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, senor, 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 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, 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.

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.

The Inca naturally does not distinguish between the modern Peruvians and their Spanish ancestors.

This is quite a common thing in Peru, and the Indian women make exceedingly clever spies.