"Ever since that time the Peruvians have been very jealously on the watch against any return of the Spaniards to this part of the country; a watch for them has always been maintained; and when, from time to time, small parties have appeared in the neighbourhood they have--well-- vanished. Our friends here are very reticent about these disappearances, too. "Now, it seems that on the day of our arrival at the margin of the lake we were seen and watched all day, under the impression that we were Spaniards; and when night came and we slept, a party stole upon us, stupefied us in some fashion--they did not explain how--and brought us eight miles or so from our camp to the town, where, as I understand, rather elaborate preparations were subsequently made for our dispatch from this world to the next. "That plan, as you know, fell through in consequence of certain remarks which the exigencies of the situation prompted me to make. I somehow had an idea that we were being mistaken for Spaniards; and the decorating of us with those wreaths of flowers also seemed to me a sinister sign; I therefore concluded that the moment for an explanation had arrived; and I began by informing them that we were not Spaniards, but were such inveterate enemies of them that we had sailed across the Black Water in a great canoe for a whole moon and more with the express object of fighting them. Then, suddenly, that story of Vilcamapata's came into my head, and I hinted that there was more than met the eye in the fact of our presence in this country. I suddenly assumed a high and mighty demeanour, reproached them for their blindness and inability to recognise the friends who stood before them, and finally, moved by some impulse for which I am wholly unable to account, rapped out certain words that flashed into my mind, of which I knew not the meaning, but which I somehow seemed to understand were words of power. And they were, too; for, from what has since transpired, I understand that they were the mysterious words the utterance of which by a complete stranger was to be the sign to the Peruvians that Manco Capac, the first of the Incas, had returned to earth to free them from the hated Spanish yoke!