Part 31 (2/2)
The path was so narrow that two could seldom come up abreast, and so steep that the enele and stu to proceed, and hung back more than once; but Amyas could hear an authoritative voice behind, and presently there eure at which Amyas and Cary both started
”Is it he?”
”Surely I know those legs ah they are in armor”
”It is my turn for him, now, Cary, remember! Silence, silence, men!”
The Spaniards see a forlorn hope Don Guzman (for there was little doubt that it was he) had et theently we handled the Guayra squadron,” whispers Cary, ”and have no wish to become fellow-martyrs with the captain of the Madre Dolorosa”
At last the Spaniards get up the steep slope to within forty yards of the stockade, and pause, suspecting a trap, and puzzled by the co in his hand; but his heart beats so fiercely at the sight of that hated figure, that he can hardly get out the words-- ”Don Guzman, the quarrel is between you and me, not between your e to you at La Guayra, but you were away; I challenge you now to single co, I have a halter for you, but no sword! As you served us at Smerwick, ill serve you now Pirate and ravisher, you and yours shall share Oxenham's fate, as you have copied his crimes, and learn what it is to set foot unbidden on the do of Spain”
”The devil take you and the king of Spain together!” shouts As to him no more than it does to me, but to the Queen Elizabeth, in whose name I have taken as lawful possession of it as you ever did of Caracas Fire, ht!”
Both parties obeyed the order; Amyas dropped down behind the stockade in time to let a caliver bullet whistle over his head; and the Spaniards recoiled as the narrow face of the stockade burst into one blaze ofarray from front to rear
The front ranks fell over each other in heaps; the rear ones turned and ran; overtaken, nevertheless, by the English bullets and arrohich tu down the steep path
”Out,like the rest!” And scra over the abattis, Amyas and about thirty followed the from some prisoner his brother's fate
Amyas was unjust in his last words Don Guzhtly wounded; and seeing his men run, had rushed back and tried to rally theitives
However, the Spaniards were out of sight alish could overtake them; and Amyas, afraid lest they should rally and surround his sainst his will, and found in the pathway fourteen Spaniards, but all dead For one of the wounded, with lish as he lay; and Amyas's men, whose blood was htful stories of the rescued galley-slaves, had killed them all before their captain could stop them
”Are you mad?” cries Amyas, as he strikes up one felloord ”Will you kill an Indian?”
And he drags out of the bushes an Indian lad of sixteen, who, slightly wounded, is crawling away like a copper snake along the ground
”The black ver; and poisoned too, rant not: but an Indian is worth his weight in gold to us now,” said A his prize under his arm like a bundle The lad, as soon as he saw there was no escape, resigned hiht in, and treated kindly enough, but refused to eat For which, after ave as a reason, that he would radually gave thelish always (so at least the Spaniards said) fatted and ate their prisoners like the Caribs; and till he saw the would persuade him that the corpses were not to be cooked for supper
However, kind words, kind looks, and the present of that inestiht hied to a Spaniard who had an ”encomienda” of Indians some fifteen miles to the south-west; that he had fled fro for so seen the shi+p where she lay moored, and boarded her in hope of plunder, had been surprised therein by the Spaniards, and forced by threats to go with thelish But now came a part of his story which filled the soul of Areat savannahs which lay to the southward beyond the mountains, and had actually been upon the Orinoco He had been stolen as a boy by soone down (as was the fashi+on of the Jesuits even as late as 1790) for the pious purpose of converting the savages by the si servants of those who those who resisted their gentle ain? Who could ask such a question of an Indian? And the lad's black eyes flashed fire, as Ah for a dozen Indians, if he would lead theh the passes of the hty river, where lay their golden hopes Hernando de Serpa, Amyas knew, had tried the same course, which was supposed to be about one hundred and twenty leagues, and failed, being overthrown utterly by the Wikiri Indians; but A those Indians, to be pretty sure that they had brought that catastrophe upon theh by that coes which he had learned from his incomparable tutor, Francis Drake
Noas the ti his men around him, Amyas opened his whole heart, simply and manfully This was their only hope of safety Some of them had murmured that they should perish like John Oxenham's crew This plan was rather the only way to avoid perishi+ng like them Don Guzman would certainly return to seek theo Even if the stockade was not forced, they would be soon starved out; why not in a blockade? As for taking St Jago, it was impossible The treasure would all be safely hidden, and the toell prepared to lory, theyalong the coast, and trying the ports: shi+ps could outstrip them, and the country was already warned There was but this one chance; and on it Amyas, the first and last tilory of the enterprise, the service to the queen, the salvation of heathens, and the certainty that, if successful, they should win honor and wealth and everlasting fame, beyond that of Cortez or Pizarro, till the men, sulky at first, warmed every moment; and one old Pelican broke out with-- ”Yes, sir! we didn't go round the world with you for naught; and watched your works and ways, which was always those of a gentleman, as you are--who spoke a word for a poor fellohen he was in a scrape, and saw all you ought to see, and naught that you ought not And we'll follow you, sir, all alone to ourselves; and let those that know you worse follow after when they're coht mind”
Man after man capped this brave speech; the o, liked still less to be left behind, gave in their consent perforce; and, tostory short, Amyas conquered, and the plan was accepted
”This,” said Amyas, ”is indeed the proudest day of ained fourscore God do so toto the trust which you have put in me this day!”
