CONTENTS

The morning of the Twentieth of October, in the Year of Grace Fifteen Hundred and Twenty-seven, broke, as many another morning had done, slowly and most drearily over a little desolate island, a mere tract of sand-fringed rock, sparsely sprinkled with a few dwarf shrubs and scattered trees, lying some five leagues from the Pacific coast of Northern South America, which in those days was called Tierra Firma, and about two degrees to the northward of the Line.

As the light grew stronger under the low-brooding canopy of clouds which for many weeks had hung unbroken over the misty sea and the rain-lashed, wind-swept island, a man crawled out from under a wretched shelter of twisted boughs and ragged, sodden sail-cloth among the rocks on the western shore. He rose wearily to his feet and stretched himself with the slow, painful motion of one whose joints are stiff with wet and cold. Then he pushed the dank, black, matted hair back from his white, wrinkled brow, and his hands, thin and brown and knotted, trembled somewhat as he did so.

“Another day! Mother of God, how long is this to last? Ah, well, it is breakfast time, and one must eat even in a place like this. Come, comrades, rouse ye! it is daylight again. Perchance the ship will come to-day, if it pleases the merciful Saints to send her.”

He turned his head back towards the rocks as he said these last words, and with an effort that would have been manifest to one who heard it, raised his voice, the harsh, husky voice of a man well-nigh done to death by hunger and the sickness of body and soul that comes of bitter hardship and hope long deferred.

Then he made his way with slow, limping, dragging steps over the sloping strip of wet, much-trampled sand down to the water’s edge, and there, just out of reach of the upwash of the waves, he fell on his knees and began to dig with a little piece of stick.

Presently other figures crept out of the rocks and shook and stretched themselves just as wearily as he had done, a few of them exchanging gruff, half-murmured, half-spoken greetings, and then went and fell to at the same task until some two score or more of as woe-begone looking wretches as the unkindly Fates ever mocked at in their misery were scattered along the shore, grubbing on their knees in the spongy sand amidst the spume of the out-going waves for the sand-worms and crabs and such other shellfish as relenting Fortune might deign to send to them for their morning meal.

There were high-born gentlemen of Spain among them, haughty gallants who had lorded it with the proudest in Seville and Cordova and Madrid, who would once have run a man through the body rather than yield him an inch of the footway, who had feasted and drunk and danced and diced and made love till only a remnant of their fair estates was left to them, and that they had staked on one last throw with Destiny—life, and honour, and every hope they had against a share of the fairy gold of El-Dorado, long dreamed of and never found.

There were rude sailors, too, and outlawed adventurers, cut-throats and cut-purses, criminals fleeing from justice, and debtors from their creditors; husbands who had wearied of their wives, and scapegrace sons who had been driven from the homes they had dishonoured—and here they all were, ragged and starving, racked with ague and smitten with scurvy, scraping shellfish and worms out of the sand wherewithal to make the pangs of famine a little more endurable, for the hand of misery had fallen heavily upon them and crushed them all down level with the beasts that eat and take no thought for the morrow.

On a little plateau among the rocks, some twenty feet or so above the beach, a rude flagstaff had been fixed, propped up by a cairn of stone, and from the top of it flew a tattered flag that had once borne the proud arms of Spain, Mistress of the West and heiress of all its unknown wealth and mysterious glories, and, pacing with slow steps up and down the little platform in front of the cairn, was a man whose worn and work-stained dress distinguished him but little from the wretches who were digging on the sands below him.

Though but a few years past middle age the storm and the stress of a long life of travail might well have passed over his stooping shoulders and down-bent head. His long black hair and ragged beard were streaked with grey, and his face was pinched with hunger and seamed and lined with the furrows of ever-present care; and yet his eyes, as he raised them every now and then to gaze out over the misty sea, as though striving to pierce the dense cloud-curtain in which sky and water were lost on every side, were still bright and proud and fearless as befitted the leader of the forlornest hope a soldier of fortune had ever led.

And yet his thoughts, as he paced that narrow strip of rock and muddy soil, were dark enough to have quenched the light in the eyes of most men, for they were thoughts of long and bitter toil which so far had brought no guerdon save failure and debt and dishonour.

