imple recommendation to take less food and more
exercise, I observed that before I could say anything further I must
gather plants, make decoctions, and consult the stars, and that my black
colleague should prepare a charm which would greatly increase the potency
of my remedies and the chances of her recovery.

Mamcuna answered that I talked like a medicine-man who understood his
business and her case, that she would strictly obey my orders, and so soon
as she felt better give me a condor's skull helmet. Meanwhile, I was to
take up my quarters in her own house, and she ordered the caciques to send
me forthwith three suits of clothes, my own, as she rightly remarked, not
being suitable for a man of my position.

"Now, did not I tell you?" said Gondocori, as we left the room. "Oh, we
are going on swimmingly; and it is all my doing. I do believe that if I
had not protested that you were the greatest medicine-man in the world,
and had come expressly to cure her, she would have had you roasted or
ripped up by the man-killer or turned adrift in the desert, or something
equally diabolical. Your fate is in your own hands now. If you fail to
make good your promises, it will be out of my power to help you. You heard
how she treated your predecessor."

CHAPTER XXIII.

YOU ARE THE MAN.

Early next morning I sent Gahra secretly up to the lake on the bastion for
a jar of chalybeate water, which, after being colored with red earth and
flavored with wild garlic, was nauseous enough to satisfy the most
exacting of physic swallowers. Then the negro sacrificed a cock in the
royal presence, and performed an incantation in the most approved African
fashion, and we made the creature's claws and comb into an amulet, which I
requested the queen to hang round her neck.

This done, I gave my instructions, assuring her that if she failed in any
particular to observe them my efforts would be vain, and her cure
impossible. She was to drink nothing but water and physic (of the latter
very little), eat animal food only once a day, and that sparingly, and
walk two hours every morning; and finding that she could ride on horseback
(like a man), though she had lately abandoned the exercise, I told her to
ride two hours every evening. I also laid down other rules, purposely
making them onerous and hard to be observed, partly because I knew that a
strict regimen was necessary for her recovery, partly to leave myself a
loop-hole, in the event