THE TREACHERY OF DJAMA
'Wait now for a little while with patience,' I said, laying my hand on
his shoulder, 'and you shall see a strange thing, a thing that shall
show you how strong the old traditions are still in the land of the
Incas. Lie here and do not let yourself be seen till I send a messenger
for you. It will not be very long.'
He nodded and I rose quietly to my feet and went round the hollow until
I got the great stone between me and the place where the soldiers were
standing, and then I went down on my hands and knees and crept quietly
towards it and climbed up a flight of steps carved in it. This took me
to the top of the cleft in which is the broken stairway. I climbed down
this and dropped softly into the hole at the bottom. It was dry now, for
Tupac had done that which I had bidden him in the throne-room. I felt
my way down the steps till I came to the wall at the bottom. Then I
whispered his name, and he answered out of the darkness in the old
language,--
'I am here, Lord, and all that has been ordered is done.'
I crept towards him along the wall, measuring my way along it with my
outstretched arms till I knew that I had come to the revolving stone
which closed the way into the hall. He was standing against it, and one
of the others was with him. I felt over the door till I found the silver
socket, and then we opened the door as before with the bar which Tupac
had brought. Then I went down through the hall and lighted a lantern and
went into the little chamber where, as before, I changed my clothing for
the imperial robes, and set the Llautu on my head; but I kept on my belt
under my cloak, and put two revolvers in it in case I should need them,
and when I went back into the hall Tupac and the others were lighting
candles and putting them in the holders round the walls as I had bidden
them. When this was done I said to him,--
'Go now and bring the others down, first the soldiers with their
officer, by whose side you must keep closely, and see that your knife
is ready. Then let Ainu bring the Men of the Blood, and the strangers
quickly after them, and bid Anahuac and Ainu close the door when the
last man has entered.'
He bowed his head, and the two went out and left me sitting there on a
seat built up of blocks of gold before the pyramid, waiting to play my
part in the scene that was to follow, and strike the first blow in the
battle that I had come to fight. Presently I heard the rattle of arms
and the sound of footsteps coming along the passage. I took one of the
revolvers out of my belt and held it ready under my cloak, and sat still
and rigid as the effigy of Yupanqui, looking straight before me at the
entrance at the other end.
Tupac came in first, and close behind him was a Spanish officer with a
drawn sword in his hand. After him came the soldiers, two and two, with
their rifles and bayonets. The officer stopped and stared about him,
blinking with eyes half dazzled by the sudden light and the glitter of
the gold and jewels which he saw wherever he looked. The same instant I
saw the gleam of steel in Tupac's hand close to his yellow throat. Then
he said to him in Spanish,--
'Put up your sword, señor, and come with me and beg your life from the
Son of the Sun who sits yonder on his throne.'
The Spaniard uttered a loud cry of amazement as his eyes fell upon me,
for so far he had not seen me, having been too much taken up by the
splendours of the hall. Then he turned and called to his soldiers, but
while the cry was still in his throat, Tupac's arm went round his neck
and the knife-point touched his skin. Then he bade two of the soldiers
take the sword out of his hand and hold him fast, which they did,
greatly to his wonder, for he did not know that the betrayer was already
betrayed. As soon as he was safe, Tupac told the other soldiers to take
their places along the walls, and they did so in silence, yet wondering
greatly at all they saw. There were four-and-twenty of them, not
counting the two who held the officer, all men of Indian blood whom the
Spaniards[D] had made rather slaves than soldiers to fight their petty
quarrels for them for little pay and scanty food.
After them came Anahuac and Ainu and the rest of the Men of the Blood,
bringing with them Djama and the professor blindfolded, and Francis
Hartness with his eyes unbound. All this time I had neither moved nor
made a sound, and the soldiers were looking at me almost in terror,
wondering whether I was truly a man or one of the dead Incas with living
eyes in his head. As for the Spanish officer, being a coward, as many of
his sort are, he was already white with fear, and his knees were shaking
as he stood between the two soldiers who held him. When all had entered,
Anahuac came and prostrated himself before me and said,--
'The commands of the Son of the Sun are obeyed. All are here, and the
door is shut.'
