s, while the slaves followed, without a sign of gratitude, but
meekly obedient to their new masters, and testifying now and then by a
sign or a grunt, their surprise at not being beaten, or made to carry
their captors. Some, however, caught sight of the little calabashes of
coca which the English carried. That woke them from their torpor, and
they began coaxing abjectly (and not in vain), for a taste of that
miraculous herb, which would not only make food unnecessary, and enable
their panting lungs to endure the keen mountain air, but would rid them,
for a while at least, of the fallen Indian's most unpitying foe, the
malady of thought.

As the cavalcade turned the corner of the mountain, they paused for one
last look at the scene of that fearful triumph. Lines of vultures were
already streaming out of infinite space, as if created suddenly for the
occasion. A few hours and there would be no trace of that fierce fray,
but a few white bones amid untrodden beds of flowers.

And now Amyas had time to ask Ayacanora the meaning of this her strange
appearance. He wished her anywhere but where she was: but now that she
was here, what heart could be so hard as not to take pity on the poor
wild thing? And Amyas as he spoke to her had, perhaps, a tenderness in
his tone, from very fear of hurting her, which he had never used before.
Passionately she told him how she had followed on their track day and
night, and had every evening made sounds, as loud as she dared, in hopes
of their hearing her, and either waiting for her, or coming back to see
what caused the noise. Amyas now recollected the strange roaring which
had followed them.

"Noises? What did you make them with?"

Ayacanora lifted her finger with an air of most self-satisfied mystery;
and then drew cautiously from under her feather cloak an object at which
Amyas had hard work to keep his countenance.

"Look!" whispered she, as if half afraid that the thing itself should
hear her. "I have it--the holy trumpet!"

There it was, a handsome earthen tube some two feet long, neatly glazed,
and painted with quaint grecques and figures of animals; a relic
evidently of some civilization now extinct.

Brimblecombe rubbed his little fat hands. "Brave maid! you have cheated
Satan this time," quoth he; while Yeo advised that the idolatrous relic
should be forthwith "hove over cliff."

"Let be," said Amyas. "What is the meaning of this, Ayacanora? And why
have you followed us?"