by Rex Stout
Chapter XXIII.
WE ARE TWO.
Whether I would have been able to rouse myself to action before theshock of the assault was actually upon us, I shall never know.
It was not fear that held me, for I felt none; I think that dimly andhalf unconsciously I saw in that black line, silently creeping upon us,the final and inexorable approach of the remorseless fate that hadpursued us ever since we had dashed after Desiree into the cave of thedevil, rendering our every effort futile, our most desperate strugglesthe laughing-stock of the gods.
I was not even conscious of danger. I sat as in a stupor.
But action came, though not from me, so suddenly that I scarcely knewwhat had happened. There was a cry from Desiree. Harry sprang to hisfeet. The Incas leaped forward.
I felt myself jerked violently from the ground, and a spear was thrustinto my hand. Harry's form flashed past me, shouting to me to follow.Desiree was at his heels; but I saw her halt and turn to me, and I,too, sprang forward.
Harry's spear whirled about his head, leaving a gap in the black linethat was now upon us. Through it we plunged. The Incas turned andcame at us from behind; one whose hands were upon Desiree got my spearin his throat and sank to the ground.
"Cross to the left!" Harry yelled. He was fighting them off from everydirection at once.
I turned, calling to Desiree to follow, and dashed across the cavern.We saw the wall just ahead, broken and rugged. Again turning I calledto Harry, but could not see him for the black forms on every side, andI was starting to his rescue when I saw him plunge toward us, cuttinghis way through the solid mass of Incas as though they had been stalksof corn. He was not a man, but a demon possessed.
"Go on," he shouted. "I'll make it!"
Then I turned and ran with Desiree to the wall. We followed it a shortdistance before we reached one of the lanes of which Harry had spoken;at its entrance he joined us, still bidding us to leave him to coverour retreat.
Once within the narrow lane his task was easier. Boulders andprojecting rocks obstructed our progress, but they were even greaterobstacles to those who pursued us. Still they rushed forward, only tobe hurled back by the point of Harry's spear. Once, turning, I saw himpick one of them up bodily and toss him whirling through the air intothe very faces of his comrades.
I had all I could do with Desiree and myself. Many times I scrambledup the steep face of some boulder and, after pulling her up safelyafter me, let her down again on the other side. Then I returned to seethat Harry got over safely, and often he made it barely by inches,while flying spears struck the rock on every side.
It is a wonder to me now that I was able even to stand, after myexperience on the spiral stairway in the column. The soles of my feetand the palms of my hands were baked black as the Incas themselves.Blisters covered my body from head to foot, swelling, indescribablypainful.
Every step I took made me clench my teeth to keep from sinking in afaint to the ground; I expected always that the next would be mylast--but somehow I struggled onward. It was the thought of Desiree, Ithink, that held me up, and Harry.
Suddenly a shout came from Harry that the Incas had abandoned thepursuit. It struck me almost as a matter of indifference; nor was Iaffected when almost immediately afterward he called that he had beenmistaken and that they had rushed forward with renewed fury and ingreater numbers.
"It is only a matter of time now," I said to Desiree, and she nodded.
Still we went forward. The land had carried us straight away from thecavern, without a turn. Its walls were the roughest I had seen, andoften a boulder which lay across our path presented a serrated facethat looked as though it had but just been broken from the wall above.Still the stone was comparatively soft--time had not yet worked itsleveling finger on the surfaces that surrounded us.
We were standing on one of these boulders when Harry came runningtoward us.
"They're stopped," he cried gleefully, "at least for a little. A pieceof rock as big as a house gently slid from above onto their preciousheads. It may have blocked them off completely."
We hurried forward then; Harry helped Desiree, while I painfullybrought up the rear. At every few steps they were forced to halt andwait for me, though I did my utmost to keep up with them. Harry hadtaken my spear that I might have both hands to help me over the rocks.
Climbing, sliding, jumping, we left the Incas behind; no sound camefrom the rear. I began to think that they had really been completelyshut off, and several times opened my mouth to call to Harry to ask himif it would not be safe to halt; for every movement I made was torture.But each time I choked back the cry; he thought it was necessary to goon and I followed.
This lasted I know not how long; I was staggering and reeling forwardlike a drunken man, so little aware of what I was doing that when Harryand Desiree finally stopped at the beginning of a level, unbrokenstretch in the lane, I stumbled directly against them before I knewthey had halted.
