Part 11 (1/2)

I picked up the broken pistol, looked at it in the lamplight, and knew straightway that I had guessed aright. For I recognised it at once. It had belonged to Joshua Trust. It was the same pistol I had seen often in his hands, the one with which he had fired at me upon the Littlehampton road. And if I had had any doubts upon the matter, they would have been dispelled at once; for there were the man's initials, ”J.T.,” carved with his sailor's jack-knife on the wood.

I just let the broken pistol fall to the ground at my feet; and at the noise, the wounded man, to whom I had given water, struggled again upon an elbow, and spoke to me--_in English_.

CHAPTER XIII--THE STORY OF ATUPO

”Friend?” said he; and though he p.r.o.nounced the word in the strangest fas.h.i.+on, I at once took his meaning.

I a.s.sured him of my good intentions, that I was no friend of those who had committed so dastardly an outrage. And at that, though in the greatest pain--as I could see--he smiled and thanked me.

I will not repeat word for word the childish broken English that he talked. He knew nouns enough to express his meaning, but this was all of our language that he had, and for verbs he was obliged to fall back upon grimaces and gesticulations. These, however, were so forcible and graphic that I was never at a loss to understand him: and during the six weeks that this man and I lived together in the ruins, whilst his broken leg was mending, he came to speak quite fluently in my language, whereas--to my shame, be it confessed--I learned not a dozen words of his.

I asked him how he had picked up his English; and since I had already guessed his answer, the familiar sound of that fond name was no less pleasant in my ears.

”John Bannister,” said he; and then asked me eagerly where Bannister now was.

I shook my head, telling him as simply and as briefly as I could the whole of my adventures, from the time when I was kidnapped a few miles from my home beyond the seas to the day when I took my departure from the habitations of the wild men of the woods.

His story I got from him by degrees, after I had tended to his wounds. I had no knowledge of surgery, but I knew that a broken leg must be made fast to a splint; and, borrowing a knife, I returned that very evening to the forest, and cut a straight branch from a tree, as well as a long coil of liana, which I wound about my shoulders like a garden-hose.

I peeled the bark from two sides of the branch to make it as smooth as possible, and then bound it tightly to the poor man's leg by means of the liana. I bathed his wound daily with the clean water from the spring within the vault; and in a few days the blood ceased to flow and the wound--a rough, ugly rent from a leaden bullet--began to heal.

There was a plentiful supply of food within the chamber--bananas, dried berries, and manioc; and together we lived, this man and I, in uneventful idleness, he flat upon his back on a bed of rushes, I attending to his daily wants.

He claimed direct descent from the _incas_ of Old Peru. He told me much that I already knew: that in the great land which had been discovered by Pizarro there had been two races, the common Peruvians and those of _inca_ stock. The latter was the n.o.bility of the land, being of royal blood; and it was they who had held the important offices of state and formed the priesthood.

Centuries ago, upon the fall of Cuzco, Cahazaxa, one of the greatest n.o.bles in the kingdom, escorted by an army of priests and soldiers, conveyed the Greater Treasure across the mountains, and hid it in the forest that extends across the whole valley of the Upper Amazon and its tributaries. The Spaniards got wind of this, and some years afterwards, in the year 1541, an expedition led by the redoubtable Orellano, a lieutenant of Gonzalo Pizarro, crossed the eastern chain of the Andes in search of El Dorado, or that country which was then but vaguely known as the Land of the Gilded King.

This ”Gilded King” was Cahazaxa himself, who, at the time of Orellano's famed expedition, had been for some months dead. But the little civilised colony that he had established in the wilderness survived, and continued to survive until the middle of the last century, when I myself beheld the last of it.

Now, in the narration of historical and other facts, I have the greatest regard for a certain principle, established by the Greeks: the habit of reserving for its proper place each item of information, whether it be of primary or secondary importance. On that account, I ask you, therefore, for the s.p.a.ce of a chapter or so, to bear in mind the famous name of Orellano and his search for the Land of the Gilded King--an affair to which I must soon refer again. I set down now only that which the _inca_ himself told me, together with such historical facts as were known to me at the time.

Cahazaxa was dead; and he was buried in a cavern, high amidst the cloud-wrapped mountains, where his soul might rest in peace the nearer to the G.o.d he wors.h.i.+pped--the life-giving and almighty Sun, who, as he held, in the very dawn of the ages had sent Manco Copac and Mama Oello Huaco to earth, to make the Incas of Peru glorious and great.

Orellano, the Spaniard, failed to find the Treasure. Undergoing the most terrible privations, he and his gallant followers pierced the forest, and, making one of the most remarkable journeys in the whole history of exploration, descended into the main stream of the great River of Mystery--as I call the Amazon--and, finally, after eight months of hards.h.i.+p and of peril, came within sight of the Atlantic.

The courage of these men is much to be commended. The modern explorer has at his service breech-loading magazine rifles, invaluable geographical and scientific knowledge, and an adequate supply of suitable food and drugs. But these bold Spaniards of the sixteenth century had nothing, save their own stout hearts and strong Toledo blades. Enough has been written concerning their greed, their bigotry and cruelty. The story might be told again and again of their indomitable bravery. Orellano knew not whither he was going. When he decided to shoot the rapids, taking his life in his hands, he might as well have thrown dice with Death. How can we do aught but honour the land that has produced such sons as Cortez and Pizarro, Orellano, Vasco Nunez, and Alonzo de Ojeda?

But, for the present, we are more concerned with Cahazaxa, a hero no less than these doughty Spaniards. He and his followers hid themselves in the wilderness, and there both Orellano and Pizarro himself failed to find them; and in this there is little to wonder at, when we consider the immensity of the great Forest of the Amazon.

They built for themselves a ma.s.sive temple after the fas.h.i.+on of the sacred palaces of Quito and Cuzco, dedicated to the Sun; and in course of time they constructed roads and bridges across the rivers, founding for themselves a colony where the civilisation of the _incas_ lived for a century or more after their own country across the mountains had fallen under the dominion of the hated Spaniard.

This was the land of the Gilded King, the country of El Dorado. Word of its existence came to Quito, from the lips of savage aborigines p.r.o.ne naturally to exaggeration; but, though party after party of avaricious, bold adventurers crossed the mountains, the Peruvian settlement remained undisturbed. The secret of the ”Big Fish” was never discovered either by the Spaniards or the Portuguese, who in the next century came up the great river from the east, traversing the country that is now called Brazil.

I did not learn all this from the _inca_ priest himself; but so much of it as he could not tell me I knew already from what I had read of those golden days when the New World was a land of Mystery and Romance, and men thought and talked of doubloons instead of dollars.

It is true, I never beheld with my own eyes the actual civilisation of ancient Peru as it had existed in Cahazaxa's time, because, many years before, it had died a natural death. The Peruvians, born and bred upon the western sea-board or the great tablelands beyond the Andes, were not able to survive in the humid atmosphere of the tropic forest. In course of time, a colony of several thousands, whom Cahazaxa had led across the mountains, had dwindled to a community of a few families of the old _inca_ stock, the majority of whom served as priests of the Sun in the great ruined temple, constructed by their forefathers, which they were not able to keep in repair.