CHAPTER I.

ON THE ROAD TO EL-DORADO

In the late afternoon of a day towards the end of October, in the year 1532, a little company of horse and foot, attended by some twoscore Indian bearers, was plodding slowly and wearily towards the green margin of a thirsty wilderness of red-brown sand and rock, over which it had been toiling almost without rest for sixteen hours past.

Nearly seventy of the company were either mounted or walking beside their parched and weary horses, and four of the strange animals, never before seen in the unknown regions into which the little army was penetrating, were harnessed to wheeled gun-carriages, on each of which was mounted a petrero, or small brass cannon, capable of throwing a ball of about three pounds weight. Besides the seventy horsemen, there were about a hundred men-at-arms, all passably equipped with helmet, breast-plate, and back-piece, sword and dagger and pike, and of these three carried arquebuses and resting-forks, and some twenty of them arbalests, or heavy cross-bows, which at fifty paces would send their short, steel-headed bolts through breast and back of a mailed warrior.

But some of the cavaliers are clad in mail from head to foot, saving only that they have permitted themselves the luxury of exchanging their plumed helmets, which hang at their saddle-bows, for wide-brimmed hats of plaited straw. To many men such a garb in such a place would be intolerable, for there is not a cloud in the sky, and the sun-rays beating down on the parched earth and heated rocks are cast up again as if from a reflector.

There is no breath of wind coming in from the sea twenty leagues away, and in all the wide plain there is not a scrap of shadow save what is cast by the slowly-moving men and horses, and so every bit of steel and iron that the rays catch is hot, so hot that the bare hand can scarcely be laid upon it.

But these men are iron all through, hammered into hardness on the anvil of a fate that none but the sternest and strongest could have endured and yet lived. And good need, too, have they to be stern and strong, for this little army is marching into the heart of an unknown land, fenced in by mighty mountain bulwarks such as no white man has ever crossed before, to confront the master of millions in one of his strong places surrounded by his victorious hosts, and to pluck him from his throne as though he had been but the chief of a petty tribe.

Some of them you have seen before--down on their knees by the water’s edge on the beach at Gallo, grubbing for sea-worms and shellfish to stay the torments of their famine. That was five years ago, and many and great things have happened since then. Yonder cavalier riding alone a little ahead of the troop, armed from head to foot in plate and mounted on a strong black charger, is he who drew that line with his sword-point on the sand and made that famous speech which will be remembered to his honour as long as the history of brave deeds continues to be written.

Then he was but a nameless, base-born adventurer, reckless even to madness in the pursuit of that phantom-land of El-Dorado, whose glittering shores ever receded as the barques of those who sought them struggled against wind and storm and current over the treacherous waters of the unknown sea.

But now El-Dorado is a fact, for the treasures of the golden city of Tumbez have been laid at the foot of his Catholic Majesty’s throne, and Francisco Pizarro is a hidalgo of Spain, a military knight of the Empire who might hang from his shoulders the habit of Sant’ Iago, whose arms are quartered with those of the Crown of Castile, and whose titles are Governor and Captain-General of New Castile, as El-Dorado has been already named though yet unconquered, and Adelantado and Alguacil Mayor, or chief magistrate, of the new land which his sword is to win for his imperial master.

Once more in the history of heroic things the dreamer has confounded the practical men of affairs who had derided and obstructed his schemes till the visions had become realities, and who were now hiding their envy under the mask of eager service.

A little way behind him strides the giant form of Pedro de Candia, leading his horse with his arm through the bridle, and by his side walks Alonso de Molina, also bridle on arm, and with them are six others, all that are left of the gallant band that crossed the line on Gallo, and now hidalgos to a man. But there are some others with them who were not on Gallo, but who are destined to write their names as deeply and redly in the history of El-Dorado as any of them. A fat, white-haired, fiery-faced man, long past the prime of life, who rolls about in the saddle like a full meal-sack, and yet a man of mighty strength and limitless endurance, for all his fat, who can sleep as well on a horse as in a bed, and march and fight and plunder and fight again till he has worn out every man but himself, and then laugh at his troop and curse them for carpet-soldiers and faint-hearts. For this is Francisco Carvahal, the bitterest jester and the bloodiest fighter that you may read of in all the wars of the Conquerors.

