They all assembled for the evening service (hardly a day had passed since they left England on which they had not done the same); and after it was over, they must needs sing a Psalm, and then a catch or two, ere they went to sleep; and till the moon was high in heaven, twenty mellow voices rang out above the roar of the cataract, in many a good old tune.  Once or twice they thought they heard an echo to their song:  but they took no note of it, till Cary, who had gone apart for a few minutes, returned, and whispered Amyas away.

“The sweet Iniquity is mimicking us, lad.”

They went to the brink of the river; and there (for their ears were by this time dead to the noise of the torrent) they could hear plainly the same voice which had so surprised them in the hut, repeating, clear and true, snatches of the airs which they had sung.  Strange and solemn enough was the effect of the men’s deep voices on the island, answered out of the dark forest by those sweet treble notes; and the two young men stood a long while listening and looking out across the eddies, which swirled down golden in the moonlight:  but they could see nothing beyond save the black wall of trees.  After a while the voice ceased, and the two returned to dream of Incas and nightingales.

They visited the village again next day; and every day for a week or more:  but the maiden appeared but rarely, and when she did, kept her distance as haughtily as a queen.

Amyas, of course, as soon as he could converse somewhat better with his new friends, was not long before he questioned the cacique about her.  But the old man made an owl’s face at her name, and intimated by mysterious shakes of the head, that she was a very strange personage, and the less said about her the better.  She was “a child of the Sun,” and that was enough.

“Tell him, boy,” quoth Cary, “that we are the children of the Sun by his first wife; and have orders from him to inquire how the Indians have behaved to our step-sister, for he cannot see all their tricks down here, the trees are so thick.  So let him tell us, or all the cassava plants shall be blighted.”

“Will, Will, don’t play with lying!” said Amyas:  but the threat was enough for the cacique, and taking them in his canoe a full mile down the stream, as if in fear that the wonderful maiden should overhear him, he told them, in a sort of rhythmic chant, how, many moons ago (he could not tell how many), his tribe was a mighty nation, and dwelt in Papamene, till the Spaniards drove them forth.  And how, as they wandered northward, far away upon the mountain spurs beneath the flaming cone of Cotopaxi, they had found this fair creature wandering in the forest, about the bigness of a seven years’ child.  Wondering at her white skin and her delicate beauty, the simple Indians worshipped her as a god, and led her home with them.  And when they found that she was human like themselves, their wonder scarcely