The Romance of Golden Star | Page 8

happened three hundred years ago, and waking up to find
himself in another world. I'll be bound he is dreaming about his wife or
sweetheart, and we shall have to tell him, or rather you will, that she
has been a mummy for three centuries. Look now, his lips are moving;
I believe he is going to say something. See if you can hear what it is?'
The professor stooped down and held his ear so close that he could feel
on his cheek the gentle fanning of the breath that had been still for three
centuries. Then the Inca's lips moved again, and a soft sighing sound

came from them, and in the midst of it he caught the words,--
'Cori-Coyllur, Nustallipa, Ñusta mi!'
Then there came a long, gentle sigh. The Inca's lips became still again,
shaped into a very sweet and almost womanly smile, as though his
vision had passed and left him in a happy, dreamless slumber.
'What did he say?' whispered Djama. 'Were you able to understand it?'
'Yes,' said the professor, 'yes, and you were right about the subject of
his dream. Come away, in case we wake him, and I will tell you.'
They went to the other end of the laboratory, and the professor went on,
still speaking in a low, half-whisper,--
'Poor fellow, I am afraid we have incurred a terribly heavy debt to him.
What he said meant, "Golden Star, my princess, my darling!" So you
see you were right, but poor Golden Star has been dead three hundred
years and more--that is, at least, if his Golden Star is the same as the
heroine of the tradition.'
'What tradition?' asked Djama.
'It's too long a story to tell you now, but if she is the same, then our
Inca's name is Vilcaroya, and he is the hero of the strangest story, and,
thanks to you, the strangest fate that the wildest romancer could
imagine. However, the story must keep, for I wouldn't spoil it by
cutting it short. The principal question now is--what are we going to do
with him? We can't keep him here, of course?'
'No, certainly not,' replied Djama, with knitted brows and faintly
smiling lips. 'His Highness must be cared for in accordance with his
rank and our expectations. I shall have him taken into the house and
properly nursed.'
'But what about your sister? You will frighten her to death if you take
in a living patient that has been dead for three hundred years.'

'Not if we manage it properly; there will be no need to tell Ruth the
story yet, at anyrate. I'll tell her that I am going to receive a patient who
is suffering from a mysterious disease unknown to medical science. I'll
say I picked him up in the Oriental Home in Whitechapel, and have
brought him here to study him, and you and I must smuggle him into
the house and put him to bed some time when she is out of the way.
Then I'll instal her as nurse; in fact, she will do that for herself; and as
there is no chance of her learning anything from him, we can break the
truth to her by degrees, and when His Highness is well enough to travel
we'll all be off to Peru and come back millionaires, if you can only
persuade him to tell you the secret of his treasure-houses.'
That night the doctor and the professor took turns in watching by the
bedside of their strange patient, whose slumber became lighter and
lighter until, towards midnight, he got so restless and apparently uneasy
that Djama considered that the time had come to wake him and see if
he was able to take any nourishment. So he set the professor to work,
warming some chicken broth over a spirit lamp, and mixing a little
champagne and soda-water in one glass and brandy and water in
another. Meanwhile, he filled a hypodermic syringe with colourless
fluid out of a little stoppered bottle, and then turned the sheet down and
injected the contents of the syringe under the smooth, bronze skin of
the Inca's shoulder. He moved slightly at the prick of the needle, then
he drew two or three deep breaths, and suddenly sat up in bed and
stared about him with wide open eyes, full, as they well might be, of
inquiring wonder.
The professor, who had turned at the sound of the hurried breathing,
saw him as he raised himself, and heard him say in the clear and
somewhat high-pitched tone of a dweller among the mountains,--
'Has the morning dawned again for the Children of the Sun? Am I truly
awake, or am I only dreaming that the death-sleep is over? Where is
Golden Star, and