Before I answered him, I called Francis Hartness to me and said,--
'Come here and stand by me, my friend, for I shall need your counsel.'
He came and stood by me on my right hand, saying as he looked still
wonderingly at me,--
'This means treachery, I suppose, and after that, tragedy. Is that why
you left Ruth and Golden Star in the Fortress? I am afraid you had only
too much reason to, but I hope, for Ruth's sake, you will do justice
with as much mercy as you can.'
'You shall see,' I answered. 'But if it were not for her you would see
justice without mercy.'
Then I bade Anahuac rise, and told him and Tupac to unbind the eyes of
Djama and the professor and bring them before me.
As Djama's eyes opened to the light, he stared about him in silence for
a moment. His face was very pale, and his lips were twitching and
trembling. The professor, too, looked about him, also wondering greatly
at what he saw; but neither of them spoke till they had been led forward
and stood before me. Then, while Djama still kept silence, the
professor, looking from me to Hartness, said in a voice that had much
wonder, but no fear or sign of guilt, in it,--
'What is this? What does all this mean? What are all these soldiers here
for, Vilcaroya? I thought it was so important that all this should be
kept secret? Surely no one has betrayed you already? But no, that can't
be. Hartness, what does it all mean?'
'It means--first,' I said, speaking very slowly, and not in a loud
voice, 'that you have been brought here with Laurens Djama to take the
oath which you agreed to take--never to reveal the secrets of the things
that you have learned. I ask your pardon for the rude way in which my
people have brought you, but it was necessary.'
Then I turned to Djama, who was standing silent and motionless, with
clenched teeth and set face, like one who knows that he stands near his
doom and has no hope of mercy, and said,--
'Now, Laurens Djama, are you ready to do as you promised to do when I
told you that I would give you the half of this gold for what you have
done for me and Golden Star? Are you ready to swear the oath here, in
the presence of these witnesses, that you swore to me then?'
He drew himself up and looked at me boldly--for he was a brave man
although his heart was black--and said to me with a hard, harsh laugh in
his voice,--
'You have been too clever for me, and so I suppose you have the right to
mock me. There is no need to go on with this farce. The sight of your
treasures gave me the gold-fever, I suppose, and it drove me mad, as it
has driven many others mad, and I betrayed you. There is no use saying
any more. I see that I have been betrayed too, and that my life is in
your hands, so I need only say that I keep the right of taking it myself
in my own way.'
'There is no need for that yet,' I said, 'and others are concerned in
this besides you.'
Then I turned from him to Francis Hartness and said,--
'I cannot speak the Spanish speech, and I would not if I could. Do you
therefore speak to the Spaniard yonder, and bid him say how he came to
be here with his soldiers. Tell him, too, that if he lies, or refuses to
speak, he shall be buried in the gold he came to steal until the weight
of it crushes his life out. But say to him that if he speaks the truth
and holds nothing back and does as I shall bid him, he shall have his
life, and afterwards as much gold as three men can carry.'
So then Francis Hartness turned to the trembling Spaniard and questioned
him, and he confessed freely as soon as he knew he was not to be killed,
and told how Djama had gone to the Governor of Cuzco and told him of my
coming and of a great treasure that he would show him, and of others
that I knew the secret of and might be made to reveal, and how he had
bargained that half of all that was found should be his and the other
half the Governor's, if he would help him to carry it to the coast in
safety and put it on a steamer. The Spaniard told also how the Governor,
who was his own father, had only half believed this story, and had
bidden him bring a company of soldiers to the appointed place and see if
there was any truth in Djama's story, and, if he found there was, to
take Djama and all of us prisoners and carry us back to Cuzco, and put
us into the prison until he could question us the next day.
When he had finished, Djama laughed again and said,--
'There's the honour of a Peruvian! Serve me right for being such a fool
as to trust to it!'
