They bore away the lithe corpse into the forest, and buried it under soft moss and virgin mould; and so the fair clay was transfigured into fairer flowers, and the poor, gentle, untaught spirit returned to God who gave it.

And then Amyas went sadly and silently back again, and Parracombe walked after him, like one who walks in sleep.

Ebsworthy, sobered by the shock, entreated to come too:  but Amyas forbade him gently,—­

“No, lad, you are forgiven.  God forbid that I should judge you or any man!  Sir John shall come up and marry you; and then, if it still be your will to stay, the Lord forgive you, if you be wrong; in the meanwhile, we will leave with you all that we can spare.  Stay here and pray to God to make you, and me too, wiser men.”

And so Amyas departed.  He had come out stern and proud; but he came back again like a little child.

Three days after Parracombe was dead.  Once in camp he seemed unable to eat or move, and having received absolution and communion from good Sir John, faded away without disease or pain, “babbling of green fields,” and murmuring the name of his lost Indian bride.

Amyas, too, sought ghostly council of Sir John, and told him all which had passed through his mind.

“It was indeed a temptation of Diabolus,” said that simple sage; “for he is by his very name the divider who sets man against man, and tempts one to care only for oneself, and forget kin and country, and duty and queen.  But you have resisted him, Captain Leigh, like a true-born Englishman, as you always are, and he has fled from you.  But that is no reason why we should not flee from him too; and so I think the sooner we are out of this place, and at work again, the better for all our souls.”

To which Amyas most devoutly said, “Amen!” If Ayacanora were the daughter of ten thousand Incas, he must get out of her way as soon as possible.

The next day he announced his intention to march once more, and to his delight found the men ready enough to move towards the Spanish settlements.  One thing they needed:  gunpowder for their muskets.  But that they must make as they went along; that is, if they could get the materials.  Charcoal they could procure, enough to set the world on fire; but nitre they had not yet seen; perhaps they should find it among the hills:  while as for sulphur, any brave man could get that where there were volcanoes.  Who had not heard how one of Cortez’ Spaniards, in like need, was lowered in a basket down the smoking crater of Popocatepetl, till he had gathered sulphur enough to conquer an empire?  And what a Spaniard could do an Englishman could do, or they would know the reason why.  And if they found none—­why clothyard arrows had done Englishmen’s work many a time already, and they could do it again, not to mention those same blow-guns and their arrows of curare poison, which, though they might be useless against Spaniards’ armor, were far more valuable than muskets for procuring food, from the simple fact of their silence.