"Go on!" I gasped, struggling to my feet in a mania.
Harry stooped over to assist me and set me with my back resting againstthe wall. Desiree supported herself near by, scarcely able to stand.
"We can go no farther," said Harry. "If they come--"
As he spoke I became aware of a curious movement in the wallopposite--a movement as of the wall itself. At first I thought it adelusion produced by my disordered brain, but when I saw Desiree'sastonished gaze following mine, and heard Harry's cry of wonder as heturned and saw it also, I knew the thing was real.
A great portion of the wall, the entire side of the passage for alength of a hundred feet or more, was sliding slowly downward.Glancing above I saw a space of several feet where the rock haddeparted from its bed. The only noise audible was a low, grating soundlike the slow grinding of a gigantic millstone.
None of us moved--if there were danger we would seem to have welcomedit. Suddenly the great mass of rock appeared to halt in its downwardmovement and hang as though suspended; then with a sudden jerk itseemed to free itself, swaying ponderously toward us; and the nextmoment it had fallen straight down into some abyss below, thundering,tumbling, sliding with terrific velocity.
There was a deafening roar under our feet, the ground rocked as from anearthquake, and it seemed as though the wall against which we stood wasabout to fall in upon us. Dust and fragments of rock filled the air onevery side, and one huge boulder, detached from the roof above, cametumbling at our feet, missing us by inches.
We were completely stunned by the cataclysm, but in a moment Harry hadrecovered and run to the edge of the chasm opposite thus suddenlyformed. Desiree and I followed.
There was nothing to be seen save the blackness of space. Immediatelybefore us was an apparently bottomless abyss, black and terrifying; theside descended straight down from our feet. Looking across we couldsee dimly a wall some distance away, smooth and with a faint whiteness.On either side of us other walls extended to meet the farther wall,smooth and polished as glass.
"The Incas didn't do that, I hope," said Harry, turning to me.
"Hardly," I answered; and in my absorbing interest in the phenomenonbefore me I half forgot my pain.
I moved to the edge of one of the walls extending at right angles tothe passage, but there was little to be made of it. It was of softlimestone, and most probably the portion that had disappeared wasgranite, carried away by the force of its own weight.
"We are like to be buried," I observed, returning to Harry and Desiree."Though for that matter, even that can hardly frighten us now."
"For my part," said Harry, with a curious gravity beneath the apparentlightness of his words, "I have always admired the death of Porthos.Let it come, and welcome."
"Are we to go further?" put in Desiree.
Just as Harry opened his mouth to reply a more decisive answer camefrom another source. The rock that had fallen, obstructing the path ofthe Incas, must have left an opening that Harry had missed; or they hadremoved it--w
hat matter?
In some way they had forced a passage, for as Desiree spoke a dozenspears whistled through the air past our heads and we looked up to seea swarm of Incas climbing and tumbling down the face of a boulder overwhich we had passed to reach our resting-place.
I have said that we had halted in a level, unbroken stretch that stillled some distance ahead of us. At its farther end could be seen agroup of rocks and boulders completely choking the lane, Beyond, otherrocks arose to a still greater height--the way appeared to beimpassable.
But there was no time for deliberation or the weighing of chances, andwe turned and made for the pile of rocks, with the Incas rushing afterus.
There Desiree and I halted in despair, but with a great oath Harrybrushed us aside and leaped upon a rock higher than his head withincredible agility. Then, lying flat on his face and extending hisarms downward over the edge, he pulled first Desiree, then myself, upafter him. The whole performance had occupied a scant two seconds,and, waiting only to pick up the three spears he had thrown up thesloping surface of the rock to another yet higher and steeper.
"Why don't we hold them here?" I demanded. "They could never come upthat rock with us on top."
Harry looked at me.
"Spears," he said briefly; and, of course, he was right. They wouldhave picked us off like birds on a limb.
We scaled the second rock with extreme difficulty, Harry assisting bothDesiree and me; and as we stood upright on its top I saw the Incasscrambling over the edge of the one below. Two or three of them hadalready started to cross; many more were coming up from behind; andone, as he made the top and arose to his feet, braced himself on thesloping rock and raised a spear high above his head.
At sight of him I started, crying to Harry and Desiree. They turned.
