Nearlyfive months had passed since Juan Pizarro and Hernando de Soto had ridden at the head of twenty-eight wounded and wearied men, the sole survivors of the terrible Battle of the Valley, into the northern gates of Cuzco. Their homeward march had been one long fight of two nights and two days, during which not a man left his saddle save when he dropped from it overcome by wounds and weariness, and lay waiting for the axe or spear or mace which ended his fighting days for ever.
Those who reached the city had found it closely invested on all sides by seemingly innumerable hosts, which had come flocking from all quarters of the land in answer to the call of its last champion. The beleaguering hosts had opened to let them through, and the Peruvian warriors had laughed at them as their wounded and jaded steeds crawled feebly into what seemed the death-trap in which they were about to die, but those who had fallen behind had been butchered without pity.
The young Inca had fulfilled with terrible exactness the oath which he had sworn to Anda-Huillac on the fateful night when Nahua and Mama-Oello had devoted themselves to a death of shame and torment to buy him his last chance of liberty. The news of the Battle of the Valley had sped with the swiftness of lightning throughout the length and breadth of the land, and the Inca’s call to arms had been answered north and south and east and west by hosts of fierce and pitiless warriors, who had seemed to spring full-armed from the earth like the fabled fruit of the dragon’s teeth of old.
Wherever the Spaniards had settled in isolated families and small communities, they had been fallen upon and butchered, men, women, and children, without warning and without pity, for the day of reckoning had come, and the penalty of outrage and massacre, of plunder and treachery, had now to be paid.
Messenger after messenger had been dispatched from Cuzco to the coast, and when at length one of them had reached Pizarro in his newly-founded City of the Kings, he had sent an army of four hundred horse and foot to the relief of the sorely beleaguered city. Then the host which had been besieging Lima had drawn back into the mountains, hovering on the Spaniards’ flanks and rear until they had caught them entangled among the narrow, winding mountain-paths and the fearful gorges of the mountains. Then they had cut the bridges and broken down the roads before and behind them. Avalanches of rocks and stones had fallen upon them from inaccessible precipices, clouds of warriors had descended on their nightly camps, and though these had fallen by hundreds under the well-wielded Spanish weapons, in the end the inevitable happened, and of the army which was more than twice as strong as that which had conquered Atahuallpa in Cajamarca, only a few sorely-wounded stragglers had struggled back across the mountains to Lima to tell their tale of disaster and defeat.
In the City of the Sun the long weary months had been filled with days and nights of horror. The splendid capital of El-Dorado on which de Soto and his companions had gazed in awe-mingled wonder on that first memorable morning was now a wilderness of blackened and fire-wasted ruins. Day after day the legions of the Inca had flung themselves into its approaches, only to be beaten back with fearful slaughter by the little band of desperate heroes, now less than two hundred strong, who held their camp in the midst of the great square surrounded by the blackened ruins of the palaces and temples which they had first seen glowing with gay colours and shining with gold and silver.
Every night the countless watchfires had blazed up in undiminished numbers on the hills about the city and on the towers of the great fortress which loomed dark, threatening, and unscaleable above it. Every hour arrows and darts headed with blazing fire-balls had soared through the air and fallen on the thatched roofs of the buildings and into the fast-emptying magazines of grain, which, saving the horses killed in battle, were all that now stood between the besieged and starvation.
Scarcely a day had passed but one or more severed Spanish heads were flung from the battlements of the fortress into the city to tell Hernando Pizarro and his men in what terrible fashion the Inca was keeping his oath, and at last Don Hernando, forgetting all knightly honour and humanity in his desperation, sent out an envoy to say that if he received such another message he would slay every prisoner in his hands.
As it happened, the Inca was absent at the time on one of those raiding expeditions which afterwards made his name a terror to every Spaniard in the land, and Ruminavi sent back his messenger’s head as an answer. Within an hour the Princess Lalla-Cica and her companions, whom de Soto had so far, even in the midst of all these horrors, contrived to defend from injury, were brought out into the square, and there, in full sight of the garrison of the fortress, they died the death that had been decreed to Nahua and the Queen-mother.
Scarcely had their shame and torment ended than a general assault was made on all sides of the city, and the Peruvian warriors poured in, column after column, through the streets blocked with charred timbers and strewn with the rotting corpses which throughout the siege had been filling the air with poison and plague. Through these they fought their way with little check, for the narrow streets were too choked and cumbered for the horses to work with any good effect. But no sooner did they reach the entrances to the square than the cannon and musketry roared out, and the silver balls and bullets—for iron was now too precious to use for such purposes—tore their way through their crowded ranks, mowing them down by scores, and then came the thundering charges of the war-beasts, the onslaught of the swift-striking, deep-biting steel, and the end was the same as it had ever been—hundreds slain at the cost of a few wounded men and horses and one or two dead of the iron-clad soldiery of Spain.
It was a victory for Don Hernando and his companions, as every fight had been when the Peruvians had once come within range of the artillery and musketry and made themselves a fair mark for the irresistible charges of the cavalry. But the same thing had happened day after day, week after week, and month after month, as the great tragedy of the Conquest drew to its climax, and every day fresh hosts had replaced the slain without, and every night death and wounds and sickness had made the muster-roll of the defenders shorter and shorter.
“We must make an end of this somehow, comrades,” said Don Hernando, when they were holding a council the night after the grand assault, “or by the Saints it will surely make an end of us! Here we are, cut off from all succour, with scarce a hundred and fifty fighting-men, and not fourscore horses that are fit for work. Every day we grow fewer and weaker, and every day these heathens seem to grow more and stronger. Those we slay lie in the streets and poison us with plague, so that we do but bring sickness on ourselves by slaying them, while at every onset there come back ten for every one we kill. The loss of one man and a horse is to us greater than a thousand men to them. They have the whole country to draw their supplies from; we have only what is here in the city, and that, as you know, cannot last many days longer. When that is gone we must fight our way out or starve. It is manifest that no help can come to us from outside. Almagro is far away in Chili, my brother, the Governor, is no doubt beleaguered in Los Reyes. If he could have sent us succour he would have done. If he has sent it the troops have doubtless been cut off and perished among the mountains. That is our condition, comrades. Now what is your counsel upon it?”
