“You see I trust you although you are a god from the sea who has been fighting against me.  Now hearken.  You had a servant with you, a very strange man, who is said also to have come out of the sea, though that I cannot believe since he is like one of our princes.  Where is that man?”

“With the army of Huaracha, Inca.”

“So I have heard.  I heard also that in the battle he hoisted a banner with the sun blazoned on it, and that thereon certain regiments of mine deserted to Huaracha.  Now, why did they do that?”

“I understand, O Inca, that the kings of this land have many children.  Perhaps he might be one of them.”

“Ah!  You are clever as a god should be.  Well, I am a god also and the same thought has come to me, although as a fact I have only had two legitimate sons and the others are of no account.  The eldest of these was an able and beautiful prince named Kari, but we quarrelled, and to tell the truth there was a woman in the matter, or rather two women, for Kari’s mother fought with Urco’s mother whom I loved, because she never scolded me, which the other did.  So Urco was named to be Inca after me.  Yet that was not enough for him who remained jealous of his brother Kari who outpassed him in all things save strength of body.  They wooed the same beautiful woman and Kari won her, whereon Urco seduced her from him, and afterwards he or someone killed her.  At least she died, I forget how.  Then the lords of the Inca blood began to turn towards Kari because he was royal and wise, which would have meant civil war when I had been gathered to the Sun.  Therefore Urco poisoned him, or so it was rumoured; at any rate, he vanished away, and often since then I have mourned him.”

“The dead come to life again sometimes, Inca.”

“Yes, yes, Lord-from-the-Sea, that happens; the gods who took them away bring them back—­and this servant of yours—­they say he is so like to Kari that he might be the same man grown older.  And—­why did those regiments, all of them officered by men who used to love Kari, go over to Huaracha to-day, and why do rumours run through the land like the wind that springs up suddenly in fine weather?  Tell me of this servant of yours and how you found him in the sea.”

“Why should I tell you, Inca?  Is it because you want to kill him who is so like to this lost Kari of yours?”

“No, no—­gods can keep each other’s counsel, can they not?  It is because I would give—­oh! half my godship to know that he is alive.  Hark you, Urco wearies me so much that sometimes I wonder whether he really is my son.  Who can tell?  There was a certain lord of the coastlands, a hairy giant who, they said, could eat half a sheep at a sitting and break the backs of men in his hands, of whom Urco’s mother used to think much.  But who can tell?  No one except my father, the Sun, and he guards his secrets—­for the present.  At least Urco wearies me with his coarse crimes and his drunkenness, though the army