"The king!" I shouted; and I saw a shudder of terror run over Desiree'sface as she, too, recognized the black form below. At the same instantthe spear darted forward from the hand of the Child of the Sun, but itlanded harmlessly against the rock several feet away.
The next moment the Inca king had bounded across the rock toward us,followed by a score of others.
I was minded to try my luck with his own weapon, but we had no spearsto waste, and Harry was dragging Desiree forward and shouting to me tofollow. I turned and ran after them, and just as we let ourselves downinto a narrow crevice below the Incas appeared over the edge of therock behind.
Somehow we scrambled forward, with the Incas at our heels. Sharpcorners of projecting rocks bruised our faces and bodies; once my legbent double under me as I fell from a ledge onto a boulder below, and Ithought it was broken; but Harry jerked me to my feet and I struggledon.
Harry seemed possessed of the strength of ten men and the heart of athousand. He pulled Desiree and me up and over boulders and rocks asthough we had been feathers; the Lord knows how he got there himself!Half of the time he carried Desiree; the other half he supported me.His energy and exertions were titanic; even in the desperate excitementof our retreat I found time to marvel at it.
We did not gain an inch; our pursuers kept close behind us; but we heldour own. Now and then a stray spear came hurtling through the air orstruck the rock near us, but they were infrequent and we were not hit.
One, flying past my head, stuck in a crevice of the rock and I graspedthe shaft to pull it out, but abandoned my effort when I heard Harryshouting to me from the front to come to his aid.
He and Desiree were standing on the rim of a ledge that stood highabove the ground of the passage. At its foot began a level stretchleading straight ahead as far as we could see.
"We must lift her down," Harry was saying.
He let himself over the ledge, hung by his hands, and dropped. "Allright!" he called from below; and I lay flat on the rock while Desireescrambled over the edge, holding to my hands. For a moment I held hersuspended in my outstretched arms; then, at a word from Harry, I lether drop. Another moment and I was over myself, knocking Harry to theground and tumbling on top of him as he stood beneath to break my fall.
By then the Incas had reached the top of the ledge above us, and weturned and raced down the long stretch ahead. I was in front; Harrycame behind with Desiree.
Suddenly, as I ran, I felt a curious trembling of the ground beneath myfeet, similar to the vibrations of a bridge at the passing of a heavyload.
Then the ground actually swayed beneath me; and, realizing the danger,I sent a desperate shout to Harry over my shoulder and bounded forward.He was at my side on the instant, with Desiree in his arms.
The ground rocked beneath our feet like a ship in a storm; and, just asI thought we were gone, my foot touched firm rock as I passed a yawningcrevice a foot wide under me.
One more leap to safety, and we turned just in time to see the floor ofthe passage which we had traversed disappear into some abyss beneathwith a shattering roar.
We stood at the very edge of the chasm thus suddenly formed, gazing ateach other in silent wonder and awe.
"The beggars are stopped now," said Harry finally. "That break in thegame is ours."
Looking back across the chasm, we saw the Incas tumbling by twos andthrees over the boulder on the other side. As they saw the yawningabyss that separated them from their prey they stopped short and gazedacross in profound astonishment.
Others came to join them, until there were several hundred of theblack, ugly forms huddled together on the opposite rim of the chasm, ahundred feet away.
I ran over the group with a keen eye, seeking the figure of the Incaking, and soon my search was successful. He stood a step in front ofthe others, a little to the right. I pointed him out to Harry andDesiree.
"It's up to him to walk right out again," said Harry.
Desiree shivered, and proceeded to send her last invitation to thedevil.
Turning suddenly, she grasped Harry's spear and tore it from his hand.Before we realized her purpose, she stepped forward until her footrested on the very edge of the chasm, and had hurled the spear acrossstraight at the Inca king.
It missed him, but struck another Inca standing near full in thebreast. Quick as lightning the king turned, grasped the shaft of thespear, and pulled it forth, and with his white teeth gleaming in asnarl of furious hate, sent it whistling through the air straight atDesiree.
Harry and I sprang forward with a shout of warning; Desiree stoodmotionless as a statue. We grasped her frantically and pulled herback, but too late.
She came, but only to fall lifeless into our arms with the spear burieddeep in her white throat.
We laid her on the ground and knelt beside her for a moment, then Harryarose to his feet with a face white as death; and I uttered a silentand vengeful prayer as I saw him level a spear at the Inca king acrossthe chasm. But it went wide of its mark, striking the ground at hisfeet.
