THE MAN-KILLER.
I was as helpless as a man in a strait waistcoat. When I tried to rise,
my captors tautened the rope and dragged me along the ground. Resistance
being futile, I resigned myself to my fate.
On seeing what had happened, the flying brave (a kinsman of Chimu's)
returned, and he and the others held a palaver. As Mamcuna's affianced
husband, I was a person of importance, and they were evidently at a loss
how to dispose of me. If they treated me roughly, they might incur her
displeasure. The discussion was long and rather stormy. In the result, I
was asked whether I would go with them quietly to the queen's house or be
taken thither, _nolens volens_. On answering that I would go quietly, I
was unbound and allowed to mount my horse.
I do not think I am a coward, and in helping Señora de la Vega to escape
and sending her off with Gahra, I knew that I had done the right thing.
Yet I looked forward to the approaching interview with some misgiving.
Barbarian though Mamcuna was, I could not help entertaining a certain
respect for her. She had treated me handsomely; in offering to make me her
husband she had paid me the greatest compliment in her power; and how
little soever you may reciprocate the sentiment, it is impossible to think
altogether unkindly of the woman who has given you her love. And my
conscience was not free from reproach; I had let her think that I loved
her--as I now perceived, a great mistake. Courageous herself, she could
appreciate courage in others, and had I boldly and unequivocally refused
her offer and given my reasons, I did not believe she would have dealt
hardly with me.
As it was Mamcuna might well say that, having deliberately deceived her, I
deserved the utmost punishment which it was in her power to inflict. At
the same time, I was not without hope that when she heard my defence she
would spare my life.
By the time we reached the queen's house my escort had swollen into a
crowd, and one of the caciques went in to inform Mamcuna what had befallen
and ask for her instructions.
In a few minutes he brought word that the queen would see me and the
people who had taken part in my capture forthwith. We found her sitting in
her _chinchura_, in the room where she and I first met. Bather to my
surprise she was calm and collected; yet there was a convulsive twitching
of her lips and an angry glitter in her eyes that boded ill for my hopes
of pardon.
"Is it true, this they tell me, señor--that you have been helping Chimu's
wife to escape, and killed Chimu?" she asked.
"It is true."
"So you prefer this wretched pale-face woman to me?"
"No, Mamcuna."
"Why, then, did you help her to escape and kill her husband? Don't trifle
with me."
"Because I pitied her."
"Why?"
"Chimu treated her ill, and she was very wretched. She wanted to go back
to her own country, and she has little children at home."
"What was her wretchedness to you? Did you not know that you were
incurring my displeasure and risking your own life?"
"I did. But a Christian caballero holds it his duty to protect the weak
and deliver the oppressed, even at the risk of his own life."
Mamcuna looked puzzled. The sentiment was too fine for her comprehension.
"You talk foolishness, señor. No man would run into danger for a woman
whom he did not desire to make his own."
"I had no desire to make Señora de la Vega my wife. I would have done the
same for any other woman."
"For any other woman! Would you risk your life for me, señor?"
"Surely, Mamcuna, if you were in sorrow or distress and I could do you any
good thereby."
"It is well, señor; your voice has the ring of truth," said the queen,
softly, and with a gratified smile, "and inasmuch as you went not away
with Chimu's pale-faced wife, but let her depart with the negro--"
"The señor would have gone also had we not hindered him," interposed
Chimu's kinsman. "We saw him lift the woman into the saddle, and he was
turning to follow her when Lurin caught him with the lasso."
"Is this true; would you have gone with the woman?" asked the queen,
sternly, her smile changing into an ominous frown.
"It is true; but let me explain--"
"Enough; I will not hear another word. So you would have left me, a
daughter of the Incas, who have honored you above all other men, and gone
away with a woman you say you do not love! Your heart is full of deceit,
your mouth runs over with lies. You shall die; so shall the white woman
and the black slave. Where are they? Bring them hither."
The caciques and braves who were present stared at each other in
consternation. In their exultation and excitement over my capture the
fugitives had been forgotten.
"Mules! Idiots! Old women! Follow them and bring them back. They shall be
burned in the same fire. As for you, señor, because you cured me of my
sickness and were to have been my husband I will let you choose the method
of your death. You may either be roasted before a slow fire, hacked to
pieces with _machetes_, or fastened on the back of the man-killer and sent
to perish in the desert. Choose."
