when the opportunity should come for him to
break away successfully and effect his escape. For that he would escape
he was resolutely determined. The prospect of being an Inca--an
absolute monarch whose lightest word was law--had, at that precise
moment, no attraction for him. He had not a particle of ambition to
become the regenerator of a nation; or, if a scarce-heard whisper
reached his mental ear that to become such would be an exceedingly grand
thing, he promptly replied that his genius did not lie in that
direction, and that any attempt on his part to regenerate anybody must
inevitably result in dismal and utter failure. No, he had been sent out
to Peru by Sir Philip Swinburne to execute certain work, and he would
carry out his contract with Sir Philip in spite of all the Indians in
the South American continent. As to that story about his being the
reincarnated Inca, Manco Capac, Harry Escombe was one of those estimable
persons whose most valued asset is their sound, sterling common sense.
He flattered himself that he had not an ounce of romance in his entire
composition; and it did not take him a moment to make up his mind that
the yarn, from end to end, was the veriest nonsense imaginable. He
laughed aloud--a laugh of mingled scorn and pity for the stupendous
ignorance of these poor savages, isolated from all the rest of the
world, and evidently priding themselves, as such isolated communities
are apt to do, upon their immeasurable superiority to everybody else.
Then he happened to think of the exquisitely wrought service of gold
plate off which he had fed that day, and the wonderfully fine quality of
the material of the priests' clothing; and he began to modify his
opinion somewhat. A people with the taste and skill needed to produce
such superb goldsmith's work and such beautiful cloth--soft and smooth
as silk, yet as warm as and very much finer than any woollen material
that he had ever seen--could scarcely be classed as mere savages; they
must certainly possess some at least of the elements of civilisation.
And then those "second thoughts", which are proverbially best, or more
just, gradually usurped in young Escombe's mind his first crude ideas
relative to the ignorance and benighted condition generally of the
inhabitants of the unknown City of the Sun. And as they did so, a
feeling of curiosity to see for himself that wonderful city gradually
took root, and began to spring up and strengthen within hi