“Not for a couple of days anyway. I know that Dad can’t start before that.”
“Fine. Now, I’ll get back to my observations.”
“I thought I could take some lessons with me,” Jim remarked.
“We’ll have some prepared.”
Jim bent over the maps, made a memorandum of the route the Don had suggested, a rough sketch on which he marked various items of importance, and when the man came to tell him it was time to go to dinner, the boy could hardly believe it. Half an hour later they were seated in the cheery living room, and the meal was being served. Through the first course they discussed this and that, then suddenly Jim remembered that Don Haurea had said he had been in Peru.
“It must be an interesting country, down there, sir. Did you like it when you were in Peru?”
“Very much indeed.”
“We studied its history in school, and I read some extra books about the Conquistadores. Most of the writers soft peddled the old duffers, but I got a hunch they were a pretty hot lot. Pizzaro and his brothers—they were half brothers. Only one of them got back to Spain, and he spent twenty years in prison. The Marquis Francisco was assassinated, one brother was killed by the Indians, and the other was hanged. Rather a come-down from being chief moguls, but I wasn’t a bit sorry for them, they were a—” Jim saw Don Haurea’s face flush and was filled with dismay lest he had said something personal.
“South America, particularly Peru, has stood for hundreds of years as a monument to those men, whose ignorance, cruelty and avarice caused them to commit crimes which constitute one of the greatest blots in the history of the world,” the Don said. His eyes rested on his plate, then he looked up with his usual pleasant smile. “No doubt you have guessed that my regard for the ‘Marquis’ as they called him, his brothers and also partner, Almagro, is not very high. They were all low born men, except Hernando Pizzaro, who was the legitimate son of his father, and as you say, the only one to return to Spain alive. It must have been galling to him to return to his native land and be treated as a criminal; he had sailed away as a great hero, had known the riches of kings, but he died in comparative poverty.”
“He had it coming to him,” Jim declared. He was no end relieved that he had not embarrassed his host, and he did wonder a bit why Don Haurea, who was usually so perfectly calm and self possessed, should feel so deeply about the fate of Peru and her neighbors. “I thought it was too bad Spain didn’t take a tumble to herself sooner, she might have saved something from the wreck.”