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THE ROMANCE OF GOLDEN STAR ...
by
GEORGE [CHETWYND] GRIFFITH[-JONES]
Reprint Edition 1978 by Arno Press Inc.
Reprinted from a copy in The Library of the University of California,
Riverside
Editorial Supervision: Marie Stareck
THE ROMANCE OF GOLDEN STAR
[Illustration: Hail, Son of the Sun!
_Page 78._
THE ROMANCE OF GOLDEN STAR.
_Frontispiece._]
THE ROMANCE OF GOLDEN STAR ...
by
GEORGE GRIFFITH
Author of
'The Angel of the Revolution,'
'Olga Romanoff,' 'The Outlaws
of the Air,' 'Valdar the Oft-Born,'
'Briton or Boer?' Etc., Etc.
Illustrated by Alfred Pearse
_'To that Son of the Sacred Race
who for Honour and Faith and
Love shall take the hand of a
pure virgin of his own holy blood
and with her pass fearless through
the Gate of Death into the shadows
which lie beyond shall be given the
glory of casting out the Oppressor
and raising the Rainbow Banner
once more above the Golden Throne
of the Incas. On that Throne he
shall sit and wield power and mete
out justice and mercy to the Children
of the Sun when the gloom
that is falling upon the Land of
the Four Regions shall have passed
away in the dawn of a brighter
age.'_
--THE PROPHECY CONTAINED
IN THE ANCIENT LEGEND
OF VILCAROYA-INCA AND
GOLDEN STAR, HIS SISTER-BRIDE.
London: F. V. White & Co....
14 Bedford Street, Strand, W.C. 1897
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
PAGE
HIS HIGHNESS THE MUMMY 1
A PHYSIOLOGICAL EXPERIMENT 16
CHAPTER I
BACK THROUGH THE SHADOWS 32
CHAPTER II
BROTHERS OF THE BLOOD 47
CHAPTER III
IN THE HALL OF GOLD 66
CHAPTER IV
THE SISTER STARS 86
CHAPTER V
HOW DJAMA DID HIS WORK 105
CHAPTER VI
THE WAKING OF GOLDEN STAR 124
CHAPTER VII
IN THE THRONE-ROOM OF YUPANQUI 145
CHAPTER VIII
HOW THE SOUL OF GOLDEN STAR CAME BACK 168
CHAPTER IX
THE TREACHERY OF DJAMA 188
CHAPTER X
ON THE RODADERO 209
CHAPTER XI
HOW WE TOOK THE CITY OF THE SUN 230
CHAPTER XII
QUEEN AND CROWN 250
CHAPTER XIII
HOW DJAMA PAID HIS DEBT 262
CHAPTER XIV
THE RE-KINDLING OF THE SACRED FIRE 271
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
BY
ALFRED PEARSE
PAGE
'HAIL, SON OF THE SUN!' _Frontispiece_
'AM I ONLY DREAMING THAT THE DEATH-SLEEP IS OVER?' 26
THE DAGGER-POINT DROPPED TILL IT WAS WITHIN AN INCH
OF GOLDEN STAR'S BREAST 119
THEY THRUST HIM IN WITH HIS ARMS STILL BOUND 205
IT HAD SMITTEN HIM TO THE HEART 228
NOW THE MOMENT FOR THE GIVING OF THE SIGN HAD COME 280
The Romance of Golden Star
PROLOGUE
I
HIS HIGHNESS THE MUMMY
'Ah, what a thing it would be for us if his Inca Highness were really
only asleep, as he looks to be! Just think what he could tell us--how
easily he could re-create that lost wonderland of his for us, what
riddles he could answer, what lies he could contradict. And then think
of all the lost treasures that he could show us the way to. Upon my
word, if Mephistopheles were to walk into this room just now, I think I
should be tempted to make a bargain with him. Do you know, Djama, I
believe I would give half the remainder of my own life, whatever that
may be, to learn the secrets that were once locked up in that withered,
desiccated brain of his.'
The speaker was one of two men who were standing in a large room,
half-study, half-museum, in a big, old-fashioned house in Maida Vale.
Wherever the science of archæology was studied, Professor Martin Lamson
was known as the highest living authority on the subject of the
antiquities of South America. He had just returned from a year's
relic-hunting in Peru and Bolivia, and was enjoying the luxury of
unpacking his treasures with the almost boyish delight which, under such
circumstances, comes only to the true enthusiast. His companion was a
somewhat slenderly-built man, of medium height, whose clear, olive skin,
straight, black hair, and deep blue-black eyes betrayed a not very
remote Eastern origin.
Dr Laurens Djama was a physiologist, whose rapidly-acquired fame--he was
barely thirty-two--would have been considered sounder by his
professional brethren if it had not been, as they thought, impaired by
excursions into by-ways of science which were believed to lead him
perilously near to the borders of occultism. Five years before he had
pulled the professor through a very bad attack of the calentura in
Panama, where they met by the merest traveller's chance, and since then
they had been fast friends.
They were standing over a long packing-case, some seven feet in length
and two and a-half in breadth, in which lay, at full length, wrapped in
grave-clothes that had once been gaily coloured, but which were now
faded and grey with the grave-dust, the figure of a man with hands
crossed over the breast, dead to all appearances, and yet so gruesomely
lifelike that it seemed hard to believe that the broad, muscular chest
over which the crossed hands lay was not actually heaving and falling
with the breath of life.
The face had been uncovered. It was that of a man still in the early
prime of life. The dull brown hair was long and thick, the features
somewhat aquiline, and stamped even in death with an almost royal
dignity. The skin was of a pale bronze, though darkened by the hues of
death. Yet every detail of the face was so perfect and so life-like
that, as the professor had said, it seemed to be rather the face of a
man in a deep sleep than that of an Inca prince who must have been dead
and buried for over three hundred years. The closed eyes, though
somewhat sunken in their sockets, were the eyes of sleep rather than of
death, and the lids seemed to lie so lightly over them that it looked as
though one awakening touch would raise them.
'It is beyond all question the most perfect specimen of a mummy that I
have seen,' said the doctor, stooping down and drawing his thin, nervous
fingers very lightly over the dried skin of the right cheek. 'On my
honour, I simply can't believe that His Highness, as you call him, ever
really went to the other world by any of the orthodox routes. If you
could imagine an absolute suspension of all the vital functions induced
by the influence of something--some drug or hypnotic process unknown to
modern science, brought into action on a human being in the very prime
of his vital strength--then, so far as I can see, the results of that
influence would be exactly what you see here.'
