tears to sparks of fire. “O patre, I have not told half—I cannot! They
have broken into the houses of the Virgins of the Sun. They have taken
them away by violence. I know now—too well!—why my mother died rather
than be captive to the Spaniard. They have left us nothing sacred,
nothing holy—not even the grave. They have dug open the tombs of our
fathers to search for hid treasures. They have torn the ornaments from
our temples; they have turned them into stables for their horses. They
have robbed our store-houses, where the Incas laid up maize, quinoa,
wool, cotton, to supply the people in years of scarcity. They have
slaughtered by thousands the gentle, useful llamas, that bore our burdens
and clothed us with their fleeces—only that they may feast upon their
brains!—Are these the favourites and messengers of Pacha-camac, sent to
teach us his will? No; they are the children of Supay—the devil. I will
never believe God loves them, or commands us to obey them. I will never
become as one of them, to learn their ways, to wear their dress, to serve
their gods—”
“José, hush!” interposed the monk. Five minutes ago those two hearts had
been very near, had almost met. But José’s words, blasphemous in the
ears of Fray Fernando, broke down the bridge between them. “I can hear
my countrymen reproached,” he said, “and I sorrowfully admit there is
too much cause;—but I cannot hear my Faith blasphemed. Still,” he added,
more gently, “I would fain believe your heart does not mean all your lips
have said. Changed as you are, I can hardly think you have forgotten all
the past—you whom I taught, watched over, tended in sickness. See, here
is the holy emblem of our Faith.” He took the crucifix, with the rosary
attached, from his girdle, and held it out to José. “Take it, my son;
kiss it, in token of your penitence and your attachment to the Christian
faith; and I will forgive your wild words and forget them.”
José took the crucifix,—but held it at arm’s length.
“Kiss it, my son,” said the monk.
José did not move.
“Kiss it,” Fray Fernando repeated more sternly. Unfortunately he
added,—“as a sign that you renounce the vain idols of your race.”
What! Was Ynty an idol—Ynty the glorious? What then was this bit
of wood—not even gold or silver—to which the patre bade him do
reverence. José’s anger was not often roused, but when roused, it was
incontrollable. He made a step forward towards a steep cliff, near the
edge of which he was standing. The crucifix swung and shook over the
precipice in his extended hand.
“Dare you?” cried the monk, springing forward to arrest him,
horror-stricken at his profanity.
“I dare!” the Indian answered, the wrongs of his race all crowding on his
memory, and the cross seeming nothing, in that moment’s passion, save an
emblem of the creed of the destroyer. “Behold!”
The deed was done. His passion began to die away the moment it was
indulged. And at the same time the last rays of the sun were dying from
the sky.
“Enough!” said Fray Fernando, and he spoke very coldly. The white man’s
anger needs no loud words, no fierce gestures for its expression. “I was
a fool to expect gratitude or love from an Indian. You never knew what
either means, José. You have never loved me, and the love I gave to you I
wasted. This is our last parting. Let me pass.” José moved aside at his
command, and stood watching him, with a stupified air, until he was out
of sight.
Then he ran to the place whence the cliff could be descended with the
least difficulty. Leaping and scrambling, and clinging now and then to a
stray tuft of ychu, he soon reached the spot where lay the crucifix. He
took it up, and placed it carefully in the little bag by his side.
From this spot he could see the valley, winding far beneath. He stood
gazing until the short twilight was past, and the rapidly increasing
darkness hid it from his view. Then he threw himself on the ground, and
gave way to a passionate burst of weeping. For the patre had parted with
him in fierce anger, telling him he had never loved him.
He had no sense of fear in that lonely spot. The tracks of the puma were
seldom seen in the district; and the hardy Indian youth thought little
of a bed on the alfalfa, and less of the want of food, especially whilst
some fragrant leaves still remained in his coca-bag.
But he was sore in need of help and comfort, for himself and for his
people. And, because he saw none, either in the darkened heavens or on
the miserable earth, he wept and wailed, plucking up the alfalfa by the
roots and flinging it from him in his bitter grief.
