"Well," exclaimed Dick, as he stared about him in astonishment, "this beats everything! Men and women, big and little, there must have been close upon two hundred of them, and not one had the courage to stay and face us!" "They probably took us for Spaniards," answered Stukely, "and may have thought that we were merely the advance guard of a considerable force. Hence their terror. I only hope that when they discover their mistake they may not revenge themselves upon us for the fright which we have given them. I would that one or the other of us possessed a smattering of their lingo, sufficient to make ourselves understood; I am afraid that we shall find our ignorance in that respect a very serious hindrance as we penetrate farther into the interior; and we must do our best to remedy the--hallo! what on earth is in that bundle? Did you see it move?" Phil referred to the bundle over which the piache had been performing his extraordinary dance when they interrupted him, and which had the appearance of being simply a bundle of ordinary matting. But Stukely's eye happened to have been resting upon it while he spoke, and he had distinctly seen it move. "No, I didn't," answered Chichester, in reply to his friend's question, "for the simple reason that I wasn't looking at it. But we'll look at it now, if you like." And striding over to where the bundle lay upon the ground, he drew his knife, severed the thongs that bound it, unrolled the matting, and disclosed to his own and his companion's astonished gaze the figure of a little old man, securely bound hand and foot. He was an Indian of some sort, evidently, but not of the same race as the inhabitants of the village, his colour being that of light copper, while that of the others was a very dark brown, nearly approaching to black; also his features were of a totally different and much higher type, his forehead being broad and high, his nose thin and aquiline, and his cheek-bones rather high and prominent; in fact he must, in the days of his youth, have been a decidedly handsome man, with an imposing presence; but now he was old--how old it was rather difficult to guess, but probably not far short of a hundred--shrunken and shrivelled up until he resembled an animated mummy more than anything else. His head and face were clean shaven, and he was naked, except for a sort of petticoat of feathers about his loins, the said petticoat having evidently at one time been an exceedingly handsome garment, though now it was soiled, frayed, and generally very much the worse for wear.