The Romance of Golden Star Part 14

'There has been nothing said that brings any share of the guilt of this treason to you, so now, if you will promise me on your faith and honour as an Englishman to keep my secrets and obey such commands as I shall put upon you for your own safety and that of all of us, you shall go free, and you shall have the choice of going back to England or to any other country until the war is over, or of staying here under my protection until you can go away safely with the treasure which shall be yours. But if you go now you cannot take it with you, for in a few days from now there will be war throughout the whole land, and it would be impossible to take so much treasure to the coast. Now, what do you say?'

He thought for a moment and then said,--

'I am not a man of war, as you know Vilcaroya, but I hope I am a man of honour. I have never breathed a syllable that could have given anyone an inkling of your secret, and I promise you solemnly that I never will.

What Djama has done distresses me even more than it amazes me. I would have staked my life on his honesty, and if you will release him and let him come with me--'

'No, no, my friend!' I said, quickly and sternly. 'What you would ask is impossible. His aims were deeper and his sin was blacker than it has been shown to be here. He did not betray us for gold alone, for he knew that I would keep my promise and give him more than he could want. He would have given me to my enemies to be killed--it might have been by tortures, to make me say where my treasures were hidden--so that he might have had Golden Star at his mercy.'

'It was your own fault, curse you! Why did you not give her to me?'

Djama cried suddenly, breaking loose from the two who held his arms and putting his hand to his pistol pocket. The next instant my own revolver was out from under my cloak and levelled at his heart.

'Another motion and I will kill you,' I said, 'though so quick a death would be too good for you. Tie his hands behind his back and hold him faster this time. Give me his pistol.'

Before I had done speaking they had seized him again in spite of his struggles, and paying no heed to his cries and imprecations--for by this time his long-pent-up pa.s.sion had broken loose and made him almost mad, and when they had given me his pistol I said to him,--

'I told you that Golden Star should be yours if you could win her as an honest man. But you sought to steal her as you would have stolen my gold. That is enough; keep silence now, or you shall be gagged.'

Then I held out my hand to the professor and said,--

'I will accept your promise, for you are an honest man. There is my hand. Now we will be friends as before, and I will answer for your safety. Will you go or stay with us?'

'I will stay,' he said, 'for my studies are not completed yet, and besides, I am anxious to see what the Inca empire will be like when it is restored.'

'I am glad that you say so,' I replied, 'for you are welcome, and you shall make your home here always if you will.'

Then I bade them stand the Spanish officer in the professor's place beside Djama, and, turning to Francis Hartness, said,--

'These men are worthy of death, for they would have delivered us to death, but I cannot kill Djama since Joyful Star might hate me for it, and if I do not kill him it would not be justice to kill the Spaniard.

What shall I do?'

'I see nothing for it,' he said, after thinking awhile, 'but shutting them up safely until we have got this business over, and then sending them out of the country and forbidding them to come back under pain of death. There are plenty of places that they would be perfectly safe in.'

'That is well thought of, my friend,' I said, 'and it shall be done.

They came for gold and they shall have it. They shall live in it, and see gold, and nothing but gold, till the sight of it is hateful to them.

They shall have a prison of gold, and eat and drink from gold, and sleep and walk and sit on gold. Yes, truly, they shall have enough of gold before they see the light of day again. Now tell the Spaniard what I have said.'

He did so, and at first the wretch's eyes glittered and then grew dim when the true meaning of his doom came upon him, for it meant he knew not how long an imprisonment with a man who had betrayed his friends, and whom, as he had confessed, he would himself have betrayed; and he thought, too, that I had only promised him his life and the gold to make him speak, and that now I would keep him prisoner and perhaps kill him in the end. So he fell on his knees, like the craven that he was, and begged for mercy, and told Hartness of my promise, and with Hartness's lips I told him only that he must have patience and wait until it was my pleasure to do what I had said.

After this I called Tupac and Anahuac and told them what I wished done, and they took a score of their men and forthwith began to build, in a corner of the hall beside the throne, a chamber measuring some ten feet each way, of the oblong blocks of gold which were piled up in the pyramid, and while they were doing this I called the soldiers before me and told them, speaking in their own dialect, that if they were faithful to me until the end of the war, each man should have one ounce weight of gold paid to him every month, and one ounce more for each of his comrades that he could persuade to join us, and for this night's work I would give them each a wedge of gold of the weight of two ounces, which was more money than all that they had earned in their lives before; and when I had promised this they went on their knees and swore faith to me and destruction to their hated Spanish masters.

Then I told them how Francis Hartness would lead them to battle and to victory as he had led the soldiers of his own nation, and after that he spoke to them in Spanish, and told them what to tell their comrades and what was to be done with the arms and ammunition when the signal for the rising was given.

