adding of hydrochloric acid to a
neutral solution of auric-chloride) for producing from gold a rich
purple stain, that was employed in the coloring of hard-wood and bone,
was precisely that which Boyle mentioned in 1663; and, as nearly as I
could determine the date, it was about that very time that they, also,
first effected this combination. In the matter of hardening gold, and
thereafter giving it all the qualities of tempered steel, they had made
a step that was distinctly in advance of anything which our
metallurgists had accomplished; and I am strongly inclined to the belief
that--at least among the priests--knowledge had been gained of a process
quite unlike that known to us for producing a gold fulminate. I was not
so fortunate as to gain more knowledge of this matter than could be
learned from hearsay, but from several sources I heard of the splitting
asunder of a certain great rock by the Priest Captain--which wonder was
accompanied by a thunderous noise and a gleam of flame and a bursting
forth of smoke--whereby he was considered to have proved that the aid of
the gods was at his command. But to my mind, and also to Rayburn's, the
proof was, rather, that he had at his command--in some way that as yet
our chemists have not fathomed--the aid of a gold fulminate that could
be controlled in use as readily as we control gunpowder. That this
agent, whatever it might be, was not easily available, was indicated by
the fact that the Priest Captain never had given more than this single
exhibition of the wonders which he could accomplish with it; and that it
then had served his purpose well was shown by the obvious awe with which
all who told me of it spoke of the dreadful havoc that thus visibly was
wrought by what they termed the thunder of the gods.

Indeed, a very serious difficulty that the leaders of the revolution had
to overcome was the unwillingness on the part of the people at large to
defy the power of their spiritual chief; which feeling among the upper
classes was mainly because disobedience to the Priest Captain was, in
effect, heresy; while among the lower classes there was joined to a like
horror of heresy a very lively dread of the punishment, both temporal
and spiritual, that the Priest Captain could bring upon them because of
his intimate relations with the supernatural beings by which the forces
of the world were controlled.

Yet out of this condition of affairs arose an opportunity that Fray
Antonio