At last he looked up. Ynty was gone long ago. Not even a faint glow
remained now on the horizon. He remembered the words of the great Inca
Huayna Capac, taught him in his childhood. Ynty could not be lord and
governor, thought the wise monarch, because so often absent from the
earth; nay, he seemed like a servant who himself obeyed a master, or like
an arrow shot from a bow by a strong hand. It was plain enough now that
Ynty could not help his children in their hour of need. There was no
one to hear and help in those cold distant heavens to which they cried
in vain. Were the Spaniards right? Was God on their side? Instead of
the departed sun, there burned above his head the bright stars of the
Southern Cross, which the patre told him was the sacred emblem of the
Christian Faith, written on the heavens in characters of fire. No hint
of the true meaning of the cross had ever found its way to José’s heart,
though he was, of course, familiar with the historical fact. He had never
heard the message of divine love.
And through the best human love that he knew came the bitterest pain of
that bitter hour. The patre had saved him from his cruel enemy, tended
him in sickness, fed him, clothed him, taught him. And now the patre
said, “You have never loved me, and the love I gave to you I wasted.”
The Indian lay quite still for a long time. Thoughts he had no power to
express were struggling in his soul. José and Viracocha were at strife
within him.
At last came a decisive moment. “Arri! rantihuarcca,” he said, half
aloud. “Yes; he bought me.” That was the argument that turned the scale.
José—for he it was who won the victory—started up, shook the alfalfa from
his dress, tied his sandals more firmly, and again repeating, “Arri;
rantihuarcca,” peered cautiously around through the darkness.
An hour afterwards the Indian youth was treading noiselessly through
the sleeping galpon. He reached the door of Fray Fernando’s hut, and
pushed it gently. As of old, it was only on the latch. The monk had his
own reasons for not adopting precautions that, in real danger, would
inevitably prove futile. José entered. All was still. Fray Fernando lay
on his pallet fast asleep, for the hour was now very late. Whereupon
José, with that peculiar kind of _sang froid_ characteristic of his race,
turned quietly into his accustomed corner, and, as though he had never
forfeited his right to be there, laid himself down to sleep.
VIII.
Vindicated.
“But prove me what it is I would not do.”
TENNYSON.
Fray Fernando returned to the galpon sorrowful and desolate. All the
tenderness that life had left in his blighted heart had been gathered up
and poured forth on the head of the Indian youth, who had truly been as a
son to him. He never dreamed how much he had given, until he awoke to the
consciousness that all was given in vain.
Nothing, absolutely nothing, was left him now to care for. He had not a
hope remaining; just then he had scarcely a fear. His heart was too weary
for conflict; it only ached with a dull and constant pain. Listlessly he
went through the prescribed course of his evening devotions, repeating
unfelt prayers and praises that found no echo in his heart. If he had
ever really prayed, he had prayed for the child he fondly dreamed God
had sent to comfort him in his misery. But that was over now; José was
gone back to his people and to his gods, and his work and his prayers for
him—like all his other work and all his other prayers—were wasted.
In this mood he laid himself down to sleep. Of late the slumbers that
sealed those eyes had been fitful and broken. But it happened that upon
this occasion Nature, usually capricious, saw fit to reassert her power
and exact her revenge, and ere long he fell into a sound dreamless sleep.
He awoke with a start. A sharp cry rang in his ears. The room seemed full
of furious men, struggling for mastery, clinging desperately to each
other’s throats. Then some bright thing, a knife or dagger, known by its
glitter in the moonlight, fell to the ground at his side.
Less than a minute restored his senses fully, and reduced the shadowy
host of combatants to two—a gigantic negro and a slender stripling, who
seemed about to pay for the frantic tenacity with which he clutched his
adversary’s throat, by being crushed to death in his strong grasp.
That moment Fray Fernando forgot his peaceful calling, his sacred
character, everything but the youth’s danger. Seizing the weapon so
opportunely left at his hand, he made third’s-man in the fray to such
good purpose, that the negro fled for his life, like an evil spirit of
night chased by returning day.
With the dagger still in his hand, the monk stood and gazed about him
in bewilderment. But he could see scarcely anything, for the moon had
retreated behind a cloud.
“Much-hani Pacha-camac!” exclaimed a well-known voice. Then in Spanish,
“Deos gratias!”
“José! Is it you, José? How came you hither? What is it all about?”
“It was Pepe!” gasped José. “Villain, traitor, _aucca_! May I see him
hurled from the highest rock on Cerro Blanco! Patre, are you hurt?”