But I bade him sternly to hold his peace till he should be told to
speak, and then, when Francis Hartness had told me in English what the
Spaniard had said, I bade Tupac and Anahuac stand forward and tell of
their share in what had been done, so that all might understand. They
told their story in Quichua, and when I translated it into English to
Francis Hartness I made few words of it, of which the meaning was
this,--
Ever since Tupac and his comrades had recognised me as their lord, and
sworn their faith to me, they, and others whom they trusted, had
industriously spread abroad the news of my coming--though telling
nothing that would make a traitor able to betray us--and, in proof of
their story, little wedges of gold, stamped with the ancient symbol of
the Sun, had been passed from hand to hand as earnest of my promise that
I would use the hidden treasures of the Incas for the benefit of my
people, and make money of gold where now there was only silver and
copper.
By this time, not only had the golden wedges gone far and wide through
the land, but nearly all the soldiers of the pure Indian blood had been
won over to my cause, for, as I have said, and as everyone in the
country knows, these soldiers are treated with great hardness by their
Spanish masters, who often pay them nothing for many weeks or months
together, and give them scanty food and hard usage, and cast them into
prison or flog them and shoot them if they think to do anything to get
justice. Moreover, there are always factions of men they call
politicians scheming for power and setting the soldiers fighting against
one another and against their countrymen for no benefit to themselves.
So what Francis Hartness had told me on the night that Golden Star had
come back to life had already begun to come true. More than half the
garrison of Cuzco had already been won over, and only waited for the
signal which should bid the whole Indian population of the valley to
rise and seize the arms and ammunition in the city, and make the
officers and the Governor and all the officials prisoners.
Anahuac's daughter was a servant in the Governor's house, and this girl
understood Spanish, though she pretended only to know Quichua and the
dialect of the people, and she had been set to watch,[E] and Tupac's
eldest son had also been secretly watching all the comings and goings of
Djama since we came to Cuzco. In this way his visit to the Governor had
been made known to me, and then one of the soldiers in the company that
had been ordered to go with the Governor's son to the Rodadero had told
Tupac of the order, and I had arranged with him how the surprise was to
be carried out, and this, as you have seen, had been done with complete
success.
When I had finished telling this to Hartness I turned to the professor
and said to him kindly,--
'There has been nothing said that brings any share of the guilt of this
treason to you, so now, if you will promise me on your faith and honour
as an Englishman to keep my secrets and obey such commands as I shall
put upon you for your own safety and that of all of us, you shall go
free, and you shall have the choice of going back to England or to any
other country until the war is over, or of staying here under my
protection until you can go away safely with the treasure which shall
be yours. But if you go now you cannot take it with you, for in a few
days from now there will be war throughout the whole land, and it would
be impossible to take so much treasure to the coast. Now, what do you
say?'
He thought for a moment and then said,--
'I am not a man of war, as you know Vilcaroya, but I hope I am a man of
honour. I have never breathed a syllable that could have given anyone an
inkling of your secret, and I promise you solemnly that I never will.
What Djama has done distresses me even more than it amazes me. I would
have staked my life on his honesty, and if you will release him and let
him come with me--'
'No, no, my friend!' I said, quickly and sternly. 'What you would ask is
impossible. His aims were deeper and his sin was blacker than it has
been shown to be here. He did not betray us for gold alone, for he knew
that I would keep my promise and give him more than he could want. He
would have given me to my enemies to be killed--it might have been by
tortures, to make me say where my treasures were hidden--so that he
might have had Golden Star at his mercy.'
'It was your own fault, curse you! Why did you not give her to me?'
Djama cried suddenly, breaking loose from the two who held his arms and
putting his hand to his pistol pocket. The next instant my own revolver
was out from under my cloak and levelled at his heart.
'Another motion and I will kill you,' I said, 'though so quick a death
would be too good for you. Tie his hands behind his back and hold him
faster this time. Give me his pistol.'
Before I had done speaking they had seized him again in spite of his
struggles, and paying no heed to his cries and imprecations--for by this
time his long-pent-up passion had broken loose and made him almost mad,
and when they had given me his pistol I said to him,--
'I told you that Golden Star should be yours if you could win her as an
honest man. But you sought to steal her as you would have stolen my
gold. That is enough; keep silence now, or you shall be gagged.'
