or my eye
to penetrate the darkness, and then I saw a spiral stair ascending
perpendicularly, apparently carved from the solid rock. Harry must
have perceived it at the same moment, for he turned to me with a short
laugh:

"Going up? Not for me, thank you. The beggar means for us to go
alone."

For a moment I hesitated, glancing round uncertainly at the dusky forms
that were ever pressing closer upon us. We were assuredly between the
devil and the deep sea.

Then I said, shrugging my shoulders: "It's no good pulling, Harry.
Come on; take a chance. You said it--going up!"

I placed my foot on the first step of the spiral stair.

Harry followed without comment. Up we went together, but slowly. The
stair was fearfully steep and narrow, and more than once I barely
escaped a fall.

Suddenly I became aware that light was descending on us from above.
With every step upward it became brighter, until finally it was as
though a noonday sun shone in upon us.

There came an exclamation from Harry, and we ascended faster. I
remember that I counted a hundred and sixty steps--and then, as a
glimmering of the truth shot through my brain into certainty, I counted
no more.

Harry was crowding me from below, and we took the last few steps almost
at a run. Then the end, and we stumbled out into a blaze of light and
surveyed the surrounding scene with stupefaction and wonder.

It was not new to us; we had seen it before, but from a different angle.

We were on the top of the column in the center of the lake; on the spot
where Desiree had whirled in the dance of the sun.

Chapter X.

THE VERDICT.

For many seconds we stood bewildered, too dazed to speak or move. The
light dazzled our eyes; we seemed surrounded by an impenetrable wall of
flame. There was no sensation of heat, owing, no doubt, to the immense
height of the cavern and our comparatively distant removal from the
flames, which mounted upward in narrow tongues.

Then the details began to strike me.

I have said the scene was the same as that we had previously beheld.
Round the walls of the immense circular cavern squatted innumerable
rows of the Incas on terraced seats.

Below, at a dizzy distance, was the smooth surface of the lake, black
and gloomy save where the reflections from the blazing urns pierced its
depths. And directly facing us, set in the wall of the cavern, was the
alcove containing the throne of gold.

And on the throne was sea