The procession passed across the square, keeping pace with the slow, measured stride of the guards, till it stopped opposite an incline of planks which led to the floor of the scaffold. Then the doomed ones were driven up this like sheep being driven into a pen, and half the guard broke their ranks and followed them with thongs in their hands, and began silently and swiftly to bind the hands and feet of all save the very youngest. When this was done they piled a wall of fagots round the platform, and then came back down the incline, pulling the planks away and heaping fagots in their place. Then the Inca clapped his hands once more and called Manco before him. When he had taken his place, standing in the same attitude of homage as before, he said to him in a quiet, almost kindly tone-- “Well, my brother, have you chosen? Will you carry the torch or stand amidst the fagots?” “I will carry the torch, Lord,” Manco replied in a low, steady voice. Atahuallpa started, and for an instant he looked at him as though he could have slain him with his own hand. Then his scowl changed swiftly to a smile and he said-- “That is well, my brother. It is better to live purged of dishonour than to die a death of shame. Let the torch be brought.” Then a soldier brought a blazing torch of aromatic, resinous wood with the upper half wrapped thickly about with strips of cotton soaked in oil. Manco took it from his hand and, saluting the Inca, walked backwards from the throne down the steps of the terrace without a word, and then turned and walked towards the scaffold through a gap made for him by the guards, with one hand gripping the shaft of the torch and the other in his breast closed upon the hilt of a long, keen knife of tempered copper. Until now the little throng of victims on the scaffold had uttered no sound. Those who knew what the ghastly preparations meant had steeled themselves to meet their fate with the heroic stoicism of their race. Those who did not know were still wondering what it all meant, and some of the little children were even playing with each other among the fagots, of whose terrible purpose they were still in happy ignorance. But now, as the elders saw their executioner--to them the strangest of all who could have been found for the task--approaching they knew that the end was near, and for the first time they opened their lips, and the shrill, wailing cadencies of the Death-Song floated to the ears of the listening multitude, whose every eye was now turned on Manco.