'But surely that can't be anything but a dream. How could it be possible
to bring all the vital functions to a dead stop like that, and yet keep
them in such a state that it might be possible--for that's what I
suppose you are driving at--to start them into activity again, just as
one might wind up a clock that had been stopped for a few weeks and set
it going?'
'My dear fellow, the borderland between life and death is so utterly
unknown to the very best of us that there is no telling what frightful
possibilities there may be lying hidden under the shadows that hang over
it. You know as well as I do that there are perfectly well authenticated
instances on record of Hindoo Fakirs who have allowed themselves to be
placed in a state of suspended animation and had their tongues turned
back into their throats, their mouths and noses covered with clay, and
have been buried in graves that have been filled up and had sentries
watching day and night over them for as long a period as six weeks, and
then have been dug up and restored to perfect health and strength again
in a few hours. Now, if life can be suspended for six weeks and then
restored to an organism which, from all physiological standpoints, must
be regarded as inanimate, why not for six years or six hundred years,
for the matter of that? Given once the possibility, which we may assume
as proved, of a restoration to life after total suspension of animation,
then it only becomes a question of preservation of tissue for more or
less indefinite periods. Granted that tissue can be so preserved, then,
given the other possibility already proved, and--well, we will talk
about the other possibility afterwards. Now, tell me, don't you, as an
archæologist, see anything peculiar about this Inca prince of yours?'
The professor had been looking keenly at his friend during the delivery
of this curious physiological lecture. He seemed as though he were
trying to read the thoughts that were chasing each other through his
brain behind the impenetrable mask of that smooth, broad forehead of
his. He looked into his eyes, but saw nothing there save a cold, steady
light that he had often seen before when the doctor was discussing
subjects that interested him deeply. As for his face, it was utterly
impassive--the face of a dispassionate scientist quietly discussing the
possible solution of a problem that had been laid before him. Whether
his friend was really driving at some unheard-of and unearthly solution
of the problem which he himself had raised, or whether he was merely
discussing the possible issue of some abstract question in physiology,
he was utterly unable to discover, and so he thought it best to confine
himself to the matter in hand, without hazarding any risky guesses that
might possibly result in his own confusion. So he answered as quietly as
he could:
'Yes, I must confess that there are two perhaps very important points of
difference between this and any other Peruvian mummy that I have ever
seen or heard of.'
'Ah, I thought so,' said Djama, half closing his eyes and allowing just
the ghost of a smile to flit across his lips. 'I thought I knew enough
about archæology and the science of mummies in general to expect you to
say that. Now, just for the gratification of my own vanity, I should
like to try and anticipate what you are going to say; and if I'm wrong,
well, of course, I shall only be too happy to be contradicted.'
'Very well,' laughed the professor; 'say on!'
'Well, in the first place, I believe I'm right in saying that all
Peruvian mummies that have so far been discovered have been found in a
sitting posture, with the legs drawn close up to the body by means of
bindings and burial-clothes, so that the chin rested between the knees,
while the arms were brought round the legs and folded over them. Then,
again, these mummies have always been found in an upright position,
while you found this one lying down.'
'Quite so, quite so!' said the professor. 'In fact, I may say that no
one save myself has ever discovered such a mummy as this among all the
thousands that have been taken out of Peruvian burying-places. And now,
what is your other point?'
'Simply this,' said Djama, kneeling down beside the case, and laying his
hands over the abdomen of the recumbent figure. 'In the case of all
mummies, whether Egyptian or Peruvian, it was the invariable practice of
the embalmers to take out the intestines and fill the abdominal cavity
with preservative herbs and spices. Now, this has not been done in this
case. Look here.'
And deftly and swiftly he moved the dusty, half-decayed coverings from
the body of the mummy, while the professor looked on half-wondering and
half-frightened for the safety of his treasure.
'That has not been done here. You see the man's body is as perfect as it
was on the day he died--to use a conventional term. Now, am I not
right?'
'Yes, yes; perfectly right,' answered the professor, who felt himself
fast losing his grip of the conversation which had taken so strange a
turn. 'But what has all this got to do with the most unique mummy that
ever was brought from South America? Surely, in the name of all that's
sacred, you don't mean--'
'My dear fellow, never mind what I mean for the present,' replied Djama,
with another of his half smiles. 'If I mean anything at all, the meaning
will keep, and if I don't it doesn't matter. Now, do you mind telling me
exactly how and where you came across this extraordinary specimen
of--well, for want of a better term--we will say, Inca embalming?'
'Yes, willingly,' said the professor, glad to get back again on to the
familiar ground of his own experiences. 'I found it almost by accident
in a little valley about four days' ride to the westward of Cuzco. I was
on my way to Abancay across the Apurimac. My mule had fallen lame, and
so I got belated. Night came on, and somehow we got off the track
crossing one of the Punas--those elevated tablelands, you know, up among
the mountains--and when the mule could go no farther we camped, and the
next morning I found myself in an almost circular valley, completely
walled in by enormous mountains, save for the narrow, crooked gorge
through which we had stumbled by the purest accident. The bottom of this
valley was filled by a little lake, and while I was exploring the shores
of this I saw, hidden underneath an overhanging ledge of rock, a couple
of courses of that wonderful mortarless masonry which the Incas alone
seemed to know how to build. I had no sooner seen it than all desire of
getting to Abancay or anywhere else had left me. I made my arriero turn
the animals loose for the day, and then I sent him back to a village we
had passed through the day before to buy more provisions and bring them
to me.
'As soon as he had got out of sight I set to work to get some of the
stones out and see what there was behind them. I knew there must be
something, for the Incas never wasted labour. It was hard work, for the
stones were fitted together as perfectly as the pieces of a Chinese
puzzle; but at last I got one out and then the rest was easy. Behind the
stones I found a little chamber hollowed out of the rock, perfectly
clean and dry, and on the floor of this I found, without any other
covering than what you see there, the mummy of His Highness lying on
what had once been a bed of soft Vicuña skins, as perfect and as
lifelike as though he had only crept in there twelve hours before, and
had laid down for a good night's rest.