"There was another!" cried Harry, and soon he had found it where it layon the ground and sent it, too, hurtling across.
This time he missed by inches. The spear flew just past the shoulderof the king and caught one who stood behind him full in the face. Thestricken savage threw his arms spasmodically above his head, reelingforward against the king.
There was a startled movement along the black line; hands wereoutstretched in a vain effort at rescue; a savage cry burst fromHarry's lips, and the next instant the king had toppled over the edgeof the chasm and fallen into the bottomless pit below.
Harry turned, quivering from head to foot.
"Little enough," he said between his teeth, and again he knelt besidethe body of Desiree and took her in his arms.
But her fate spoke eloquently of our own danger, and I roused him toaction. Together we picked up the form of our dead comrade and carriedit to the rear. I hesitated to pull forth the barbed head of thespear, and instead broke off the shaft, leaving the point buried in thesoft throat, from which a crimson line extended over the white shoulder.
A short distance ahead we came to a projecting boulder, and behin
d thatwe gently laid her on the hard rock. Neither of us had spoken a word.Harry's lips were locked tightly together; a lump rose in my throat,choking all utterance and filling my eyes with tears.
Harry knelt beside the white form and, gathering it gently in his arms,held it against his breast. I stood at his side, gazing down at him inmute sympathy and sorrow.
For a long minute there was silence--a most intense silence throughoutthe cavern, during which the painful throbbing of my heart was plainlyaudible; then Harry murmured, in a voice of the utmost tenderness:"Desiree!" And again, "Desiree! Desiree!" until I half expected thevery strength and sweetness of his emotion to bring our comrade back tolife.
Suddenly, with a quick, impulsive movement, he raised his head toglance at me.
"She loved you," he said; and though there was neither jealousy noranger in his voice, somehow I could not meet his gaze.
"She loved you," he repeated in a tone half of wonder. "And you--you--"
I answered his eyes.
"She was yours," I said, with a touch of bitterness that persuaded himof the truth. "All her beauty, all her loveliness, all her charm, tobe buried--Ah! God help us--"
My voice broke, and I knelt on the ground beside Harry and pressed mylips to the white forehead and golden hair of what had been Le Mire.
Thus we remained for a long time.
It was hard to believe that death had in reality taken possession ofthe still form stretched as in repose before us. Her body, still warm,seemed quivering with the instinct of life; but the eyes were not theeyes of Desiree. I closed them, and arranged the tangled mass of hairas well as possible over her shoulders. As I did so the air, set inmotion by my hand, caused some of the golden strands to tremble gentlyacross her lips; and Harry bent forward with a painful eagerness,thinking that she had breathed.
"Dearest," he murmured, "dearest, speak to me!"
His hand sought her swelling bosom gropingly; and his eyes, as theylooked pleadingly even into mine, shot into my heart and unnerved me.
I rose to my feet, scarcely able to stand, and moved away.
But the fate that had finally intervened for us--too late, alas! forone--did not leave us long with our dead. Even now I do not know whathappened; at the time I knew even less. Harry told me afterward thatthe first shock came at the instant he had taken Desiree in his armsand pressed his lips to hers.
I had crossed to the other side of the passage and was gazing backtoward the chasm at the Incas on the other side, when again I felt theground, absolutely without warning, tremble violently under my feet.At the same moment there was a low, curious rumble as of the thunderingof distant cannon.
I sprang toward Harry with a cry of alarm, and had crossed about to themiddle of the passage, when a deafening roar smote my ear, and theentire wall of the cavern appeared to be failing in upon us. At thesame time the ground seemed to sink directly away beneath my feet withan easy, rocking motion as of a wave of the ocean. Then I felt myselfplunging downward with a velocity that stunned my senses and took awaymy breath; and then all was confusion and chaos--and oblivion.
When I awoke I was lying flat on my back, and Harry was kneeling at myside. I opened my eyes, and felt that it would be impossible to make agreater exertion.
"Paul!" cried Harry. "Speak to me! Not you, too--I shall go mad!"
He told me afterward that I had lain unconscious for many hours, butthat appeared to be all that he knew. How far we had fallen, or how hehad found me, or how he himself had escaped being crushed to pieces bythe falling rock, he was unable to say; and I concluded that he, too,had been rendered unconscious by the fall, and for some time dazed andbewildered by the shock.
