"No!" Pedro concurred with emphasis. "Thou sayst right, Cristoval. But the poor _veedor_! Have ye seen him? He hath been waddling about the square, swollen with consternation, now climbing to the fortress to stare at the campfires on the hills, now scuttling down again to tell how many there are; one minute praying, the next swearing, and the next bellowing like a calf that he is a civilian, no fighting man, and is misplaced. And misplaced he is, I’ll take my oath! Pizarro locked him up at last, to prevent the panic he was beginning to spread. Gods, gentlemen! were I the commander I’d melt him and make him into tallow dips." A bugle sounded in the square, and Cristoval exclaimed, rising, "Officers’ call! The general hath something to say." Pizarro had something of moment to say, and was in council with his officers through the night. *CHAPTER V* _*The Monarch and the Princess Rava*_ The entry of the Spaniards into Caxamalca had not been spirited, nor jubilant. But the rain, which had conspired with other depressing circumstances to dishearten them, ceased during the night, and the sixteenth of November broke with a cloudless sky. Its first light was greeted in the Peruvian camp by the clamor of trumpets, the wailing of conches and horns, and the thunder of drums—a warlike and mighty dissonance which struck faintly upon the listening ears of the invaders in the town, and set many a good Christian making the sign of the cross and murmuring his prayers. The army of the Inca was portentously astir. The monarch was quartered in a villa at the edge of the eastern foothills. Not far away, their position marked by columns of rising steam, were the hot mineral springs which had made the place a resort of the Incas for generations. The villa itself differed little in its severe simplicity from other structures of the country. It was massively built of stone, with the usual high-pitched covering of thatch—a form of roof far from primitive in this instance, for the thatches of Peru were artfully and durably constructed, often highly ornate in the weaving and gilding of their straw. The building was without exterior decoration except for the sculptured geometrical design bordering the entrance. This doorway, like the small windows set high up under the eaves, and the numerous niches with growing plants, which served to modify the severity and blankness of the walls, narrowed from threshold to lintel as in the architecture of ancient Egypt. The walls, too, broad at the base and sloping inward as they narrowed to the top, further suggested the comparison.