Harry Escombe Part 11

Pa.s.sing through the doorway, which, like the other two, was fitted with ma.s.sive doors of solid bronze secured by an enormously strong lock of the same metal, the young Inca--who, as one of the results of his having been placed upon the throne, had become the absolute owner of all this wealth, with power to use it in such manner as might seem to him good-- found himself in a much smaller room, its dimensions being about ten feet long by the same width, and some twelve feet high. To the sides of the room were fitted large chests of very heavy wood, three chests on each side occupying the entire length of the room, with a pa.s.sage way about six feet wide between the two rows of chests. Each chest was fitted with a ma.s.sive wooden cover secured to it by strong bronze hinges, and fastened by a ponderous bronze lock.

The custodian unlocked these chests one at a time, and, raising the heavy cover with difficulty, held the lamp which he carried over the yawning interior, disclosing its contents. The first chest opened was nearly full of what to Es...o...b.. appeared to be dull black stones, most of them with at least one smooth surface, ranging in size from that of a walnut to lumps as large as a man's two fists. One of these lumps Harry's conductor took out and handed to the young man for his inspection.

"Well, what do you call this?" demanded Harry, turning the stone about in his hands, and inspecting it curiously.

"That, Lord, is an amethyst," answered the other; "and, as you see, the chest is nearly full of them. But, unless we should happen to discover a new mine, I am afraid we shall get no more of them, for the mine from which those were extracted appears to be exhausted; and it was never very productive even at its best. We did not know what the stones were when they were first discovered, but, as it was suspected that they might possess a certain value, steps were taken to determine the question, with the result that we were told they are amethysts. They are not especially valuable, I believe, but we make a point of never wasting anything, so it was decided to store these until wanted. Now here,"--opening the next chest--"we have another mineral about which we were a bit puzzled at first; but we were in less doubt in this case than we were with regard to the amethysts, as the appearance of the stone seemed to indicate that it possessed a value. We dealt with this as we did with the amethysts, and found that we had chanced upon a particularly rich opal deposit."

The chest of opals was, like the one previously opened, almost full, and Harry took admiringly into his hand the great piece of rock representing the half of a ma.s.s of stone that had been accidentally broken in two, and found to contain a considerable quant.i.ty of iridescent, many-hued crystal. The next chest contained some very fine specimens of sapphire; but it was little more than half-full, the mine having only been discovered within the last decade, and even then not very industriously worked; but there were in the chest a few specimens that Es...o...b.. shrewdly suspected to be practically priceless.

Having completed the inspection of the contents of the coffers on one side of the room, the custodian crossed over to the other side, and threw up the lid of a chest, the interior of which at once began to glow as though each of the stones--looking very much like lumps of ordinary washing soda--contained within it a morsel of phosphorus.

"Aha!" exclaimed Es...o...b.., plunging his hand delightedly into the chest and fishing up two or three of the stones; "no need to ask what these are; there's no possibility of mistaking them. Yes, there's the genuine soapy feel about them all right," as he ran his fingers over the smooth surface of the crystals. "But I didn't know that you had diamonds in Peru."

"There is at all events one mine in the country, Lord, namely that from which these stones came," answered the Indian. "But the existence and locality are known only to the few who work it and who guard the approach to it; for we believe it to be the richest mine in the whole world, and we are naturally anxious to retain possession of it for ourselves exclusively. It is not in this valley; it lies a long three- days' journey from here, in a particularly wild and desolate part of the country which is practically inaccessible, save to the boldest and hardiest mountaineers among us. It has only been known for about twenty years, and the contents of this coffer represent the labour of only six men during that time. But the mine is enormously rich, and, as you may see, the size and quality of the stones improve as the miners penetrate deeper, the largest and finest stones, which are those most recently extracted, being at the top of the others in the chest."

Harry stooped over and picked up a particularly fine specimen, larger than one of his clenched fists, which glowed and scintillated in the light of the lamp as though it were on fire.

"Why," he said, gazing admiringly at the stone as he turned it about in his hand, "The contents of this chest must be of absolutely incalculable value! This stone alone would const.i.tute a very handsome fortune to its lucky possessor, if I am any judge of diamonds."

"True, Lord," answered his companion. "But there are several finer stones than that--this one, and this, for example," as he fished up a couple of superb specimens. "There are probably no diamonds in the world equal to these two in size and purity of colour. And all belong to my Lord."

"Ay," said Harry; "with such enormous and inexhaustible wealth as this at one's command it should not be very difficult to provide the means of reconquering the country and restoring it to its former state of power and glory. What have you in the other two chests?"