He was thinking of that ill-starred Darien expedition, with its plague and famine and ruthless slaughterings, which had been the grave of so many golden hopes; of the gallant high-hearted Vasco Nuñez de Balboa whom he had watched toilfully climbing the hills from whose summit he, first of all the men of the Old World, was to behold this Sea of the South over which he was now looking, hoping against despair for Almagro’s ship to come and end the weary weeks of waiting; and then he thought of his own black treachery which had sent Vasco to his death in obedience to his own unspoken resolve to strike all men from his path who bade fair to get to the Golden South before him.

Then his thoughts shifted on to his first expedition southward from Panama, and he reviewed one by one with unsparing exactness the long succession of labours and disasters that had daunted well nigh every heart but his. He thought of his little, crazy, overloaded ships struggling against storms and contrary currents; of the pestilential swamps and fever-haunted forests through which he had led his ever-dwindling little band of followers, and of the twenty-seven men who, one by one, had starved to death under his eyes in Hunger Bay—just as those companions of his down yonder must soon starve if help did not come.

Then at length his thoughts took a brighter hue as they turned back to the day on which that young naked savage lad, son of the cacique Commogre on the mountains above Darien, had laughed at the Spaniards for quarrelling about a few pounds’ weight of gold and, pointing to the southward, had told them of the unknown sea and the lands that lay along its borders where gold was as common as the stones by the wayside and silver as the wood in the forests; and lastly he remembered how he himself had had that brief glimpse of El-Dorado at Tacamez which had lured him on to this, his second, journey which had ended here on the desert shores of Gallo and in the pitiless clutches of famine and despair.

Surely thoughts like these were enough to shake the heart and turn back the steps of many a man who might well yield to such ill-fortune and yet still be accounted brave; but it was not such a man who stood beside the flagstaff-cairn on Gallo and stared out in defiance of Fate itself over that dreary sea and into those all-circling glooms. If he had been he would never have written the name of Francisco Pizarro in letters of blood and flame across the Western World beside that of Hernando Cortes, and, though he knew it not, ere that day’s gloom had deepened into the darker gloom of night, he was to show by a few brief words and one all-decisive act what manner of man he truly was.

The diggers on the beach had ended their task and were roasting the wretched fruits of their labours over a few smoky fires of mouldering sticks in the driest places among the rocks. But Pizarro, still seemingly lost in his thoughts, made no motion to join them at their meal, and presently a man whose short, sturdy, strong-built frame seemed to have defied so far both famine and sickness, came with short, active steps up on to the platform, carrying a drinking-can in one hand and a wooden platter in the other.

“Since you did not come to your breakfast, Señor Capitan, I have brought it to you,” he said in a cheery voice, as Pizarro saw him and came to meet him. “ ’Tis poor fare enough, but as good as this God-forgotten wilderness affords. This is almost the last of the wine, but the fish is passable, though the biscuit would be better if there were more bread and less mould.”

Pizarro took the platter but put back the proffered can, saying with a smile that was strangely soft and kind for such a man as he—

“Nay, nay, good Ruiz. I thank you for your care of me, but I have no need of the wine, I who am still the strongest here, saving perchance yourself. Take it back and let the sick have it. Water is good enough for me. Nay, nay, man, I tell you I will not have it. Take it away and bring me a stoup of your best water instead.”

“Ever the same, Señor,” said the Pilot—for it was he, Bartolomeo Ruiz, first Pilot of the Southern Seas, who had brought the future Conqueror his breakfast in such homely fashion—“ever the same, caring more for the meanest wretch that has scurvy in his bones than for the life that is now everything to us. Still I do your bidding for its kindness’ sake, praying, as I ever do, that Our Lady of Mercies may wait no longer to reward your goodness with the fortune it deserves. Ha! by the Saints, what was that?—the sound of a gun from the sea! Now, glory to God and Our Lady—there Almagro comes at last! Said I not ever that he would never leave us in our need?”

As Pizarro’s longing ears caught the thrice-welcome sound that came booming out of the mist to seaward, a bright flush leapt into his thin, sallow cheeks, and he stretched out his hand and said in a voice that had a clear, strong ring of joy in it—

“Bring back the wine, Ruiz! The sick will have better than that ere long, so we’ll pledge each other, you and I, old friend, to the end of our troubles and a fair wind to El-Dorado!”

