"Be they gods or no!" he cried, "they are our foemen, and the enemies of Peru! Can those be of the sun, who come hither to massacre his children? Let us meet fire with fire--kindle the palace--and try how these strangers will breathe amidst the roar of the devouring elements!" So saying, the intrepid young man, as if actuated by the spirit of his great ancestor, the indomitable Judge of Israel, caught up a torch, and applied it to the hangings of the wall. Quick as thought, the flames ran up--their fiery tongues licked the ceiling--the beams began to crackle and to blaze--the smoke descended in thick spiral wreaths throughout the room. Once again, and but once, sped the volley of the Spaniards: next moment they were engaged hand to hand with Manco Capl, and a body of the young Incas, whom his words had roused to desperation. The struggle was terrible, but not long. The Europeans, trained to the use of arms from their infancy, made wild havoc among their slender assailants. One by one they fell, vainly defending their king, who was soon within the grasp of Pizarro. Soon the flickering of the flames, and the rolling columns of smoke which issued from the burning hall, announced to those who had taken refuge in the adjacent temple the nature of the awful catastrophe. "O Axtloxcl--O my father! let me go!" cried Oneiza. "My husband is perishing in the fire! Oh, let me go and die with him, if I cannot hope to save him!" At this moment a door of the palace burst open, and Manco Capl, his vesture bloody, and his long plumes broken, rushed through the intervening space. The jaguar followed at his heels. "My bride--my Oneiza! where art thou!" he cried; and, with a loud scream of joy, his wife tore herself from the grasp of her father, and leaped into the young man's arms. "Thou art safe! thou art safe!" she cried. "Hush, Oneiza! The Great Spirit has been very merciful, but there is danger yet. Canst fly, beloved?" "With thee, my love?--to the boundary of the solid earth." "Then away with me, for death is near at hand!" The horses of Pizarro and his followers had been picketed close to the gates of the temple. Whether from negligence, or the conviction that the fear which the Peruvians had already manifested at the sight of these strange animals would be their safeguard, or from the impossibility of sparing one single soldier of the scanty band, these had been left without a sentry. Actuated by an impulse, which perhaps in a calmer moment he would scarcely have felt, Manco Capl snatched the reins of one of them, a splendid piebald charger, which indeed was Pizarro's own, lifted Oneiza upon a second, sprang into the saddle, and in an instant was galloping away. "Fire upon the dog!" cried Pizarro, who was just then rushing out, sword in hand. "Fire upon him, I say! I would not lose Onagra for his weight in virgin gold!"