Note 12 — Chapter VII · THE KINDLING OF THE PYRE

But all the while the terrors of the earthquake were multiplying throughout the valley of the doomed city. Mighty masses of red-hot rock were flung high into the air from the throat of the volcano and fell back to earth, some on the mountain-sides and some on the squares and streets and buildings of the city, bursting in the midst of close-packed masses of men and women and children. Great gaps were opening in the ground and closing again, swallowing fragments of walls and buildings and burying hundreds alive in their depths. But the new-crowned Inca sat still and unharmed upon his throne, for at length his terror had passed, lost in a cold despair, and he had resolved to die, if die he must, crowned and throned as became a king and the son of kings, and so, in the midst of the ruins of his city and the death-agonies of his people, he remained to the last, the one being unmoved, watching the blazing pyre and waiting for the hand of death to strike him.12