Page:Gaston Leroux--The bride of the sun.djvu/290

276 with bloody but they danced on, singing. The hideous dwarfs lifted up a body, which disappeared in the fire.

The other mammacona, heroically erect, had cried out only once, and when she in her turn vanished in the scarlet chariot which the Sun had sent to take her to his Enchanted Realms, hymns of glory thundered through the temple.

Maddened by the songs, the flames, the incense, and the acrid smoke of the pyres, three more mammaconas followed their sisters. It is impossible to guess how far this delirium of sacrifice would have gone had not Huascar stopped it. At a sign from him, the diabolical music ceased, and the Guardians of the Temple choked the glowing pyres with sand.

It was Maria-Teresa's turn. Dick, half fainting, opened his eyes again at Orellana's words. He saw the mammaconas strip her of the jewels with which she was literally covered from head to foot. From her hair, ears, cheeks, breast, shoulders, from her beautiful arms and shapely ankles, the "tears of the Sun" fell one by one, and were placed preciously in a golden basin. Last of all they removed the fatal Golden Sun bracelet. All these jewels were to be hidden again until the day, ten years thence, when the Inca would demand another bride for the Sun.

As she was rapidly divested of her golden