Treasure of Kings Part 11

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.

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.