Chapter I

The brilliant young ruler of Spain, Charles V, had just extended his empire over the half of Europe, and his _Conquistadores_ were planting the flag in Mexico and Darien.

A threatening rabble of ragged seamen stood before the governor’s office in Panama. The news had spread from tavern to tavern that a sailor, left behind with Pizarro, on the Island of Gallo--where the bold adventurer had halted temporarily in his quest for gold and glory--had got a message past Almagro’s keen eye that had reached His Excellency. The knave had concealed the writing in a ball of cotton sent as a specimen of South Sea goods to the governor’s wife.

Now that the ugly news of their suffering was out they would snap their fingers in Almagro’s face and add their voices to the clamor for an end of folly.

The leader of the mob was haranguing his comrades as the friends of Pizarro’s unfortunate expedition approached. Molina, the cavalier, led Father Luque and the Chief Justice, Gaspar Espinosa, into the governor’s house while Almagro stopped within earshot of the crowd.

At sight of Almagro the orator grinned. Pizarro’s partner was not a man of impressive appearance. Of small stature, quick and nervous in movement, wiry, weather-beaten and ill-favored at best, he had lost an eye in a fight with the Indians on the first voyage to the South. The deep hollow left below his forehead had given to his face a peculiarly sinister expression. There was about him a suggestion of the grotesque until his bronzed features lighted with animation as he talked. At the end of a speech he had a way of boring a questioner through with his one eye that was especially disquieting--if he spoke to an enemy. Its steady light was now focused on the speaker.

“Remember, Comrades,” the orator shouted, “that we were dragged by Pizarro into the wilderness of the South to die of hunger. The cry of a Kingdom of Gold was a cheat from the start. The golden country was always just ahead. We never saw it. The little yellow metal found was sent back here as molasses to catch more flies. Stand together now and let the governor know the truth--”

Almagro suddenly appeared, lifted his single eye to the orator’s face and a dead silence followed.

The little man spoke with deadly deliberation.

“No whine from cowards in the governor’s ears to-day, swine! Hardship? suffering? danger? _Por Dios!_ Did you go on a pleasure jaunt? You enlisted as a soldier. A soldier’s business is to die. Open your mouth at this hearing--if you dare. I will not answer you. No--God’s light! I’ll spit you with my sword and roast you in hellfire!”

Before the orator could recover from the shock of his threat, Almagro swung on his heel and followed his friends into the governor’s house.

A hurried council was held before their entrance into the audience chamber. In spite of rumors of the hostility of the authorities the managers of the expedition were not without hope. Espinosa, the secret backer of the enterprise, had sought the aid of his beautiful sister Teresa. She had won her lover, Alonso de Molina, to the cause. Molina was not only the most popular young cavalier who had come from Spain in the suite of the new governor, Don Pedro de los Rios; he was an intimate friend of His Excellency.

Father Luque seized Almagro’s arm.

“I am going to ask you, Diego, to keep your temper at this hearing and allow our new advocate to do all the talking.”

A smile played around the one eye.

“Not a word from me, Father Luque. I have already spoken.”

The governor lifted his brows in angry surprise at the appearance of the new champion of an expedition he had fully resolved to doom.

“You appear before me, Alonso de Molina,” he grumbled, “in behalf of these madmen who have already exhausted the patience of the king’s servants?”

“I do, Your Excellency,” was the firm reply. “I hold that they have given good evidence on which to base their faith in the enterprise.”

“And what, pray? A few yards of cloth and a few gold trinkets. A hundred raids here in Darien have each yielded more. Scores of men have been sacrificed on these two crazy voyages to the South, and they are no nearer this myth of a Kingdom of Gold than three years ago when the mad scheme was first launched.”

“Yet, Your Excellency will recall the fact,” Molina soothed, “that our sovereign expressed a command that you should lend every reasonable aid to the expeditions of the South Sea--”

“Every reasonable aid--yes!” the governor continued. “I have done more than reason demands. I will no longer permit the senseless sacrifice of our men to the obstinacy of Pizarro and his associates. The whole scheme is insanity. I have decided. I will issue orders to my trusted officer, Tafur, to sail at once with two ships for the Island of Gallo and bring back every Spaniard whom he shall find still alive.”

Molina attempted to speak and the governor stopped him with an angry gesture.

“No more. An end now to this nonsense!”

Molina bit his lips and then smiled:

“I was only about to ask of Your Excellency permission to accompany Tafur on this voyage?”

Molina bowed to the governor. Rios twisted in his chair and finally answered:

“Provided, Señor, that you agree to return with the ships.”

“I agree,” was the prompt answer.

Almagro seized the young cavalier’s hand and whispered:

“I expect to see you leading an army in the new Kingdom, young man!”

“You may, for all of that,” Molina answered tersely with a snap of his strong jaw. He did not like the governor’s humor. The man had not conducted himself as a fair executive; he had acted merely the rôle of a tyrant executing a predetermined decision.

Father Luque wrote a letter to Pizarro which Almagro signed with his cross-mark, advising him to hold his ground until a favorable turn of fortune. They would stay in Panama and with Espinosa work with tireless energy to reverse the decision.

Molina placed the letter in his doublet and sailed with Tafur for the Island of Gallo. The more he heard of Francisco Pizarro the greater became his curiosity to see and talk with the man who had kept Panama in a state of turmoil for more than three years. And all for a dream. No fool could work this miracle.

The man towards whom he sailed was never in all his eventful career in graver need of succor. The island on which he and his men had landed to await supplies proved a barren waste of misery. They found themselves prisoners without hope of relief unless it should come from Panama. Each day was a struggle with starvation. The men sent out on foraging expeditions had begun to conceal what food they found against the final day of a living death. The only food now upon which the commander could depend was found in the scrawny crabs and shellfish picked up on the shores.