Well! We were alive--that was all.
For we were weak and faint from hunger and fatigue, and one mass ofbruises and blisters from head to foot. And we had had no water forsomething like twenty-four hours. Heaven only knows where we found theenergy to rise and go in search of it; it is incredible that anycreatures in such a pitiable and miserable condition as we were couldhave been propelled by hope, unless it is indeed immortal.
Half walking, half crawling, we went forward.
The place where we had found ourselves was a jumbled mass of bouldersand broken rock, but we soon discovered a passage, level and straightas any tunnel built by man.
Down this we made our way. Every few feet we stopped to rest. Neitherof us spoke a word. I really had no sense of any purpose in ourprogress; I crept on exactly as some animals, wounded to death, move onand on until there is no longer strength for another step, when theylie down for the final breath.
We saw no water nor promise of any; nothing save the long stretch ofdim vista ahead and the grim, black walls on either side. That, Ithink, for hours; it seemed to me then for years.
I dragged one leg after the other with infinite effort and pain; Harrywas ahead, and sometimes, glancing back over his shoulder to find me atsome distance behind, he would turn over and lie on his back till Iapproached. Then again to his knees and again forward. Neither of usspoke.
Suddenly, at a great distance down the passage, much further than I hadbeen able to see before, I saw what appeared to be a white wallextending directly across our path.
I called to Harry and pointed it out to him. He nodded vaguely, asthough in wonder that I should have troubled him about so slight anobject of interest, and crawled on.
But the white wall became whiter still, and soon I saw that it was nota wall. A wild hope surged through me; I felt the blood mount dizzilyto my head, and I stilled the clamor that beat at my temples by anextreme effort of the will. "It can't be," I said to myself aloud,over and over; "it can't be, it can't be."
Harry turned, and his face was as white as when he had knelt by thebody of Desiree, and his eye was wild.
"You fool," he roared, "it is!"
We went faster then. Another hundred yards, and the thing was certain;there it was before us. We scrambled to our feet and tried to run; Ireeled and fell, then picked myself up again and followed Harry, whohad not even halted as I had fallen. The mouth of the passage was nowbut a few feet away; I reached Harry's side, blinking and stunned withamazement and the incredible wonder of it.
I tried to shout, to cry aloud to the heavens, but a great lump in mythroat choked me and my head was singing dizzily.
Harry, at my side, was crying like a child, with great tears streamingdown his face, as together we staggered forth from the mouth of thepassage into the bright and dazzling sunshine of the Andes.
Chapter XXIV.
CONCLUSION.
Never, I believe, were misery and joy so curiously mingled in the humanbreast as when Harry and I stood--barely able to stand--gazingspeechlessly at the world that had so long been hidden from us.
We had found the light, but had lost Desiree. We were alive, but sonear to death that our first breath of the mountain air was like to beour last.
The details of our painful journey down the mountain, over the rocksand crags, and through rushing torrents that more than once swept usfrom our feet, cannot be written, for I do not know them.
The memory of the thing is but an indistinct nightmare of suffering.But the blind luck that seemed to have fallen over our shoulders as aprotecting mantle at the death of Desiree stayed with us; and afterendless hours of incredible toil and labor, we came to a narrow passleading at right angles to our course.
Night was ready to fall over the bleak and barren mountain as weentered it. Darkness had long since overtaken us, when we saw at adistance a large clearing, in the middle of which lights shone from thewindows of a large house whose dim and shadowy outline appeared to ussurrounded by a halo of peace.
But we were nearly forced to fight for it. The proprietor of thehacienda himself answered our none too gentle knock at the door, and hehad no sooner caught sight of us than he let out a yell as though hehad seen the devil in person, and slammed the door violently in ourfaces. Indeed, we were hardly recognizable
as men.
Naked, black, bruised, and bleeding, covered with hair on our faces andparts of our bodies--mine, of recent growth, stubby and stiff--ourappearance would have justified almost any suspicion.
But we hammered again on the door, and I set forth our pedigree andplight in as few words as possible. Reassured, perhaps, by myexcellent Spanish--which could not, of course, be the tongue of thedevil--and convinced by our pitiable condition of our inability to dohim any harm, he at length reopened the door and gave us admittance.