'You may imagine how delighted I was at such a find. I hardly knew how
to contain myself until my man came back. I put the stones back into
their places as well as I could, and when Patricio returned the next day
I had the animals saddled up, and started off in a hurry to Cuzco. There
I had this case made, bought two extra mules, brought them to the
valley, packed up my mummy, took it back to Cuzco, and from there to the
railway terminus at Sicuani and took it down by train to Arequipa, where
I left it in safe keeping until I had finished the rest of my
exploration. Then I went back, took it down to Mollendo, got it on board
the steamer, and here it is.'
'And you didn't find any traces of other treasure-places, I suppose, in
the valley?' said Djama, who had listened with the most perfect
attention to the professor's story.
'No, I didn't, though I must confess that one side of the cave in which
I found this was walled up with the same kind of masonry as there was in
front of it; but, to tell you the truth, the Peruvian Government has
such insane ideas about treasure-hunting; and the life of a man who is
believed to have discovered anything worth stealing is worth so little
in the wilder districts of the interior, that I was afraid of losing the
treasure I had got, perhaps for the sake of a few little gold ornaments
which I might have dug out of the hill, and so I decided to be content
with what I'd found.'
'H'm!' said the doctor. 'Well, you may have been wise under the
circumstances; I daresay you were. But we can see about that afterwards.
Meanwhile there is something else to be talked about.'
He stopped suddenly, took a quick turn or two up and down the room, with
his hands clasped behind him and his eyes fixed on the floor. Then he
went to the door, opened it, looked out, shut it and locked it, and then
came back again and sat down without a word in his chair, staring
steadily at the impassive face of the mummy in the packing-case.
'Why, what's the matter, doctor?' said the professor, a trifle sharply.
'You don't suppose I am afraid of anyone coming to steal my treasure, do
you?'
'My dear fellow,' said Djama, looking him straight in the eyes, and
speaking very slowly, as though his mind was doing something else
besides shaping the thoughts to which he was giving utterance, 'I don't
for a moment suppose that there are thieves about, or that, if there
were, any burglar with a competent knowledge of his profession would
think of stealing your mummy, priceless as it may prove to be. I locked
the door because I don't want to be interrupted. I want to talk to you
about a very important matter.'
'And that is?'
'Mephistopheles.'
'WHAT?'
'Gently, my friend, gently, don't get excited yet. You will want all
your nerves soon, I can assure you. Yes, I am quite serious. You know
that in the good old days, when people still believed in His Majesty of
Darkness, such a speech as the one you remember making a short time ago
was quite enough to call up one of his agents, armed with full powers to
make contracts and do all necessary business.'
'Look here, Laurens, if you go on talking like that, I shall begin to
think you have gone out of your mind.'
'My dear fellow, to be quite candid with you, I don't care two pins what
you think on that subject. I have been called mad too many times for
that. Now, suppose, just for argument's sake, that I were
Mephistopheles, and staked my diabolic reputation on the statement that
in that thing you possess a possible key to those lost treasures of the
Incas, which ten generations of men have hunted for in vain, what kind
of a bargain would you be inclined to make with me on the strength of
it? Half the rest of your life, I think you said, and as that wouldn't
be very much good to me, suppose we say the half of any treasures we
may discover by the help of our silent friend there? Eh?--will that suit
you?'
'Are you really serious, Djama, or are you only dreaming another of
these wild scientific dreams of yours?' exclaimed the professor, taking
a couple of quick strides towards him. 'What connection can there
possibly be between a mummy, about four centuries years old, and the
lost treasures of the Incas?'
'This man was an Inca, wasn't he?' said the doctor, abruptly, 'and one
of the highest rank, too, from what you have said. He lived just about
the time of the Conquest, didn't he--the time when the priests stripped
their temples, and the nobles emptied their palaces of their treasures
to save them from the Spaniards? Is it not likely that he would know
where, at anyrate, a great part of them was buried? Nay, may he not even
have known the localities of the lost mines that the Incas got their
hundredweights of gold from, and of the emerald mines which no one has
ever been able to find? Why, Lamson, if these dead lips could speak, I
believe they could make you and me millionaires in an hour. And why
shouldn't they speak?'
'Don't talk like that, Djama, for Heaven's sake! It is too serious a
thing to joke about,' said the professor, with a half-frightened glance
in his set and shining eyes. 'I should have thought you, of all men,
knew enough of the facts of life and death not to talk such nonsense as
that.'
'Nonsense!' said the physiologist, interrupting him almost angrily; 'may
I not know enough of the facts of life and death, as you call them, to
know that that is _not_ nonsense? But there, it's no use arguing about
things like this. Will you allow this mummy of yours to be made the
subject of--well, we will say, an experiment in physiology?'
'What! the finest and most unique huaca that was ever brought to
Europe--'
'It would only be made finer still by the experiment, even if it failed.
I know what you are going to say, and I will give you my word of honour,
and, if you like, I'll pledge you my professional reputation, that not a
hair of its head shall be injured. Let me take it to my laboratory, and
I promise you solemnly that in a week you shall have it back, not as it
is now, but either the body of your Inca, as perfect as it was the day
he died, or--'
He stopped, and looked hard at his friend, as if wondering what the
effects of his next words would be upon him.
'Or what?' asked the professor, almost in a whisper.
'Your Inca prince, roused from his three-hundred-year sleep, and able
to answer your questions and guide us to his lost mines and treasure
houses.'
'Are you in earnest, Djama?' the professor whispered, catching him by
the arm and looking round at the mummy as though he half thought that
the silent witness in the packing-case might be listening to the words
which, if it could have heard, would have had such a terrible
significance for it. 'Do you really mean to say in sober earnest that
there is the remotest chance of your science being able to work such a
miracle as that?'
'A chance, yes,' replied Djama, steadily. 'It is not a certainty, of
course, but I believe it to be possible. Will you let me try?'
'Yes, you shall try,' answered the professor in a voice nothing like as
steady as his. 'If any other man but you had even hinted at such a
thing, I would have seen him--well, in a lunatic asylum first. But
there, I will trust my Inca to you. It seems a fearful thing even to
attempt, and yet, after all, if it fails there will be no harm done, and
if it succeeds--ah, yes, if it succeeds--it will mean--'
'Endless fame for you, my friend, as the recreator of a lost society,
and for both of us wealth, perhaps beyond counting. But stop a
moment--granted success, how shall we talk with our Inca _revenant_?
Have I not heard you say that the Aymaru dialect of the Quichua tongue
is lost as completely as the Inca treasures?'
'Not quite, though I believe I am now the only white man on earth who
understands it.'
