Day came with a heavy sky and threat of rain. During the morning sorties were attempted by the Spaniards, evidently for reconnaissance, for after brief skirmishing in the littered streets, the attacking parties withdrew. The afternoon was spent by Cristoval in making a tour of the suburbs with the Inca, inspecting the barricades, suggesting improvements, and perfecting or advancing the investment.
With darkness came rain and a rising wind. The night would favor. Toward midnight Cristoval rode with Pedro to the Coricancha. The square was massed with Antis, and in advance, near the barricade across the street to the Acllahuasi, was a picked body, among them their general, equipped with captured arms and armor—a resolute band, which Cristoval surveyed with satisfaction.
CHAPTER XXXVII
A Night Attack and a Deliverance
The rain fell drearily, driven and swished by flaws of the wind, which, as the night deepened, increased to a gale, moaning and whistling mournfully through the ruins. The hours lagged, measured by the brusque challenging of the Spanish sentinels at each relief, distinctly heard above the storm. Still the cavalier withheld the word for the advance, biding the night's most sinister hour.
He waited with apparent patience. But outwardly calm, within was a turbulence of mingled hope and anxiety, eagerness and doubt; throngs of dear anticipations, and clouds of dark misgivings. He was a lover with the possibility of meeting his beloved ere the night was spent; but while his heart palpitated at the thought, it sank at the attending uncertainties, and at all that must intervene. He turned abruptly, not daring to dwell upon a happiness so unassured. Mocho looked toward him. "Do we move, Viracocha Cristoval?"
"In God's name, yes! Let us go!"
Mocho muttered a word to the nearest Antis; as it passed to the rear of the column a movement followed, barely audible. Cristoval unsheathed his sword and laid aside belt and scabbard. Pedro imitated with a sigh and murmured, "Well, this is what cometh of being a cook! Would I were—" He did not finish. He had muffled his peg, and followed the cavalier noiselessly as the latter stole out through a breach in the barricade to the open street. Mocho, Abul Hassan, and the squad of mail-clad Antis, were close behind; then, the main body. With the advance were two men armed with sledges.
Cristoval moved forward in the darkness with caution, pausing at moments to bate his breath and listen. Along the wall of the roofless palace of the Priesthood of the Sun, past black doorways full of subdued echoings of the dismal plash and drip in the courts within, until they reached an intersecting street. Only this short distance covered! He seemed to have travelled an hour. Looking back he found his party close upon him, motionless, dimly seen in the faint light of the crossing. Forward again, counting his steps. Three hundred paces, and he halted. Here was the Acllahuasi, its thatch saved from the fire by miracle. On his left, the Amarucancha—blank walls with a few roof-timbers vaguely outlined against low-hanging clouds. The gate of the convent must be near, and he waited to allow the tribesmen to pass the barricade. The movement of those nearest him ceased; there was no sound from the rear, and for a time, as he stood looking back into the gloom, Cristoval feared the Antis were not following. A figure appeared before him as silently as a phantom, and stretching forth his hand, he felt a quilted tunic. At once another was beside him, and a third, and the cavalier could see the stealthy movement of hundreds, creeping forward with the still tread of pumas. Slowly they massed, and touching Pedro's arm, Cristoval advanced.
In front, through the cleft between the black walls on either hand, was a pale flickering from the square, where the fires were struggling in the rain, ruddily lighting the mist when a blast started a few scattered sparks, subsiding to a feeble glow until the buildings melted into obscurity. He could descry the breastwork across the head of the street, and the embrasure from which a falconet commanded the approach. He looked in vain for a sentinel. But presently, the faint ring of a grounded halberd: the sentinel was there, and awake.