form a very good guess as to where he now is." "You can?" ejaculated Umu. "Then say on, and that right quickly.
"Because, Lord nay, I know not, except that that well, it is a most unusual for my Lord Huanacocha to absent himself for so many hours without saying whither he intended to go," stammered the steward. "Say you so?" sneered Umu. "That seems to me strange indeed; for it is not the usual custom of a noble to acquaint his steward with his business.
And a few minutes later the old fellow entered the room where Harry was standing and, having first made his obeisances, respectfully invited the young Englishman to retire to his sleeping room, there to don certain garments more suitable to his rank and state than those which he was wearing, in order that he might be ready to receive the Lord Umu, commander of the royal bodyguard, who was represented to be dying of impatience to do homage to his Sovereign Lord.
"So much the worse for you," growled Umu savagely, for the delay was beginning to tell upon his patience. "Is there any man here," he continued, "who can tell me where my Lord Huanacocha is to be found?" He glared round upon the assembled servants, the whole of whom had by this time been quietly herded together by the soldiers. There was no answer. "Very well," continued Umu, addressing his men.
He could not tell; his brain was still in too muddled a condition for him to feel that he could trust it. But there was one sensible thing that he could do, he told himself. He could go to Umu and lay the whole matter before him.
The morning was by this time so well advanced that the hour for the first meal of the day was past, and it became a moot point with Arima whether to seek Umu at his house or at the barracks of the Inca's bodyguard. He decided, however, upon trying the house first, and it was well that he did; for, although Umu was not at home, neither, it seemed, was he at the barracks.
So obviously was this expected of him that Harry needed no hint to that effect, but, vaulting lightly into the saddle of the magnificent white stallion that, gorgeously caparisoned, chafed and fretted under the restraint of his bridle, held by two of the nobles, while two more held the heavy gold stirrups for the royal rider's feet, wheeled his steed and cantered gaily off to where Umu, sitting bolt upright in his saddle with drawn sword, waited in the centre, and some few paces in front of the regiment, to receive him.
But I had in my travels in many countries seen inscrutable facts, and to me this was one. Nobody knew what was the cause of the inaction of the fire in the lovu or umu. It was not a secret held by anybody, or a deception. One might believe that the stones arrive at a condition of heat which the experienced sorcerers know to be harmless.
Whenever the torchlight fishing was bountiful, and the fish were glowing on the hot stones of the umu, Rehua lifted sorrowful eyes toward the skies, and vainly supplicated, 'Pipiri Ma, return to us! and Taua answered, shaking his head with a doleful and unbelieving nod, 'Alas! it is over. Pipiri Ma will not come back, for one day the torchlight fishing was bad for the children."
If, however, it be borne in mind that of the goddesses at least two, Umu and Nin-akha-kuddu, are of a local character, the conclusion appears justified that Nisaba was a goddess associated more particularly with the district in which Uruk lay.
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