'Good! then let me get to work at once, and in a week--well, in a week
we shall see.'
II
A PHYSIOLOGICAL EXPERIMENT
Laurens Djama dined with the professor that night, and the small hours
were growing large before they ended the long talk of which their
strange bargain, and the still stranger experiment which was to result
from it, formed the subject. The next day the packing-case containing
the mummy was transferred to Djama's laboratory, and then for a whole
week neither the professor nor any of his friends or acquaintances had
either sight or speech of him.
Every caller at his house in Brondesbury Park was politely but firmly
denied admittance on professional grounds, and three letters and two
telegrams which the professor had sent to him, after being himself
denied admittance, remained unanswered.
At last, on the Thursday following the Friday on which the mummy had
been sent to the laboratory, the professor received a telegram telling
him to come at once to the doctor. Three minutes after he had read it he
was in a hansom and on his way to Kilburn, wondering what it was that he
was to be brought face to face with during the next half hour.
This time there was no denial. The door opened as he went up the steps,
and the servant handed him a note. He tore it open and read,--
'_Come round to the laboratory and make a new acquaintance who will
yet be an old one._'
His heart stood still, and he caught his breath sharply as he read the
words which told him that the unearthly experiment for which he had
furnished the subject had been successful.
The doctor's laboratory stood apart from the house in the long, narrow
garden at the back, and as he approached the door he stopped for a
moment, and an almost irresistible impulse to go away and have nothing
more to do with the unholy work in hand took possession of him. Then the
love of his science and the longing to hear the marvels which could only
be heard from the lips that had been silent for centuries overcame his
fears, and he went up to the door and knocked softly.
It was opened by a haggard, wild-eyed man, whom he scarcely recognised
as his old friend. Djama did not speak; he simply caught hold of the
sleeve of his coat with a nervous, trembling grasp, drew him in, shut
the door, and led him to a corner of the room where there was a little
camp bed, curtained all round with thin, transparent muslin, through
which he could see the shape of a man lying under the sheets.
Djama pulled the curtain aside, and said in a hoarse whisper,--
'Look, it has been hard work, and terrible work, too, but I have
succeeded. Do you see, he is breathing!'
The professor stared wide-eyed at the white pillow on which lay the head
of what, a week before, had been his mummy. Now it was the head of a
living man; the pale bronze of the skin was clear and moist with the dew
of life; the lips were no longer brown and dry, but faintly red and
slightly parted, and the counterpane, which was pulled close up under
the chin, was slowly rising and falling with the regular rhythm of a
sleeper's breathing. He looked from the face of him who had been dead
and was alive again to the face of the man whose daring science and
perfect skill had wrought the unholy miracle, and then he shrank back
from the bedside, pulling Djama with him, and whispering,--
'Good God, it is even more awful than it is wonderful! How did you do
it?'
'That is my secret,' whispered Djama, his dry lips shaping themselves
into a ghastly smile, 'and for all the treasures that that man ever saw,
I wouldn't tell it to a living soul, or do such hideous work again. I
tell you I have seen life and death fighting together for two days and
nights in this room--not, mind you, as they fight on a deathbed, but the
other way, and I would rather see a thousand men die than one more come
back out, of death into life. You see, he is sleeping now. He opened his
eyes just before daybreak this morning--that's nearly ten hours ago--but
if I lived ten thousand years I should never forget that one look he
gave me before he shut them again. Since then he has slept, and I stood
by that bed testing his pulse and his breathing for eight hours before I
wired you. Then I knew he would live, and so I sent for you.'
The professor looked at his friend with an involuntary and unconquerable
aversion rising in his heart against him; an aversion that was half
fear, half horror, and then he remembered that he himself had a share in
the fearful work which had been done--a work that could not now be
undone without murder.
With another backward look at the bed, he said, in a whisper that was
almost a smothered groan,--
'When will he wake?'
Before Djama could reply, the question was answered by a faint rustle,
and a low, long-drawn sigh from the bed. They looked and saw the Inca's
face turned towards them, and two fever-bright eyes shining through the
curtains.
'He is awake already, two hours sooner than I expected,' said Djama, in
a voice that he strove vainly to keep steady. 'Come, now, you are the
only man on earth who can talk to him. Let us see if he has come back to
reason as well as to life.'
'Yes, I will try,' said the professor, faintly. He took a couple of
trembling steps. Then the lights in the room began to dance, the
whitewashed walls reeled round him, and he pitched forward and fell
unconscious by the side of the bed.
When he came to himself he was lying on the floor of the laboratory, out
of sight of the bed, behind a great cupboard, glass-doored and filled
with bottles. Djama was kneeling beside him. A strong smell of ammonia
dominated the other smells peculiar to a laboratory, and his brow was
wet with the spirit that Djama was gently rubbing on it with his hand.
'What have I been doing?' he said, as, with the other's assistance, he
got up into a sitting position and looked stupidly about him. 'It isn't
true, that is it, I really saw--Good God no, it can't be; it's too
horrible. I must have dreamt it.'
'Nonsense, my dear fellow, nonsense! I should have thought you would
have had better nerves than that. Come, take a nip of this, and pull
yourself together. There is nothing so very horrible about it for you.
Now, if you had had the actual work to do--'
'Then it _is_ true! You really have brought him back to life again? That
was him I saw lying on the bed?' He looked up at Djama as he spoke with
a half-inquiring, half-frightened glance. His voice was weak and
unsteady, like the voice of a man who has been stunned by some terrible
shock, and is still dazed with the fear and wonder of it.
'Yes, of course it was,' said Djama; 'but I can tell you, I should have
hesitated before I introduced you so suddenly, if I hadn't thought that
the nerves of an old traveller like you would have been a good deal
stronger than they seem to be. It's a very good job that His Highness
was only about half conscious himself when you collapsed, or you might
have given him a shock that would have killed him again.'
'Again?' said the professor, echoing the last word as he got up slowly
to his feet. 'That sounds queer, doesn't it, to talk of killing a man
_again_? I am more sorry than I can say that I was weak enough to let my
feelings overcome me in such a ridiculous fashion. However, I am all
right now. Give me another drain of that brandy of yours, and then let
us talk. Is he still awake?'
'No, he dozed off again almost immediately, and you have been here about
ten minutes or a quarter of an hour. Do you think you can stand another
look at him?'
