The accounts of how Mr. Hampton and Don Ernesto and Carlos, and of how Jack, Ferdinand and Pedro were captured, differed little from the tale of the capture of the camp. Each party had been surrounded by an overwhelming number of the Incas, and had seen the folly of putting up a fight and so had surrendered.
As they moved in the midst of their captors down the sloping meadow to the sh.o.r.e of the great lake, sparkling and calm under the mid-morning sun, these stories were quickly told. At the sh.o.r.e, the Incas embarked in several great canoes holding a score of men each. The prisoners, however, were placed aboard a state barge in which Prince Huaca also embarked. The barge rowed forty oars, twenty to a side.
Paddles dipped in unison, and the canoes were off. The oars of the great barge flashed in and out in perfect time, and it, too, moved away in stately fashion, with the prisoners left to themselves on the half-deck at the bow, while Prince Huaca took his post on the other half-deck at the stern. The rowers could be seen bending back and forth, back muscles rippling under their tunics, in the waist of the barge.
"Am I dreaming?" said Frank.
Mr. Hampton nodded.
"It is hard to believe, isn"t it, Frank?"
"Hard? It"s impossible to believe. Why, this is like stepping back thousands of years to the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean and the Greek galleys of the days before Christ."
"These fellows seem like Greeks or Romans, too," mused Mr. Hampton. "The commoners, with their bobbed hair, their tunics and sandals, and Prince Huaca, proud and stately as a Roman n.o.ble, are not exactly what one would expect to find in the world of today."
Don Ernesto agreed. The remark opened another line of thought.
"See how openly they operate on this lake, and in this valley," he said.
"Look around you, too. So far as I can observe, there is only the one entrance of the pa.s.s through which we were brought. Can it be that the Incas maintain frontier guards, so to speak, on perpetual watch to capture any intruders into this wild region who threaten discovery of their secret? I begin to believe so. Perhaps guards are on duty on the mountain tops about us, and others in the valley beyond the pa.s.s."
This, they later learned, was the actual state of affairs. Not only were frontier guards kept on constant duty about the great valley in which they now found themselves, but also about the inner valley holding the Enchanted City, to which they were being taken. Moreover, such watch had been maintained down the centuries.
The prospect that greeted their eyes was wonderfully beautiful. The lake itself was some five miles long, but only one in width. As they now approached the sh.o.r.e opposite, they descried a stone jetty, for one side of which the canoes headed, while the barge was brought up on the other.
They were disembarked and marched ash.o.r.e under escort of Prince Huaca and twenty men. The others remained by their craft.
At the end of the jetty a guard house of stone was pa.s.sed. What surprised the boys beyond measure was to see the half dozen sentries drawn up in military formation, present arms with their silver-mounted muskets as Prince Huaca pa.s.sed.
"I can"t believe it," muttered Frank. "Incas presenting arms!"
Mr. Hampton offered a solution.
"Perhaps some adventurer captured by them, as were we, has instructed them in military tactics."
Ahead through a copse of trees lay a country home of stone, and toward this Prince Huaca bent his steps. On nearer approach they could see the stone was beautifully chiselled, and the house n.o.bly proportioned with a broad portico in front, through the supporting pillars of which they could see a courtyard, around the sides of which the dwelling was constructed.
At the command of Prince Huaca, the guard halted at the foot of a broad flight of stone steps with the prisoners, while the prince mounted and disappeared into a door on the left of the courtyard. The captives now had a chance to look about them. Although about the house, or, better, the mansion itself, no figures were to be seen, there was a constant coming and going in what they took to be the servants" quarters which lay considerably to the left.
Horses were being watered in one spot, out of a great trough, and then led back to the fields which stretched on every hand. Don Ernesto exclaimed at this sight.
"Those are Argentinian horses," said he, with conviction. "The early Spaniards who colonized the region of La Plata were enjoined by their monarchs to bring over a certain number of head of horses and of cattle for their own use, and a certain number to be turned loose to breed.
Thus the great herds of wild horses and cattle which used to thunder over the Pampas, but since have been largely exterminated or brought under herd, came into existence."
"And you think----"
"Yes, Senor Hampton, that is what I believe. These horses either wandered thus far across the mountains, which seems preposterous, or, as is more likely, were captured by scouting parties and brought hither.
The intermixture among the Incas of Spaniards in de Arguello"s early expedition or of adventurers captured since, as is more likely, told the Incas of these horses, and mayhap even helped to capture them."
"This valley is certainly marvellous," declared Mr. Hampton, shading his eyes with his hand, as he gazed about him in the bright sunlight.
