One man saw this. Since the attack on the hill village the chief of that place had been dragged along with the expedition by way of punishment. Sullenly he had tugged at his oar, carried his load, or pulled at his rope; he neither forgot anything nor forgave anything. He rarely spoke to the Indians from the delta and the plain, and when he did his words were full of contempt. One night, when the adventurers were lodged on the land in a cleft of the mountains, he disappeared. The natives who slept on either side of him as guard were both stabbed to the heart. The sight still further dulled the spirits of all.
Chapter XXXVII.
COUNCIL FIRES IN TWO PLACES.
The rising sun flashed spears of light on a rocky spur that stretched out from the foot of the mighty Andes. A tall, straight figure stood silhouetted against a background of sun-bathed cliff. Higher above him the great masses of land rolled back, league after league, and stretched upwards foot after foot to the eternal snows and the eternal heavens. Below him a belt of dark forest swept round the foothills of the giant range, and through a gap in the mass of trees a noisy, turbid stream went tumbling down to the sweltering plains and a feeder of the Orinoco.
The man stood motionless as his rocky pedestal, and intently watching something beyond the line of trees. Presently he turned sharply about, came down from the crag, pushed his way through the trees, and stood in a little pool-filled hollow. Almost immediately he was joined by about twoscore men, all armed with spear and bow and arrow, and, like himself, brown-skinned and stalwart. The newcomers bowed themselves to the ground and murmured some words of homage and adulation. The standing savage drew in a deep breath, expanding his broad chest, and his eyes flashed with pride and power.
"Arise, my sons," he said; "the gods that make men and unmake them shall reward you. Ye have been faithful to him whom the gods have set over you. To the brave shall be the spoils; my sons shall lade themselves with all their hearts may desire. Now tell me what you have done."
A tall warrior stood forth. "We have followed our father since the white strangers seized him. We have watched him and them, and waited for this happy moment."
"Aught else?"
"We have spoken with the peoples who dwell in the woods and the hills, and turned their minds against the men from the land of the sun-rising. They will fight them if any man can discover a charm that will protect them from the thunder and lightning that springs from the strangers' hands."