'Oh, certainly,' said the professor, who, as a matter of fact, felt a
trifle ashamed of himself and his weakness, and was anxious to do
something that would restore his credit. He followed the doctor out into
the laboratory again, and stood with him for some moments without
speaking by the Inca's bedside. He was sleeping very quietly, and his
breathing seemed to be stronger and deeper than it had been. He had
slightly shifted his position, and was lying now half turned on his
right side, with his right cheek on the pillow.
'You see he has moved,' whispered Djama. 'That shows that muscular
control has been re-established. We shall have him walking about in a
day or so. Ah! he is dreaming, and of something pleasant, too. Look at
his lips moving into a smile. Poor fellow, just fancy a man dreaming of
things that happened three hundred years ago, and waking up to find
himself in another world. I'll be bound he is dreaming about his wife or
sweetheart, and we shall have to tell him, or rather you will, that she
has been a mummy for three centuries. Look now, his lips are moving; I
believe he is going to say something. See if you can hear what it is?'
The professor stooped down and held his ear so close that he could feel
on his cheek the gentle fanning of the breath that had been still for
three centuries. Then the Inca's lips moved again, and a soft sighing
sound came from them, and in the midst of it he caught the words,--
'_Cori-Coyllur, Nustallipa, Ñusta mi!_'
Then there came a long, gentle sigh. The Inca's lips became still again,
shaped into a very sweet and almost womanly smile, as though his vision
had passed and left him in a happy, dreamless slumber.
'What did he say?' whispered Djama. 'Were you able to understand it?'
'Yes,' said the professor, 'yes, and you were right about the subject of
his dream. Come away, in case we wake him, and I will tell you.'
They went to the other end of the laboratory, and the professor went on,
still speaking in a low, half-whisper,--
'Poor fellow, I am afraid we have incurred a terribly heavy debt to him.
What he said meant, "Golden Star, my princess, my darling!" So you see
you were right, but poor Golden Star has been dead three hundred years
and more--that is, at least, if his Golden Star is the same as the
heroine of the tradition.'
'What tradition?' asked Djama.
'It's too long a story to tell you now, but if she is the same, then our
Inca's name is Vilcaroya, and he is the hero of the strangest story,
and, thanks to you, the strangest fate that the wildest romancer could
imagine. However, the story must keep, for I wouldn't spoil it by
cutting it short. The principal question now is--what are we going to do
with him? We can't keep him here, of course?'
'No, certainly not,' replied Djama, with knitted brows and faintly
smiling lips. 'His Highness must be cared for in accordance with his
rank and our expectations. I shall have him taken into the house and
properly nursed.'
'But what about your sister? You will frighten her to death if you take
in a living patient that has been dead for three hundred years.'
'Not if we manage it properly; there will be no need to tell Ruth the
story yet, at anyrate. I'll tell her that I am going to receive a
patient who is suffering from a mysterious disease unknown to medical
science. I'll say I picked him up in the Oriental Home in Whitechapel,
and have brought him here to study him, and you and I must smuggle him
into the house and put him to bed some time when she is out of the way.
Then I'll instal her as nurse; in fact, she will do that for herself;
and as there is no chance of her learning anything from him, we can
break the truth to her by degrees, and when His Highness is well enough
to travel we'll all be off to Peru and come back millionaires, if you
can only persuade him to tell you the secret of his treasure-houses.'
That night the doctor and the professor took turns in watching by the
bedside of their strange patient, whose slumber became lighter and
lighter until, towards midnight, he got so restless and apparently
uneasy that Djama considered that the time had come to wake him and see
if he was able to take any nourishment. So he set the professor to work,
warming some chicken broth over a spirit lamp, and mixing a little
champagne and soda-water in one glass and brandy and water in another.
Meanwhile, he filled a hypodermic syringe with colourless fluid out of a
little stoppered bottle, and then turned the sheet down and injected the
contents of the syringe under the smooth, bronze skin of the Inca's
shoulder. He moved slightly at the prick of the needle, then he drew
two or three deep breaths, and suddenly sat up in bed and stared about
him with wide open eyes, full, as they well might be, of inquiring
wonder.
The professor, who had turned at the sound of the hurried breathing, saw
him as he raised himself, and heard him say in the clear and somewhat
high-pitched tone of a dweller among the mountains,--
'Has the morning dawned again for the Children of the Sun? Am I truly
awake, or am I only dreaming that the death-sleep is over? Where is
Golden Star, and where am I? Tell me--you who have doubtless brought me
back to the life we forsook together--was it last night or how many
nights or moons ago?'
The words came slowly at first, like those of a man still on the
borderland between sleep and waking; but each one was spoken more
clearly and decisively than the one before it, and the last sentence was
uttered in the strong, steady tones of a man in full possession of his
faculties.
'Come here, Lamson,' said Djama, a trifle nervously; 'bring the soup
with you, and some brandy, though I don't think he needs it. Do you
understand what he said?'
[Illustration: "Am I only dreaming that the death-sleep is over?"
_To face page 26._]
'Yes,' replied the professor, coming to the bedside with a cup of soup
in one hand and a glass of brandy and water in the ether. Both hands
trembled as he set the cup and the glass down on a little table. He
looked at the Inca like a man looking at a re-embodied spirit, and said
to him in Quichua,--
'I am not he who has brought you back to life, but my friend here, who
is a great and skilled physician, and master of the arts of life and
death. You are in his house, and safe, for we are friends, and have
nursed you back to health and waking life after your long sleep.'
'But Golden Star,' said the Inca, interrupting him with a flash of
impatience in his eyes. 'Where is she--my bride who went with me into
the shades of death? Have you not brought her, too, back to life?'
The professor stared in silence at the strange speaker of these strange
words, which told him so plainly that the old legend of the death-bridal
of Vilcaroya-Inca and Golden Star was now no legend at all, but a true
story which had come down almost unchanged from generation to
generation. Then an infinite pity filled his heart for this lonely
wanderer from another age, whose friends and kindred had been dead for
centuries, and whose very nation was now only a shadowy name on a
half-forgotten page of history.
'What does he say?' said Djama, breaking in upon his reverie. 'I suppose
he wants to know where he is, and what has become of that sweetheart of
his he was dreaming about?'
