Very reluctantly the Indians allowed him to act as their ambassador. By sheer force of will he bore down opposition, and was taken to a point whence the smoke of campfires was visible above the trees. It was hard to say whether the faith his friends placed in him was stronger than their fear and loathing of the white strangers; but he exacted a promise that, if he persuaded the members of the expedition to retreat, they would not be molested. Oddly enough, neither he nor the Indians gave a thought to any other possible development. These savages believed that the white god who had dropped upon them from the skies would never leave them, and Power himself had almost forgotten the existence of the outer world. Most certainly, he paid no heed to the fact that his seven years of expiation were nearly sped. He was happy among these simple people. In his way, he was a king, and the habit of ruling had become second nature. By chance, that day he carried the spear which had been his faithful ally in crossing the Andes, and a weird and barbarous figure he must have presented when he walked into an almost unguarded camp which had been set up for a few hours on the right bank of the river. Clothed in skins, his face bronzed to a deep brown by constant exposure to the elements, his hair falling over his shoulders, and a long beard sweeping to his breast, he looked a veritable wild man of the woods. A halfbreed peon who was the first to see him whipped out a revolver, and shouted a warning; but Power held his spear crosswise above his head, showing, by this Indian sign, that he came in peace, and he was permitted to approach. "Where is your leader?" he asked in Spanish. The peon seemed to be vastly astonished; but he turned to a tall, thin, elderly man who had dived out of a tent at his cry, and now strode forward. "Where have you come from?" he said; but his speech betrayed him, and Power added to the sensation he had already caused by saying: "You are no Spaniard, at any rate." "Good Lord!" cried the other. "It's an Englishman!" "Next thing to it, an American," said Power. "What is your name, and how do you happen to be in this outlandish place?" was the bewildered demand. "I am here to explain all that, and more. Are you the head of this expedition?" "Yes." "Well, what about discussing matters in that tent of yours?" "Come right along," said the stranger, leading the way. CHAPTER XV THE NEW LIFE Nearly seven years had elapsed since Power had either seen a man of his own race, or heard civilized speech. During all that time, save when he spoke aloud in self-communing, or hummed the half-remembered words of a song, he had neither uttered, nor read, nor written a word of English. One literary treasure, indeed, had come his way, and he made good use of it.