At last, daylight was waning. The thatch had burned out by this, and the smoke become less dense, permitting occasional glimpses of the flames still tossing about him. He was growing chilled and stiffened by long immersion, and rose to his feet from time to time, first dropping his visor to protect his face. Through the obscurity he could see the dull red of the doorways, and the walls with their topping of fire, but as evening came on the heat grew less intense, and he found that he could stand, dipping at intervals to cool his armor.
Night fell and grew late. The worst of the fire had passed to the southward. Around him the flames barely reached above the blackened walls, though the glare from the doors revealed the desolation of the court. It was hideous and infernal, and he was seized with a frantic longing to be away from its horror, but hours dragged before he could even quit the pool. Slowly, however, the fire subsided, and he mounted the steps unheeded by his fellow refugees. Now he could see the entrance, with fragments of the doors hanging to the hinges and still feebly burning. He would attempt it.
He found his sword and shield, among the leafless stalks of the bushes, and after a final plunge in the pool, left the court. Filling his lungs, he bolted through the door and into the street. It was full of embers, starting into flame and swirled about by eddies of hot wind. He could see but a short distance ahead, but with a hurried prayer he dashed forward through the stifling heat. The end of the street was not far, but before he had reached it his feet and legs were blistered. In his struggles for breath, and in the dread doubt whether he would attain his goal, he hardly felt the pain, but rushed blindly on, ploughing up a spray of fire in his passage. At length, the foot of the street, and he staggered into the open, across the quay, and down the steps to the stream.
At the farther end of the bridge was the falconet with its gunners. The fire had not crossed the rivulet, but the heat had driven them to the opposite side. One of the cannoneers beheld Cristoval rushing through the fiery dusk of the street, and his affrighted exclamation drew the attention of his mates. They saw the arch-fiend, clad in red-hot steel, with blazing eyes, and brandishing a sword of flame, charging toward them through a burst of fire. There was one gasping yell, and they fled into the darkness.
CHAPTER XXXV
The Lurking Morisco
During the half-hour it took the sergeant commanding the gun to reassemble his panic-stricken cannoneers, Cristoval was passing slowly down the Tullamayu, secure in its shadows. In his thankfulness for escape from death his scorched feet and legs seemed naught, and he was eager only to pass the fire ahead, cross the city to the other stream, and find the Amarucancha. To find the Amarucancha; for not an instant did his purpose flag, nor would while he had strength to creep.
He reached the point where the stream is bridged by the Rimac Pampa, climbed a stairway, and found himself at the edge of that square. The entire district south and east had burned the night before, and the ruins were still smouldering, with small fires here and there in the débris lighting up the plaza, but rendering its greater extent the more obscure. To the north-east, the suburbs of Toco Cachi and Munay Cenca were burning fiercely, but the advance of the conflagration thence had been retarded by the wind, so that between the burning zone and the Tullamayu lay an area yet untouched, while the fire which had swept over him was now in the rear. In the west was a huge, roseate bank of smoke, rolling upward in colossal and endless transformation. Overhead were fragments of sky, densely black, with sickly stars briefly seen, then extinguished by the pallid fleece whirled and driven by the wind. Everywhere above the horizon, a stupendous activity impressive in its silence.
Cristoval turned from it oppressed, to listen and reconnoitre before venturing from shelter. About him, gloom and stillness profound, the desolation of vacant streets, the mournfulness of abandonment; and over all, a wan, unnatural twilight. He felt the weight of loneliness and a vague dread of the shadowy thoroughfares and sombre buildings. He shook it off with resolution, and stole out into the street. Not far ahead an intersecting way admitted a narrow illumination from the north. He was within fifty paces of this when a dim figure crossed the light and vanished in the darkness beyond. It appeared and disappeared so quickly and silently that he was uncertain lest he had been deceived by a swirl of smoke. He paused uneasily, unresolved whether to advance or go back. "No Spaniard, that," he reflected, "and cierto, not a sentinel! A mere rag of a figure—if not a rag of mine imagination. But what an unholy, shivery manner of gait!—a flit, and 't was gone. Murder! I had liefer seen a pikeman." He stood for a moment peering and hearkening, then advanced with drawn sword.
Arriving at the strip of light, he crossed it hastily, and halted by the wall. Farther up the street was another lighted spot, and he watched it with vigilance. Again the form, seen for an instant, and lost in the gloom. Now, Cristoval's courage was proof as his own mail against tangible danger, but volatile as ether before the uncanny or mysterious. The fleeting form was both. The cavalier was daunted, and admitted it to himself. But he braced himself with a sign of the cross and stole forward. "After all," he muttered, "belike 't is naught but some poor devil of a native, burned out and homeless. But the fiend take a man who moveth with so ghastly locomotion! Neither a walk, trot, nor canter. Anyway, he seemeth to have as little appetite for me as I for him, and man or spook, I'll not crowd him, I swear it!"