ience as they possessed.

It was not, however, until past noon on the following day that Inaguy
returned to camp alone, with a somewhat disquieting tale. From this it
appeared that, having got upon the retreating Indians' trail, he and his
companions had followed it up until close upon sunset, when, while
passing through a narrow opening between two high rocks, they had been
suddenly set upon from both front and rear, overpowered, and conveyed as
captives to a certain spot, where they found the tribe of which they
were in search established as dwellers in numerous rock caves in the
side of a cliff.

Arrived here, they were at once taken into the presence of the chief and
closely questioned as to the why and the wherefore of their presence in
that region, how many in number their party were, and so on, the
questioning and answering being conducted with considerable difficulty
owing to Inaguy's very imperfect knowledge of the language in which he
was addressed. It appeared that the chief listened to Inaguy's
explanation, such as it was, with a good deal of impatience and
suspicion, and finally terminated the interview by appropriating the
gifts which the man bore, and condemning him and his comrades to be
sacrificed, on the following morning, to a certain stone god, by way of
propitiation, in the hope that the act might effect the cure of certain
persons belonging to the community who were then lying apparently at the
point of death, suffering from some mysterious sickness. And so
terrified had Inaguy been at the prospect of a sacrificial death, with
its accompanying tortures, that it had taken him the whole night to
think out an argument which might possibly save the lives of himself and
his companions.

This argument he had advanced when, at sunrise, he and his two
companions had been led forth to die upon the altar before the great
stone god; and it had consisted, first, in the narrative of how the
Great White Chief in command of his party had miraculously cured a black
panther which had been discovered in the last stage of dissolution, and
subsequently tamed it, and secondly, in the confident assertion that the
man who could do this thing could likewise cure the sick of the village,
if he were approached in a becomingly humble spirit. The humble spirit,
Inaguy regretfully reported, had proved conspicuous by its absence; but
after much discussion a bargain had been eventually struck whereby the
two followers of