“Love gold!” Torres jeered. “I am a great captain in the sun, and the sun is made of gold. Gold? It is like to me this dirt beneath my feet and the rock of which your mighty mountains are composed.” “Bravo,” Leoncia whispered approval. “Then, O divine Da Vasco,” the Sun Priest said humbly, although he could not quite muffle the ring of triumph in his voice, “are you fit to pass the ancient and usual test. When you have drunk the drink of gold, and can still say that you are Da Vasco, then will I, and all of us, bow down and worship you. We have had occasional intruders in this valley. Always did they come athirst for gold. But when we had satisfied their thirst, inevitably they thirsted no more, for they were dead.” As he spoke, while the Lost Souls looked on eagerly, and while the three strangers looked on with no less keenness of apprehension, the priest thrust his hand into the open mouth of a large leather bag and began dropping handfuls of gold nuggets into the heated crucible of the tripod. So near were they, that they could see the gold melt into fluid and rise up in the crucible like the drink it was intended to be. The little maid, daring on her extraordinary position in the Lost Souls Tribe, came up to the Sun Priest and spoke that all might hear. “That is Da Vasco, the Capitan Da Vasco, the divine Capitan Da Vasco, who led our ancestors here the long long time ago.” The priest tried to silence her with a frown. But the maid repeated her statement, pointing eloquently from the bust to Torres and back again; and the priest felt his grip on the situation slipping, while inwardly he cursed the sinful love of the mother of the little girl which had made her his daughter. “Hush!” he commanded sternly. “These are things of which you know nothing. If he be the Capitan Da Vasco, being divine he will drink the gold and be unharmed.” Into a rude pottery pitcher, which had been heated in the pot of fire at the base of the altar, he poured the molten gold. At a signal, several of the young men laid aside their spears, and, with the evident intention of prying her teeth apart, advanced on Leoncia. “Hold, priest!” Francis shouted stentoriously. “She is not divine as Da Vasco is divine. Try the golden drink on Da Vasco.” Whereat Torres bestowed upon Francis a look of malignant anger. “Stand on your haughty pride,” Francis instructed him. “Decline the drink. Show them the inside of your helmet.” “I will not drink!” Torres cried, half in a panic as the priest turned to him. “You shall drink. If you are Da Vasco, the divine capitan from the sun, we will then know it and we will fall down and worship you.” Torres looked appeal at Francis, which the priest’s narrow eyes did not fail to catch. “Looks as though you’ll have to drink it,” Francis said dryly. “Anyway, do it for the lady’s sake and die like a hero.”