"The temple of Huitzilopochtli! The shrine of the Chalchuih Tlatonac." "God!" cried Jack, in despair, as he recognised his position. "I am lost!" He saw his peril at a glance. The threats of Don Hypolito regarding a frightful death were not mere words. With devilish ingenuity he had secured the death of his rival, with no possible chance of the truth becoming known. Jack saw that Xuarez had preserved his life, had delivered him to the Indians, to the end that he might be offered up on the altar of the war-god, as a sacrifice to the opal. No wonder his usually brave heart quailed at the prospect of such horrors. Captive to remorseless savages, in the heart of an impenetrable forest, there was no chance of a rescue by his friends. He was weak, unarmed, unfriended, in the power of a fanatic race; there was no help for it--he must die. "Cocom," whispered Jack, clutching the Indian's arm, "why have I been brought here--why did Don Hypolito deliver me to the Indians? Is it for--for----" His dry lips refused to form the horrible word; but Cocom, without the least emotion, supplied it. "For sacrifice! Yes, Don Juan; you are to be offered to the god." "Horrible! When?" "In three weeks. At the termination of the great cycle." "What do you mean?" asked Jack, with a shudder. "Our time," explained Cocom, with stolid apathy, "is divided into cycles of fifty-two years. This have we received from our Aztec ancestors. At the end of a cycle the sun will die out in the heavens, and the earth end, if the new fire is not lighted on the altars of the gods. When the last day of the cycle comes, you, Don Juan, will be bound on the stone of sacrifice, your heart will be taken out as an offering to the great gods, and on your breast will the new fire be lighted. Then will the sun rise again, and a new cycle begin for the earth. The gods will be appeased, and mankind will be saved." Jack had read of this terrible superstition in the fascinating pages of Prescott, but he never expected that he would one day take an active part in such a ceremony. With the hope of despair he endeavoured to evade his doom. "But the body of a white man will not please the gods. Why not sacrifice as your ancestors did, on the Hill of the Star?" "Hitherto, Señor, that has been done. Now, however, the gods have spoken through the opal, and it is willed that a white man alone can avert the end of time. A white man must be sacrificed, and you are chosen." Jack shuddered, and hid his face in his hands. "Surely, Señor, you are not afraid!" "Afraid!" echoed Jack, uncovering his face, with a frown. "No, Cocom; an Englishman is never afraid of death. But to come in such a form as this--oh, horrible! horrible!"