The assembled cavaliers, who were sitting and standing round a smoky fire in the middle of the wretched camp, looked at one another for a few moments in gloomy silence. They had eaten their last scanty meal from vessels of gold, and the whole camp was littered with gold and silver flagons and dishes, ornaments and chains and bars into which others had been melted down, and yet, battle-worn and sore stricken with plague and famine, they themselves looked scarcely less wretched than that other company which some seven years before had grubbed for worms and sea-snails on the desolate shores of Gallo. At length Pedro de Leon, one of the Almagrist faction, spoke, and said in a sullen, angry voice—
“So far as I can see, Señor, and as many others think with me, this much-boasted city of El-Dorado hath been little better than a gold-baited death-trap to us. True we eat and drink from vessels of gold, yet we are dying of famine by inches. Therefore my counsel is that, while we have yet a little life left in us, and before all our powder is burnt or our horses die of wounds and starvation, we should leave this accursed place and make shift to fight our way to the coast.”
“It would be as easy to fight thy way to Heaven, friend!” growled Carvahal, whose huge form seemed to thrive as well on famine as on plenty. “Depend upon it, if men well fed and well found have not been able to fight their way from Los Reyes here, we shall never fight ours to Los Reyes, and, since one place is as good as another to die in, why take the trouble to go elsewhere to do it?”
“I have not often heard thee speak wiser words than those, Carvahal,” said de Soto. “But still to my mind there is something more to be said. It seems to me, Señores,” he went on, addressing the council generally, “that we are here to hold this place for his Highness and our Sovereign Lord. We have won it with our arms, and with our arms we should keep it. Nevertheless, I am fain to confess that I see no way of holding it so long as the fortress is held by the enemy. It commands the whole country to the north, and blocks the only road by which succour can reach us. Moreover, if report speaks truly, there are great stores of meal and grain in it which would be very useful to us just now. If it were ours I should see no cause for despair.”
“Then let us take it!” said Juan Pizarro, sitting up on a rug of skins on which he had been lying.
He had been wounded in the jaw in that day’s fight by a shrewdly-slung stone, which had crushed the iron of his chin-piece in upon his flesh, and the wound was so painful that he could not now bear anything more than a felt cap upon his head.
“It was by my counsel that we did not occupy it at first. Therefore if it be the wish of the council, I will seek to make good my error by leading the attack upon it to-morrow. Let us make scaling-ladders and shields to guard us from the stones, and take it by escalade. Let us to-morrow divide our force into three companies of fifty each. I will lead one against the fortress, let Gonzalo take the other out by the northern road and take it in flank at the same time, and do you, Hernando, hold the camp with the other fifty. With the cannon and the musketry you will be well able to keep it against as many as will attack it. If God gives us the victory we can hold out for months to come; if not, we shall at least have fought a good fight and be none the worse than we are now. What say you to that, Señores?”
“It is good counsel, Juan,” said Hernando, after a little pause, during which they all looked at one another in anxious silence. “It is good counsel and we will do it. In such straits as ours what is boldest is best; so now, comrades, the council is ended. Get what rest and refreshment you can to-night, for to-morrow we shall have a hard day’s work. I will see to the making of the ladders and shields. The holy father Valverde will hold Mass at sunrise, and those who have sins to confess had better seek their confessors betimes, for this time to-morrow night may be too late. And now, comrades, again good-night, and God be with us, for in Him is now our only hope of help!”
Whilethe Spaniards were holding their council in the camp in the great square, Manco and Ruminavi were holding another no less momentous in one of the chambers of the central tower which crowned the fortress of the Sacsahuaman. Nor was their debate less anxious than that of Hernando Pizarro and his companions. The truth was that the feeding of the vast host which had now for months been encompassing Cuzco was fast becoming impossible. More than that, the time for sowing had come, and this among the Incas and their people had for ever been the season of universal religious observance. It was to them what Holy Week was to the Catholics, or the feast of Bairam to the Moslems.
Moreover, in such a country as the elevated regions of the Sierras, it was absolutely imperative that the grain should be sown simultaneously, and at this one season. If not, the next year the Children of the Sun would have to fight a foe even more pitiless than the Spaniards, for there would be famine throughout the length and breadth of the land. There were thus two reasons—one religious and one economical—which made it imperative to partially raise the siege of Cuzco, at least for a time.
Now that the great Temple of the Sun had been defiled and desecrated, the most holy place in the Land of the Four Regions was the temple on the sacred Island of Titicaca, some six days’ journey to the south, and thither it was necessary that the Inca, in his sacred character as Brother of the Sun, should go and open the first furrow with his golden hoe and plant the first seeds of the next year’s harvest. To have neglected this duty would have been an incredible impiety, and a breach of a custom hallowed by ages of solemn observance.
On the other hand, too, the multitudes which had been gathered about Cuzco, feeling the pinch of famine, and wearying of the length and rigours of the siege, were getting more and more difficult to keep together in any semblance of an army. Their thoughts were turning to their homes and families, and to the starvation and misery that would be their fate if the crops were not sown.
The last grand attack on the Spanish camp had failed, as all the others had done, and the disheartened hosts of the Inca were falling back to their old belief that, after all, these strange invaders must be something more than human, and therefore unconquerable, and Manco and his old General well knew that, while the people were in this temper, to neglect or even to postpone the Feast of Sowing would be to provoke almost universal mutiny and revolt, and utterly ruin all hope of future resistance.
So, after long and earnest debate between the young Inca and his General, the priests of the Sun and the chief nobles of the Blood, a compromise was decided upon. Manco was to start at dawn with his priestly retinue, and proceed with all possible dispatch to Titicaca. The bulk of the people were to be sent to their homes to prepare the fields for sowing, and Ruminavi was to remain with the picked regiments of the army to continue the blockade of the city.
It was thus that there came about the last of the long series of fatalities which had seemed to foredoom the empire of the Incas to destruction. If this decision had been made even a day later, or even if the Spaniards had carried out their original plan of attacking the fortress the next morning, Cuzco might have fallen, and the Spaniards might have been forced to begin the whole conquest over again in the face of a victorious and triumphant people.
But it so happened that the next day was St. James’, and when Hernando Pizarro told the Fray Valverde, who was now duly consecrated Bishop of Cuzco and the Southern Indies, of the projected attack, he protested with all the vigour of his eloquence against the desecration of the holy day by avoidable bloodshed, and ended by refusing point blank to celebrate Mass or to give absolution to any who took part in the impious enterprise.
“No, Señor,” he said sternly, in reply to Don Hernando’s military arguments as to the necessity of striking quickly. “No, the day on which the holy St. Jago died is no day for battle and slaughter if good Christians can avoid them. If you are attacked again, then strike back like true men, and prayers shall not be wanting for the souls of those who fall. But if the heathen leave you in peace, as after to-day’s defeat they may well do, then should the solemn hours of to-morrow be devoted to a better and more urgent service. They must be hours of fasting, humiliation, and prayer.
