But toward the southern end of the island, the walls began their gradual descent, finally merging with the sea and becoming a long stretch of sandy beach over which the waves, unstopped, rolled high onto the shore. At one point, a narrow wooden pier extended into the water. Pitch steered the motorboat toward it.

In a little while now. You’ll see for yourself in a little while now.

Steve helped Pitch moor the boat to the pier. He put on his backpack and carried the folded canvas tent under his arm; then he followed Pitch down the pier and stepped onto the beach. Stretched before him, just over the sand dunes, was the rolling land, and to his left, less than a mile away, where the walls began their ascent again, was the canyon.

They were nearing the canyon when Steve first saw the horses. There were eleven of them, small and lean and shaggy … a stallion, who stopped grazing to look at them, and five brood mares with five spindle-legged fillies standing close beside them. It was obvious that Tom had left the worst of the horses upon Azul Island, Steve thought. Certainly the Conquistadores couldn’t have ridden puny animals like these in their long, arduous campaigns into the New World! He remembered the pictures of statues he had seen in his schoolbooks of men like Pizarro and Cortés sitting astride horses strong and powerful of limb, capable of standing the rigors of long marches through strange and hostile lands. Thoughtfully he watched the horses until the stallion led his frightened, straggling band down the canyon.

Pitch said, “It’s truly remarkable, Steve, that this breed of horse has survived at all in this place.”

Steve bent down, picking up a tuft of grass. He tasted the ends. Not the lush green grass of Antago, he thought, but hardy grass that could sustain life because it absorbed every bit of moisture in the ground.

“Of course,” Pitch was saying, “they must spend most of their time in the canyon, where they’re protected from the weather and sun. The grass, too, is more abundant in the canyon.” Pausing, he looked around, then added, “We’ll make camp there, Steve.”

They were approaching it now. The walls, a few hundred yards on either side of them, were rising, shutting out the sea. A quarter of a mile away, the canyon came to an abrupt end against a sheer wall of stone, the lower part darkened by shadows made by the sides of the canyon, the upper part shining like a golden vision in the sun’s rays.