“No, thank God. But am I dreaming or awake? What has happened?”
“He wanted to drink your blood, but God preserved you,” said José.
Then Fray Fernando had recourse to his flint and steel. But it was some
time before the tiny sparks availed to kindle the tinder. At length,
however, the feat was accomplished; and a little oil-lamp shed as much
light as in it lay upon the monk’s perplexities.
The first thing it revealed startled him considerably. “O José!” he
exclaimed in great distress, “why did you not tell me you were wounded?”
For the lad’s white tunic was covered with blood.
“It is nothing,” said José, in whose code of morality the silent
endurance of pain occupied a prominent place. “Only,” he added, his dark
face glowing with satisfaction, even with triumph, “the patre knows if I
love him now.”
“You have saved my life,” Fray Fernando answered. But it was not his
fashion to waste time in words when deeds were needful. He bound up
José’s severely wounded arm, quickly and carefully, with a piece of linen
torn from one of his consecrated vestments. Then he took some wine from
the little store reserved for the celebration of mass, and gave it to his
patient to drink. Not until all this was done, did he ask an explanation
of the events of the night.
“I came back to you,” José answered simply, “because you bought me.
Finding you asleep, I lay down in my place. By-and-by Pepe crept in,
still and silent, as a snake creeps through the grass. I cried aloud
to wake you, and sprang at his throat. What else could I do? He had a
weapon, I had none. I clung to him like the puma; he struggled and struck
me with his knife; but his hands were not free enough to do much harm.
I pressed my fingers into his throat for very life—your life and mine.
Until at last, in his pain, he lost his _think_, and dropped the knife.
Then I knew you were saved.”
Fray Fernando stretched out his hand to him. “You are a brave lad,” he
said; “God bless you!”
“Patre,” said José, “say ‘my son’ as you used to do.”
The monk was touched. “God bless thee, my son!” he answered warmly.
There was a silence; then José resumed,—“Patre, come with me to my
people. No one will hurt you amongst them.”
Fray Fernando started at the suggestion. A hasty “No” trembled on his
lips; but he began to reflect that his present position was worse than
perilous. What would the morning bring? Pepe’s attempted crime could
scarcely remain a secret. Should Diego pass it over, he would proclaim
his own guilt; should he undertake to punish it, the negro, in his
despair, would reveal everything. Clearly neither Diego nor Pepe had
now any alternative but to complete their work. While a man might have
repeated half a score of Paternosters, Fray Fernando pondered. Then he
spoke in a decided, even cheerful tone, “José, I am going to Cuzco. Will
you go thither with me?”
“To Cuzco!” José cried in rapture. “Will the river go to the Mother Sea?”
“Not so loud. We must go at once, and in silence. I must needs speak with
our lord, Don Marcio Serra; and he lives at Cuzco.”
“_Chachau!_” said José. The exclamation meant, “I am heartily willing,
and very glad.”
Then the monk began to put together the few articles he thought necessary
for the journey.
“We need not be troubled with baggage,” said José coolly. “The men will
give us all we want by the way.”
“And what of the way, José? How shall we find that? You know no more of
it than I. You have only travelled along the coast, never towards Cuzco.”
“The way, patre! How could we miss it? We have only to go by the road.”
For if in the days of Roman ascendancy the proverb, “All roads lead to
Rome” expressed an almost literal truth, it was yet more strictly true
that in the empire of the Incas all roads led to Cuzco. Their policy was,
in the highest degree, one of centralization.
“Will you take the books, patre?” José inquired. He regarded his patron’s
books with almost superstitious reverence. Indeed, it is quite possible
that he thought each of them possessed what his race styled a “Mother,”
or spiritual essence of its own.
“I will take this,” said the monk, laying his hand on a Breviary. “Not
the others.”
Two bundles comprised all that the travellers cared to take; more indeed
than José, who thought he had a child’s right to everything he needed in
Tahuantin Suyu, would willingly have encumbered himself with.
When his other preparations were completed, the monk took a key from
the bosom of his frock, and unlocked a small strong coffer, placed for
security in a kind of rude press which he had contrived in the wall of
his hut. He took out some pieces of money; then paused for a moment in
evident doubt. Something else was there, which he scarcely liked either
to take or to leave behind; something which belonged of right to José,
and which indeed his conscience told him he ought to have given him long
ago. He had withheld it, fearing the memories it might awaken. But now
all his precautions had been proved useless, if not worse. Better to
do the thing that was right, without too much regard to consequences.
