Thus, by the strange decrees of Fate, it came about that the City of the Sun, the chief and richest prize of their incredible labours and astonishing triumphs, first became the object of the bitter dispute between the two factions of the Conquerors, which speedily grew from personal quarrel into civil war, during which the former friends and allies turned their weapons upon each other, and in the end overwhelmed in mutual disaster for themselves the great enterprise which they had begun so brilliantly.

For the time being, however, the dispute was healed, and the two ancient comrades, who so many years before in far-away Panama had dreamed the golden dream of El-Dorado, took a solemn oath on the Sacrament in the very capital of El-Dorado itself that all quarrels should be forgotten, and that both should work henceforth loyally together for the glory of the crown of Spain and the spread of the true Faith. This being done, Pizarro set out for the coast to found that City of Kings, which is now called Lima, and which was for more than two centuries the most splendid city on the southern continent of America, while Almagro made ready to start southward to the conquest of his new dominions: and it is at this juncture in the fortunes of the conquerors and the conquered that the curtain rises upon the last act of the tragedy which began in the City of the Great Ravine.

CHAPTER II.
NAHUA’S OATH

It was after sunset one day early in the year 1535, and the young Inca Manco, the titular ruler of the Land of the Four Regions, was sitting moody and disconsolate in a chair, whose framework was carved out of massive silver, in a small apartment of the palace of the Inca-Rocca, which stood on an ample terrace about half-way up the slope leading to the great fortress of the Sacsahuaman, and which had been assigned to him as a residence by those whom he had now learnt to recognise were not his allies but his masters. A thousand trifles, and one fact that was anything but a trifle, had at last brought the bitter truth home to him. All the fair promises of the Spaniards had been lies. If they had overthrown the Usurper it had been only to help themselves, not him. He was no more sovereign here in the city of his fathers than Atahuallpa had been in captivity at Cajamarca.

After the fair seeming ceremony of his establishment there had been feasting and dancing and revelry, for the lighthearted, childlike people had believed as honestly as he had done in the sincerity and friendliness of the Strangers. But then had come the rude awakening. The Spaniards had appointed their own officers over the city; their priests had carried a new worship into the temples sacred to the Sun; the soldiers, in spite of their General’s own strict command, had plundered both palaces and temples of their treasures, and, worse than all, they had broken open the great House of the Virgins and the other convents about the city and had inflicted the foulest indignities upon their innocent dwellers. He had himself once sought to escape from the hideous thraldom of this royal mockery with Nahua, his one beloved, and of so little account did the Spaniards hold him that he was allowed to go unnoticed, and they would have escaped to the friendly shelter of the mountains had it not been that Talambo, the chieftain of the Cañaris, a northern tribe which had revolted from the rule of Atahuallpa and joined the invaders, went to Almagro and persuaded him that he had gone to join Ruminavi and bring all the remaining hosts of Peru in an irresistible swarm down upon the devoted city, and this had led to his being pursued and brought back to be thrown into prison like a common malefactor.

The coming of Hernando Pizarro to take command of the city in place of Almagro had led to his release and his restoration to the pretence of royalty. But now the iron had entered into his soul and he knew himself for what he was, a captive and a slave, a puppet dressed in the robes of sovereignty whose business it was to dance at his master’s orders for the delusion of his own people.

Nearly half an hour had passed in his sombre reverie when suddenly the vision of Atahuallpa, bound to the stake and surrounded by these pitiless Strangers, seemed to rise before his view as it had been told to him by many of those who had stood round the square of Cajamarca on that fatal night. Then he saw the morning light breaking over the circle of devoted women lying dead, slain by their own hands, round the stake, and among them the Princess Pillcu-Cica, his own half-sister. He remembered her in the old days at Quito as the friend and playmate of Nahua, and then suddenly again the picture before his half-dreaming eyes changed and he saw himself bound to such a stake with Nahua lying lifeless at his feet.

It needed no more to stir the latent heroism in his soul to revolt. He sprang from his seat, nerved by a sudden impulse of almost despairing anger, and snatching the fringed diadem from his brow he dashed it to the ground, and at the very moment that he did so the heavy curtains that covered the doorway were drawn apart and his uncle Anda-Huillac entered with bowed head and slow steps, followed by Mama-Oello, his mother, the sister-wife and Coya of Huayna-Capac, and Nahua.

When the high priest had given him the customary greetings, his eyes fell upon the borla lying on the floor, then he raised them and looked at the young Inca, and said—

“It is the first time, Lord, that the crown of the Four Regions has lain where it might be trampled underfoot, yet I call our Father the Sun to witness that I would rather see it there—ay, I would rather see it spurned by the foot of the merest slave in Cuzco—than on thy brow.”