"My Lord shall see," answered the Indian, as he unlocked and threw back the lid of the next chest, which proved to be three parts full of rubies, every one of which const.i.tuted a little fortune in itself, while many were of such exceptional size and superb colour that the young Englishman could only gasp in speechless amazement and admiration.

"Why, Huatama," he exclaimed at length, "I am at a loss to express my astonishment. Aladdin's cave was nothing to this, nothing at all!"

"Aladdin, did my Lord say?" murmured the Indian, looking enquiringly at Harry. "I do not seem to remember him. Surely he was not a Peruvian?

The name does not--"

"No," answered Harry with a laugh. "Aladdin knew nothing of Peru; he was an Eastern--a Chinese fellow, or something like that, if I remember rightly."

"Ah, yes!" remarked Huatama reflectively; "I have seen a few Chinese, down at Lima and Callao, when I had occasion to go there a year ago on business for the Council of Seven. I do not like them; and I hope that when my Lord has subjugated the country he will drive them all out of it."

"Well, we shall see," rejoined Es...o...b.. with a laugh. "But it is early days as yet to talk of driving out the Chinese; there is a great deal to be done before we shall find ourselves face to face with that question.

And now, what does your last chest contain?"

It contained emeralds, and was more than half-full of stones of surpa.s.sing size and purity of colour, every one of them being a picked stone especially selected for its exceptional quality. But Es...o...b..'s powers of admiration were by this time completely exhausted, and after having rather perfunctorily examined and expressed his approval of a few of the finest specimens, and commended the treasure as a whole to the unflagging care of Huatama, he returned to his apartments in the palace and flung himself into a chair to endeavour to convince himself that what he had seen in those rock-hewn chambers below was all prosaically real and not the fantasy of a disordered imagination.

As he pictured to himself the great chambers with their heaped-up stacks of silver and gold bars, and the smaller room with its six coffers of uncut gems, his thoughts insensibly floated away across the ocean to the modest little Sydenham home, and he tried to imagine the raptures of his mother and sister, could they but behold the incredible acc.u.mulation of priceless gems that his eyes had rested upon that day. Then he remembered that in consequence of this extraordinary adventure of his a mail boat had been permitted to leave for England with no letter on board from him to his mother, and he began to wonder anxiously what would happen at The Limes when its occupants fully realised that the Peruvian mail had arrived, and that there was no letter for them. It was the first time that such a thing had ever been permitted to occur; and, although he had been quite helpless to prevent the accident, Es...o...b.. somehow felt that it ought not to have been allowed to happen; that he ought to have remembered in time, and taken steps to ensure that a letter had been despatched by some means or other. What was the use of being an Inca if he could not manage a simple little thing like that?

To summon Arima and enquire of that trusty henchman whether, in the hurry of departure from the survey camp, he had remembered to pack up and bring away his master's writing desk was naturally the next thing in order. Upon learning that the desk had not been forgotten, Es...o...b.. at once had it brought to him, and sat down and wrote a long letter, addressed jointly to his mother and sister. This letter contained a full account of his abduction and all that had followed thereupon, together with an a.s.surance that not only would he contrive henceforward to communicate with them regularly, but also that if, after the lapse of a certain length of time to allow the process of "settling down" to become complete, it should appear that his scheme of government was likely to prove a success, he would send for them to come out to him.

He added that, meanwhile, the enormous wealth represented by the acc.u.mulations of more than three hundred years was at his absolute disposal, and that he felt quite justified in awarding himself a salary of one gold bar per calendar month for his services to the state; also, that since under present circ.u.mstances he had no use for a private purse, he should dispatch to them the monthly bar of gold for their own personal use and enjoyment, and that he should expect them to employ it for the purpose named. This somewhat lengthy epistle concluded by giving instructions for the conversion of the gold bar into coin of the realm. Harry also wrote to Sir Philip Swinburne, stating that he had fallen into the hands of the Indians, but was being well-treated by them, and believed he was in no immediate danger, also that at the moment he saw no prospect of being permitted to return to civilisation; he was therefore writing for the purpose of allaying any apprehension that might be experienced on his account. Finally, he wrote to Bannister in somewhat similar terms. Then he sent for Huatama, and gave that functionary instructions to withdraw one gold bar from the treasury vaults and have it securely packed in a suitable box for transmission to Europe.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

THE MONSTERS THAT HAUNTED THE LAKE.

These matters attended to, Es...o...b.. summoned the Council of Seven to the palace, and held what might be considered his first official conference.

