CHAPTER VI. THE RETURN OF MANCO At the moment when the Spanish cavaliers arrived on the brow of the hill overlooking Cuzco, Manco-Capac was walking with Nahua up and down a broad, paved path in a vast garden which formed part of the precincts of the great Temple of the Sun. It was one of the most wonderful gardens in the world, unequalled even by those lying round the Temple on the Island of Titicaca, or by the marvellous gardens attached to the pleasure palaces of the Incas in the valley of Yucay, “the Vale of Imperial Delights.” It was oblong in form and of considerable extent, containing some three acres by English measurement. The high walls of smooth, dressed stone were half pierced by deep niches or alcoves lined with plates of alternate gold and silver, and converted into shady bowers by veils of creeping plants suspended on trelliswork of silver. The centre of the garden was laid out in exact imitation of the city, that is to say, each straight street was represented by walks which crossed each other, as the streets did, at right angles, and the squares and fountains were all reproduced exactly in miniature. The flower-beds were brilliant with many-tinted blossoms and odorous with a hundred perfumes. Every flowering plant that would come to maturity in the valley was represented, and those of the warmer valleys at lower elevations were cunningly counterfeited in gold and silver and copper coloured so as to exactly imitate stalks and leaves and blossoms. They had just met, Manco coming from the garden entrance of the Temple, and Nahua from the gateway opening out of a long passage leading from the House of the Virgins of the Sun. The five years that had passed since their escape from the City of the Great Ravine had changed them from a boy and girl to a youth and maiden on the threshold of manhood and womanhood. Nahua was now nearly sixteen and Manco within a few months of twenty. During the last three years the young prince had borne arms almost constantly in the wars between Atahuallpa and Huascar, always, of course, under the banner of his own elder brother, than whom there could in his eyes be no other rightful heir to the throne of the Land of the Four Regions. In the stern school of battle and misfortune his body and his spirit had alike grown and strengthened, and now, in this hour of near approaching disaster, young as he was, there was no better warrior in any of the armies of the Sun than he, no head cooler to plan or quicker to execute, no soul stauncher or more steadfastly determined to fight out the battle with Destiny to the bitter end. In a word, Manco-Capac, now the sole remaining prince of the pure and sacred Blood, was now also the last hope of the sore-afflicted Children of the Sun.