"Notice those irrigation ditches, carrying water to the fields everywhere from the lakes. Why, this is so intensively cultivated, it can raise sufficient food for a great city without difficulty."
Don Ernesto nodded.
"The ancient Incas were fine agriculturists," said he. "They practised irrigation, and had a very good knowledge of culture of the soil. These, their descendants, seem to be no whit behind them."
At this moment they were interrupted by an exclamation from Frank, who pointed to two figures approaching them across the lawn. They were Prince Huaca and another young man dressed as he, evidently a n.o.ble. He was regarding them with curiosity. He did not address them, however, but the two halted at a little distance and concluded their conversation, during all of which time the stranger regarded them with bright quick glances.
Then he bowed to Prince Huaca, and the latter issued a command at which the guard started forward with the prisoners in their midst. They moved down the great driveway from the mansion to a highroad crossing the valley to the encircling mountains. Jack looked back as they reached the highroad, and saw the figure of the young n.o.ble, immobile, staring after them.
"He certainly was curious," he commented.
Frank, who marched beside him, shook his head.
"I believe I know what was in his mind," said he.
"What?" Jack glanced at him curiously.
"I don"t know--maybe I"m wrong--but it seemed to me there was a look of longing in his eyes--as if he wondered about the great outside world, perhaps, from which we came."
Mr. Hampton, who had overheard, threw Frank an understanding and approving glance.
"You have an observant mind, Frank," he said. "It is not unlikely that a gallant young fellow like that n.o.ble would wonder about the world beyond, and think at times that he would like, perhaps, to penetrate it.
And your words give me an idea. We will bear in mind the possibility of young blood becoming irked at this self-immurement, no matter how idyllic the conditions. Perhaps, if no other way of escape suggests itself, we may induce some such young fellow to aid us by painting to him the wonders of the world to which we can introduce him."
The party moved along in silence, until Bob declared:
"Fellows, did you ever see a finer road?"
The highway upon which they had entered from the estate drive was, indeed, a fine thoroughfare. It was made of concrete, and so broad that, a procession of farm carts drawn by horses, approaching from the opposite direction, was enabled to pa.s.s, although they moved three abreast.
"Ah, these Incas once more resemble their ancestors," said Don Ernesto.
"Yes, they were great road-builders," said Mr. Hampton.
"Great road-builders, indeed," Don Ernesto rejoined. "When the Conquerors entered the Peruvian empire under Pizarro, they found the Incas had built a road not then equalled in any part of the world, perhaps not even equalled today. It was a road even finer than anything built by Rome. For more than twelve hundred miles it extended, bringing into communication all the provinces of the empire.
"Moreover, it must be remembered that road was built at a great elevation through the mountains, all of which added to the difficulty of the enterprise. At some places it was more than 12,000 feet above sea level. It went northward from Cusco to a point beyond Quito, in the province of Guaca, and southward from Cusco to Chuquisaca, not far from the mines of Potosi.
"You boys," he added, "can better appreciate the magnitude of this road, if I tell you it was as far as a road from Calais to Constantinople, and through mountainous country immeasurably more difficult to travel than any country in Europe. In some places, the beds of concrete or mezcla, of which the road was formed, went down from 80 to 100 feet. The rains have since washed the earth away from under the concrete, for, I am sorry to say, the Conquerors and the later Viceroys of Spain did not see fit to care for this highway. Yet ma.s.ses of it today are left suspended over washouts like bridges made of one stone, as the historian Velasco said.
"There was also a lower road, about forty leagues distant from the other, which traversed the plains country near the sea. And along both these roads, at equal distances, were built stone inns, called tambos by the natives. The word has persisted, and is still used throughout the Inca country, to describe a post house on a highroad.
"In fact," he concluded, "it was the existence of these roads which, ironically, helped to destroy the Inca Empire. For over them the invading armies of the Spaniards were able to move with speed."
As Don Ernesto had talked, they had continued moving forward at a brisk pace, and had drawn close to the base of a lofty mountain. Now the road began to mount, in some places the going being so steep that concrete stairways were built. Up this the guards with the prisoners, and with Prince Huaca at the head, moved steadily. With each upward step, they were enabled to see more of the valley outspread below them, the great lake, the three smaller bodies of water, the irrigation ditches like a network of bright ribbons, the little clumps of trees surrounding other country mansions like that they had stopped at, and everywhere laborers were at work in the fields.
"Truly a marvellous sight," said Mr. Hampton, as they came to a halt at length on a wide concreted terrace with a low stone wall at the front, very thick, and loopholed, and with a stone building of fortress-like strength built at the back, seemingly into the side of the mountain.
Here the path up which they climbed appeared to end.