We, I suppose, are to believe that we have a right to laugh at Amyas's scheme as frantic and chimerical It is easy to amuse ourselves with the premises, after the conclusion has been found for us We kno, that he was mistaken: but we have not discovered his ht to plume ourselves on other men's discoveries Had we lived in Aed either to the many wise men who believed as he did, or to the many foolish men, who not only sneered at the story of Manoa, but at a hundred other stories, whichto be true Coluhed at: but he found a neorld, nevertheless Cortez was laughed at: but he found Mexico Pizarro: but he found Peru I ask any fair reader of those two char books, Mr Prescott's Conquest of Mexico and his Conquest of Peru, whether the true wonders in them described do not outdo all the false wonders of Manoa
But what reason was there to think them false? One quarter, perhaps, of America had been explored, and yet in that quarter two empires had been already found, in a state of ricultural civilization superior, in s, to any nation of Europe Was it notthree-quarters similar empires existed? If a second Mexico had been discovered in the mountains of Pariht would anywas told of Manoa which had not been seen in Peru and Mexico by the bodily eyes ofWhy should not the rocks of Guiana have been as full of the precious metals (we do not know yet that they are not) as the rocks of Peru and Mexico were known to be? Even the details of the story, its standing on a lake, for instance, bore a probability with them Mexico actually stood in the centre of a lake--why should not Manoa? The Peruvian worshi+p centred round a sacred lake--why not that of Manoa? Pizarro and Cortez, again, were led on to their desperate enterprises by the sight of ses, who told theold-country near at hand; and they found that those savages spoke truth Why was the unanimous report of the Carib tribes of the Orinoco to be disbelieved, when they told a sik's adh's Guiana proves, surely, that the Indians theain, that vast quantities of the Peruvian treasure had been concealed by the priests, and that members of the Inca faainst the Spaniards Barely fifty years had elapsed since then;--what more probable than that this remnant of the Peruvian dynasty and treasure still existed? Even the story of the Aenerous and untruthful atteh out either fool or villain, has come from Spaniards, who had with their own eyes seen the Indian wo by their husbands' sides, and from Indians, who asserted the existence of an Aht had Amyas, or any man, to disbelieve the story? The existence of the Amazons in ancient Asia, and of their intercourse with Alexander the Great, was then an accredited part of history, which it would have been gratuitous impertinence to deny And what if some stories connected these warlike woeneration ought surely to be the last to laugh at such a story, at least as long as the A of Dahomey continue to outvie the men in that relentless ferocity, hich they have subdued every neighboring tribe, save the Christians of Abbeokuta In this case, as in a hundred ination; and Amyas spoke coh and stay at home Wise men dare and win Saul went to look for his father's asses, and found a kingdo to seek China, and never knew, they say, until his dying day, that he had found a whole neorld instead of it Find Manoa? God only, who s, knoe iant ceiba-tree, those valiant reat oath, and kept that oath like olden city for two full years to coht befall; to stand to each other for weal or woe; to obey their officers to the death; toall complaints to a council of war; to use no profane oaths, but serve God daily with prayer; to take by violence from no man, save from their natural enees, and chaste and courteous to all wo all booty and all food into the common stock, and observe to the utmost their faith with the adventurers who had fitted out the shi+p; and finally, toin God to be their guide
”It is a great oath, and a hard one,” said Brith to keep it” And they knelt all together and received the Holy Communion, and then rose to pack provisions and aain to sleep and to dreae strea from round the world, did actually sail home up Thames but five years afterwards--”with mariners and soldiers clothed in silk, with sails of daold, and the richest prize which ever was brought at one tiht in the southern sky It is the lide silently up the hill and into the camp, and whisper to Amyas that they have done the deed The sleepers are awakened, and the train sets forth
Upward and southward ever: but whither, who can tell? They hardly think of the whither; but go like sleep-walkers, shaken out of one land of dreaer one All around is fantastic and unearthly; now each ures of his fellows, clothed froree; looks up, and sees the yellow e tree-ferns overhead, as through a cloud of glittering lace Now they are hewing their way through a thicket of enorh; now they are stu over boulders, waist-deep in cushi+ons of club-h shrubberies of heaths and rhododendrons, and woolly incense-trees, where every leaf, as they brush past, dashes some fresh scent into their faces, and ”The winds, withNard and cassia's baly brow, from whence they can see far below an ocean of soft cloud, whose silver billows, girdled by the ht
And froe voices rise; the screaht-birds, and wild hohich they used at first to fancy were the cries of ravenous beasts, till they found the fiercer than an ape But what is that deeper note, like a series of muffled explosions,--arquebuses fired within some subterranean cavern,--the heavy pulse of which rolls up through the depths of the unseen forest? They hear it now for the first tiain; and the Indian lad is hushed, and cowers close to them, and then takes heart, as he looks upon their swords and arquebuses; for that is the roar of the jaguar, ”seeking his lare away to the northward? The yellow ht is far too red to be the reflection of any beah the cloud rises a coluht and left around it, and shows beneath, aeyes, each half suspecting, and yet not daring to confess their own suspicions; and Amyas whispers to Yeo-- ”You took care to flood the powder?”
