“Why don’t we hold them here?” I demanded.  “They could never come up that rock with us on top.”

Harry looked at me.

“Spears,” he said briefly; and, of course, he was right.  They would have picked us off like birds on a limb.

We scaled the second rock with extreme difficulty, Harry assisting both Desiree and me; and as we stood upright on its top I saw the Incas scrambling over the edge of the one below.  Two or three of them had already started to cross; many more were coming up from behind; and one, as he made the top and arose to his feet, braced himself on the sloping rock and raised a spear high above his head.

At sight of him I started, crying to Harry and Desiree.  They turned.

“The king!” I shouted; and I saw a shudder of terror run over Desiree’s face as she, too, recognized the black form below.  At the same instant the spear darted forward from the hand of the Child of the Sun, but it landed harmlessly against the rock several feet away.

The next moment the Inca king had bounded across the rock toward us, followed by a score of others.

I was minded to try my luck with his own weapon, but we had no spears to waste, and Harry was dragging Desiree forward and shouting to me to follow.  I turned and ran after them, and just as we let ourselves down into a narrow crevice below the Incas appeared over the edge of the rock behind.

Somehow we scrambled forward, with the Incas at our heels.  Sharp corners of projecting rocks bruised our faces and bodies; once my leg bent double under me as I fell from a ledge onto a boulder below, and I thought it was broken; but Harry jerked me to my feet and I struggled on.

Harry seemed possessed of the strength of ten men and the heart of a thousand.  He pulled Desiree and me up and over boulders and rocks as though we had been feathers; the Lord knows how he got there himself!  Half of the time he carried Desiree; the other half he supported me.  His energy and exertions were titanic; even in the desperate excitement of our retreat I found time to marvel at it.

We did not gain an inch; our pursuers kept close behind us; but we held our own.  Now and then a stray spear came hurtling through the air or struck the rock near us, but they were infrequent and we were not hit.

One, flying past my head, stuck in a crevice of the rock and I grasped the shaft to pull it out, but abandoned my effort when I heard Harry shouting to me from the front to come to his aid.

He and Desiree were standing on the rim of a ledge that stood high above the ground of the passage.  At its foot began a level stretch leading straight ahead as far as we could see.

“We must lift her down,” Harry was saying.

He let himself over the ledge, hung by his hands, and dropped.  “All right!” he called from below; and I lay flat on the rock while Desiree scrambled over the edge, holding to my hands.  For a moment I held her suspended in my outstretched arms; then, at a word from Harry, I let her drop.  Another moment and I was over myself, knocking Harry to the ground and tumbling on top of him as he stood beneath to break my fall.