Him you will see and hear of again--as you will of Hernando de Soto, stateliest knight of them all, and of Juan and Gonzalo and Hernando, the brothers of the Captain-General--and near him, mounted on a mule and garbed in the black habit of a Dominican friar, rides another of whom the same may be said. From under the cowl that is drawn over his head to shield it from the sun-rays looks out a dark, ascetic face, thin-lipped and peaked-nosed, with small, black, deep-set eyes and high narrow forehead.

That is the face of Fray Vincente de Valverde, sometime to be bishop of Cuzco and Grand Inquisitor of New Castile, a man who, like some others of his cloth that are riding or walking with him, has come out to the new land and its millions of unknown dwellers with the words of the Gospel of Peace on his lips and the fires of fanaticism blazing hot and cruel in his heart.

Yet one more of the company must be signalled out by name, so that what follows may be made the plainer.

He is an Indian youth, slim and agile; a son of the New World clothed in the garb of the Old. Handsome and yet cunning of countenance, he has already learnt to look with something like contempt upon those who were once his people, for this is Filipillo, or little Philip, the lad who was taken away from Tumbez some three years ago and baptized and carried to Spain, being destined, as it appears, to an office which, however poorly performed, nevertheless has given his name a place in the story of the New World, for he is now interpreter to His Excellency Don Francisco, and before many days are passed it shall be his to stand, as it were, between the Old World and the New, and pass through his ears and lips the words which did all that words could do to seal the fate of an empire and the destiny of millions.

Only a bronze-skinned, straight-haired, black-eyed lad who has yet to see his twentieth summer, and yet one who is ere long, for the sake of a pretty face and a pair of eyes brighter and softer than his own, to compass the ruin of one into whose presence his father would scarcely have dared to crawl uninvited through the dust.

Of a sudden Pizarro’s charger raised his head, and after drinking in with widened nostrils a long, deep breath, let out a shrill, whinnying neigh which was instantly taken up by all the other animals in the troop, and with one accord they quickened their pace as though they had drunk in some new principle of life through the air they were breathing.

“Ah,” cried Carvahal, straightening his short, thick legs out from his charger’s flanks, and throwing his arms wide apart, “Cuerpo de Jesu, the good beasts smell the green and the water at last! Carramba! Caballeros, some of us will be glad to get out of this, I fancy, for the good God seems to have made this accursed country in patches with pieces of Paradise and the Inferno, and then, for some wise purpose of His own, left it unfinished at that. It’s a land where one must either get fat and soft and lazy with luxury in valleys that would be no shame to Paradise itself, or else starve and parch in deserts hardly fit for a heretic to die in!”

“It would be a dry desert and a hot one that would melt much of the fat off of that goodly carcase of thine, Carvahal,” said Pedro de Candia, with a laugh, half turning in his saddle towards him; “though doubtless that poor nag of thine would willingly carry thee over a few leagues of desert if thereby he could save himself a few pounds of thy weight to carry. More than once I have seen the poor beast look back at thee to see if thou wert not sweating thyself somewhat smaller.”

“Ay, and I too,” laughed Alonso de Molina; “and yet though this heathen wilderness hath to-day had more rain than it has ever had, and that, too, dripping from good Christian skins, methinks thou, Carvahal, hast done less than any of us to lay the accursed dust.”

“Even so,” growled Carvahal, “and for good reason too, for if there are many more rides like this before us some of ye will get to Atahuallpa’s camp, wherever the heathen may be lodged, with nothing more than your bones rattling inside your mail, and so a man or two with good flesh and blood inside his harness may be wanted when it comes to good honest blows, which the Lord in His mercy send as soon as may be, for this is cheerless work for Christian cavaliers.”

“That is well put, Carvahal,” said Candia, joining in the laugh that the old soldier’s sally raised, and glancing with no little satisfaction from his own mighty frame to the slim, graceful form of Molina, “yet methinks thou wilt not be the only one that gets there unmelted. Ay, it is an accursed land, as thou sayest, and will need a plenteous blessing of heathen gold applied to good Christian profit to sanctify it, for it seems full of evil enchantments.

“Look at those hills yonder. All day we have been riding and walking and labouring alongside them and towards them, and they are no whit nearer than when we started. And as for that green yonder--who knows that we shall reach it to-day or to-morrow? It looks but a couple of leagues away, and yet it may be twenty, or not there at all in reality, but only put there to lure us on by some enchantment of the false gods that these heathens pray to.”

