Page:Gaston Leroux--The bride of the sun.djvu/246

232 demi-gods, and which have not moved, nor will move until the earth dies, long after the winds of heaven and the quivering of the mountains have stamped flat the miserable huts left by the Conquistadors.

They left the city behind them and Orellana, taking Dick by the hand, like a little child, made him climb the mount which the Quichuas call the Hill of the Dancing Monkey. Its gigantic summit, hewn into terraces, galleries and giant stairways by long-dead craftsmen, was already crowned with Indians. All eyes were turned toward that other miracle of Inca work which is Sacsay-Huaynam, a hill of stone fashioned into a Cyclopean fortress, with three lines of defenses rising one above the other, each wall dotted with niches from which on this day, as of yore, armed sentries looked out over the country. On the summit of Sacsay-Huaynam towered the Intihuatana, or "the pillar on which the sun is bound."

Orellana's broken voice explained it all to Dick, guide-like.

"This pillar, señor, was used by the Incas to measure time. A religious stone, erected to mark the exact period of the equinoxes. That is why they call it Intihuatana; it means 'where the sun is bound.' Look over there! You can see the procession starting…. Don't you