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Updated: June 13, 2025
"Yes, in a way I am," answered Escombe with circumspection; "that is to say, we are both in the same service, but he is my superior." "I see," answered the stranger. "How far are you going in the ship?" "We are going to Callao," answered Harry. "To Peru, eh?" returned the stranger. "So am I. I know the country pretty well.
The next morning Escombe spent in the company of a sort of committee of the chief amautas or "wise men", who represented the concentrated essence so to speak of all Peruvian wisdom and learning, and who had been embodied for the express purpose of instructing the young Inca in the intricacies such as they were of the code of Tavantinsuyu or "four quarters of the world" as it then stood.
It will be a splendid opportunity for you to acquire experience in a branch of your profession that you know very little of, as yet; and if the scheme should be carried out, you, in consequence of the familiarity with the country which you will have acquired, will stand an excellent chance of obtaining a good post on the job. Now, what do you say, Escombe; are you willing to go?
Realising at length that no information was to be obtained from these people, Arima passed from the palace into the grounds, making his way, in the first instance, down to the shore of the lake, for the purpose of satisfying himself beyond all possibility of question whether or not there was any foundation for his first surmise, that Escombe had risen early and left the palace without waiting for him.
So much Escombe was able to note with regard to his new home, as the cavalcade swung in through the magnificent gates of wrought copper which gave access to the grounds, and made its way up a wide path or drive to the main entrance, before which it halted.
Taking these two facts in conjunction, Escombe, with the extreme assurance of youth, and perhaps not attaching quite enough importance to the fact that the sun was the deity whose worship had been especially inculcated and carefully handed down from generation to generation, thought, as he considered the matter, that he could see his way first to divert the adoration of his subjects from the sun to Pachacamac, and afterwards to explain that Pachacamac and the God of the Christians were one and the same, thus insensibly leading them from the paths of paganism into those of Christianity.
Harry led the new arrival into his tent, and proceeded forthwith to discard his working clothes and divest himself of the stains of his day's toil as he chatted animatedly, asking questions for the most part, as is the wont of the old hand and Escombe had by this time grown to quite regard himself as such when he foregathers with somebody fresh from "home". Bannister, having arrived at the camp pretty early in the afternoon, had already bathed and changed; he therefore had nothing to do but to sit still and answer Harry's questions, jerking in one or two himself occasionally, until the younger man's toilet was completed, when they sat down to dinner together.
"This cannot possibly last very much longer," remarked Escombe reassuringly to his companions, who had by this time turned a sickly, greenish-yellow with terror at so unaccustomed an adventure and that, too, on an element to which they were practically strangers "the brute will soon become exhausted at this rate, and when he does we will haul him alongside and finish him off with our spears and arrows.
And indeed the picture which they drew was sufficiently alarming to have daunted a lad of nervous and timid temperament, and perhaps have turned him from his purpose. But Harry Escombe was a youth of very different mould, and was built of much sterner stuff.
On the afternoon of the fourth day following Tiahuana's departure, about an hour before sunset, as Escombe was about to enter the house after a somewhat longer walk than usual in the valley, he paused for a moment at the head of the footpath to take a last, long look at the lovely landscape, with the leading features of which he was now becoming tolerably familiar, when his wandering gaze was arrested by the glint of the sunlight upon what had the appearance of a number of rapidly moving objects indistinctly seen about a mile distant among the low spreading branches of the trees which lined the great road leading from the City of the Sun.
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