“José,” he said, showing him the curiously wrought pin he had received
from Don Ramon, “do you remember this?”
“My mother’s topu!” José exclaimed, eagerly taking it from his hand. For
some moments he looked at it in silence, then he pressed it to his lips,
while a tear glistened in his eye.
“Keep it,” said the monk. “But we must not loiter now, for the hours of
darkness are waning. Are you ready?”
“Let the patre wait but for a moment,” said José. He fastened his
treasure securely into his tunic; then, with some difficulty, caused by
his only possessing the use of one hand, he took the crucifix from the
coca-bag by his side. “This belongs to the patre,” he said, with the air
of a person a little ashamed of himself.
Fray Fernando wisely accepted the unspoken apology. He restored the
crucifix to its place at his girdle, merely saying, “It is a precious
symbol of a still more precious Thing.”
Then they passed silently through the sleeping galpon; and, before the
morning dawned, were far beyond the reach of the astonished Diego.
IX.
The Journey.
“The high Peruvian solitudes among.”
HEMANS.
Now did Fray Fernando and his young companion behold in all their glory
“the works of the Lord, and the wonders of His hand.” For their way to
Cuzco led them across the mighty Andes. Of these Cerro Blanco, though
in any other land it would have taken rank as a monarch mountain, was
only a kind of sentinel, or advanced guard. It looked down protectingly
on the valleys beneath, but it looked up reverently to the white and
shadowy peaks of snow which rose, one above the other, far as the eye
could reach. Fray Fernando had been wont to think of the Andes as a
“corderilla,” or chain; now he knew them as a vast gigantic army—God’s
great army—at His creative word arising from the earth, and ranging
themselves in what to the eye of man seemed magnificent confusion, but
was majestic order in His sight, who saw the whole. “In His hand,” said
Fray Fernando, “are the high places of the earth, and the strength of the
hills is His also. He, and He alone, telleth their number, and calleth
them all by name; even as He doth the stars, which their ice-crowned
pinnacles almost seem to touch.”
As, in compliance with the advice of José, the travellers began their
journey by descending to the vale of Nasca, in order to avail themselves
of an Inca road from thence to Cuzco, they had occasion to traverse, and
that more than once, each of the zones into which different gradations
of altitude divide that wonderful region. They passed through valleys
where tropical vegetation displayed all its gorgeous magnificence. There
rose the giant palms, slender, tall, and graceful; there flourished
many a wondrous flowering tree; there bloomed the magnolia, the cactus,
the balsam, spreading out purple, white, or scarlet petals to the hot,
heavily perfumed air; while “strange bright birds, on their starry
wings,” glittering with clear hard metallic lustre, flitted from bough to
bough, from blossom to blossom.
José, who took upon himself almost entirely the direction of the journey,
gathered for his patron sweet dates, or luscious chirimoyas, looking
like large green oranges. But he warned him that they must not linger in
these valleys. “They are the abodes of fever,” he said. And indeed Fray
Fernando himself was willing enough to pass on to a purer and cooler
atmosphere.
Marvellous was the beauty of their next stage. It brought them to the
region of the Peruvian-bark tree, which José called quina-quina, with its
light-green leaves and its little clustered flowers, rose-coloured or
white, filling the air with their delicious fragrance. But the cypress
and the palm were the monarch trees of those primeval forests, and they
gave shelter to an almost incredible undergrowth of vegetation. Their
long slender stems were climbed to the very top by tangled lianas, with
luxuriant leaves and gorgeous flowers. It was the land of flowers. There
hung the large violet blossoms of the melastoma, there gigantic fuchsias
drooped their graceful crimson bells; whilst beneath them blossoms of
every hue enamelled the living green of the turf. Fray Fernando could not
help asking, “Is not this Paradise?”
Just then José stooped down, and from the sweet tangle of flower-covered
bushes selected and gathered a single spray. It was a cluster of
curious slipper-shaped blossoms, bright yellow spotted with crimson—the
calceolaria of our modern conservatories. “Amongst us,” he said, “this
flower means pity and kindness. With garlands of it, mingled with the
cantut[22] and the evergreen, our fathers used to crown the heads of the
noble youths at the great belting festival, to teach them that as the
sun brings forth flowers from the earth for the joy of man, their hearts
should bring forth pity and kindness. But pity and kindness are gone now;
the Spaniards have driven them away.”