Before the can was dry the men of the forlorn hope had forgotten their hunger and their weakness and had started at the sound of the gun to scramble up the rocks to get a better sight of the long-expected, oft-despaired-of argosy of their hopes which they now so fondly believed had come to their aid at last.

Men who had scarce been able to crawl down to the water’s edge an hour before now ran nimbly as schoolboys up from the beach to the plateau, and Pizarro’s heart, ever as soft towards his companions-in-arms as it was hard towards his enemies, bled for them as he watched them, lean and ragged and crippled with disease, staring with hunger-hollowed eyes out into the mist which still hid the vessel from them. But the next moment the instinct of command returned to him, and he said in a loud, cheery tone—

“We must do something else than stare at the sea, comrades, if we don’t want Almagro to sail past the island in the mist. Uncover the gun and bring up some powder and a length of match so that we may answer their signal.”

They ran to obey him like men who had never known an hour of sickness. Beside the cairn was a heap of sail-cloths and well-tarred canvas which, when stripped off, revealed a mounted culverin, a Spanish piece capable of throwing a ball of two or three pounds in weight. It was scarcely uncovered before the powder arrived. The gunners loaded with a good charge, well rammed home. Then Pizarro took the match from Ruiz, who had kindled it, and fired it with his own hands. As the echoes of the report rattled away among the rocks every man on Gallo strained his ears to catch the answering sound from the sea. After a space of about a minute it came.

“She is yonder!” cried Ruiz, pointing out into the mist. “I saw the flash. There goes another gun, and there she comes like a ghost out of the clouds. Now, glory to the Lord of Hosts, who has heard the voice of our distress! On your knees, brothers, and give thanks, for the time of our misery is ended!”

Then down he went on his knees with hands uplifted, and, save Pizarro, every man followed suit, and there arose from that wild place as strange a sound of mingled praise and prayer as ever had risen from earth to Heaven. Men with shrill, cracked voices sought to raise the triumphant strains of the Te Deum, others, hoarse and husky, broke out into the Magnificat, and others again wept and laughed by turns, bringing forth nothing but a babble of words mingled with shrill cries and broken by sobs, until suddenly the quick, stern voice of Pizarro broke through the babel, bringing every man to his feet.

“Ruiz, Pedro de Candia, Alonso de Molina, come hither!”

The three men went to him where he stood apart from the rest by the flagstaff. They saw that the flush had died out of his cheeks, that his brows were frowning, and his eyes dark with an evil foreboding. He turned and faced them and said, in the hard, stern tones that they had so often heard from his lips in the moments when all others about him had despaired—

“We give thanks too soon, I fear me, comrades. That is not Almagro’s ship. She is twice the size, and look yonder—behind her, there comes another out of the mist. Think you that fortune has so smiled upon Almagro that he went away with that poor little caravel of ours to return with two such ships as those? Nay, unless my heart is lying to me, not friends but enemies are yonder—enemies to our high enterprise, if not to our persons, for ere long you will learn that those ships come from Pedro de Arias, and not from Almagro and de Luque.”

“The good Saints prove you wrong, Señor!” said the tall and, in spite of his rags, still graceful-looking cavalier who had answered to the name of Alonso de Molina. “Yet though they should have come to take us back to Panama by force, yet forget not that there are true hearts among us who have sworn to follow you, and will, though you lead us to the mouth of the Pit itself.”

“Well spoken!” said he, also a knight of goodly stature and presence, who had come when Pedro de Candia was called. “Though there be but half a score of us that remain true, we will not forget what Almagro said when he left us, ‘better to roam a free man through the wilderness than to lie in chains in the debtors’ prison at Panama.’ What say you, Señor Capitan? Shall we get the arms out?”

Pizarro thought for a moment, and then he raised his head and, with a glance at the ships which were now close in shore, he said—

“Yes, get them out. Let us receive them as soldiers and gentlemen of Spain, whatever errand they come on; but be that what it may, I swear by my good Saint, St. Francis, and all the host of Heaven, that if ten, ay, if but two good men stand by me, I will stop here and wait Almagro’s coming, or such other means as God’s mercy may send us to prosecute this our enterprise to the end. Now, there comes the boat. Let us go and arm ourselves and receive them in what poor state we may.”

“And three swords, if no more, shall be used this day to help you to keep that oath of yours, Señor, if need be,” said Ruiz, as they went downward toward the beach, and the others said with one voice—

“Amen to that!”

