In the half light the lost city, the tumuli and the ruins of the old buildings took on strange and fantastic shapes.
The feeling that he was among the dead, the dead for many centuries, returned to Ned with overpowering effect.

He thought of Aztec and Toltec and people back of all these who had built this city.

The Mexicans below were intruders like himself.
He shook himself as if by physical effort he could get rid of the feeling and then went to the water palm in which he cut another gash.
Again the fountain gushed forth and he drank.

But the palm was a small one.

There was too little soil among the crevices of the ancient masonry to support a larger growth, and he saw that it could not satisfy his thirst more than a day or two.