“We have been talking, Señor, likening ourselves to the warriors of Judah on the borders of Canaan. They sent men to spy out the strength or weakness of the land. Why should not we do the same thing? It is yet but a little past noon, and Atahuallpa is no more than a league or so away. There is no time to be lost, and that which we have to learn we cannot learn too quickly. I have been your envoy with some success twice already: once at Tumbez and once at Caxas and Huamacucho. Give me half a score of horse and let me ride across the valley and speak face to face with the Inca himself while you are making safe your position here. Before nightfall I shall be back with news that may be well worth the telling.”
A hum of admiration and approval ran round the chamber as he uttered this daring proposal, and Pizarro answered, speaking slowly and gravely, and yet with a gleam of approbation in his eyes—
“That would be a bold venture, de Soto, and one well worthy of him who would undertake it, but, bethink thee—an embassy of ten to one who cannot know the laws of Christian warfare, surrounded by countless legions amidst which ye would be but as a handful of pebbles dropped into the ocean! We could ill afford to lose thee, de Soto, and I would rather lose my right hand than thee and ten others. What think you, Hernando?”
His brother thought for a moment, and then he looked up and said—
“De Soto is right, and I for one see no danger in the venture. Rather would it show the Inca that we come as friends, suspecting nothing of such designs as he may have against us. If Atahuallpa seeks our destruction, believing us safe in his power, he will not alarm the whole of his quarry by offering violence to our embassy. If his friendship be genuine, then, too, there can be no danger. Let de Soto take a score of our best-mounted horsemen and set out forthwith. The venture may well look a bold one in heathen eyes, and its boldness can do our enterprise little harm and may do it much good. Let them go, say I.”
Pizarro looked down and stroked his beard in silence for a moment. Then he looked up and said—
“That is well and cunningly reasoned, brother. Thou wert ever a sound counsellor. Boldness is, after all, the best weapon of those who are at once stout of heart and few in number. De Soto, choose thy troop, to the number of not more than twenty. Take Filipillo to be thy mouthpiece, and God give thee a good return!”
CHAPTER VII.
HOW DE SOTO PERFORMED HIS EMBASSY
The matter of the embassy to Atahuallpa having been thus decided, but little time was wasted in carrying it into execution. While Pizarro and his captains had been debating the venture in the banqueting-hall in the quarters which the Inca had assigned to them, a fierce and sudden storm of wind and hail had swept down the valley, and this, enduring only for a short time, as storms in those regions are wont to do, was followed by a swift change of temperature which melted the hail into a warm, soft rain. Then this with equal suddenness vanished, and the parting cloud-masses rolled in great shadowy billows up the mountain-sides, and down between them the sun streamed warm and bright over the humid foliage of the valley, turning it by one of Nature’s subtle strokes of magic into an enchanted realm paved with emeralds and diamonds—dazzling and yet fleeting forecasts of the fate of those whose daring had led them thus far into the unknown land which for most of them should prove at once a treasure-house and a grave.
“A good omen, comrades!” laughed de Soto as he wheeled his horse in between the chargers of Alonso de Molina and Sebastian ben-Alcazar, a tall, spare-built, dark-faced cavalier with more Moorish than Christian blood in his veins, and who was a Christian now only because his father had abjured his faith for love of a dark-eyed, fair-haired maiden of Castille. “A good omen, forsooth! Sunshine after storm. In good truth it seems to me that we have battled through storm and darkness enough from the sands of Gallo to this pleasant vale before us to earn somewhat of sunshine after our labours.”