“Do you wonder, Señor, at the misfortunes that have overtaken you when you and your captains have permitted your men to imperil their own souls and pollute their holy cause by all manner of greed and lust and violence? Think you that God and the Holy Saints can look down with favour on work done by hands so foul and wicked as theirs are? It is not a battle with the heathen that they must fight to-morrow. It is a battle with their own evil lusts, which destroy the soul as well as the body. Do your will according to your own advice, Señor, but remember that to-morrow I proclaim a solemn fast and day of humiliation and intercession, and those who go out to battle between the rising and setting of the sun, save to repel an assault of the enemy, will go followed, not by the Church’s blessing, but by her solemn anathema!”
Don Hernando was too good a soldier as well as too good a Catholic not to see that in the face of such an interdict the order to march would be answered by the superstitious soldiery with nothing less than flat refusal and mutiny. So Bishop Valverde had his way, and, all unknowingly, did more than any other man at such a juncture could have done to ensure the triumph of the enterprise. All through the day a silence hung over the Spanish camp, broken only by the tolling of bells and the murmur of prayer and chanting and exhortation. The Peruvians, most mistakingly believing that they were preparing to leave the city and run the fatal hazard of the mountain passes, left them unmolested and went on with their own dispositions. The Inca departed southward at dawn, his heart full of heavy forebodings, and yet firmly persuaded that duty as well as necessity compelled the observance of the sacred duty he was going to perform; while Ruminavi and his captains busied themselves in organising the people according to their divisions, or nations, preparatory to dismissing them to their homes.
And so it came about that, when that ever memorable Saturday came, the amazed and delighted Spaniards looked out upon the surrounding hills and saw that the innumerable hosts which for months had blackened the hillsides and covered the plain had melted away and vanished like the creatures of an evil dream.
“Behold how quickly the Lord has answered the prayer of His servants!” cried Valverde, when the news was brought to him, and he came out on the terrace before the palace of Viracocha, which he had consecrated as the Cathedral of San Francisco. “Behold the Lord of Hosts hath spoken and His enemies are scattered, even as were the multitudes of Sennacherib before Salem! Now, soldiers of the Cross, go forth and conquer, for the voice of your contrition has risen up to Heaven and the hour of your deliverance is at hand. Go now and take the triumph that awaits you and the blessing of God and His holy Church go with you!”
The soldiers who had assembled before the terrace at the sound of his voice knelt by one impulse and received his benediction. Then they ate as good a meal as their scanty resources afforded them and set about their preparations.
Juan Pizarro’s first plan of attack had been greatly altered in after debate. In the first place the assault was to be made under cover of darkness, as the Peruvians, like all Indian nations, never fought at night unless forced to do so. Secondly, Don Hernando was to take command of the troop which was to carry out the flanking operations, while Gonzalo Pizarro, with Pedro de Candia as Captain of the Artillery, was to hold the square and what was left of the city.
The morning was busily employed in constructing scaling-ladders and mantlets, to protect the assailants from the stones that would be showered upon them, and shortly after the midday meal Juan Pizarro, at the head of forty horse, rode out of the city to the southward. This move was a feint to persuade the Peruvian leaders that he had gone on a foraging raid to replenish the exhausted store-houses of Cuzco.
But as soon as the sudden darkness had fallen over the valley he turned aside and threaded his way up through the side valleys on to the open plain which was commanded by the curved northern and eastern face of the great fortress. Meanwhile another party on foot had left the city carrying the ladders and mantlets, and made their way up under cover of the darkness to the gorge of the Rodadero past the south-eastern flank of the fortress and met him on the plain. By this time, too, Don Hernando had taken his troop round by the north up the steep, paved roads towards the head of the pass from which de Soto and his companions had first seen the City of the Sun.
The Sacsahuaman, the guardian fortress of the metropolis of the Land of the Four Regions, was at this time by far the most splendid and stately monument of architectural skill in the Western Hemisphere, and would have lost little by comparison with some of the strongest places of the Old World. It was, indeed, rather a fortified hill than a fortress—a Gibraltar of the land.
On the side facing the city it towered up an almost sheer ascent of more than seven hundred feet, faced with massive masonry, and approachable only by narrow zigzag paths and flights of steps hewn in the living rock, and absolutely unapproachable by a hostile force so long as the summit or fortress proper was held even by a scanty garrison. The approaches to the hill at either end were ravines dominated by high walls built of stones so huge and solidly set together that they stand to-day as firm as the primæval rock on which they are founded. To the northward the true fighting face, commanding the little, level plain of the Rodadero, consists of three angled walls of cyclopean stonework, extending in the shape of a bent bow and rising in terraces one above the other to a height of some seventy feet, and the lower of these walls forms a curve of some eighteen hundred feet in length.
At the time of the Conquest this colossal structure was crowned by three towers, the central and greatest of which was the true citadel, half palace, half fortress, built close to the perpendicular wall overlooking the city, and rising some sixty feet above its summit. These three towers have vanished, and much of the outworks are damaged now, torn down by the Conquerors to yield dressed stones for the building of the modern city, but, even after the ravages of three centuries, the Sacsahuaman remains to-day the greatest as well as the most marvellous structure of the New World.
Such, then, was the strong place which the remnant of the Spanish army in Cuzco, something less than a hundred men in all, set out to storm on that memorable night. If it had been held by disciplined troops, furnished with even the most primitive artillery of the times, it would have been impregnable, but its present defenders possessed only the arms of savage warfare—bows and arrows, darts and stones, and for closer quarters axes, maces and swords of copper, while its assailants, few as they were, were equipped with the most efficient arms that the art of war had so far produced.
Had it not been for the fatal decision of the night before the whole country would still have been occupied by the countless throngs, through which it would have been impossible for the attacking forces to have passed without discovery, as they now did, until they had reached the points at which the assault was to be delivered. Instead of this they must have been entangled and overwhelmed in the difficult defiles which, by an oversight of which no European commander could have been guilty, they now found unguarded.
The point which Juan Pizarro had selected for his attack was a great gateway opening on to the narrow valley through which the little stream now known as the Rodadero flows down to the ravine. This was called the Tiapunco, or Gate of Sand, possibly from the sandy nature of the little plain. It was an opening in the lower and outer wall of the fortifications, and led on to the first terrace of level ground between the outer and middle wall.
