this I laughed again and
said that if so it would be after we were both dead.

By degrees he learned English quite well and even how to read and write
it, teaching me in return much of his own language which he called
_Quichua_, a soft and beautiful tongue, though he said that there were
also many others in his country, including one that was secret to the
King and his family, which he was not allowed to reveal although he knew
it. In time I mastered enough of this Quichua to be able to talk to Kari
in brief sentences of it when I did not wish others to understand what I
said.

To tell the truth, while I studied thus and listened to his marvellous
tales, a great desire arose in me to see this land of his and to open
up a trade with it, since there he declared gold was as plentiful as
was iron with us. I thought even of making a voyage of discovery to
the west, but when I spoke of it to certain sea-captains, even the most
venturesome mocked at me and said that they would wait for that journey
till they "went west" themselves, by which in their sea parlance that
they had learned in the Mediterranean, they meant until they died.[*]
When I told Kari this he smiled in his mysterious way and answered that
all the same, I and he should make that journey together and this before
we died, a thing that came about, indeed, though, not by my own will or
his.

[*] Of late there has been much dispute as to the origin of
the phrase "to go west," or in other words, to die. Surely
it arises from the custom of the Ancient Egyptians who,
after death, were ferried across the Nile and entombed upon
the western shore.--Ed.

For the rest when Kari saw my workmen fashioning gold and setting
jewels in it for sale to the nobles and ladies of the Court, he was much
interested and asked if he might be allowed to follow this craft, of
which he said he understood something, and thus earn the bread he ate. I
answered, yes, for I knew that it irked his proud nature to be dependent
on me, and gave him gold and silver with a little room having a furnace
in it where he could labour. The first thing he made was an object about
two inches across, round and with a groove at the back of it, on the
front of which he fashioned an image of the sun having a human face and
rays of light projecting all about. I asked him what was its purpose,
whereon he took the piece and thrust it into the lobe of his ear where
the gristle had been s