Chapter XX

Within an hour the trumpet called the Spanish soldiers again to the Plaza of Caxamalca. On its flagstones lay in dark heaps the dead. The slaughter had lasted barely fifty minutes and more than five thousand had been slain, an army of forty thousand soldiers had fled through the bushes in terror and a mighty empire lay within the grasp of Francisco Pizarro.

The Spanish captain outdid himself in an effort to cheer the fallen monarch and lighten his gloom. He could well afford in this hour of bloody triumph to play the generous host.

“You must not be cast down by this misfortune, Your Highness,” he urged in friendly accents. “You are not alone in such distress. No ruler of the world has been able to resist the soldiers of Spain. We fight under the banners of her great Emperor and the banners of the all conquering Christ whose Kingdom is now overspreading the earth. Your pride was high; your power was vast. But nothing can stand before our arms....”

He stopped short, smiled and said in cordial tones:

“Take courage. Confide in me as your friend. We found ourselves in a trap which you had set. Our lives were at stake. We had to strike.”

The Inca nodded his head sadly.

“It is the fortune of war, and I have lost.”

“I would be your friend,” Pizarro urged. “The Spaniards are a generous race. We war only on those who make war on us, showing grace to all who submit.”

The Inca lifted sad eyes toward the heaps of his dead and made no reply. The rain had begun to pour its friendly mercy on the wounded. Only here and there the groan of a dying man could be heard. The faint odor of burnt gunpowder that had filled the nostrils of the Inca with nausea had passed.

Pizarro seated his prisoner at the banquet table generously prepared for his entertainment and spared no pains to make the feast a memorable one. A few bottles of choice Spanish wine had been carefully guarded on their long march for such an occasion. These were served the captive in battered pewter cups in painful contrast to the solid gold goblets his officers had seen at their reception the day before.

Pizarro noticed the look of doubt with which Atahualpa stared bewildered at the dirty cups and apologized:

“I am sorry, Your Highness, that a soldier’s rough camp cannot yet furnish better plate for your service.”

The Inca smiled sadly and lifted his cup with a bow of instinctive courtesy.

“Be assured,” the Spaniard continued, “of your personal safety, and the safety of all your household. We are counting on your aid to restore complete tranquillity.”

The monarch accepted the situation with philosophy at which the Spaniards greatly marveled, wondering if it yet concealed the secret of a counter-attack that might overwhelm them in the night.

“I greatly appreciate,” the Inca finally said to Pizarro, “your assurance of the safety of my mother and my household....”

Noting the tone of anxiety in which his thanks were expressed, the captain hastened to assure him:

“Early in the morning, when all evidences of battle have been cleared from the plaza and the approaching streets, I will conduct your mother and your household here and establish them with you in the House of the Serpent.”

The prisoner gravely nodded his thanks.

The Spaniards studied the Inca with keen interest as he sat beside their commander at the large banquet table, presiding at a feast that celebrated his own downfall and the butchery of five thousand of his people. He was in the full strength of youth, well made and more athletic than the average of his countrymen. His head was unusually large and his regular strong features handsome, but for his blood-shot eyes which gave an impression of fierceness to his otherwise agreeable face. There was no trace of the half effeminate type of the inbreeding of the royal family which had been practiced for the past four hundred years. Atahualpa’s mother had been a foreigner, a queen in her own right as ruler of Quito before its conquest by Huyna Capac. The conqueror had fallen madly in love with the fifteen-year-old wife of the conquered ruler of the North and in spite of the fiercest opposition of his priests and nobles, had made her a queen in the consolidated Kingdoms.

The young Inca in many ways gave the impression of the perfect manhood of the true love child. His manner was poised and his speech deliberate. To his subjects he had ever been the arbiter of life and death. To his strange host on this tragic occasion he was affable and courteous.

The longer they watched him the more suspicious some of them became that this pleasing exterior concealed a daring plan of rescue that might develop before dawn. Hernando Pizarro was sure of it.

“Don’t allow his soft words to deceive you,” he warned Francisco. “The sternest discipline must be maintained until our safety is assured.”

The captain nodded his assent. His own keen and careful mind had already foreseen this possibility.

At the close of the banquet Pizarro conducted his distinguished captive to the royal suite in the House of the Serpent which had been reserved for him strictly in accordance with his request. He placed a double guard over the house and hurried into the hall of the cavalry where he had ordered an assembly of his entire force not on guard duty.

They were carefully counted and inspected. Not a man had been lost and not a drop of Spanish blood had been spilled except for the scratch which Pizarro had received in rescuing the Inca from the sword of an excited officer.

The commander called his priests and ordered his men to their knees. A prayer of thanksgiving was made to the God who had so marvelously saved every life. They had lost four killed and many wounded in a skirmish with the tribe on Puna island. They had won the first battle of the attack on the great Empire with a bare scratch from the sword of one of their own men. It was not to be wondered at that the outcome was regarded as a miracle. They believed to a man that they had marched into a death trap and were cutting their way out to a place of safety.

The best witness of Pizarro’s sincerity in this belief was Hernando de Soto, who fought by his side through the bloody hour. Whatever may be the opinions of Francisco Pizarro’s character, no chronicler has yet questioned the lofty motives, the high ideals, or the stern honesty of De Soto. Had this man believed for a moment that the attack on Atahualpa was a piece of mere savage cruelty, he would have refused to lead his men in the attack. And no argument for discipline or claims of authority could have driven him into the business. De Soto led his own cavalry into the bloody shambles because, and only because, he believed that he was cutting his way to safety.