When they reached it they found it blocked by masses of stone which made almost as solid a barrier as the wall itself, and guarded by vigilant sentries, who instantly gave the alarm by kindling a huge pile of grass and brushwood saturated with oil and fat which had been built up in an angle beside the gate. The moment that the flames leapt up they were answered by others all along the triple walls and on the battlements of the central towers.
A score of archers and half as many arquebusiers had come up with the ladders and mantlets, and these Juan Pizarro posted on a little eminence on the other side of the stream about forty paces away, with orders to keep the terrace and wall clear while a company of sappers attacked the pile of stones in the gateway with their picks and crowbars.
The pain of his wounded jaw had been so great that he had been forced to discard his helmet and trust entirely to his buckler, yet, in spite of this, he led the first party up to the assault as coolly as though he had been encased from head to foot in mail of proof.
Before they had reached the gate the alarm had spread over the whole vast fortress, and the three terraces were already alive with armed men. A storm of missiles, arrows, javelins, and stones was rained down upon the sappers as they advanced to the attack, but the next moment the roar of the arquebuses rolled out, and the heavy balls, directed by the light of the fires, plunged into the crowded masses of men. Then came the hissing flight of the long, steel-headed arrows and the short, heavy, crossbow bolts, which did almost as much execution as the bullets. Under cover of this fire the mantlets were pushed forward, and under them pick and lever and crowbar went to work on the stones.
A little higher up one of the scaling-ladders had been planted against the outer wall, and up this began to crawl a dark stream of mail-clad men, headed by Sebastian ben-Alcazar with his buckler close down over his head, and a long, broad-bladed dagger between his teeth.
Four times was the ladder planted against the wall, and four times did the gallant Spanish Moor climb to the top of it through a storm of missiles, only to be flung down again when he had almost reached the top. The fifth time a well-directed volley from the archers swept the wall clear for a moment and in that moment he made good his footing. He struck down two warriors with his dagger, and then, drawing his heavy broadsword, he set his back against the inside of the wall and valiantly held the place he had won until a dozen more had scrambled up the ladder and planted themselves beside him.
Then, shoulder to shoulder and with bucklers interlaced, they went like a moving wall of iron along the terrace towards the gate, hewing down all who opposed them with the swift, swinging strokes of their good Toledo blades. Meanwhile the sappers had been doing their work well, and the Peruvian warriors, gallant as they were, were recoiling before the well-directed arrow-flights and the volleys of the ever-dreaded fire-arms. Presently a great stone was prised out from below and sent rolling down into the valley followed by an avalanche of others, and at last the gate was clear.
“Dios y Santiago! Make way there for God and Spain, ye heathens!” roared old Carvahal, flinging his huge bulk first into the breach. “To me, comrades, to me! Carrai! there goes another heathen soul to Hell!” he shouted again as he struck out with his heavy blade at the first of a stream of warriors that had poured down into the gateway, and the splendidly attired Peruvian rolled over with severed shield arm and head split to the jaws.
Close behind Carvahal came Hernando de Soto and Juan Pizarro followed by a score of men shouting the familiar war-cry. For some minutes they were checked by the solid mass of warriors which had poured down from the second terrace to oppose them, and so close was the press that they could scarcely find room to use their weapons. They were even driven back a few feet by the sheer weight of the crowd descending upon them; but meanwhile ben-Alcazar and his comrades had been hacking and hewing away at the Peruvian flank, more ladders had been planted against the outer wall; the archers and arquebusiers had left their position as soon as there was danger of their volleys injuring friends as well as foes, and they too had joined in the desperate escalade.
Again and again the ladders were hurled away from the wall by the ever-increasing throngs of warriors who came pouring down from the upper terraces, and again and again they were up-reared, until, one by one, the climbing columns of men gained the summit of the first rampart and made good their footing. Some drew their weapons and turned fiercely on the swarming defenders while others dragged the ladders up in readiness for the assault on the second line. Before long ben-Alcazar had nearly forty men behind him, and, forming these into a solid wedge of steel and iron, he drove them deep into the flank of the column that was still holding the assailants of the gate in check.
For a few moments it stuck fast as though locked in and overwhelmed by the swarm of men into which it had driven itself. Then the wedge began to move slowly forward again, and then the column burst asunder, half of it scattered flying up the slope and the other half fast shut in between the wedge and the gate.
Now the wedge dissolved and spread out into a double line, and between this and the head of the Spanish column coming through the gate the Peruvian warriors were entrapped. They had no more chance against the steel-clad Spanish soldiery than a mob of children would have had against themselves, but they went down to the last man fighting and dying like heroes, and when the bloody, pitiless work was over the Gate of Sand was won, and the hitherto inviolate fortress was impregnable no longer.
Juan Pizarronow divided his men into three companies commanded by himself, de Soto, and ben-Alcazar, and planted the archers and arquebusiers in positions from which they could rake the second terrace with their volleys, but the storming of this was harder work than the forcing of the gate had been, for the wall was high and smooth and the few and narrow openings in it had been built up almost as solidly as the wall itself. It presented an unbroken series of angles, and above these huge heaps of stones had been piled, and hence the moment a ladder was planted those who attempted to mount it were exposed to attack not only from the top but from both sides as well.
Time after time the ladders were planted, and time after time the heroic assailants were driven back bruised and maimed by the avalanches of stones that were rained upon them. Only their stout, well-tried mail and bucklers saved them from certain death, and only the knowledge that this was their last fight and that they must either conquer in it or lose all that they had fought so hard and suffered so bitterly for, sent them back and back again to the seemingly hopeless assault.
At last Juan Pizarro, seeing that isolated attacks could only end in failure, ordered all the ladders to be planted in a single angle where the ammunition of the defenders was becoming exhausted. At the same time he drew up his archers and arquebusiers on the opposite side of the lower terrace, and, while the assailants were swarming for the fiftieth time up the ladder, these sent volley after volley over their heads into the dense ranks of the defenders above.
Still, in spite of this, two of the ladders were pushed aside and sent crashing down with their load of men on to the terrace below. Carvahal had just reached the top of a fourth, panting and swearing and foaming with fury, when suddenly the ranks of the defenders divided and a tall figure clad in Spanish mail and helm, with a Spanish buckler on his left arm and a huge copper-headed mace in his right hand, strode forward and, swinging up the mace, brought it down with a frightful crash on Carvahal’s steel cap.