'Yes,' replied the professor; 'but you won't understand properly until I
have told you the story. Poor fellow! I suppose we shall have to tell
him the ghastly truth. Good Heavens! fancy telling a man that his wife
has been dead for three hundred years or more! Look here, Djama, this
business can't stop here, you know. What a fool I was, after all, not to
see if there wasn't another chamber beside the one I found him in! Of
course there must be, and I have no doubt she is lying there at this
present moment. We shall have to go and find her, and you must restore
her as you have done him. Phew! where is it all going to end, I wonder!'
'And suppose we can't find her, or suppose I fail, even if I can bring
myself to undertake that horrible work all over again?' said Djama,
looking almost fearfully at the Inca, who was still sitting up in the
bed glancing mutely from one to the other, as though waiting for an
answer to his question. Then, keeping his voice as steady as he could,
the professor told him the story of his resuscitation, addressing him by
his own name and ending by asking him if he remembered when he and
Golden Star had devoted themselves to die together, as the tradition
said they had done.
'Yes, I remember!' said Vilcaroya, with brightening eyes and faintly
flushing cheeks. 'How could I forget it? It was when the bearded
strangers from the north had come and taken the usurper Atahuallpa
prisoner in the midst of his conquering host at Cajamarca. It was after
the Inca Huascar had been slain by stealth with a traitor's knife. It
was on the night of the feast of Raymi, when our Father the Sun had left
the Sacred Fleece unkindled, and when was fulfilled the prophecy that
the night should fall over the land of the Children of the Sun. Now,
tell me, you who speak the language of my people, how long have I been
sleeping?'
Instead of replying directly, he offered the Inca the cup of broth, and
asked him first to take the nourishment that he must need so greatly
after his long fast, telling him that it was needful to prevent him
losing his new-found strength again. When he had eaten and drunk a
little, then he would tell him what he could.
He took the broth and a little bread obediently, and while he was eating
and drinking, the professor translated what he had said to the doctor.
When he had finished, Djama looked at the Inca, sitting there taking
food and drink like any other human being, and with evident relish, too,
and said,--
'That happened in 1532--three hundred and sixty-five years ago! It
sounds utterly incredible, doesn't it, and yet there he is, eating and
drinking and talking with us just like any other man. I can hardly
believe the work of my own hands, and I am beginning to half wish I had
never begun it. Just imagine the awful loneliness to which we shall have
condemned this poor fellow, supposing we can't find his Golden Star and
restore her to him! Still perhaps you had better tell him the truth at
once. I think he can stand it. He has been a long time coming round, but
I don't think there is much the matter with him now.'
Then the professor told Vilcaroya the, to him, so terrible truth, that
of all men in the world he was the most lonely, separated as he was from
all that he had known and loved by an impassable gulf of nearly four
long centuries--that his well-loved Golden Star was but a memory known
to few, a name in a vague tradition; that the resting-place, even of her
mummy, was unknown, and that all that the darkest prophecy could have
foretold had in very truth fallen upon the land of the Incas and the
Children of the Sun.
Vilcaroya heard him to the end in silence; then, raising his hands to
his forehead, he bowed his head and said,--
'It is the will of our Father, foretold by the lips of his priests, but
other things were foretold which shall be fulfilled as well as these.
Golden Star is not dead; she only sleeps as I did. If I have awakened,
why shall not she? I know where she lies--where Anda-Huillac swore to me
they would lay her. Come, let us go! I will take you to the place, and
you shall restore her to me, warm and living and loving as she was when
I kissed her good-bye in the Sanctuary of the Sun, and I will give you
treasures of gold and silver and jewels such as you have never dreamed
of in exchange for her.'
THE STORY OF VILCAROYA
CHAPTER I
BACK THROUGH THE SHADOWS
As the time passes between dreaming and waking, so for me did the long
years pass, flowing like a smooth and silent stream seen from afar, out
of the darkness that fell so slowly and so sweetly over my eyes that
night when I sank into the death-trance beside Golden Star, my beloved,
in the bridal chamber that they made for us in the Temple of the Sun,
into the light that shone into them when they opened upon a scene so
different, and saw a white, haggard face bending over me, and two black,
burning eyes looking into them.
Then I closed them again and slept, and when I woke again there were two
faces looking at me, both white and full of fear and wonder, and I saw
two beings who seemed very strange to me, such as I had never seen among
the Children of the Sun, standing by the couch on which I lay, and one
of them fell down as though sore stricken, and I tried to think what
this could mean, and, thinking, fell asleep again.
Then I dreamt a long, sweet dream of the days that I now know were far
past, when I, Vilcaroya, son of the great Huayna-Capac, lived in the
Land of the Four Regions, a prince among princes, a warrior and a child
of the Sacred Race, whose blood had flowed unmixed through many
generations from the divine fountain of life and light, our Father the
Sun. I dreamt of Golden Star, and the days when I loved her in timid
silence, for she was the fairest of all our race, and so, as it seemed
to me, destined to no less a lot than the motherhood of a long line of
Incas, in whom should live and grow to ever greater splendour the
glories of the race that owned no earthly origin.
I called her in my dream, but she made no answer. I saw her lying by my
side in that well-remembered chamber, with the shadowy forms of the
priests standing about us as I had seen them long before; but, alas! she
lay still with closed eyes and lips which seemed to have forgotten how
sweetly they once could smile. I whispered her name, mingled with many a
loving word, into her ear, and still she moved not. I put my arms about
her and kissed her, and instantly I shrank back shivering with a fear
unspeakable, for the form that should have been so warm and soft and
yielding, was chilled and pulseless and rigid, as though some foul magic
had changed it into stone, and the lips that should have given me back
kiss for kiss were still and cold and senseless.
Then I saw, as it seemed with half-closed eyes, that dear shape of hers
being borne away from me, while I, longing to snatch her from the hands
of those who were robbing me of her, yet lay helpless on the couch,
without strength to move or speak, until all grew dim around me, and I
felt myself raised by invisible hands, and borne far away through the
darkness--and so my dream melted away into the night of sleep.
Then, yet again, I woke and saw the two strange men that I had seen
before, and one came and spoke to me kindly in my own tongue, and called
me by my own name, and gave me food and drink, and told me in a few, but
to me terrible, words that the dreams I had dreamed were dreams
indeed--dreams of a time that was long gone by, of things that had
passed away, perchance for ever, and men and women whose names were only
memories.
Thus did I come from the evening of one age into the morning of another,
falling asleep in the prime of my strength and manhood, and waking again
even as I had fallen asleep--though those who had closed my eyes had
been dead for many generations, and the name of our ancient race was
but a bitter memory to the sons and daughters of my own land amidst the
mountains.