When we had succeeded in allaying his suspicions concerning ouridentity--though I was careful not to alarm his superstitions bymentioning the cave of the devil, which, I thought, was probably wellknown to him--he lost no time in displaying his humanity.
Calling in some hombres from the rear of the hacienda, he gave themample instructions, with medicine and food, and an hour later Harry andI were lying side by side in his own bed--a rude affair, but infinitelybetter than granite--refreshed, bandaged, and as comfortable as theirkindly ministrations could make us.
The old Spaniard was a direct descendant of the good Samaritan--despitethe slight difference in nationality. For many weeks he nursed us andfed us and coaxed back the spark of life in our exhausted and woundedbodies.
Our last ounce of strength seemed to have been used up in our desperatestruggle down the side of the mountain; for many days we lay on ourbacks absolutely unable to move a muscle and barely conscious of life.
But the spark revived and fluttered. The day came when we couldhobble, with his assistance, to the door of the hacienda and sit forhours in the invigorating sunshine; and thenceforward our convalescenceproceeded rapidly. Color came to our cheeks and light to our eyes; andone sunny afternoon it was decided that we should set out for Cerro dePasco on the following day.
Harry proposed a postponement of our departure for two days, sayingthat he wished to make an excursion up the mountain. I understood himat once.
"It would be useless," I declared. "You would find nothing."
"But she was with us when we fell," he persisted, not bothering topretend that he did not understand me. "She came--it must be nearwhere we landed."
"That isn't it," I explained. "Have you forgotten that we have beenhere for over a month? You would find nothing." As he grasped mythought his face went white and he was silent. So on the followingmorning we departed.
Our host furnished us with food, clothing, mules, and an arriero, notto mention a sorrowful farewell and a hearty blessing. From the doorof the hacienda he waved his sombrero as we disappeared around a bendin the mountain-pass; we had, perhaps, been a welcome interruption inthe monotony of his lonely existence.
We were led upward for many miles until we found ourselves again in theregion of perpetual snow. There we set our faces to the south. Fromthe arriero we tried to learn how far we then were from the cave of thedevil, but to our surprise were informed that he had never heard of thething.
We could see that the question made him more than a little suspiciousof us; often, when he thought himself unobserved, I caught him eyeingus askance with something nearly approaching terror.
We journeyed southward for eleven days; on the morning of the twelfthwe saw below us our goal. Six hours later we had entered the samestreet of Cerro de Pasco through which we had passed formerly withlight hearts; and the heart which had been gayest of all we had leftbehind us, stilled forever, somewhere beneath the mountain of stonewhich she had herself chosen for her tomb.
Almost the first person we saw was none other than Felipe, the arriero.He sat on the steps of the hotel portico as we rode up on our mules.Dismounting, I caught sight of his white face and staring eyes as herose slowly to his feet, gazing at us as though fascinated.
I opened my mouth to call to him, but before the words left my lips hehad let out an ear-splitting yell of terror and bounded down the stepsand past us, with arms flying in every direction, running like onepossessed. Nor did he return during the few hours that we remained atthe hotel.
Two days later found us boarding the yacht at Callao. When I haddiscovered, to my profound astonishment, at the hacienda, that anotheryear had taken us as far as the tenth day of March, I had greatlydoubted if we should find Captain Harris still waiting for us. Butthere he was; and he had not even put himself to the trouble ofbecoming uneasy about us.
As he himself put it that night in the cabin, over a bottle of wine, he"didn't know but what the senora had decided to take the Andes home fora mantel ornament, and was engaged in the little matter oftransportation."
But when I informed him that "the senora" was no more, his face grewsober with genuine regret and sorrow. He had many good things to sayof her then; it appeared that she had really touched his salty oldheart.
"She was a gentle lady," said the worthy captain; and I smiled to thinkhow Desiree herself would have smiled at such a characterization of thegreat Le Mire.
We at once made for San Francisco. There, at a loss, I disposed of theremainder of the term of the lease on the yacht, and we took the firsttrain for the East.
Four days later we were in New York, after a journey saddened bythoughts of the one who had left us to return alone.
It was, in fact, many months before the shadow of Desiree ceased tohover about the dark old mansion on lower Fifth Avenue, incongruousenough among the ancient halls and portraits of Lamars dead and gone ina day when La Marana herself had darted like a meteor into the heartsof their contemporaries.
