“And if not,” he said, sinking his voice, “I have knowledge of what will purchase our pardon readily.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“There is this valley, and—there is more.”
While the tempter thus spoke I saw my old home in Harlem, my parents, who had doubtless mourned me both as dead and guilty, and a longing to return came over me. Then the loving eyes of Azolta, soon to be my wife, blotted out the picture, and I knew my duty.
Since my exile and residence amongst the Quadrucos I had learned to look at things from a far different stand-point than the ignorant boy who sailed from the Texel. Then I saw no harm in the Company occupying the lands of the natives, dispossessing and making slaves of them. I had been taught no better. Now I saw the wickedness of it, and the idea of these peaceful, happy people, who had sheltered us in our distress and treated us with honour and distinction, being handed over to the rapacity of the Company, and the tender mercies of its servants, struck me with horror, and I vowed in my heart that I would fight to the last drop of my blood in their defence, even against my own people.
“What do you mean by more?” I asked Paul.
“There is gold here,” he returned. “Plenty of it. I found a lot of stones with veins of the metal, when I was out hunting one day.”
He went to the corner where he slept and brought out some white stones in which he showed me yellow streaks which certainly looked like gold.
“I have seen it before,” he said, “though not in this shape.”
Now this determined me more than ever. Should my countrymen learn of this, nothing would stop them from swarming over the land, and the fate of the Quadrucos would be settled.