And then Fray Fernando knew that this was not Paradise.
Soon afterwards they came to a land of giant trees. Many of them raised
their mighty stems, like the pillars of a wonderful cathedral, a hundred
feet in the air before they sent forth a single branch. Here a strange
fit of home-sickness surprised Fray Fernando in the midst of Nature’s
richest glories. In the lower levels there was no perceptible change of
season; eternal summer reigned supreme. But here it was autumn, and these
giant trees were shedding on his pathway withered leaves, like those that
used to rustle round his footsteps in the cork-groves of his native land.
He began to feel an affection for them such as he never could have felt
for the wonderful trees of the valley, whose great spreading branches
kept their green the whole year round.
Yet another day’s journey, and the travellers entered the region of mist
and rain. Here were no great trees, but the perpetual moisture nourished
a luxuriant growth of evergreens, of arbutus, and other flowering shrubs,
in whose blossoms a bright yellow seemed the prevailing hue. José called
this district the Puna, and hastened through it as rapidly as he might,
unconsoled for the absence of Ynty by its numerous flowers, its verdant
mosses, and its creeping mimosas.
At length they came to colder and more rugged regions, where the
vegetation, at first abundant and pleasant to the eye, like that of
our temperate zone, grew gradually poor and scanty. But Fray Fernando
said reverently, that God had given the mountain to the beasts to dwell
in. Here graceful fawn-coloured vicuñas, and guanucos with long shaggy
fleeces and mild camel-like faces, roamed at large, feeding on the ychu
and alfalfa, that still grew in abundance. Pretty little piscaches, with
bushy tails, startled by the footsteps of the travellers, ran to hide in
the ychu; and here and there a plover flew screaming into the air above
their heads. Once they saw a huge condor perched on an elevated rocky
peak.
Thus for many days they journeyed onwards, now ascending, now in turn
descending again. By-and-by they came to grassy table-lands, where herds
of llamas or alpacas roamed about, either wild, or more often under
the care of Indian shepherds. Where the nature of the ground permitted
cultivation, the soil was well and carefully cultivated. Even on the
steep sides of mountains terraces were constructed with ingenious
industry. By means of these andenaria, as the Spaniards called them, many
a hill, that in another country would have been a brown and sterile mass,
was transformed into a beautiful hanging-garden, displaying every variety
of production, from the rich tropical splendours that adorned the broad
belts around the base, to the few rows of maize which were all that even
the industrious Indian could persuade to take root on the narrow strip at
the top.
The long journey was a very safe and easy one. For nearly all the way
our travellers had only to use the excellent roads provided by the
care of the Incas. Fray Fernando was not the first Spaniard who grew
enthusiastic in his admiration of these wonderful works, executed without
machinery, and even without iron tools. Passages leagues in length were
cut through the living rock, precipices were scaled by long flights of
steps, ravines were filled up with masonry, and rivers crossed by means
of suspension bridges made of maguey—the native osier. At convenient
distances all along the road tampus, or post-houses, were erected, where
the wayfarers found shelter. José explained that, in the old times, they
would have found entertainment also in many of these tampus; but since,
to use his mournful and oft-repeated expression, “the Spaniards have
changed all,” they had usually to throw themselves on the hospitality of
the Indians; and sometimes, in lonely places, to rely on the little store
of roasted maize or of frozen potatoes (called chuñu), which José never
failed to bring as provision for the way. The Indians were always kind
and generous to wayfarers; but they had only to recognize José as a Child
of the Sun, to induce them to lay the best their huts contained at his
feet.
The hardihood and agility displayed by José during the journey surprised
Fray Fernando. He made very little of the wound he had received from
Pepe, though it was severe enough to have laid a European aside for
weeks. But this was thoroughly Indian. No amount of walking or running
seemed to fatigue him. Fray Fernando was by no means a match for him,
and was always the first to propose a halt. José, compassionating his
weakness, would frequently offer him some of his favourite coca, but
this the monk always declined, from an unaccountable idea taken up by
the Spaniards, that the use of the harmless stimulant was in some way
connected with the superstition of the Indians.