That is, I suppose, properly the end of the story; but I cannot refrainfrom the opportunity to record a curious incident that has justbefallen me. Some twenty minutes ago, as I was writing the lastparagraph--I am seated in the library before a massive mahogany table,close to a window through which the September sun sends its goldenrays--twenty minutes ago, as I say, Harry sauntered into the room andthrew himself lazily into a large armchair on the other side of thetable.
I looked up with a nod of greeting, while he sat and eyed meimpatiently for some seconds.
"Aren't you coming with me down to Southampton?" he asked finally.
"What time do you leave?" I inquired, without looking up.
"Eleven-thirty."
"What's on?"
"Freddie Marston's Crocodiles and the Blues. It's going to be somepolo."
I considered a moment. "Why, I guess I'll run down with you. I'mabout through here."
"Good enough!" Harry arose to his feet and began idly fingering some ofthe sheets on the table before me. "What is all this silly rot,anyway?"
"My dear boy," I smiled, "you'll be sorry you called it silly rot whenI tell you that it is a plain and honest tale of our own experiences."
"Must be deuced interesting," he observed. "More silly rot than ever."
"Others may not think so," I retorted, a little exasperated by hismanner. "It surely will be sufficiently exciting to read of how wewere buried with Desiree Le Mire under the Andes, and our encounterswith the Incas, and our final escape, and--"
"Desiree what?" Harry interrupted.
"Desiree Le Mire," I replied very distinctly. "The great Frenchdancer."
"Never heard of her," said Harry, looking at me as if he doubted mysanity.
"Never heard of Desiree, the woman you loved?" I almost shouted at him.
"The woman I--piffle! I say I never heard of her."
I gazed at him, trembling with high indignation. "I suppose," Iobserved with infinite sarcasm, "that you will tell me next that youhave never been in Peru?"
"Guilty," said Harry. "I never have."
"And that you never climbed Pike's Peak to see the sunrise?"
"Rahway, New Jersey, is my farthest west."
"And that you never dived with me from the top of a column one hundredfeet high?"
"Not I. I retain a smattering of common sense."
"And that you did not avenge the death of Desiree by causing that ofthe Inca king?"
"So far as that Desiree woman is con
cerned," said Harry, and his tonebegan to show impatience, "I can only repeat that I have never heard ofthe creature. And"--he continued--"if you're trying to bamboozle agullible world by concocting a tale as silly as your remarks to mewould seem to indicate, I will say that as a cheap author you aretaking undue liberties with your family, meaning myself. And what ismore, if you dare to print the stuff I'll let the world know it's arank fake."
This threat, delivered with the most awful resolution and sincerity,unnerved me completely, and I fell back in my chair in a swoon.
When I recovered Harry had gone to his polo game, leaving me behind,whereupon I seized my pen and hastened to set down in black and whitethat most remarkable conversation, that the reader may judge forhimself between us.
For my part, I do swear that the story is true, on my word of honor asa cynic and a philosopher.
[end of text]
Note: I have made the following changes to the text:
PAGE PARA. LINE ORIGINAL CHANGED TO 2 1 2 sursounding surrounding 22 6 2 hunderd hundred 24 9 1 La Mire Le Mire 32 1 1 ager eager 36 4 5 earthqakes earthquakes 45 5 2 tossd tossed 56 10 1 then than 58 8 1 or our 69 8 2 geting getting 74 1 3 unstead unsteady 87 13 1 Whey Why 106 5 1 placng placing 112 4 2 aggreeable agreeable 115 1 to some some 123 1 2 Desiree arms Desiree's arms 125 3 5 had made has made 129 11 4 But was But it was 140 4 1 Lords knows Lord knows 158 5 6 begin towed being towed 168 6 2 dicussing discussing 178 6 3 Pachacamas Pachacamac 179 7 3 cabin cavern 185 2 1 was wild was a wild 192 8 3 carvern cavern* 196 8 1 perservation preservation 196 9 4 dour days four days 204 6 1 litte little 208 2 1 on my on me 209 3 4 aked asked 210 5 2 retuned returned 211 8 3 said side 212 3 3 touch tough 224 6 2 Soliel Soleil 226 5 5 aproaching approaching 243 1 3 serius serious 247 5 5 forseen foreseen 247 6 1 They The 259 4 5 peceptibly perceptibly
