CHAPTER I.
AN INCA’S RANSOM
Nearly a week had passed since the massacre—for not even the Spanish chroniclers themselves have the hardihood to describe it as a battle—and Atahuallpa, but a few days ago the leader of a conquering host and the master of all the broad domains of the Incas, was now a close prisoner in that very House of the Serpent which he had ordered to be prepared for his reception before he came to his doom in Cajamarca.
It was early evening, and in one of the apartments of the great building which the fallen Inca had selected as his hall of entertainment he was sitting at one end of a long table of carved stone, covered with goblets and dishes of gold and silver containing the remnants of the evening meal, and round it sat the chiefs of the Adventurers, the Captain himself at the other end facing the Inca, with Filipillo at his elbow.
During the meal Atahuallpa had been strangely cheerful for one who within a few days had fallen from one of the loftiest pinnacles of human power and glory into the depths of a degradation which even he himself was not to fathom until he was about to take his last look upon the land that had so lately owned him as its Lord. But now that the feast was over he had sunk into silence and dejection, and the boisterous stream of conversation flowed by him unheeded.
The architecture of the room was similar to his own banqueting-hall in the palace at Quito, and its adornments, or such as the despoiling hands of his conquerors had left, were also somewhat similar. It may have been that, though his body was there, his spirit was far away in the City of the Great Ravine. His eyes were closed as though in sleep, but with other eyes he might have been watching that convulsion of nature which followed so swiftly upon the unnatural crime that had left him the sole heir of Huayna-Capac, and which he might now look upon as the forerunner of another catastrophe more fatal to himself, his dynasty and people even than the earthquake which had rent his capital in twain. In the darkening of the sun, too, he may well have seen the harbinger of the swift eclipse of the glories of his imperial race.
But although the thoughts of such a man in such a position may well be unfathomable to eyes which look upon them across the gulf of three centuries, it is yet within the limits of reason to suppose that one at least of his sentiments was a bitter though unavailing regret that he had not taken the advice of his war-worn and battle-taught old General, worthy brother of his own conquering father, who, even in the midst of the disaster that had overwhelmed his master, had had the skill and address, not only to withdraw the pick and flower of his regiments from the open fields where they would have fallen an easy prey to the Spanish cavalry, but also to conduct them in swift and orderly retreat into the mountains on the other side of the valley, where the dreaded war-beasts of the strangers would be of but little avail.
Had he but listened to him and accepted the wise and loyal counsel he had given these so-called guests of his, instead of being his masters, might have been his prisoners. His nobles might have learnt the mastery of these strange brutes which had trampled them down in scores on the pavement of the plaza, and the use of those terrible flame-and-thunder weapons which had wrought such fearful havoc among them, and then, if that had only come to pass, who should have set bounds to the glory and dominion that might have been his? Yet here he was a helpless prisoner, with even his life at the mercy of a few strangers from some unknown land, whose numbers were to his legions as a few pebbles might be to the sands of the sea shore!
How had the miracle come to pass? Was there no explanation of it? What was the power that had drawn these men from lands which to him were only names, and across oceans whose magnitude he could not even dimly guess at? What did they come for? How could their master, seated on some far-away throne, and, as they had told him, Lord Paramount of the world, covert so eagerly these distant dominions?
So far his train of thought had reached, and then his eyes opened, and his glance fell by chance on Carvahal, who at that moment, as it happened, half-drunk with wine and chicha, was holding up a great goblet of massive gold and crying in his thickly-laughing voice—
“Ah, comrades and soldiers of Spain! whether ye be servants of Heaven or Hell, as some of our enemies might call you, is not that a glorious thing to get in the grip of an honest man’s fist? Carrajo! It’s all very well to talk at home of the glories of conquest and the bringing of religion to the heathen, but there—there is the thing we adventure for and fight for. This is that for which we have crossed the world. It was the hope of this that kept us from dying of much despair and little food on the sands of Gallo. Look at the sweet yellow shine of it in the light of those fair silver lamps—that is the lustre of the day-star or night-star or will-of-the-wisp—call it what you please—that has brought us here. Gold, good gold, solid and shining and heavy—heavy—ay, Cristo y Santiago! mine is no woman’s arm, yet the weight of this pretty bauble is so preciously great that it drags it down.”