Then I went forth into the wondrous new world into which I had awakened,
the world which you who read this hold so common, and which I found
crowded with wonders so many and marvellous that if it had not been for
the loving care of her who guided my first footsteps on my new journey,
as she might have guided those of a little child, my re-awakening reason
must soon have been quenched in the night of madness.
Many and strange as were the things that happened to me during the first
days and months of my awakening, there is little need that I should now
write of them at any length. Yet something I must say of them in order
that the still stranger things of which I shall have to tell may be the
better understood.
And first I must tell of her whose gentle hand led me from weakness to
strength, and guided my unwonted footsteps through the mazes of that new
wonderland in which I had awakened, and from whose lips I learnt the
first words that I spoke of the strong and stately English speech in
which I am striving so lamely and imperfectly to write down the story of
my new life.
This was Ruth, the sister of Djama, whose smile was the first ray of
sunshine that shone into my second life, and whose laugh was so sweet
and gladsome, that when it first sounded in my ears, like an echo from
the dear dead past, I named her forthwith Cusi-Coyllur, which in English
means Joyful Star--after that royal maiden of my own race who loved the
handsome rebel Ollantay, and, refusing all others, waited for him in the
House of the Virgins of the Sun until he came in triumph to claim her.
She came with us to the south, rejecting all contrary counsel and
braving the labours of the long, toilsome journey, so that she might be
the first woman to welcome Golden Star back into the world of life.
Yet what words can I find in this new speech that I have yet but half
learnt to tell fitly of her beauty and sweet graciousness, and of all
the magic which made her seem in my eyes like an angel that had come
down from the Mansions of the Sun to greet me in a world in which I was
a stranger? Better that you who may read what I write should learn to
know her for yourself through the sweetness and grace of her own words
and deeds, as I shall strive, however unworthily, to tell of them. So,
then, let it be.
But there is another of whom I must say something before I go on to tell
of my return to my own land--now, alas! mine no longer--and that is
Francis Hartness, a captain among the warriors of the English, and a
friend of him who was called the professor, because of his learning--he
who had helped Djama to bring me back into the world of living men.
He was a man of about thirty years, tall of stature and strong of limb,
brief of speech and straight of tongue, with eyes as blue as the skies
which shine on Yucay, and hair and beard golden and bright as the rays
which flow from the smile of our Father the Sun. Him we met by chance
one evening in the square of the town which is called Panama, named,
they told me, after that older city, whence the conquerors of my people
sailed to ravish the realms of Huayna-Capac. There was peace in his own
land and all the neighbouring countries, and so he was journeying to the
region which is now called South America, where the descendants of the
Spaniards are nearly always fighting among themselves over the spoils of
my people, to see what work he could find to keep his sword from
rusting.
As he was greatly skilled in that strange, new warfare of flame and
thunder and far-smiting bolts, which had but begun to be when our Father
the Sun hid his face from the eyes of his children, I took counsel with
Joyful Star--who was ever my wisest as well as my most faithful guide
in all things--and we together told him my story as we went south, and
after that I had asked him if he would help me in the task which I was
going to essay, which was nothing less than the taking back of the land
of my fathers, and the raising of the children of my people to the
ancient glories of that state which I alone of living men remembered. To
this, after some shrewd questioning, he consented--for it was a
desperate venture, such as his brave heart loved--and when he had given
me his hand on it, and promised, after the simple fashion of his nation,
to be true to me in peace and war, I told him of the means that I could
employ to gain my end, and how I would use that lust of gold which had
led to the ruin of my people, so that it should conquer the children of
their conquerors and give me back the empire that had been my father's.
At Panama we took ship again and travelled swiftly and straightly south,
driven by that wondrous power which had come into the world to serve men
like a tireless giant since I had fallen asleep; and day after day on
the southward voyage I walked alone up and down the deck, or stood
gazing, rapt in thought, at the desert foreshore along which the steamer
was running, and at the great masses of the dark brown barren mountains,
as they towered range beyond range till they overtopped the clouds
themselves and stood serene and sharply outlined against the blue
background of the upper sky.
Behind those mighty, rock-built ramparts lay the well-loved,
well-remembered land over which my fathers had ruled in the days of
peace, before the stranger and the oppressor had come. On the other side
of them I knew that I was now fated to find only the poor fragments of
the great cities and stately pleasure-houses that I had known in all
their strength and beauty--only the silent and deserted ruins of the
mighty fortresses which had guarded the confines of our lost empire, and
were the portals through which the Children of the Sun had marched to
unvarying conquest.
I thought, too, of the broad, green, level plain of Cajamarca,
surrounded by its guardian ramparts of terraced hills; of the long,
verdant valley of Cuzco with its hundred towns and villages nestling
amidst the foliage which shaded their streets and squares, and looking
out over the level fields of the valley and the countless tiers of
terraces that rose green and gold with maize, or glowing with flowers,
to the summits of the hills; and of that earthly paradise of Yucay,
wherein the Gardens of the Sun, the golden shrines of my ancient faith,
and the wondrous pleasure-palaces of many generations of Incas had
glowed in almost heavenly beauty, embosomed in green and gold and
scarlet in the midst of inaccessible mountains which themselves were
overtopped by the mighty peaks of eternal snow that I had so often seen
glimmering white and ghostly in the moonlight, like guardian spirits
round an enchanted realm, on many a night of delicious revelry now far
past and lost in the swift flood of the years that had rolled by since
then.
It was to the poor remnants of all these glories that I was
returning--returning to find, as they had told me, the homes of my
ancestors laid waste and the descendants of my people the slaves of
strangers. The desolation which it had taken centuries to accomplish
would be to me but the swift, magical change of a day and a night and a
morning.
Think, you who read, of the dread and the horror of it! I had seen the
last day of the stately empire of my fathers the Incas! I had fallen
asleep and I had awakened, and now, on the morrow of my sleep, I was
coming back to the silent and ghastly ruins which the slow, pitiless
work of the years and centuries had left behind it!
But over the gulf of these same centuries the hand of my Father the Sun
was swiftly stretched out to help and uphold me, for no sooner did I
again tread that soil which had once been sacred to Him, than my
fainting heart grew strong with the memory of that ancient prophecy
which I had come to fulfil, and of which this new life of mine was of
itself a part fulfilment. If one part, and that not the least, had
already been made good, then why not the rest?