The grip that he had just taken of the top of the wall relaxed and, with a hoarse cry like the bellow of a wounded bull, he reeled backwards and rolled down the ladder, sweeping every man behind him off it. They tumbled in a heap to the ground with Carvahal on top of them. One was killed outright and two were maimed for life, but the old swashbuckler sat up the next minute in the midst of them, pulled off his cap to see if his head was broken, and then, finding it wasn’t, shouted—
“Cuerpo de Cristo! that was a shrewd knock for a heathen to give a good Christian. By the Saints, I thought all the fortress had fallen on me! Devil take him, I shall have a headache for a week! Come on, lads, up again! It shall never be said that Carvahal took a blow without giving it back! I’ll crack that son of Satan’s pate for him yet if God gives me strength and a fair chance at him.”
With that he scrambled to his feet again and, with the help of those who were not too badly hurt by the fall, reared up the ladder again and once more mounted first upon it. But while this was happening a footing had already been gained on top of the wall from three of the other ladders, and Juan Pizarro, de Soto, and ben-Alcazar, with stout Michael Asterre, were laying about them with their long swords and fast clearing a space on the second terrace. Foot by foot they drove the defenders back, and now the infuriated soldiery came pouring unresisted up the ladders.
“Where is he? Where is he?” howled Carvahal as he rolled over the parapet.
“Whom seekest thou, fire-eater?” laughed de Soto, leaning on his sword during a brief pause in the fight.
“That heathen knave in Christian clothing! That iron clad son of Belial who gave me that crack over the pate and made me see more stars than the good God ever created!” he growled, looking about him in the dim light for his foe. “If I mistake not he is none other than Ruminavi the General, old Stony-face as they rightly call him. Carrajo! I will see whether his head too be made of stone when I get near enough to whet my blade upon it.”
“It will not be stone but good Spanish steel that thou wilt whet thy blade on,” said Juan Pizarro, “for that, as thou hast said, was old Ruminavi, and thou mayest thank the Saints that it was not the Inca himself, for, judging what he did in the Battle of the Valley, thick and all as thy skull may be, he would have smashed it like an egg-shell. But come, Señores,” he went on, addressing the others, “minutes are worth much now, and we have yet another wall to scale and after that the citadel to storm, and, see, the heathens are gathering to the fight again! So far we have done well, yet I would give something to hear Hernando’s guns from the gap of the road yonder.”
“And I would give more to see your head covered by a good steel morion, Señor Juan,” said de Soto. “There are two or three down yonder who have done with theirs for ever. Why not take one of them? It might mean the difference between life and death for you to-night, and the worst part of the battle has to come yet, for these gallant heathens, if I mistake not, will fight while one of them can strike a blow.”
“I have a good buckler, de Soto, and that must suffice,” he replied, speaking with some little difficulty, “for with this wounded jaw of mine I could not bear the chin-piece, and if I have to die I may as well do it comfortably as any other way.”
“And yet this is not a matter in which one may take too many chances,” growled Carvahal, rubbing his head. “Carramba! if it had not been for this steel cap of mine methinks I should by this time have been looking for the coolest spot in Purgatory. Cuerpo de Cristo! where is the scoundrel who gave me this headache?”
“By Allah and all the Saints!” shouted ben-Alcazar, “thou wilt not have long to wait, Carvahal. See, here he comes and at the head of a goodly array too! On guard, Señores, on guard!”
He had scarcely spoken when they turned and saw coming along the terrace a solid phalanx of men with long spears levelled at the charge, swinging on at a steady, measured run, led by Ruminavi whirling his huge mace and shouting the old battle-cry of the Incas.
Carvahal, who was standing a little in advance of the others, put his buckler up and his head down, and with his sword shortened in his right hand ran like a charging bull at Ruminavi. But the old warrior had fought too many fights in that style to be taken unawares. As Carvahal rushed blindly on he stepped aside with the lightness of a youth, and as he passed brought his mace down between his shoulders, and with a cry that was half a gasp and half a groan Carvahal stumbled and fell, and the next moment the first rank of the spearmen had leapt over his body and flung themselves on the Spaniards.
Even now, if it had only been man to man and weapon to weapon, the assault would have been repelled, for, in spite of their tough armour and long swords, the rush of the well-drilled spearmen drove the Spaniards back and huddled them into a heap. But just at the critical moment, as they were being crushed up against a terrace wall by the sheer weight of the column that had hurled itself against them, there rang out far to the rear a hoarse roaring shout—
“Dios y Santiago! lay on for God and Spain—lay on!” and then came the ever-dreaded thunder of horses’ hoofs, mingled with yells of terror and screams of pain and the fierce clink—clink—clink of smiting steel.
The charging spearmen stopped in the very moment of victory, as though paralysed by the dreaded sound. In vain Ruminavi, who had already smitten ben-Alcazar lifeless to the ground and broke Michael Asterre’s sword-arm with a blow of his mace, alternately cursed and cheered them on. Three or four arquebusiers scaled the wall and levelled their pieces. The “thunder-pipes” belched out their flame and smoke, and the balls, fired at less than five paces, tore through rank after rank of the close-packed spearmen and completed the panic. They broke their formation and ran, some leaping over into the terrace below, others swarming like cats up the third wall, but most of them going down pierced and slashed by the Spanish steel.
Meanwhile a troop of Don Hernando’s horse had come tearing along the terrace, riding down and trampling over a crowd of fugitives before them, and in the fast-closing gap between the Spanish horse and foot stood Ruminavi, still unwounded yet seemingly devoted to certain death.
For one brief instant he stood and looked from one to the other, and then, just as de Soto ran forward, as he thought, to save his life by making him prisoner, the wary old warrior darted under the cover of the upper wall and then, as the first horse came up to him, he put his buckler over his helmet, took a well-meant sword-stroke harmlessly upon it, and at the same moment brought his mace round with such a savage swing on the horse’s forelegs that the bones snapped under it like twigs, and horse and man rolled over in a helpless heap with the next rider and horse on top of them. Two more swift strokes of the terrible mace drove the steel of their caps into the skulls of the two fallen riders, and then the gallant old warrior, grasping one of a dozen hands held out to him over the upper wall, swung himself up as lightly as a lad of sixteen and disappeared into the darkness.
“Santiago! that was well met, Señor,” said Juan Pizarro to Cieza de Leon, who was leading the troop of horse. “Another minute and we should have been over the wall. It is well for us that these heathens have only two good men to lead them, and that only one of them seems to be here. That old Stony-face as they call him fights as if all the devils of Gadara were in him.”