”Ay, ay, sir, and to unload the ordnance too No use ina noise to tell the Spaniards our whereabouts”
Yes; that glare rises froood shi+p Rose Amyas, like Cortez of old, has burnt his shi+p, and retreat is now impossible Forward into the unknown abyss of the New World, and God be with the path: it winds along the highest ridges of theis far more open and easy
They have passed the head of a valley which leads down to St Jago Beneath that long shi+ning river of reat Silla, lies (so says the Indian lad) the rich capital of Venezuela; and beyond, the gold-mines of Los Teques and Baruta, which first attracted the founder Diego de Losada; andeye is turned towards it as they pass the saddle at the valley head; but the atteain to the left, and so doards the rancho, taking care (so the prudent A, the frail rope bridge which spans each torrent and ravine
They are at the rancho long before daybreak, and have secured there, not only fourteen ht or nine Indians stolen froh to escape fro service with thehtened shoulders and hearts; for they are all but safe froes prevent the news of their raid reaching St Jago until nightfall; and in the meanwhile, Don Guzman returns to the river mouth the next day to find the shi+p a blackened wreck, and the camp empty; follows their trail over the hills till he is stopped by a broken bridge; surmounts that difficulty, and meets a second; hison the heretic desperadoes, and he returns by land to St Jago; and when he arrives there, has news fro those lishmen, who have vanished into the wilderness ”What need, after all, to follow them?” asked the Spaniards of each other ”Blinded by the devil, whom they serve, they rush on in search of certain death, as er company has before them, and they will find it, and will trouble La Guayra no s and enemies of God,” said Don Guzman to his soldiers, ”they will leave their bones to whiten on the Llanos, as may every heretic who sets foot on Spanish soil!”
Will they do so, Don Guzhtier battlefield, to learn a lesson which neither of you yet has learned?
CHAPTER XXII
THE INQUISITION IN THE INDIES
My next chapter is perhaps too sad; it shall be at least as short as I can make it; but it was needful to be written, that readers lish nation had to face in those stern days
Three weeks have passed, and the scene is shi+fted to a long, low range of cells in a dark corridor in the city of Cartagena The door of one is open; and within stand two cloaked figures, one of e know It is Eustace Leigh The other is a familiar of the Holy Office
He holds in his hand a laht falls on a bed of straw, and on the sleeping figure of a h white brow, the pale and delicate features--them too we know, for they are those of Frank Saved half-dead froroes, he has been reserved for the more delicate cruelty of civilized and Christian men He underwent the question but this afternoon; and now Eustace, his betrayer, is come to persuade him-- or to entrap him? Eustace himself hardly knohether of the two
And yet he would give his life to save his cousin
His life? He has long since ceased to care for that He has done what he has done, because it is his duty; and now he is to do his duty once ue, coax, threaten him into recantation while ”his heart is still tender from the torture,” so Eustace's e! Is it but a freak of the laht, or is there a smile upon his lips? Eustace takes the lamp and bends over hi in his dreaher and holier still
Eustace cannot find the heart to wake him
”Let him rest,” whispers he to his companion ”After all, I fear my words will be of little use”
”I fear so too, sir Never did I behold a more obdurate heretic He did not scruple to scoff openly at their holinesses”
”Ah!” said Eustace; ”great is the pravity of the huo for the present”