Far away behind those towering tiers of mountains lay Golden Star in
that resting-place to which she had been borne with me, sleeping soundly
in the impassive embrace of their mighty arms; and within the
safe-keeping of those arms lay, too, that uncounted treasure, that vast
legacy which the long-dead leaders of my people had bequeathed to me for
the sacred purpose of restoring those glories which all men, save
myself, believed to be but a dream of the distant past, that
incomparable inheritance of which I was the sole lawful heir on earth,
and which I was coming to share with Golden Star when I had once more
raised the Rainbow Banner above the restored throne of the divine Manco.
As I thought of all this, the blood that had lain stagnant through the
long years of my magical death-sleep began to pulse like living fire
through my veins. My new life with all its marvels became glorified into
a waking vision of new conquests and re-won empire. The past was a dream
both sweet and bitter in its vivid memories, but still a dream that had
been dreamt and was done with. The present and the future were
realities, golden and glorious with a hope justified by the miracle that
had made them possible. I had learnt enough of the new age in which I
had awakened to know that the lust of gold which had brought the
conqueror and the oppressor into the land of the Children of the Sun
burnt every whit as fiercely in the hearts of the men who were living
now as it had done in theirs, and that lust, as I had told Hartness and
the others, should now work for me and for the redemption of my people
so that that which had been their ruin should yet prove their salvation.
Thus, through the long sunny days and cool, starlit nights did I,
Vilcaroya, last of the Incas, muse and dream until I once more stood in
the Land of the Four Regions, hale and strong, and burning with the
ardour of my sacred mission, ready to dare and do all things, and to use
without ruth or scruple that dread power which would so soon lie within
my hands to fulfil my oath and Golden Star's, and to accomplish the work
that I had come through the shadows of death to do.
So I came back to the shores of that well-loved land of mine which, by
the reckoning of the new time into which I had come, had been for more
than three hundred years the sport and prey of the generations of
strangers and oppressors who had followed those first conquerors of the
Children of the Sun, whose coming had sounded the hour of doom and ruin
through the length and breadth of that glorious land of green plains and
verdant valleys, of terraced hills and towering mountains, which had
once been our empire and our home.
From the mean coast town of wooden houses where the railway begins we
travelled ever upward over great, grey, sloping deserts, and by rugged
ravines with steep, broken walls of red earth and ragged rock; through
range after range of mountains that were all strange and hateful to me,
until we swung round the shoulder of a great crag-crowned mountain, and
I saw across a vast plain, into which range after range of lesser hills
sloped down, the crystal-white peaks of the snow-mountains towering far
beyond the clouds into the blue sky above them.
Then I knew that I was coming nearer to the land that had once been
mine, and ere many hours had passed we stopped in a great city which
still bore its old name of Arequipa, the Place of Rest, which my own
ancestors had given to it. It was no longer the place of palaces and
pleasure-houses, of flowery gardens and leafy woods that I had seen it,
but above it still gleamed the white snow-fields and shining peaks of
Charchani and Pichu-Pichu, and between the two great white ranges still
towered the vast, black, snow-crowned cone of Misti, the smoke-mountain,
rising sheer in its lonely grandeur twelve thousand feet above the
sloping plain on which the city lay.
As I looked at it again for the first time after so many years, I asked
the professor, as we all called him, if, since I had been asleep, the
mountain had been rent asunder again as it had been in the olden times,
long before the Spaniards came to seek gold and blood in the Land of the
Four Regions. He was very learned in such matters, even as Djama, his
friend, was learned in secrets of life and death, and when he told me
that the fires within it had slept for more years than men could
remember, I was glad. Yet I said nothing of my inward joy, for had I
told them all that I knew about the valley of black sand and yellow rock
that was hidden behind the far-off wall of snow which shone so whitely
against the blue of the midway heaven, it might have been many a long
day before we had again set out on our journey towards the place that
was the goal at once of my hopes and fears.
We stayed seven days in Arequipa, making our last preparations for the
work that lay before us and then we went on again by train to Sicuani,
in the valley of the Vilcañota. Then from Sicuani we journeyed on by
road, riding on mules through a land that was lovely even in my eyes,
though its loveliness was to me only the beauty of ruin and decay, for
this was the heart and centre of that vanished empire whose glories no
living eyes but mine had ever seen.
I saw wildernesses where there had been gardens, and gaunt, treeless
mountains lying bare to the glare of the sun. Lakes that had shone
encircled with gardens now spread out dull and stagnant over the
neglected fields. A few ragged fragments of grey clay walls still rose
from the green plain of Cacha, where I had last seen, in all its glory
of gold and rainbow colours, the holy Temple of Viracocha; and the great
guardian fortress of Piquillacta, which I had seen stretching its
impregnable length and rearing its unscalable height from mountain to
mountain across the entrance to the once lovely valley of Cuzco, lay, a
huge ragged mass of towering ruins, splendid even in decay.
As we passed through the one half-choked portal that still lay open, I
thought, with heavy heart and bowed-down head, of the great fortress as
I had seen it in the glory of its pride and strength, of the gallant
warriors that had defended it, and the gay processions that I had seen
winding in and out of its stately gates, making its hoary walls ring
with songs and laughter, and, farther on, as we rode along the valley on
that sad and yet eager three days' march of ours, I saw, on the
hill-spurs about me, the black and ragged ruins of the fair cities and
stately temples and palaces that I had seen crowded with happy throngs,
bright with gold and colours, and so fair and strong that no man could
have dreamed of the ruin the oppressor had brought upon them.
And so, journeying amidst all these sad memories through a land which,
for me, was peopled with the ghosts of my long-dead friends and kindred,
we came out at length on the broad, green Plain of the Oracle, and there
before me, still nestling under her guardian hills, lay, glimmering
white and grey under the slanting sun-rays, all that was left of what
had once been Cuzco, the City of the Sun and the home of his children.
Then, as I lifted my eyes and gazed upon it through the rising mist of
my tears, I bowed my bared head towards it and swore, in the sadness and
silence of my desolate heart, that, to the full extent of the power
which I believed was soon to be mine, I would take life for life and
blood for blood, and I would give sorrow for sorrow and shame for shame,
until I had paid to the full the debt which the long years of plunder
and cruelty and oppression had heaped up against those who, from
generation to generation, had brought this shame and ruin on the once
bright home of the Children of the Sun.