After he had closed and bolted behind him three of the bronze portals so feared by the caciques, he turned to the entrance of the chamber in which he had left Naida and the others. Here all was silent, and he found his friends grouped about a couch on which lay Elana. Feeling the solemnity of the moment, he would have taken his place quietly amongst the mourners. Naida, however, came to him at once, and in a low voice asked for news from the amphitheatre, and when Kirby answered that the caciques were unanimously in favor of leaving them alone until they starved, she exclaimed: "Oh, then it is good news!" After that, however, a shadow of doubt flickered in her great eyes. "And yet, is it? It means temporary immunity, of coarse. But--starvation!" Kirby assured her with a grin. "If we had to starve we might worry. But there is more food here than the Duca thinks. Look!" * * * * * From a bulging pocket of his tunic he fished a strip of the roots on which he had subsisted so comfortably. Naida's eyes widened, and several of the girls gave low cries. "Yes," Naida exclaimed, "but such food! Why--why, do you know what you are offering us? Why, this is the sacred Peyote! Only the Duca eats it, and, at rare intervals, his priests." Kirby was really startled now. "But surely you and the others have taken quantities of the stuff away from the Valley of the Geyser. Do you mean--" "Because we gathered the Peyote does not mean that we have ever tasted it. We gather it for the Duca. To taste would be complete, utter sacrilege. Have _you_ been eating it?" Inwardly Kirby was chuckling at this added proof of the buncumbe with which the Duca--and other Ducas--had fooled all. "Of course I've been eating the Peyote." "And--and nothing has happened to you?" Naida asked. "Hardly. I certainly haven't been blasted by the Lords of the Sun and Moon, or the Serpent either!" Naida and all the others were silent. The conflict between their reverence for the food and their clear desire to eat it, now that it was become the food of their leader, was pathetic. Kirby put one of the strips in Naida's hand. "Why not?" he asked. "We have bested the Duca in fair fight. We have seized his tower. Why not eat his food?" As he had hoped it would, the suggestion at last settled the matter. A moment later, as Naida nibbled her first bite, she smiled. "Why, it--it's good!" With the question of provisions settled at least for a time, Kirby's next thought was of the tower. The present lull of peace seemed made for exploration. "Come along," he said to Naida, "we've plenty to do," and then, when he explained, they set out, accompanied by Nini, a cousin of Naida's, and Ivana, a younger sister. All of the others remained with little Elana. * * * * *