Then I held out my hand to the professor and said,--
'I will accept your promise, for you are an honest man. There is my
hand. Now we will be friends as before, and I will answer for your
safety. Will you go or stay with us?'
'I will stay,' he said, 'for my studies are not completed yet, and
besides, I am anxious to see what the Inca empire will be like when it
is restored.'
'I am glad that you say so,' I replied, 'for you are welcome, and you
shall make your home here always if you will.'
Then I bade them stand the Spanish officer in the professor's place
beside Djama, and, turning to Francis Hartness, said,--
'These men are worthy of death, for they would have delivered us to
death, but I cannot kill Djama since Joyful Star might hate me for it,
and if I do not kill him it would not be justice to kill the Spaniard.
What shall I do?'
'I see nothing for it,' he said, after thinking awhile, 'but shutting
them up safely until we have got this business over, and then sending
them out of the country and forbidding them to come back under pain of
death. There are plenty of places that they would be perfectly safe in.'
'That is well thought of, my friend,' I said, 'and it shall be done.
They came for gold and they shall have it. They shall live in it, and
see gold, and nothing but gold, till the sight of it is hateful to them.
They shall have a prison of gold, and eat and drink from gold, and sleep
and walk and sit on gold. Yes, truly, they shall have enough of gold
before they see the light of day again. Now tell the Spaniard what I
have said.'
He did so, and at first the wretch's eyes glittered and then grew dim
when the true meaning of his doom came upon him, for it meant he knew
not how long an imprisonment with a man who had betrayed his friends,
and whom, as he had confessed, he would himself have betrayed; and he
thought, too, that I had only promised him his life and the gold to make
him speak, and that now I would keep him prisoner and perhaps kill him
in the end. So he fell on his knees, like the craven that he was, and
begged for mercy, and told Hartness of my promise, and with Hartness's
lips I told him only that he must have patience and wait until it was my
pleasure to do what I had said.
After this I called Tupac and Anahuac and told them what I wished done,
and they took a score of their men and forthwith began to build, in a
corner of the hall beside the throne, a chamber measuring some ten feet
each way, of the oblong blocks of gold which were piled up in the
pyramid, and while they were doing this I called the soldiers before me
and told them, speaking in their own dialect, that if they were faithful
to me until the end of the war, each man should have one ounce weight of
gold paid to him every month, and one ounce more for each of his
comrades that he could persuade to join us, and for this night's work I
would give them each a wedge of gold of the weight of two ounces, which
was more money than all that they had earned in their lives before; and
when I had promised this they went on their knees and swore faith to me
and destruction to their hated Spanish masters.
Then I told them how Francis Hartness would lead them to battle and to
victory as he had led the soldiers of his own nation, and after that he
spoke to them in Spanish, and told them what to tell their comrades and
what was to be done with the arms and ammunition when the signal for the
rising was given.
All this while Djama and the Spaniard were kept standing watching the
building of their golden prison-cell. The men worked swiftly, and the
many hands made the toil light, and they built the walls up very thick
and strong, fitting the golden bricks closely into each other, and
making the walls smooth and without hand or foot-hold, so that neither
could any of the bricks be got out, nor the walls be climbed. The cell
was divided into two by another wall, and when the walls were finished
they were about ten feet high, and there was an opening into each cell
in front, large enough for a man to crawl in on his hands and knees.
When all was ready I said to Djama,--
'There is your house of gold. Go and dwell in it till it shall be safe
for me to release you. Every day, as I have said, you shall eat and
drink from plates and cups of gold, and you shall dream of gold until
this gold-fever of yours is cured.'
'Until I have gone gold-mad, you mean!' he cried, snarling at me like an
angry dog. 'It is just such a vengeance as a half-civilised savage would
have thought of. You know as well as I do that I shall go mad in there
unless I kill myself first.'
'You have your choice!' I said. 'I will make your punishment no lighter.