“Ay, and by the Saints he nearly sent me down a steeper place than I could ever climb up again. Carrajo! has no one killed the heathen yet? First he tries to hammer what brains I have down my throat, and then he knocks the breath out of me like the wind out of a burst bladder.”
“Why, Carvahal,” laughed de Soto, as the old swashbuckler hobbled out from the midst of the fallen horses and men with one hand behind his back and the other rubbing his huge paunch, “art thou not dead yet? I should be loth to believe that thou wert born to be hanged——”
“Go hang thyself, babbler!” said Carvahal between a snarl and a gasp. “Is this time to crack jokes on a comrade’s misfortunes? Carrajo, Caballeros, what are we standing here for? Is this a battle or a dancing party, and where has that infernal heathen vanished to again? Ah! that was poor ben-Alcazar, was it? Well, well, it is the fortune of war and the good God will be able to see now whether he was better Christian or Moslem. For myself as a good Christian I have always had my doubts of him.”
“Buenos noches, Señores! How goes the battle your way?” said the deep voice of Don Hernando, who now rode up at the head of a second troop of horse. “For our part we have cleared the two lower terraces and driven the heathen, or such as we have left alive, either on the plain, where I have posted a troop to look after them, or up yonder to their citadels—— How now, Juan? What art thou doing here without thy helmet? Art mad, lad, to come into a fight like this bareheaded?”
“I have but a scratch and a bruise or two so far, brother,” said Juan, with a good attempt at a laugh, “and this jaw of mine is so sore and stiff that I could not bear a chin-piece on it, and what is the use of a leader who cannot cheer his men on? But enough of me for the moment. What we have done is as thou seest. We have forced the gate and cleared the two terraces, though, it grieves me to say it, not without loss. Still, here we are and there is the citadel yet to be taken. What say you? Shall we attack forthwith ere the heathen have time to recover themselves?”
“Ay, that were best,” replied Don Hernando, “when you start a savage running keep him going, and we may as well scale the wall while it is yet unguarded.”
While this conversation had been going on between the two leaders the archers and crossbow-men of the two parties had been busy collecting the arrows and bolts which they had shot, pulling and cutting them out of the flesh of those they had slain with them, and so Don Hernando, now taking the chief command, ordered them to scale the third undefended wall and spread themselves out in skirmishing order on the little plain above it. After them went the musketeers, of whom there were now five-and-twenty, and then Don Hernando, leaving half a score of mounted men to watch the horses and keep the terrace clear, dismounted and led the rest of his men, to the number of over sixty, to the final assault on the citadel.
While they were clearing the wall and dragging the ladders after them the archers, crossbow-men, and musketeers had been advancing slowly across the little plain towards the citadel, driving the now disheartened Peruvians before them. For generations the great fortress had been rightly believed to be impregnable. Horde after horde of the savage tribes of the east had dashed themselves to fragments against its triple walls and until now no enemy had ever yet set foot even upon its first terrace, and yet here a mere handful of these unconquerable strangers stood triumphant on its topmost tier. To them it was the work of demons rather than of men, and, following as it did upon unnumbered defeats and only a single victory, it was little wonder that in such a moment the hearts of the bravest failed them.
The three Spanish ranks advanced almost without resistance to the walls of the central citadel. The other two towers had been deserted, but round the base of the central one the remnants of the garrison were drawn up ten or twelve deep in a solid human wall of desperate, though it might be despairing valour, and its three terraces and broad, flat roof were filled with men who had there taken their last stand ready to die to a man for the country and the homes which they could no longer save.
But however desperate their valour and resolution they were of little avail against the well-proved science of Don Hernando and his lieutenants. Though there were others amongst the Conquerors who could have led a charge more brilliantly or fought a pitched battle in the open against overwhelming odds with better chance of success than he, yet when it came to such an attack as this, where skill and caution were equally needed, he was without a rival.
The moon had risen now and in the clear air of that elevated region the light was quite bright enough for accurate aim either with bow or arquebus, so he planted his force in three lines arranged in a semicircle about the citadel, which, as has been said before, stood close to the perpendicular face of the fortress overlooking the city. In front were the musketeers lying down with their pieces levelled at the close ranks beneath the walls. Behind them was the line of cavaliers and troopers armed with their long swords, battle-axes, and pikes, and behind them again were the archers and crossbow-men; and the plan of the battle was this:—
First the musketeers sent a murderous volley into the ranks round the base. Then, while they reloaded, the second line charged past them to increase with axe and pike and sword the havoc which the musket-balls had wrought, and while they were doing this the third rank sent their volleys of arrows and bolts into the crowded masses on the terraces. Then when the musketeers had reloaded Don Hernando gave the signal for the second rank to disengage itself and retire behind them, and as the defenders rushed forward they were met by yet another volley of balls, and hard after these came the charging steel again.
Thus, volley after volley and charge after charge were made and ever the close and well-directed flights of bolts and arrows rained with deadly effect upon the impotent defenders of the citadel whose feeble weapons were useless at a range at which the Spanish long-bows and arbalests were almost as deadly as modern rifles.
To such a fight there could be but one end, and so the time came when the last volley of musketry and the last charge of the sword and pike rent asunder the ranks of the defenders at the base and scattered their remnants weaponless and terror-stricken over the plain. Then Don Hernando bade his musketeers stand up and use their resting-forks so that they could play on the terraces of the citadel and he kept them and the archers and crossbow-men at this work until every bullet and arrow and bolt had been shot away. Then he ordered up the ladders and the last assault began.
All this time Ruminavi had been striding up and down the roof of the citadel exhorting his warriors to stand fast and die as he had sworn to do, in battle rather than in that slavery to the Strangers which was now the only alternative. Though ever erect himself and passing by some miracle scathless through the storm of missiles, he had kept his men crouching behind the parapets so that as many of them as possible might remain for the last struggle, and this struggle when it came was a bitter one, for now the fight was hand to hand, weapon to weapon, and man to man.
Again and again the ladders were planted and again and again they were hurled back to fall with their human load on the thronging assailants beneath, and a good half-score of Spaniards had fought their last fight by the time the last rampart was gained, and more than twice as many more had been disabled by wounds or broken limbs. But still, rung by rung, they went up the ladders and terrace by terrace the last stronghold of the Incas was stormed until at length one of the ladders was firmly hooked on the parapet of the roof itself.