"Just one word of explanation, Mamcuna. I would fain--"
"Silence! or I will have your tongue torn out by the roots. Choose!"
"I choose the man-killer."
"You think it will be an easier death than being hacked to pieces. You are
wrong. The vultures will peck out your eyes, and you will die of hunger
and thirst. But as you have said so let it be. Tie him to the back of the
man-killer, men, and chase it into the desert. If you let him escape you
die in his place. But treat him with respect; he was nearly my husband."
And then Mamcuna, sinking back into her _chinchura_, covered her face with
her hands; but she showed no sign of relenting, and I was bound with ropes
and hurried from the room.
The man-killer was a nandu[1] belonging to the queen, and had gained his
name by killing one man and maiming several others who unwisely approached
him when he was in an evil temper. Save for an occasional outburst of
homicidal mania and his abnormal size and strength, the man-killer did not
materially differ from the other nandus of Mamcuna's flock. His keeper
controlled the bird without difficulty, and I had several times seen him
mount and ride it round an inclosure.
[1] The American ostrich.
The desert, as I have already mentioned, lies between the Cordillera and
the Pacific Ocean, stretching almost the entire length of the Peruvian
coast, with here and there an oasis watered by one or other of the few
streams which do not lose themselves in the sand before they reach the
sea. It is a rainless, hideous region of naked rocks and whirling sands,
destitute of fresh water and animal life, a region into which, except for
a short distance, the boldest traveller cares not to venture.
After leaving the queen's house I was placed in charge of a party of
braves commanded by a cacique, and we set out for the place where my
expiation was to begin. The nandu, led by his keeper and another man, of
course went with us. My conductors, albeit they made no secret of their
joy over my downfall, did their mistress's bidding, and treated me with
respect. They loosed my bonds, taking care, however, so to guard me as to
render escape impossible, and, when we halted, gave me to eat and drink.
But their talk was not encouraging. In their opinion, nothing could save
me from a horrible death, probably of thirst. The best that I could hope
for was being smothered in a sandstorm. The man-killer would probably go
on till he dropped from exhaustion, and then, whether I was alive or dead,
birds of prey would pick out my eyes and tear the flesh from my bones.
About midday we reached the mountain range which divides Pachatupec from
the desert. Anything more lonesome and depressing it were impossible to
conceive. Not a tree, not a shrub, not a blade of grass nor any green
thing; neither running stream nor gleam of water could be seen. It was a
region in which the blessed rain of heaven had not fallen for untold ages,
a region of desolation and death, of naked peaks, rugged precipices, and
rocky ravines. The heat from the overhead sun, intensified by the
reverberations from the great masses of rock around us, and unrelieved by
the slightest breath of air, was well-nigh suffocating.
Into this plutonic realm we plunged, and, after a scorching ride, reached
the head of a pass which led straight down to the desert. Here the cacique
in command of the detachment told me, rather to my surprise, that we were
to part company. They were already a long way from home and saw no reason
why they should go farther. The desert, albeit four or five leagues
distant, was quite visible, and, once started down the pass, the nandu
would be bound to go thither. He could not climb the rocks to the right or
the left, and the braves would take care that he did not return.
As objection, even though I had felt disposed to make it, would have been
useless, I bowed acquiescence. The thought of resisting had more than once
crossed my mind, and, by dint of struggling and fighting, I might have
made the nandu so restive that I could not have been fastened on his back.
But in that case my second condition would have been worse than my first;
I should have been taken back to Pachatupec and either burned alive or
hacked to pieces, and, black as seemed the outlook, I clung to the hope
that the man-killer would somehow be the means of saving my life.
The binding was effected with considerable difficulty. It required the
united strength of nearly all the braves to hold the nandu while the
cacique and the keepers secured me on his back. As he was let go he kicked
out savagely, ripping open with his terrible claws one of the men who had
been holding him. The next moment he was striding down the steep and stony
pass at a speed which, in a few minutes, left the pursuing and shouting
Pachatupecs far behind. The ground was so rough and the descent so rapid
that I expected every moment we should come to grief. But on we went like
the wind. Never in my life, except in an express train, was I carried so
fast. The great bird was either wild with rage or under the impression
that he was being hunted. The speed took my breath away; the motion make
me sick. He must have done the fifteen miles between the head of the pass
and the beginning of the desert in little more than as many minutes. Then,
the ground being covered with sand and comparatively level, the nandu
slacked his speed somewhat, though he still went at a great pace.
