. You are doing excellently well,
_Senor Ingles_--better, even, than I dared hope. And now you are
hungry, is it not so? Good! your breakfast is ready and shall be
brought to you instantly; and when you have finished, there is my son
Yupanqui, who is ready to take any message that you may desire to send
to your camp."

An excellently roasted bird--which the patient subsequently learned was
a parrot,--bread made of Indian corn flour, and a cup of delicious
chocolate were speedily dispatched. Then Harry having asked for his
notebook, which had been found in his pocket and carefully dried, he
pencilled a note to Butler, briefly informing that individual of his
escape, and of his hope that he would be sufficiently recovered from his
injuries to rejoin the camp in about a fortnight's time, and dispatched
Yupanqui with it, describing to the Indian the probable situation of the
camp, as nearly as he could, and instructing the man to give it only
into the hands of the Englishman, and to ask for a reply, which he was
to bring back with him.

The next few days passed uneventfully, save that the invalid's progress
toward recovery was so rapid and satisfactory that about midday of the
third day Harry--who began to find bed becoming very wearisome--was
allowed by his nurse to rise and, clad in trousers and the remains of
his shirt, go as far as the entrance of the cave and sit there for an
hour or two, enjoying the magnificent prospect which greeted his
astonished eyes.

He found that the cave which had afforded him such perfect shelter
during his helplessness formed a chamber, or rather a series of
chambers, in an enormous mass of rock that rose sheer out of a little
circular, basin-like valley through which flowed the stream from the
_quebrada_, the water here spreading out in the form of a lake measuring
about a mile across and evidently rather shallow, for here and there he
could see small sandbanks showing clear of the water. It was upon one
of these that he had been found stranded by Yupanqui. The _quebrada_
died out in the valley about a mile from the mouth of the cave, as could
be seen when the spot was indicated by the old Indian woman, and Escombe
wondered more than ever by what chance his senseless body had been
carried so far by the rushing water without destroying such life as
remained in it. The ground sloped rather steeply from the cave down to
the water's edge, and some eight or ten acres of it had been dug