Intonation had
long replaced expression with them, and touches gesture, and their
work with hoe and spade and fork was as free and confident as
garden work can be. Their sense of smell was extraordinarily fine;
they could distinguish individual differences as readily as a dog
can, and they went about the tending of llamas, who lived among
the rocks above and came to the wall for food and shelter, with
ease and confidence. It was only when at last Nunez sought to
assert himself that he found how easy and confident their movements
could be.
He rebelled only after he had tried persuasion.
He tried at first on several occasions to tell them of sight.
"Look you here, you people," he said. "There are things you do not
understand in me."
Once or twice one or two of them attended to him; they sat
with faces downcast and ears turned intelligently towards him, and
he did his best to tell them what it was to see. Among his hearers
was a girl, with eyelids less red and sunken than the others, so
that one could almost fancy she was hiding eyes, whom especially he
hoped to persuade. He spoke of the beauties of sight, of watching
the mountains, of the sky and the sunrise, and they heard him with
amused incredulity that presently became condemnatory. They told
him there were indeed no mountains at all, but that the end of the
rocks where the llamas grazed was indeed the end of the world;
thence sprang a cavernous roof of the universe, from which the dew
and the avalanches fell; and when he maintained stoutly the world
had neither end nor roof such as they supposed, they said his
thoughts were wicked.
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