“Thy horse knows better than that, Candia!” snorted Carvahal after a long sniff at the new element that was stealing into the air. “He can smell the grass and water if thou canst not; and so can I, cool and fresh and sweet. Ah, the smell of it is like a good draught of Jerez. I tell thee, to-night we shall camp amidst green fields by cool running waters. Carramba! we have had our bit of Hell to-day for our sins, and to-night we shall see a bit of Paradise for our labours.”

“Labours!” laughed Molina, seeing a chance to turn the tables on the jester. “Call ye these labours, my knight of the ample waistband! Why, it is but a summer’s day’s ride. Hadst thou been with us on Gallo, or on Gorgona or at Puerto de Hambre thou wouldst have learnt more of labour in getting thy breakfast than thou hast done in all this pleasure trip of ours from San Miguel here. And yet, maybe it was well for thee that thou wast swashbuckling in Italy at the time. What say you, Candia? Would it not have been hard for us to refrain when none of us had tasted meat for a month had we had so juicy a morsel within reach?”

“Ay,” said Candia, “that may well be. He would have kept the lot of us on Gallo for a month after the ships sailed away.”

“Carrajo, hombrecito!” Carvahal roared through the laugh that followed, “you are wrong there. It was well for you that I was killing Frenchmen in Italy rather than starving with you on Gallo, for ere I had taken in an inch of my waistband I would have eaten the lot of you and made soup of your bones. But there--a truce to jesting, which is dry work anywhere without wine, and more than ever in a wilderness like this. What think you of the prospects, Candia? Were you ever pledged to a madder-seeming task than this?”

“Mad it may be,” he answered more seriously, “yet those who would do great things must not fear going mad in the daring of them, and we have not done so badly so far. We have our fort at San Miguel and our ships on the coast, with Panama behind us, and El-Dorado in front of us, and more than that, is not all the news we have had good?

“Have not these heathens been fighting amongst themselves for years, and are we not coming like strong men armed into a house that is divided against itself? This Atahuallpa, by all accounts, is a base-born usurper and ruthless tyrant. He has devastated the land with civil war, thrown his half-brother Huascar, the rightful heir, into durance, and made the streets of the Golden City red with the blood of his kindred? Hast thou not seen enough of war and politics to know how great advantage this may be to us?”

“True, true,” said Carvahal, “it looks well enough on paper, as they say of treaties, and we have good swords to turn it into practice. We will take the commission of His Most Catholic Majesty into a land that he would never have heard of but for the Captain yonder, and in his name judge a good judgment of cold steel and hot shot between usurper and rightful heir, for all the world as though we had God’s own right to do it, and then see which can give the most golden reasons for the justice of his cause. Ay, ’tis a merry trade, this adventuring, whether plied by kings at home or simple gentlemen abroad, and the devils must laugh to see how well it goes.”

“Peace, scoffer, peace!” laughed Molina. “Who art thou that thou shouldst deride our holy errand? And knowest thou not that these heathens believe us gods clad in impenetrable armour of light, invulnerable to all earthly weapons, and carrying the thunder and the lightning in our hands?

“Knowest thou not that thou thyself, ugly as thou art, art in their eyes a heaven-descended son of the great god Vira--Vira--what is it, Candia? ah! I have it--the great god Viracocha. Ha, ha! how likes your godship the sound of that? I’ faith, it will be worth all our labours heretofore to see them try and worship thee, good Carvahal.”

“Me a god! ho, ho!” growled Carvahal. “That will be a new trade for an old soldier; yet methinks I shall like it well enough if they do but lay sufficient offerings on my shrine. I will even put off fighting for awhile to see them do it.”

“And if the offerings be not big enough,” said Candia, “I can well picture thee splitting their heathen skulls in punishment for their idolatry.”

“That shows how little thou knowest of Carvahal yet,” he growled again. “Great or small, I would take all the offerings that came and then crack their skulls to boot for following after strange gods, as the Scripture saith.”

“Strange gods, i’ faith!” laughed Molina again. “They would go far before they found a stranger than thou, Carvahal!”

No doubt the old man had a retort ready near his lips, but it was never spoken, and so for a wonder he failed to get the last word, for at that moment Pizarro, who had been looking eagerly ahead with shaded eyes, suddenly pulled up and reined his horse round, holding up his hand as a signal to halt. Instantly the little troop came to a standstill, and Pizarro, riding back to the head of the column, said in a quiet but distinct tone--

“Caballeros, half an hour’s march will take us into the valley, and round the spur of the hill yonder I see a city of some size, and people are coming towards us over the fields; hence it behoves us to enter in due array. So mount and let the ranks be formed.”