If you think to pull the walls down they will fall on you and crush you,
and you will be buried in gold, and if I am told that you have tried to
break out, I will put chains of gold on you, so heavy that you shall not
be able to drag them across your cell; but if you are peaceful and
patient, all your wants shall be attended to by those that I shall
appoint, and you shall have everything but liberty and the light of day.
Now, go in.'
'I won't!' he cried with a curse that ended in a scream. 'I shall go mad
in there, I tell you, and that is a thousand times worse than death to
me. I won't! Damn you, I won't!'
'Then you shall be thrust in,' I said.
I made a sign to those who held him, and they, seeing what I meant, took
him by the body and the legs, and carried him, feet foremost, kicking
and struggling, towards the hole. Then they thrust him in with his arms
still bound. But when he was half-way through, I bade one of them loose
the cords a little, so that he could free himself afterwards. The
Spaniard made no resistance, and when he was bidden crept, trembling
like a hound that has been flogged, into his cell, and when they were
both in I ordered the openings to be built up.
[Illustration: They thrust him in with his arms still bound.
_To face page 205._]
Francis Hartness and the professor had gone away to the other end of the
hall, not liking to see this, and yet knowing that it would be useless
to seek to persuade me to more mercy.
'Our work here is done now,' I said, going to them, 'and it would be
well for us to go back to the fortress and sleep, for the morning is
near and there will be much work to do before long.'
'I don't think I shall sleep much after what I have seen to-night,' said
Hartness, 'and if I did sleep I think I should dream of that golden
prison and those two poor wretches hungering and thirsting for daylight
and liberty, with the means of buying any luxury the world could give
them within reach of their hands.'
'Yes,' said the professor, 'it is a curious situation, isn't it?--quite
apart from the personal interest it has for us. Now, in England or
America, a room built with walls and floor of solid gold would be a
luxury that only a millionaire could afford, and he would probably be
thought a fool for building it, and yet here it is only a prison in
which a man might well starve to death. Come, let us get away from here.
I really don't want to hear any more of Djama's ravings than I can help.
Good heavens! who ever would have thought that a man of his culture and
learning and strength of mind could possibly have made such a blackguard
of himself!'
'Well,' said Hartness, with a dry sort of laugh, 'you see he was the
victim of the two passions that have done most to drive men mad or make
scoundrels of them since the world began--the love of woman and the lust
for gold. I don't pretend to understand it myself, because he had gold
enough promised to him, and there is no telling but that he might have
won the woman; but there, you never can tell how far any man is mad or
sane until he's tried.'
'But there was something else, my friend,' I said. 'There was, as you
say, lust of gold and love of woman; but there was also hate. Why, I
know not; but though I owe my new life to that man, I have hated him and
he has hated me since we learnt to know each other as living men. You
know, too, how, as I told you, Golden Star shrank from him as though he
had been a poisonous reptile, and yet why should I hate him and yet love
her who is of the same flesh and blood as he is?'
'I would rather discuss the problem in the open air or at the hacienda
than here,' said the professor, 'and even then I don't suppose we should
get much nearer to a solution, for these things are mysteries and mostly
past finding out. Yet it may be that you and he, the sons of different
centuries, may actually have embodied in you the differences and the
antipathies of the two ages and the two races to which you belong. There
is no telling. But come, let us get out of here, please. I really can't
stand this any longer.'
'Nor I,' said Hartness. 'For goodness' sake let us go! This is a good
deal more trying to the nerves than a cavalry charge or a smart
skirmish.'
'Very well,' I said, 'we will go.'
Then I called to Tupac and bade him tell the soldiers and the rest that
the night's work was over and it was time to go. We gave each of the
soldiers his wedge of gold, as I had promised them; and once more I made
them swear that each would kill any of the others who thought to betray
us. Then Tupac and Anahuac went and opened the stone door, and we
returned from the Hall of Gold to the upper earth, leaving Djama and his
fellow traitor still raving and crying within the walls of their golden
prison.
FOOTNOTES:
[D] The Inca naturally does not distinguish between the modern Peruvians
and their Spanish ancestors.
[E] This is quite a common thing in Peru, and the Indian women make
exceedingly clever spies.