He found a coppice on one of the upper terraces; and having removed his jambes and sollerets, bandaged his blistered feet with his torn-up kerchief, and crawled into the lair. Physically tortured by burns, mentally by anxiety, he lay broad awake until after sunrise, watching the advancing fire, laboring with the problem before him, and wondering at the presence and hostility of José. It was late in the day when he awoke and looked out. A strong westerly wind was blowing, and he saw at once that the conflagration was making rapid headway toward the quarter of the palaces. Would reach it by nightfall, if not before. He groaned at his helplessness, forgot his pain, forgot the hunger and thirst now assailing him, and lay the day through, feverishly watching the progress of destruction. The hours dragged. The air was hot, dry, and stinging with the reek of burning. His throat was parched, his lips split and bleeding, and his face, from the heat in the palace, was raw and so badly swollen that his eyes were almost closed. His burns were maddening. But all his torture of body was a trifle, was nothing, to the agony of beholding the inexorable approach of the fire to the Amarucancha. By evening he was feverish, and lay reënacting every minute circumstance of the preceding day and nights; went through new struggles quite as real and of worse torment; and suffered horrors unspeakable. When night fell he awoke bewildered, unable for a time to untangle the actual from his delirium, and lay staring at the ruddy light, straining to comprehend its meaning. It came like a flash, and he sat up, groping for his arms. Greaved and shod, he staggered out, aching and giddy. His first glance was toward the north.—God of Heaven! The Amarucancha! The fire had crossed the stream! The temple loomed black against an appalling background of flame. He reeled and went upon his knees, weak with fear; was up and rushing forward, crashing through shrubbery, colliding blindly with tree-trunk and branch, until he reached the court; across it, and into the hall of the temple, its ghostly terrors forgotten. Through the entrance streamed a broad light from the Coricancha. The centre of the city was a vast furnace, a hell, with flames leaping and whirling with the roar of breaking surf. The long night which followed seemed as unreal in its horror as his delirium. Cristoval went fire-mad.