This they took as their dismissal, and so they made their salutations and departed with heavier hearts than they brought with them, and, having crossed the river more soberly than before, they took their way back to Cajamarca along the causeway, saying little among themselves, yet thinking much of the majesty and power that they had seen, and wondering how they, but a handful of strangers in a strange land, should overcome the innumerable hosts which the next morning might see arrayed against them. Night had fallen when they got back to their quarters, and from thence they looked across the valley and saw the countless camp-fires of Atahuallpa’s legions sprinkled over the fields and up the distant hillsides, “as thick as the very stars of heaven.” Later on that night Challcuchima was standing with bowed head before his master’s seat in his private apartment. Atahuallpa, buried in thought, was sitting with hands clasped in his lap and chin resting on his breast. His old servant and General had been giving him such counsel as few save he would dare to give, and now he was making a last effort to save his Lord and the son of his brother from the consequences of the gloomy fatalism that had robbed the conquering ruler of his wisdom and the absolute master of many regions of his strength. “Think once again, Lord, I beseech thee!” he said in solemn and yet impassioned tones. “This resolve of thine is a resolve of ruin and death. These strangers are no gods, or sons of gods. Do they not eat and drink like men? More, have we not heard how some of them have fallen and died amidst the snows of the upper mountains? Have not some of these strange beasts of theirs also fallen and died by the wayside? It is true that the weapons they bear are potent and terrible, yet have not tidings come to us from the North telling us how they have turned them against each other? Would the true sons of Viracocha have done that? Would they have ravaged and plundered our towns on the seaboard as these men have done who come to us with words of friendship on their lips and lies in their hearts?