a
mob of half-savage fellows with arms into an ordered host. I created
regiments and officered them with the best captains that I could find,
collecting in each regiment so far as possible the people of a certain
town or district. These companies I drilled and exercised, teaching them
to use such weapons as they had to the best purpose.

Also I caused them to shape stronger bows on the model of my own with
which I had shot the three Frenchmen far away at Hastings that, as it
was said, once had been the battle-bow of Thorgrimmer the Norseman
my ancestor, as the sword Wave-Flame was his battle-sword. When these
Chancas saw how far and with what a good aim I could shoot with this
bow, they strove day and night to learn to equal me, though it is
true they never did. Also I bettered their body-armour of quilting by
settings sheets of leather (since in that country there is no iron)
taken from the hides of wild animals and of their long-haired native
sheep, between the layers of cotton. Other things I did also, too many
and long to record.

The end of it was that within three months Huaracha had an army of some
fifty thousand men who, if not well trained, still kept discipline, and
could move in regiments; who knew also how to shoot with their bows and
to use their copper-headed spears and axes of that metal, or of hard
stone, to the best purpose.

Then at length came the Yuncas to join us, thirty or forty thousand of
them, wild fellows and brave enough, but undisciplined. With these I
could do little since time was lacking, save send some of the officers
whom I had trained to teach their chiefs and captains what they were
able.

Thus I was employed from dawn till dark and often after it, in talk with
Huaracha and his generals, or in drawing plans with ink that I found a
means to make, upon parchment of sheepskin and noting down numbers and
other things, a sight at which these people who knew nothing of writing
marvelled very much. Great were my labours, yet in them I found more
happiness than I had known since that fatal day when I, the rich
London merchant, Hubert of Hastings, had stood before the altar of St.
Margaret's church with Blanche Aleys. Indeed, every cranny of my time
and mind being thus filled with things finished or attempted, I forgot
my great loneliness as an alien in a strange land, and once more became
as I had been when I trafficked in the Cheap.

But toil as I would, I could not forget Quilla. Duri