Juan Pizarro, pushing Cieza de Leon aside and swearing that a Pizarro should be first on the roof, sprang on to the ladder with his dagger between his teeth. As he did so Don Hernando fought his way, to the foot, shouting in a voice hoarse with anxiety and the passion of battle—
“Down, Juan, down! Come back! Come back! Come down, I pray thee—nay, I command thee, come down! Ah! Mother of God, there is that accursed heathen again!”
And so saying he sprang up the ladder after Juan, who, unheeding his brother’s prayers and command, was already more than half-way to the parapet. After him went de Soto and then Carvahal. Juan reached the top first and as he put his hand on the parapet to clamber over, the gigantic form of Ruminavi towered high above it and the great mace went up. Instantly Juan’s buckler covered his head, and, lying flat on the ladder, he crawled up another step. He let go the parapet, snatched the dagger from his mouth and made a swift thrust at Ruminavi’s side. But in the uncertain light he missed the joint and the Spanish blade shivered to splinters on the Spanish mail. The next instant the mace came down, and with a dull, rending crash Juan’s buckler burst asunder under the irresistible shock of the blow. The bones of the arm that held it were crushed to pulp and Juan’s body, doubled up like a half-empty sack, pitched on to his brother’s shoulders and fell with a dead, heavy thud on the terrace below.
“God curse thee, thou hast killed the gentlest knight in Christendom!” roared Don Hernando as he rushed up the ladder and sprang over the parapet at Ruminavi before he could bring his mace up again. “Take that to Hell with thee!” he shouted again as he swung his long blade round and dealt a sweeping sword-stroke at the old warrior.
But Ruminavi saw it coming and sprang back so that the point only grazed his armour. The next instant Don Hernando was striding across the roof with de Soto and Carvahal hard after him. Meanwhile, too, another ladder had been hooked on and another stream of eager assailants were pouring on to the roof. Don Hernando, de Soto and Carvahal rushed together at Ruminavi while the new-comers were striking down the few defenders left, but not one of them could pass the circle which the terrible sweeps of the great mace made about him. Don Hernando’s sword was knocked flying from his grasp, another stroke took de Soto on the right shoulder and sent him reeling back among his followers. Then Carvahal ran in and took the head of the mace full on his jaw.
“Carrajo!” he howled, reeling back and spitting out a mouthful of blood and broken teeth. “The curse of God upon thee and thy stolen steel!” And then he ran in again with a savage, sweeping stroke of his broad blade at Ruminavi’s thigh.
But again the Spanish steel was met by the Spanish mail and the edge turned harmless off it and again Carvahal took a blow of the mace on his left shoulder which paralysed his buckler-arm and made even his mighty bulk tremble and reel backwards.
By this time every other defender of the roof had been cut down or pierced through and through with sword and pike-thrusts, and now old Ruminavi was the only defender left. Don Hernando had picked up an axe in place of his lost sword, de Soto had shifted his sword to his left hand, and de Leon and a dozen more Spaniards were making ready for a last rush at the gallant old warrior.
And now Ruminavi saw that the end had come. One swift glance over the corpse-strewn roof showed him that he alone was left, another at his closing enemies showed him that the trust he had so desperately defended was lost at last. He ran back to the parapet overlooking the city and leapt upon it and for the last time turned and looked round on his foes.
“Save him! Save him! He is too gallant a man to die!” shouted Don Hernando springing forward towards him.
The great mace swung round again and then like a stone from a catapult it whistled through the air, and taking Don Hernando full on the breast it sent him reeling backwards and hurled him prone on the roof. The next moment old Ruminavi drew himself up erect and, still without turning his back on his foes, sprang into the air. The next he was lying smashed out of all human shape on the stones five hundred feet below.
The Spaniards rushed forward and leant over the battlements peering down into the fearful abyss. Then de Soto stood up and made the sign of the Cross and said in a choked, husky voice—
“Heathen or not, comrades, a stark warrior and a good patriot! May God receive his gallant soul in peace. Amen!”
Itis one of the misfortunes of the romancer who devotes himself to the re-telling of a story which has already been recorded by the pen of History that he cannot deal with his characters as he would with those who are purely the creation of his own fancy. Here or there a date or an incident may be altered, and to a certain extent he may put such words as he pleases into the mouths of those whom he has recalled from the grave to play their parts upon the stage which he has reconstructed for them. But with this the license which he may legitimately use is exhausted. To push his privileges beyond this point would be to utterly destroy the verisimilitude of his narrative by bringing it into flat contradiction with the known facts of history.
Thus I am well aware that in the present instance the unities of Romance would demand that not Ruminavi, but Manco-Capac, should have died that gallant death on the citadel of the Sacsahuaman, or, better still, have brought back a great host with him from the South and overwhelmed his conquerors in the hour of their victory. But the circumstances narrated by the chroniclers of the Conquest, some of whom were actually present, are substantially as they have been given here. The gallant Manco was far away when the last assault was made, although even had he been present the final result, although it might have been deferred, could hardly have been different in the end. And yet as it happens it is this very fact which makes it possible for the romancer to bring the tale of the Conquest of Peru to a close with at least a plausible assumption that in the end poetic justice was done.
With the fall of the Sacsahuaman the Siege of Cuzco virtually ended. It is true that after the seed-time Manco came back and once more encompassed the city with innumerable legions, but meanwhile the Spaniards had stripped the surrounding country bare, not only of the remaining stores of grain, but also of the remnants of the Peruvian flocks and herds. Almagro’s men, too, were marching back from Chile, and reinforcements at length were pushing their way through the mountain defiles from the cities of the coast, and ship-load after ship-load of adventurers from Panama and Nicaragua were landing on the doomed shores of Peru. So in the end the gallant Manco, seeing his legions starving by thousands around him, was forced to yield to famine if not to the Spaniards, and finally raised the siege.
From Cuzco he retired into the fastnesses of Yucay and the impregnable fortress of Ollantay-Tambo. Here expedition after expedition was sent against him, only to be cut off to a man or hurled back in defeat and disaster. Then the well-earned vengeance of Eternal Justice fell hard and heavy on those iron Conquerors who for lust of riches had outraged every canon of human and Divine law. The gold that they came to seek proved their ruin when they had found it. Faction turned against faction, and comrade against comrade, and fiercer fights by far were fought between Spaniard and Spaniard than had ever been fought between Spaniard and Peruvian, and to-day there is not a rood of ground on all the South American continent over which the golden banner of Spain flies.