On rising from prayer, Pizarro again addressed his men with a simple eloquence characteristic of his leadership.

“Comrades, we have given thanks to Him who has led us through a thousand trials to this deliverance. Without God the miracle could not have been performed. You have prevailed over thousands and tens of thousands. Your lives have been spared by Heaven for greater deeds. You must do your part now as you’ve done it so nobly in the past. The greatest dangers still confront you. We are in the heart of an empire of twelve million people deeply loyal to their ruler. He is in our power and we have in this the assurance of our success if we do our parts with stern discipline and unswerving obedience. To-night there must be no rioting, no taking of women, no excesses, no uncalled for attack. Let every man sleep on his arms, ready at the call of the trumpet to face our foes. I have stationed a guard at the gates of the convent of the Virgins of the Sun. Let no man dare invade its precincts. We must not stir the fires of religious fanaticism in this crisis!”

The soldiers cheered him and lay down on their arms and slept till dawn. At the first streak of light in the east the trumpet called and every Spaniard sprang to his feet.

They rounded up the huddled groups of shivering, hungry Peruvians and set them to the work of burying the dead and cleansing the flagstones of the plaza of all traces of blood. To Teresa and Gaspara, the captain gave permission to take a half dozen horsemen and continue the search for Molina.

A squadron of thirty, under his brother Hernando, he sent to take the spoils from the summer house of the Inca at the hot baths and scatter the remnants of the army. He had already learned of their panic and flight into the forests.

The squadron met with no resistance, either from the stragglers of the camp or the household of the sovereign. The entire day was given to gathering the gold and silver service from the homes of the monarch and his nobles and collecting ornaments and precious stones from the living and the dead. Great was the amazement of the natives at this procedure.

Yma had summoned a division of the girls from the convent to minister to the stricken household of the Inca.

When a trooper had borne the last gold cup from the fountain in the apartment of the Mother Queen, Pacha turned her sad eyes on the Sun Virgin.

“Surely these strange beings have not shed all this blood to take so much rubbish?”

“Yes,” the girl answered. “They are mad with a lust for these metals. Our priests can give no explanation of their insanity, but my dear god-man has told me many things of their ranks and titles, wealth and poverty and the cruel suffering for food and clothes among the poor in Spain. It seems that the gold and silver which to us mean pots and bowls, plates and cups out of which to eat, to them mean food and clothes and shelter and life. It is pitiful, is it not?”

In spite of the terror spread by the slaughter in the Plaza of Caxamalca, crowds of young men and women gathered about the royal house at the baths and gazed in wonder at the strange beings who were looting the palace of its plates and ornaments. They watched with breathless awe the men who had done the daring and terrible things of the past night. The most incredible deed of all was that these invaders had laid hands on the Lord of the Sun, the Inca--God in human flesh--and held him in chains. That thunderbolts from heaven had not struck them dead was more than the natives could understand.

They watched with increasing wonder the loads of gold and silver piled on litters being borne to Caxamalca. Nothing could surprise them now. The white men were surely superfiends sent from the depths of hell to scourge the earth and with the Inca in chains his subjects were helpless. They could only bow their necks to the yoke.

The cavalry herded them in thousands and drove the helpless human sheep into the Plaza to await the orders of Pizarro. Seeing their numbers one of his officers made a suggestion.

“There’s but one safe thing to do,” he urged: “put them to death to a man.”

The captain threw a look of anger at his crude follower.

Another improved on the proposition.

“’Twould be just as well to chop off their hands to prevent attack and strike still deeper terror into the others.”

Pizarro curtly dismissed his advisers and gave swift orders to his attendants:

“Select from all our prisoners five thousand of the handsomest young men and women as slaves for our men. Each soldier of the rank and file may have twenty slaves--the officers, forty, each.”

The entire force fell to the task of selection with shouts of approval. By nightfall each Spaniard found himself established in a house with at least twenty slaves to do his bidding. From abject poverty, each man at a bound had attained the dignity and power of the nobility!

The choicest specimens of womanhood had been set aside for the officers.

When the human victims had been thus humanely spared by the commander, he gathered the remainder of the prisoners in the Square and gave them final orders in the kindliest tones:

“Go to your homes now, my good people. Return to your daily tasks as if nothing had happened. I will guard you from all harm so long as you offer no violence to my men.”

As if moving under the charm of a great serpent, the dazed men and women slowly dispersed from the Square, watching Pizarro with fascinated gaze.

When the spoils gathered during the day were piled in a heap before the Spanish captain, the sight of such riches stunned the adventurers. It was far greater than they had dared to expect. The size and weight of the solid gold service from the royal household were unbelievable. Huge emeralds had been taken in dozens from both the living and the dead. The lowest estimate made of the value of the treasure was more than a hundred thousand _castellanos_ in gold.

While the loot was being stored and placed under heavy guard, the women of the royal household were led into the presence of Pizarro by Yma and her attendants. The girl paused and watched the trembling hands and sparkling eyes of the invaders as they moved the gold. Their fingers gripped it as huge claws.

And her eyes suddenly flashed with an idea.