All this while Djama and the Spaniard were kept standing watching the building of their golden prison-cell. The men worked swiftly, and the many hands made the toil light, and they built the walls up very thick and strong, fitting the golden bricks closely into each other, and making the walls smooth and without hand or foot-hold, so that neither could any of the bricks be got out, nor the walls be climbed. The cell was divided into two by another wall, and when the walls were finished they were about ten feet high, and there was an opening into each cell in front, large enough for a man to crawl in on his hands and knees.

When all was ready I said to Djama,--

'There is your house of gold. Go and dwell in it till it shall be safe for me to release you. Every day, as I have said, you shall eat and drink from plates and cups of gold, and you shall dream of gold until this gold-fever of yours is cured.'

'Until I have gone gold-mad, you mean!' he cried, snarling at me like an angry dog. 'It is just such a vengeance as a half-civilised savage would have thought of. You know as well as I do that I shall go mad in there unless I kill myself first.'

'You have your choice!' I said. 'I will make your punishment no lighter.

If you think to pull the walls down they will fall on you and crush you, and you will be buried in gold, and if I am told that you have tried to break out, I will put chains of gold on you, so heavy that you shall not be able to drag them across your cell; but if you are peaceful and patient, all your wants shall be attended to by those that I shall appoint, and you shall have everything but liberty and the light of day.

Now, go in.'

'I won't!' he cried with a curse that ended in a scream. 'I shall go mad in there, I tell you, and that is a thousand times worse than death to me. I won't! d.a.m.n you, I won't!'

'Then you shall be thrust in,' I said.

I made a sign to those who held him, and they, seeing what I meant, took him by the body and the legs, and carried him, feet foremost, kicking and struggling, towards the hole. Then they thrust him in with his arms still bound. But when he was half-way through, I bade one of them loose the cords a little, so that he could free himself afterwards. The Spaniard made no resistance, and when he was bidden crept, trembling like a hound that has been flogged, into his cell, and when they were both in I ordered the openings to be built up.

[Ill.u.s.tration: They thrust him in with his arms still bound.

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Francis Hartness and the professor had gone away to the other end of the hall, not liking to see this, and yet knowing that it would be useless to seek to persuade me to more mercy.

'Our work here is done now,' I said, going to them, 'and it would be well for us to go back to the fortress and sleep, for the morning is near and there will be much work to do before long.'

'I don't think I shall sleep much after what I have seen to-night,' said Hartness, 'and if I did sleep I think I should dream of that golden prison and those two poor wretches hungering and thirsting for daylight and liberty, with the means of buying any luxury the world could give them within reach of their hands.'

'Yes,' said the professor, 'it is a curious situation, isn't it?--quite apart from the personal interest it has for us. Now, in England or America, a room built with walls and floor of solid gold would be a luxury that only a millionaire could afford, and he would probably be thought a fool for building it, and yet here it is only a prison in which a man might well starve to death. Come, let us get away from here.

I really don't want to hear any more of Djama's ravings than I can help.

Good heavens! who ever would have thought that a man of his culture and learning and strength of mind could possibly have made such a blackguard of himself!'

'Well,' said Hartness, with a dry sort of laugh, 'you see he was the victim of the two pa.s.sions that have done most to drive men mad or make scoundrels of them since the world began--the love of woman and the l.u.s.t for gold. I don't pretend to understand it myself, because he had gold enough promised to him, and there is no telling but that he might have won the woman; but there, you never can tell how far any man is mad or sane until he's tried.'

'But there was something else, my friend,' I said. 'There was, as you say, l.u.s.t of gold and love of woman; but there was also hate. Why, I know not; but though I owe my new life to that man, I have hated him and he has hated me since we learnt to know each other as living men. You know, too, how, as I told you, Golden Star shrank from him as though he had been a poisonous reptile, and yet why should I hate him and yet love her who is of the same flesh and blood as he is?'

'I would rather discuss the problem in the open air or at the hacienda than here,' said the professor, 'and even then I don't suppose we should get much nearer to a solution, for these things are mysteries and mostly past finding out. Yet it may be that you and he, the sons of different centuries, may actually have embodied in you the differences and the antipathies of the two ages and the two races to which you belong. There is no telling. But come, let us get out of here, please. I really can't stand this any longer.'

'Nor I,' said Hartness. 'For goodness' sake let us go! This is a good deal more trying to the nerves than a cavalry charge or a smart skirmish.'

'Very well,' I said, 'we will go.'

Then I called to Tupac and bade him tell the soldiers and the rest that the night's work was over and it was time to go. We gave each of the soldiers his wedge of gold, as I had promised them; and once more I made them swear that each would kill any of the others who thought to betray us. Then Tupac and Anahuac went and opened the stone door, and we returned from the Hall of Gold to the upper earth, leaving Djama and his fellow traitor still raving and crying within the walls of their golden prison.

FOOTNOTES:

[D] The Inca naturally does not distinguish between the modern Peruvians and their Spanish ancestors.

[E] This is quite a common thing in Peru, and the Indian women make exceedingly clever spies.

CHAPTER X

ON THE RODADERO