had recovered consciousness; his little wicked
eyes gleamed up at me with an expression that would have been
terrifying in the intensity of its malignant hatred if he had not been
utterly helpless. I turned to Harry:

"What are we going to do with him?"

"By Jove, I had forgotten!" exclaimed the lad. "Paul, perhaps if we
could communicate with them--" He stopped, glancing at the closed
doorway; then added: "But it's impossible."

"I believe it is possible," I contradicted. "If the Incas were able to
lower that stone at any moment you may be sure they are prepared to
raise it. How, Heaven only knows; but the fact is certain. Do you
think they would have condemned their precious king to starvation?"

"Then the king can save us!"

"And how?"

"Our lives for his. We'll give him nothing to eat, and if, as you say,
they have some way of watching us, they'll be forced to negotiate. You
can talk with the quipos, and tell them that unless they give us our
freedom and let us go in safety they'll have a dead king. From the way
they seem to worship him they'd come through in a minute."

"Oh, they'd promise, all right," I agreed; "but how could we hold them
to it?"

"Well, a promise is a promise. And it's our only chance."

"No, Harry; to trust them would be folly. The minute we stepped
through that doorway they would be on us--the whole beggarly, smelly
lot of them."

"Then there is no chance--none whatever?" put in Desiree.

"None. We may as well admit the worst. And the worst is best for us
now. Really, we are in luck; we die in our own way and at our own
time. But there is one difficulty."

Then, in answer to their glances of inquiry, I added significantly: "We
have no weapons. We cannot allow ourselves to starve--the end must
come before that, for as soon as they saw us weakening we would be at
their mercy."

There was comprehension and horror in Desiree's eyes, but she looked at
me with a brave attempt to smile as she took from her hair something
which gleamed and shone in the light from the flaming urns. It was a
tiny steel blade with a handle of pearl studded with diamonds.

I had seen it before many times--a present, Desiree had told me, from
the young man I had seen in the royal coach on that day in Madrid when
I had first heard the name of Le Mire.

"Will that do?" she asked calmly, holding it out to me with a firm hand.

Brave Le Mire! I took the dagger and placed it in my pocket, an