Of those of the Conquerors who have figured in these pages only one reaped any earthly reward for his labours, and this was the gallant and gentle knight Hernando de Soto, who, after the Civil Wars married a noble Inca princess, whom he took with him as his bride to Spain and presented at the Court of the Great Emperor. Of the rest, Alonso de Molina, as we have seen, died with his head on the breast of his well-beloved enemy and rival in love. Juan Pizarro died a soldier’s death on the citadel of the Sacsahuaman. His brother Gonzalo, taken in revolt against his lawful sovereign, lost his head on the block. Carvahal, after winning himself the title of “the Demon of the Andes,” was dragged to the scaffold in a basket and there hung, drawn, and quartered under the sentence of the victorious Viceroy. Pedro de Candia was murdered on the bloody field of Chupas by Almagro his own commander, and Almagro himself, taken prisoner in Cuzco by Don Hernando, was garroted in prison after abjectly begging his life from his conqueror. And Don Hernando himself went home to Spain only to be flung into a dungeon, in which he languished for twenty weary years—the last of his ever-famous family—to be released in the evening of his days, and to watch from the sad eminence of a hundred years of life the ruin of the great enterprise in which he had borne so conspicuous and, on the whole, so honourable a part.
Of the fate of Manco there are two stories told. One by the Spaniards, which says, that after years of successful guerrilla warfare, during which he made his name a terror to the conquerors of his country, he fell slain, surrounded by the bodies of his enemies, in an obscure combat. The other, be it legend or truth as you will, is found in the traditions of the fallen people, who still revere his name as that of the last champion of their lost liberties.
In an unknown and almost inaccessible valley hidden away somewhere in the vast ranges of the Vilcañota, surrounded by ice-crowned peaks and vast snowfields towering far up into the cloudless sky, he at length, with a remnant of the Children of the Blood, found a refuge, and there to this day the ancient Inca Empire survives, awaiting the day of vengeance, and ruled over by a lineal descendant of the last bearer of the Divine Name, and of her who was once the fairest and noblest of the Virgins of the Sun.
In this happy uncertainty we may take farewell of Manco and Nahua, and turn our eyes for a moment to the City of the Kings. There, in a room in his own palace, lies an old battle and travel-worn man of nearly three-score years and ten, pierced by the swords of those to whom he had opened the long-locked gates of El-Dorado. His life-blood is dripping from a wound in his throat on to the floor. He turns over on his side and with his finger traces a cross in his own blood. Then he kisses it, and, as his trembling lips shape the one word “Jesu,” another sword pierces him, this time to the heart, and his head drops down and he dies. And this is the end of that iron-souled Conqueror who had fought so many a bitter battle with Destiny and who, with the sword that was to win an empire for others, had traced that Line of Fate on the desolate sands of Gallo.
THE END
1Tavantinsuyu] “The Land of the Four Regions” (North, South, East, and West). The name Peru was not known to the Incas. It was an invention of the Spaniards, and of obscure, indeed, unknown origin.
2the doom of those who disobey] All disobedience to the direct commands of the reigning Inca was punished by death because he was considered to be the incarnation of Divinity; hence disobedience to him was sacrilege. There is, however, no instance on record of this crime having been committed.
3Nothing less than this appalling penalty was the punishment decreed by the Inca laws to those who disobeyed the commands or deliberately thwarted the will of the crowned Son of the Sun.
4by the coming of our Father] The rising of the sun was thus alluded to.
5Coya] Queen, or wife-royal, as distinguished from those who formed the harem of the Sovereign. The Incas held exactly the same views on the subject of sister-marriage as the Pharaohs did.
6the brilliant Chasca] The Incas’ name for the planet Venus. They called her in their poems “the bright-haired handmaid of the Sun.”
7the yellow fringe on his brow] The mark of social differences. Those not of the pure Inca race wore black, those of the blood-royal yellow, and the crowned Inca scarlet mingled with gold threads.
8This portent was actually seen over the city of Cuzco shortly before the Conquest.
9Llapa] A generic term used by the Incas to denote all or any of the manifestations of thunder-storms, earthquakes, meteors, and similar phenomena.
10The golden mask shall never cover thy face] The faces of the royal mummies were covered with a golden mask moulded to the features.
11It is said that more than 700 members of Huayna-Capac’s Household sacrificed themselves in various places on his death, but some authorities hold that this savage custom had been abolished by the later and more enlightened Incas.
12It was said that nearly 40,000 inhabitants of the Valley of Quito perished in the earthquake which occurred about this time. It is, of course, a matter of history that Atahuallpa escaped.
13According to one who took some share in this hideous day’s work, this was absolutely the only wound inflicted on a Spaniard.
14The Spanish chroniclers have recorded that Atahuallpa felt the, to him, unspeakable dishonour of this proposal even more keenly than his own captivity and all the indignities that it entailed.
15roaring torrent of the “Great Speaker”] The Apu-Rimac, one of the head-waters of the Amazon. It flows through this gorge with a constant dull roar.
16I baptize thee, Juan de Atahuallpa] It was the evening of the Feast of St. John. Hence the new “convert’s” name.
Frontispiece by Stanley L. Wood.
Minor spelling inconsistencies (e.g.conquerers/conquerors, spearmen/spear-men, war-beasts/war beasts, etc.) have been preserved.
Plain text edition only: note markers are given in [square] brackets.
Alterations to the text:
Convert footnotes to endnotes.
Punctuation: fix a few quotation mark pairings and a missing period.
[Book I/Chapter III]
Change “and he looked up to see what newhorrowwas coming” tohorror.
[Book I/Chapter IV]
“Awierd, low sound of song seemed to rise from” toweird.
[Book I/Chapter V]
“Yet not amurmerof pity or sorrow came from a single” tomurmur.
“from a single breast in all the vast, silent, throng” delete comma aftersilent.
“Manco replied in a low, steadyvaice” tovoice.
[Book I/Chapter VI]
“the last of them had died away in a long, wailing, scream.” delete the comma afterwailing.
[Book II/Chapter I]
“than when we started.andas for that green yonder” toAnd.
“Atahuallpa, by all accounts, is a base-bornursurperand ruthless” tousurper.
[Book II/Chapter IV]
“I feel as though I were hanging‘twixtHeaven and earth” to’twixt.
[Book II/Chapter V]
“Cajarmarcawas, for the time being, a city of the dead” toCajamarca.
[Book IV/Chapter VI]
“We rode on, hoping to gain someknowlegeof the position” toknowledge.
“exchange for those of his mother and and his betrothed” delete oneand.
[Book IV/Chapter XII]
“the Spanish long-bows andarbalastswere almost as deadly” toarbalests.
[End of text]