On the beach Pizarro gave his orders with the quick, clear decision of a man to whom command is second nature, and arms and armour were taken out of their hiding-places, where they had been buried out of reach of the rain, and furbished up and donned on weak and famine-worn limbs with hands that trembled half with weakness and half with the excitement of new-born hope, for Pizarro had strictly enjoined his three companions to say nothing of his fears to the others.

Meanwhile a boat, with the flag of Spain trailing from her stern, was slowly making its way from the larger of the two ships to the shore. As her keel touched the sand a score of men, forgetting their discipline, as they well might do in such a moment, ran into the water and took hold of her gunwales, striving to draw her up, at the same time crying their welcomes to those they took for their deliverers; but Pizarro, with the chief and better-born men of his company, stood aloof on the shore, only saluting the new-comers in a grave and soldierly fashion.

When the boat was well aground, a tall, lean man, whose bright arms and handsome dress looked splendid in contrast with the wretchedness of the Men of Gallo, came and stood up in the bows, and, unrolling a parchment that he held in his hand, bowed to those about him and, with no further greeting, straightway began to read—

“From his Excellency Señor Don Pedro de Arias, by the Grace of God and the favour of his most Puissant and Catholic Majesty Charles the Fifth of Spain and the Netherlands and Lord Paramount of the Indies, to Francisco Pizarro, Bartolomeo Ruiz, Pedro de Candia, Alonso de Molina, and all other faithful and obedient servants of His Majesty aforesaid, now on the Island of Gallo in the South Sea, Greeting!

“These are to inform you that the said Don Pedro de Arias, having received certain complaints from persons now serving in an expedition under the command of the said Francisco Pizarro, and being well aware how great loss and suffering hath been occasioned by the ill-conduct and disaster of the said expedition, and having well weighed these matters in his council at Panama, hath sent his lieutenant, Don Lorenzo Tafur, with two ships, to bid the said Francisco Pizarro, and those with him in the Island of Gallo, to return in the said ships with all speed to Panama, that an account of the lives and treasure lost in the said expedition may be faithfully rendered to him, and that the precious lives of his Catholic Majesty’s faithful subjects may no more be endangered and wasted on the fantastic and chimerical schemes of the said Francisco Pizarro and his associates.

“Given under my hand and seal in the Government House at Panama, this the eighth day of October, in the Year of Salvation, one thousand five hundred and twenty-seven—

“For the King,
“Pedro de Arias.”

When he had finished his reading the Lieutenant folded up his parchment and sprang to the land. As he did so some of the Men of Gallo raised a cheer, but others stood silent, looking at Pizarro as though wondering what he would say to this. He took a couple of steps forward to meet Tafur, and then saluting him with a courtesy which then as ever belied the baseness of his birth, drew himself up, and with his hand on his sword-hip looked him in the face and said—

“That is a cold and formal greeting, Señor, to bring to men who have spent all they have save their lives in the effort to win new lands and new nations for God and His Majesty; but such as it is, here is my answer to it. I, for one, having spent so much, am resolved to spend more, even to the life which is all that is left to me, before I will turn back. Having gone thus far, God and the Saints helping me, I will go to the end. The rest of my comrades can speak for themselves, but I go on.”

“And I! and I! and I!” cried Ruiz and Candia and Molina with one voice, drawing their swords and pointing them heavenwards in token of their oath.

Tafur drew himself up facing them, staring at them half in anger and half in wonder, for it seemed to him incredible that men who had manifestly suffered the utmost extremities of famine and misery could still have so bold a spirit left unbroken in their breasts. Then he said angrily, and yet not without a touch of pity in his voice—

“But, Señors, this is disobedience—nay, more, it is rebellion, since you are commanded to return in His Majesty’s name.”

“But not by His Majesty’s voice or under his hand and seal!” said Pizarro, cutting his speech short with an impatient gesture. “We be true and loyal subjects of the king, but Pedro de Arias shall have no obedience of mine in this matter. He is a partner with me in this venture, and has pledged his word to the carrying out of it. Moreover, it is not for our sakes that he bids us return, but because he wants good Spanish men and good Spanish swords to do his own work in Nicaragua. So, once for all, Señor, I will not go back, though I will seek to coerce none to stay with me.”

