“Pedro Navarro, hast thou come hither to serve God and His Saints or to pander to thine own evil lusts? What need hadst thou to leave Panama if thy desire was to bear thyself as a lecher and a doer of base violence rather than as a soldier of the Cross? Till thou hast repented, thou art not worthy to bear the arms or wear the garb of a soldier of Spain.”
Then, looking round among the cavaliers, his eyes lighted on Carvahal, and some thought that the shadow of a grim smile was visible under his beard as he beckoned to him and said—
“Come hither, Carvahal. I know of no hands fitter than thine to punish one who hath demeaned himself as this man hath. Let two of his fellows strip him of his arms and clothes, ay, even to his shoes, and do thou tie him to thy stirrup till thy mercy shall see fit to let him loose, and should he give signs of lagging on the march doubtless thou wilt find means at hand to bring him back to good marching order.”
To this Carvahal consented readily enough, for sinners punish sinners with as much gusto as thieves chase thieves, and all that day he dragged the naked, limping wretch by his side, stumbling over the steep stony road with swollen and bleeding feet, his bare back blistered by the scorching sun and his tongue, unslaked by a single drop of water, hanging out black and baked between his parted teeth, and when he was like to faint he roused him with his spurred heel to hear a homily on St. Anthony or a sermon that it would have done the Devil good to listen to.
It was a sore punishment enough, and Pedro Navarro was more dead than alive when the evening halt was called. And yet, not long after, this same man threw himself in the way of a spear that was aimed at his Captain’s throat, so well did Francisco Pizarro know how to lead men like dogs and yet, like dogs, make them love him the better for his chastening of them.
Huamacucho was passed on the fourth day from Zaran, and on the night that the penance of Pedro Navarro was ended the sun set, as it seemed to these voyagers in a strange land, over the confines of two worlds. All day the narrow path, winding round hillspurs and threading mountain-sides midway between Heaven and the depth of unmeasured valleys and gorges, had led upward and ever upward.
At some of the turnings they had looked back and seen valley after valley, divided by their parting ridges, sloping and falling away down into illimitable distances until their eyes lost themselves in a dim, far-off haze beyond which, as they well knew, lay the desert coast and the blue Sea of the South. At others, looking upward, they saw ridge after ridge and range after range, each one barer and bleaker than the one below it, towering ever up and up like the steps of some titanic stairway which seemed to reach from earth to Heaven, and ever and anon from some ’vantage point of better view they saw far, beyond and above the highest of these, twinkling points of gleaming white, whiter than the cloud-sprays drifting in the mid-most heaven, so high and far away that it seemed as though they had as little kinship with the earth as the clouds themselves.
There was not a faint heart in all the company, for none such would have come thus far; but, as day after day they mounted higher and higher, and as hour after hour the awful solitude of those lonely wildernesses encompassed them more and more closely about, there was not a heart among them that did not feel the weight of the Unknown pressing in upon him.
“By the faith of a soldier and a Christian,” said Carvahal as he rounded one of the hillspurs on the forenoon of the seventh day, riding beside Alonso de Molina, “methinks much more of this would pass human endurance. Look at yonder line of snow and ice sharp-edged against the sky! Hast thou ever seen the purity of such whiteness as that on earth? Doth it not seem as though this ever upward mountain road would take us rather to the gates of Heaven than to those of El-Dorado? Santiago! it would need but little faith to see the gleam of the Gates of Pearl amidst yon peaks of snow and ice—may my good St. Francis pardon me for naming things earthly and heavenly in one breath!”
The young cavalier looked at him with a grave face, but with the twinkle of a smile in his eyes, and said—