Part 11 (2/2)

It was these men, descended in a direct line from the _incas_ whom the Spanish conquerors had driven forth from Cuzco and Quito, who guarded the secret of the Greater Treasure. It was they who were treacherously attacked and foully done to death by Amos Baverstock. And I will now relate the full story of that brutal enterprise as I got it from the lips of the man whom I befriended.

Baverstock, with his three companions, had come to the temple some weeks before, on the day they had tied me to the tree and left me to starve to death.

The priests had been greatly alarmed at the sight of the intruder, whom they recognised at once. They remembered the time when Baverstock and Trust had attacked the temple, and they had been obliged to fight for their lives, and would then and there have been slaughtered, had it not been for John Bannister, who placed himself at their head and drove Amos forth.

But Bannister was no longer with them to fortify them with his courage, to preside at their councils, and to deal death to their enemies with his swift, unerring aim. And they were terrified at the very sight of Amos, as I myself had been when I first set eyes on the man upon the Suss.e.x sh.o.r.e.

He demanded to know where the Greater Treasure was hidden. He reminded them that they had lied to him once, and held forth threats that made their blood run cold. If they lied to him again, he would return, and no man of them would live to fool Amos Baverstock a third time.

Now, they dared not speak the truth, for they were sworn to secrecy before the Sun, which they believed to be the Creator of the Universe; and yet, they dared not lie, for they knew Amos would be as good, or as evil, as his word.

So, swearing upon all things they looked upon as holy, they set Amos and his friends upon the right road to the ”Big Fish.” They told him to follow a certain track across the gra.s.sland, until he came to a range of down-like, gra.s.s-clad hills. Thence, to the west, lay a wood in mid-valley, and in a glade in this wood the Treasure was buried, the place being marked by a great red stone, standing forth in the form of a monster fish in the act of leaping from the water. Here, clearly, was the origin of the legend, current among the natives even to this day, of the Big and Little Fishes. And when I heard the story as it was told me by the _inca_ priest, I confess I was conscious that my heart beat more rapidly and the warm blood of my youth was stirred within me.

But Amos Baverstock cared nothing for legend. He lived only to lay hands upon a horde of untold gold; and that same day he left the Temple of Cahazaxa and set forth to the west upon his treasure hunt.

And when he was gone, the priests held conference, demanding of Atupo why he had told their enemy so much of their cherished secret--for Atupo was the name of the surviving priest with whom I talked among the temple ruins. For he it was who devised the scheme whereby he hoped both to save the lives of his friends and to preserve the Greater Treasure; and now that all had failed so dreadfully, to the great pain he suffered from his wound was added anguish and remorse, inasmuch as the blame was his.

He advised them to arm themselves, and took with him ten of the best archers of the little community, ordering them to steep the heads of their arrows in the juice of the venomous weed that grows in the forest--which is nothing more or less than strychnine, one of the most virulent of poisons.

Atupo, with these ten men, who were all young and fleet of foot, traversed the gra.s.sland by a series of forced marches by night, so that they outdistanced Amos and reached first the Wood of the Red Fish--for so, with a little lat.i.tude, may be translated the old Peruvian name. And there they laid an ambush by a pathway along which Amos, and those with him, would be obliged to pa.s.s, and each archer was instructed to pick out his man. Four were detailed to shoot at Amos, three at Trust, and two each at Forsyth and the Spaniard, Vasco.

Now, it seems not possible that a plan so well thought out could fail; and yet, it would seem also that here, at least, the devil helped his own.

For Mr. Forsyth, and not Amos, came first to the ambuscade; and of the two arrows, one struck a silver tobacco tin that he chanced to be carrying that day in the pocket over his heart, and the other sheared off his right ear as cleanly as a tailor snips his cloth with a pair of scissors. And in the fraction of a second, Forsyth, all bleeding from the head, had his revolver from its holster, and had shot down two of the priests.

Thus was the alarm given to Amos and those who followed him; and there was no question of a surprise. It came to a hand-to-hand affair, and then a running fight amid the woodland undergrowth, in which the bow and arrow had but a small chance against modern firearms. One by one, the priests were dropped in their tracks, and only Atupo himself escaped with life, though sorely wounded in the leg.

He got clear of the wood, and lay hidden, day after day, in the long gra.s.s of the plain, journeying by night towards the forest, endeavouring to reach the ruined Temple of Cahazaxa. Though his leg was not then broken, he could do no more than crawl a few miles at a time, so that he was long weeks upon the road.

And during all these days, Amos beat the wood from west to east, from south to north, and failing to find the ”Red Fish,” believed that he had again been sent upon a wild-goose chase; and the more firm was he in this conviction since there had been such treachery on the part of the _inca_ priests.

I heard afterwards that his wrath was like that of a madman; he stamped and raved, and swore that he would return to the temple and put every living soul to death. And yet, they could not move a yard upon their backward journey, until Forsyth's life was out of danger.

Without doubt, Mr. Gilbert Forsyth would have died in torture, there amid the foothills of the distant Andes, had it not been for his own prompt.i.tude and courage. For no sooner did he feel the poison working inward from the wound where the arrow had cut off an ear, than he thrust the blade of a hunting-knife into a glowing charcoal camp-fire, and himself placed the red-hot steel upon the lacerated flesh.

And though he fainted at the time, and fell afterwards into a raging fever, this action saved, perhaps, his life. In the wilderness, rough-and-ready methods are often unavoidable; only he who is bold and strong can survive, whilst the weakling falls by the way. That Forsyth, despite his affectations and his London ways, was a man of action who could face pain as well as danger, this deed of his was in itself enough to prove. With his own hand he burned the poison from his flesh.

For all that, he lingered for many days betwixt life and death; and it was the delay caused thereby that gave Atupo time to regain the temple.

He had intended to give warning to his brother priests, and for this purpose he arrived none too soon. Many were so alarmed at the news of the disaster that they departed instantly, seeking shelter in the forest and taking with them their wives and families. But three remained, to collect the sacred lamps and vessels that were within the Temple, meaning to set forth the following day. And these were caught at midnight by Amos, who turned a.s.sa.s.sin then and there; for it was he who killed them with his own hands, in the great vault beneath the ruins.

Atupo, too, he shot, though the man lay wounded on the ground, exhausted after the effort of his long journey across the gra.s.sland, and left him there for dead, his already wounded leg fractured a few inches below the hip.

All this I learned from the man himself, while I nursed him under the Temple--all save the story of the fort.i.tude of Mr. Forsyth, of which I heard afterwards, as in due time I will tell.

<script>