And it was the rainy season. Storm after storm swept the island and deluged them with rain for days. Their clothes were in tatters and there was nothing out of which they could make more. There was not an animal on the island large enough to furnish a skin to cover their nakedness; the rude huts which they had built had been torn down and scattered to the winds, and the rain beat on their half naked bodies with fury. The spirit of adventure had died long since. They waited in sullen terror, and they watched the sea with feverish eyes for the sight of sails.

Finally they were rewarded.

Tafur’s ships at last crept across the horizon from the North, and a shout of delirium swept the huddled groups on the beach. They ate like ravenous beasts the food set before them.

Molina delivered the letter to Pizarro and studied the man while Ruiz, his faithful pilot, read its message aloud. Tall, lean, straight, sun and wind-tanned, the adventurer stood with taut muscles as he listened to the fated words. By the deep gravity of his countenance the younger man could see that he was facing the supreme hour of life. As the purport of the message dawned on his mind, Molina saw his nostrils dilate, the grim mouth relax into a smile and his deep-set eyes flash with joy. His decision was instantaneous. He would not beg a single coward to stay. But there were a few choice spirits to whom he could appeal. He would hold them with ties of loyal steel and let Tafur take the rest of his mottled crew to hell if he liked. He called his followers in a final conference before allowing them to embark. Most of them stared with hostile eyes for they already had begun to curse him for their sufferings.

He drew his sword and faced the crowd with an exultant look. Stooping, he traced a line in the sand from east to west, and in clear tones called:

“Soldiers of Spain! On the south side of this line are hunger, nakedness, storms, suffering, and death; on the north side lie ease and pleasure, drink and idleness in Panama. Choose! Choose each man what best becomes a brave Castilian! For my part, _I_ go to the south!”

Pizarro stepped across the line to be immediately followed by Ruiz, Pedro de Candia and eleven others of his men. Molina roused from the spell under which the man’s simple eloquence had held him to find himself among the volunteers. Pizarro grasped his hand and pressed it fiercely:

“I am honored, Señor Alonso de Molina, by this act of approval from a brave spirit. But I cannot allow you to remain on this grim watch. You have influence in Panama. Hence I ask you to return with my good pilot and bring back a ship for our enterprise.”

The young cavalier bowed.

“I have taken service under your banner, Francisco Pizarro, and go where you command.”

Again the two men clasped hands. Turning to the group who had pledged anew their lives to his cause, he called aloud each name:

“Bartholome Ruiz, Cristoval de Peralta, Pedro de Candia, Domingo de Sonia Luce, Nicolas de Ribera, Francisco de Cuellor, Alonso de Molina, Pedro Alear, Garcia de Jerez, Anton de Carrion, Alonso Briceno, Martin de Paz, and Juan de la Torre, you have this day written your names on the scroll of fame. I salute you my friends, my comrades!”

He grasped each hand in turn and felt repaid for every hour of pain and hunger, in their loyalty.

Tafur angrily faced the group and demanded that they embark in obedience to the commands of their governor. They laughed at his rage.

“Your act,” he snarled, “is sheer madness involving death of every man among you.”

“Perhaps,” Pizarro answered. “We understand. We have chosen death before desertion. Say this to the governor. We demand only that you leave us one of your ships in which to pursue our voyage.”

“God’s light!” shouted Tafur, “I like your impudence. Leave you a ship? Not a shred of a single sail. Stay here and rot in your damned folly if you will. I’ll have no part in it.”

The only concession Pizarro could wring from him was to land a limited supply of the food which he had brought to their rescue.

And then the adventurer with eleven of his followers stood on the shore and watched the ships spread their wings and disappear beyond the northern horizon. A dozen men, with scant food, without clothing, almost unarmed, with no knowledge of the land to which they were bound, without tools, without shelter, without a vessel for transport, took their place on a lonely island in the ocean--resolved to find and conquer a mighty empire. They might fail; but their failure would be attended by no governor’s rebuke: they would win, or die.

To Pizarro it was the supreme crisis. And he exulted. Had he faltered, compromised, or returned, it would have been the end of his dreams. These dreams had now ceased to be dreams--they had become the living realities of life. There could be no turning back from to-day; every bridge was burnt behind--before lay glory or death.

He immediately decided to abandon the Island of Gallo. Twenty-five leagues to the north lay the little island of Gorgona, but five leagues from the mainland and uninhabited. But it was an advantageous spot. It was high and heavily timbered. The woods abounded in pheasants and the plains with rabbits. With their crossbows the men could get a fair supply of game without loss of powder, and cool streams supplied good water.

By Pizarro’s orders the men constructed a raft on which they managed on a fair day to float with favorable currents to this island. They built rude huts and began the long siege of waiting for Molina’s return. The one horror from which they suffered most was the bite of swarming mosquitoes. So desperate was the pests’ attack that at times it was necessary for the sufferers to bury their bodies completely in the sand until a breeze brought relief.

Through months of desolate waiting, Pizarro’s stout spirit was the inspiration of every follower. Freebooters and adventurers though they were, in this time of trial they watched the stars, tried once more to find the face of God, and in the night winds to hear His voice. Pizarro encouraged them in religious devotions. Without fail they said their morning prayers, and as the twilight deepened, chanted their hymns to the Virgin. And they celebrated punctually each festival of the Church. Pizarro was using every means at his command and every ounce of his indomitable character to make his enterprise a holy crusade under the banners of Castile.