“Then, Señor Capitan,” replied Tafur, bowing as though unawares in respect to the greatness of this man’s heart, which could thus lift him above his miseries, “since I have neither the authority nor the will to use force against you, I will but say that all who will shall come with me, and that all, if any shall be so mad and blind to their own interest, who shall elect to stay with you may do so.”

“And if a sufficiency shall nevertheless elect to stay,” said Pizarro, looking round with a smile on his wretched followers, “will you not give me the smallest of your ships——”

“No, Señor, no!” replied the Lieutenant, stopping him as soon as he saw his drift. “Not a ship, not a boat even will I give to encourage you in your disobedience. I was not sent here to help you waste more lives and treasure in this mad enterprise of yours. If you elect to stay, you shall stay, but I will strain my authority no further. So now decide quickly and let me be gone, for there is food and drink on yonder ships, and clothes and shelter for those who will have them, and I will not keep starving and naked men longer without them than I can help.”

“Then that shall be soon decided!” said Pizarro, drawing his sword and going apart a little to where there was a smooth stretch of sand. Then with his sword-point he drew a long line from west to east, and, standing on the northern side of it, he pointed towards the south with his blade, and turning to the whole company, which had followed him to learn the meaning of what he did, he said in a clear, strong voice—

“Friends and comrades and cavaliers of Spain! On yonder side are toil and hunger, nakedness, the pitiless storm and the drenching rain, and it may be a grave in the unknown wilderness. On this side are ease, and pleasure, and safety; but yonder lies El-Dorado with its gold and silver and gems, the glory of conquest and the hope of dominion. Here is Panama, poverty and dishonour. Now choose each of you that which seems to you best becoming a brave Castilian. For my part I go south.”

And with that he stepped across the line. There he faced them, one man daring Fate which had already almost done its worst upon him, still defying its further terrors. The others, both his own men and Tafur’s, stared at him for a space, stricken dumb with wonder and reverence for him. Then Ruiz broke loose from the group amidst which he stood, and saying simply: “Señor Capitan, if none other follow you, I will!” walked across the line. Close following him came Pedro de Candia with his drawn sword across his shoulder, marching in silence like a soldier at parade. Then Alonso de Molina, who crossed himself and said—

“God must be with such a man as that. Come, comrades, yonder is the only road for a brave man!”

And after him there came one by one eleven others, of whom some crossed the line in silence without looking back, while some prayed and others laughed, and others went sideways, beckoning to those behind as though mocking their lack of courage; but when the fifteenth man, who was named Juan de la Torre, had gone over, the rest hung back and not a man of them moved, but each looked at the other and then at the little group beyond the line and then at the ships.

And so the Line of Fate was drawn, and so was the wheat divided from the chaff and the gold of true valour from the dross, and thus did Francisco Pizarro, the base-born captain of adventurers, draw his sword in the face of a frowning destiny, and with it trace on the shifting sands the line of a mighty nation’s fate, and thus did he step over it, he and those who were faithful to him, out of the obscurity of his former life into the light of a fame that shall last while the world endures.

That afternoon Lorenzo Tafur sailed away with his ships and the faint-hearts who were not found worthy of great deeds; but after much argument and altercation he had been persuaded to leave a small portion of stores on the island, and he also took with him Bartolomeo Ruiz, the Pilot, charged with urgent messages to Almagro and De Luque, through whose hands came the funds that had been furnished by the Licentiate Espinosa for this and other expeditions, telling them of the resolution come to by Pizarro and his companions, and praying them to do all that in them lay to bring the succour they so sorely needed.

So the ships sailed away northwards and were lost in the mists and clouds, and the little band stood together on the rocks of Gallo watching them go until they had faded like ghosts into the gloom and the shadows drew closer round them and the night fell dark and drear over the desolate spot.

But, though the little band of heroes knew it not, far away to the southward, above the clouds which lay over them like a pall, the new-risen moon was shining in a clear and cloudless sky, gemmed with thousands of stars more brilliant than they had ever seen, over gleaming fields of spotless snow and soaring peaks of everlasting ice, through the midst of which they were one day to march to the long-dreamed-of El-Dorado and to the glory and the shame that was to be the reward of their valour and their sins.

PROLOGUE.THE LINE OF FATE

PROLOGUE.
THE LINE OF FATE