He shuffled out of the imperial presence backwards, and managed to leave the House of the Serpent unseen. Less than half an hour later one of the royal post-couriers was speeding swiftly and silently through the star-lit darkness, not across the valley towards the camp of Challcuchima, but straight along the great post-road due south to Andamarca, carrying the imperial token in his turban, and on his lips the mandate of Atahuallpa to the Curaca in whose charge Huascar lay, bidding him, on pain of his own life, and the lives of all his kindred, to take such means as his judgment might find best to ensure that his captive should no longer be a living man when the Spaniards came to seek him. CHAPTER III. “WILT THOU BE INCA OR SLAVE?” With the first gleam of dawn Pizarro’s envoys set out on their already bootless errand to Andamarca. He made no secret of their object during an interview which he had that day with the Inca, and Atahuallpa, fully believing that he had forestalled them, contented himself with a feeble show of protest, saying that what he had not only inherited from his father but also won by the sword was surely his beyond all reach of foreign arbitrament; but very soon he took refuge in a dignified silence, as though he had made up his mind that the inquiry could result only to his own advantage--with which Pizarro, having his own plans, as he thought, already well matured, was well content. Now Andamarca lay at such a distance from the Spanish camp that not even the imperial post-runners could convey a message there and bring an answer back in less than a week, and Pizarro had been given to understand that the roads were so unsuited for horse travelling that two weeks at the least would be necessary for his envoys to make the journey there on horseback and return with the captive Huascar, whose exalted station would render it imperative that he should be carried by bearers in one of the royal litters. This, as Filipillo had foreseen, gave him ample time to push forward the plot which, with a cunning far beyond his birth and years, he had conceived with a daring as great as the ruthlessness with which he put it into execution. The day following the departure of the escort intended for Huascar he let fall certain vague hints about the camp and in the hearing of the Captain himself as to the stealthy departure of runners from Cajamarca for unknown destinations, and spoke of rumours that had reached him of movements of the army under Challcuchima which boded no good to the Spaniards, and promised but ill for the accumulation of the gold which was to pay Atahuallpa’s ransom.