The desert was a vast expanse of white sand, the glare of which, in the
bright sunshine, almost blinded me, interspersed with stretches of rock,
swept bare by the wind, and loose stones.
Instead of turning to the right or left, that is to say, to the north or
south, as I hoped and expected he would, the man-killer ran straight on
toward the sea. As for the distance of the coast from that part of the
Cordillera I had no definite idea--perhaps thirty miles, perhaps fifty,
perhaps more. But were it a hundred we should not be long in going thither
at the speed we were making; and vague hopes, suggesting the possibility
of signalling a passing ship or getting away by sea, began to shape
themselves in the mind. The nandu could not go on forever; before reaching
the sea he must either alter his course or stop, and if he stopped only a
few minutes and so gave me a chance of steadying myself I thought that, by
the help of my teeth, I might untie one of the cords which the movements
of the bird and my own efforts had already slightly loosened, and once my
arms were freed the rest would be easy.
An hour (as nearly as I could judge) after leaving the Cordillera I
sighted the Pacific--a broad expanse of blue water shining in the sun and
stretching to the horizon. How eagerly I looked for a sail, a boat, the
hut of some solitary fisherman, or any other sign of human presence! But I
saw nothing save water and sand; the ocean was as lonesome as the desert.
There was no salvation thitherward.
Though my hope had been vague, my disappointment was bitter; but a few
minutes later all thought of it was swallowed up in a new fear. The sea
was below me, and as the ground had ceased to fall I knew that the desert
must end on that side in a line of lofty cliffs. I knew, also, that nandus
are among the most stupid of bipeds, and it was just conceivable that the
man-killer, not perceiving his danger until too late, might go over the
cliffs into the sea.
The hoarse roar of the waves as they surge against the rocks, at first
faint, grows every moment louder and deeper. I see distinctly the land's
end, and mentally calculate from the angle it makes with the ocean, the
height of the cliffs.
Still the man-killer strides on, as straight as an arrow and as resolutely
as if a hundred miles of desert, instead of ten thousand miles of water,
stretched before him. Three minutes more and--I set my teeth hard and draw
a deep breath. At any rate, it will be an easier end than burning, or
dying of thirst--Another moment and--
But now the nandu, seeing that he will soon be treading the air, makes a
desperate effort to stop short, in which failing he wheels half round,
barely in time to save his life and mine, and then courses madly along the
brink for miles, as if unable to tear himself away, keeping me in a state
of continual fear, for a single slip, or an accidental swerve to the
right, and we should have fallen headlong down the rocks, against which
the waves are beating.
As night closes in he gradually--to my inexpressible relief--draws inland,
making in a direction that must sooner or later take us back to the
Cordillera, though a long way south of the pass by which we had descended
to the desert. But I have hardly sighted the outline of the mighty
barrier, looming portentously in the darkness, when he alters his course
once again, wenching this time almost due south. And so he continues for
hours, seldom going straight, now inclining toward the coast, anon facing
toward the Cordillera but always on the southward tack, never turning to
the north.
It was a beautiful night. The splendor of the purple sky with its myriads
of lustrous stars was in striking contrast with the sameness of the white
and deathlike desert. A profound melancholy took hold of me. I had ceased
to fear, almost to think, my perceptions were blinded by excitement and
fatigue, my spirits oppressed by an unspeakable sense of loneliness and
helplessness, and the awful silence, intensified rather than relieved by
the long drawn moaning of the unseen ocean, which, however far I might be
from it, was ever in my ears.
I looked up at the stars, and when the cross began to bend I knew that
midnight was past, and that in a few hours would dawn another day. What
would it bring me--life or death? I hardly cared which; relief from the
torture and suspense I was enduring would be welcome, come how it might.
For I suffered cruelly; I had a terrible thirst. The cords chafed my limbs
and cut into my flesh. Every movement gave an exquisite pain; I was
continually on the rack; rest, even for a moment, was impossible, as,
though the nandu had diminished his speed, he never stopped. And then a
wind came up from the sea, bringing with it clouds of dust, which
well-nigh choked and half blinded me; filled my ears and intensified my
thirst. After a while a strange faintness stole over me; I felt as if I
were dying, my eyes closed, my head sank on my breast, and I remembered no
more.