But this was only the beginning of the terrors of that awful noontide, for as they watched the hideous disc of flame-encircled darkness a roar as of a thousand thunder-peals in one shook the firmament and seemed to bring its ruins crushing down upon the shuddering earth. Then out of the north-west there leapt up a vast sheet of glaring ruddy light, and against it they saw the shape of Yavirá, crowned by the altar of the Unknown God, stand out huge and black and sharp. A fiery wind like a blast from the very mouth of Hell itself swept roaring through the valley, and, as though swiftly drawn out by invisible hands, a black curtain spread over the heavens from north to south and east to west, and under it the ever-broadening glare blazed out, swiftly changing it from black to red. The earth reeled and swayed beneath their feet: the stone-paved streets cracked and gaped, and the mighty walls of palace and temple, built to endure for ever, shook and split, and great stones came crashing down, crushing scores out of all human shape beneath them. And now the spell of fear was broken and the bonds of horror loosed, and madness came. Those who had moaned and wailed before now laughed and sang and shouted, and at the sound Manco woke from his stupor. All this time he had stood with Nahua in his arms and the knife ready poised above her breast. Both seemed as though the fearful magic of the sights and sounds about them had changed them to statues of bronze, paralysed alike in mind and body. When her father and mother fell dead beside her a shudder had run through Nahua’s body and then it had become fixed and rigid, and she had stood staring at the dead with blank, unmeaning eyes, heedless of the horror that was in Heaven and the terror that was on the earth. Manco too, though half-prepared by his vigil on the altar and the words of Mama-Lupa for what had come to pass, had been smitten with a thought at once terrible and glad, the thought that in another moment Nahua would have died by his hand, and this had seemed to turn his heart and brain to stone and his blood to ice. But now, in the midst of the delirium about him, the spell that had bound him was suddenly loosened, for the love which but a little while before had bidden him slay the being dearest to him on earth, leapt up into new life in his soul, triumphant even over the terrors of the convulsed heavens and earth, and love brought hope with it now where it had brought despair before.