Page:Gaston Leroux--The bride of the sun.djvu/259

Rh eagerly|, striving to guess how much was truth, and how much madness.

"But how do they get from Cuzco to the Temple of Death?"

"Don't you worry about that.… By the Corridors of Night, by the Corridors of the Mountains of Night, by the Corridors of the Lake of Night.… By the way, do you know anything about fishing?

Dick did not have time to answer this extraordinary question, for the guard had come through to their carriage, and was inviting them to the luggage-van to see the samacuena danced. Everybody else seemed to be going there, and they accepted so as not to draw attention to themselves. They found the van peopled with Indians, dancing, playing the guitar, and drinking hard. At each step, the guard, to celebrate Garcia's victories, fired a volley of cohetes, the mountains throwing back the echo of the explosions.

Then some of the Quichua soldiers in the train gave themselves up to the pleasures of the chase. Spying flocks of vicuñas in the hills, they went to the observation-car and tried their luck. One of them, something of a marksman, brought down a vicuña, the train stopped with a grinding of brakes, and the guard himself went off to retrieve the bag.