He began by laying before them his views as to the steps necessary to be taken in order to carry out successfully the desire of the people to become a regenerated nation, instructing them to cause several different kinds of information to be obtained for him, and finally pointing out to them the necessity for free communication with the outside world, and the consequent establishment of something in the nature of a regular postal and transport service between the valley and two or three points on the railway system.

Long before he had finished all that he had to say it was perfectly evident to the young Inca that the members of the Council--or at least some of them--were entirely out of sympathy with many of his views and ideas, and that he would have to contend with a vast amount of ignorance and prejudice. To indicate a few out of many points where this lack of sympathy most strongly manifested itself, Harry had commented upon the necessity for establishing an army and providing it with the most modern and efficient weapons and equipment. To this Huanacocha and his supporters strongly objected, arguing that the State already possessed an army in the shape of the Inca's bodyguard, horse and foot, which, in their opinion, ought to be amply sufficient to reconquer the country in view of the fact that Pizarro's army numbered less than two hundred men when he captured Atahuallpa and thus achieved the conquest of Peru.

And, as to the importation of modern weapons, they were altogether opposed to the proposal for many reasons, the chief of which were the difficulty and delay attendant upon the procuring of them and of their introduction into the country, and the further delay involved in training the troops to use them. Moreover, the weapons with which the existing troops were armed were such as they had always been accustomed to, and in the use of which they were already thoroughly skilled. Such a radical change as was proposed must of necessity involve an enormous delay, and for their part they were unable to see any advantage in the proposal. They looked with equal disfavour upon the proposal to establish a postal and transport service, arguing that there was no need for anything of the kind, the fundamental idea governing the settlement of their forefathers in the valley and the founding of the City of the Sun being that its inhabitants and the resources of the valley itself would be amply sufficient to achieve the reconquest of the country. It was not until Harry had very nearly lost his temper in arguing with these men that he learned that not one of them had ever been outside the valley, and that their very meagre knowledge of the outside world had been derived from the few individuals who at rare intervals had been obliged to make short and hasty journeys outside the confines of the encircling mountains upon State business. As soon as Harry had thoroughly grasped this fact he gave them to understand, as politely as possible, that none of them knew in the least what they were talking about, and for that reason he would feel himself compelled to dispense with their advice for the future, forming his own plans in accordance with the knowledge which he had acquired during a residence of several years in the biggest, busiest, and best-informed city in the world; and that henceforth he would ask of them nothing more than loyal wholehearted obedience to his commands. He finally dismissed them with instructions to establish immediately a service of postal runners between the valley and the town of Juliaca on the Santa Rosa, Puno, Arequipa, and Mollendo railway; with further instructions to arrange for the establishment of a thoroughly trustworthy agent at Juliaca, whose sole business it should be to see that all letters for Europe and other parts of the world were duly stamped and posted upon receipt by him; and to the care of whom all letters for the valley might be addressed. This done, Es...o...b.. summoned Arima to his presence and, handing him all the coin that he happened to have in his possession, delivered to him the letters which he had written, together with the gold bar--by this time securely packed and ready for posting--and directed him to proceed with all possible speed to Islay--using the railway as far as possible in order to save time--and there post the letters and the box containing the bar. Then he suddenly bethought himself and, before dismissing Arima upon his journey, sat down and wrote a long letter to Mr John Firmin, of Lima, he who had been a fellow-pa.s.senger from England with Harry on board the _Rimac_, In this letter he told Firmin as much of his story as he thought it necessary for him to know, and made certain arrangements whereby Firmin was to undertake certain business transactions from time to time, and to supply immediately certain necessaries, for the due delivery of which Harry gave his friend the most minute instructions. This completed what the Inca was pleased to regard as a very excellent and satisfactory day's work.

And now the young Englishman began to find his time very fully occupied, so much so, indeed, that the days seemed not nearly long enough to enable him to accomplish the half of what he wished to do. There was, for instance, the learning of the Quichua language. Harry had not been domiciled in his palace twenty-four hours before it had become patent to him that this was the first task which he must undertake; for very few of the n.o.bles had any knowledge whatever of Spanish, and the inconvenience and loss of time involved in conversing through an interpreter were far too great to be pa.s.sively endured. And, since he could do very little else as satisfactorily as he would wish until he had mastered this rich and expressive language, he devoted four hours of every day--two in the morning and two in the evening--to its study.

Then he soon learned that, exclusive of the inhabitants of the Valley of the Sun, there were some three hundred and fifty thousand Indians scattered up and down the country, at least one in every ten of whom might be counted as a fighting man. These people had to be brought into the valley, housed, fed, disciplined, in preparation for the time when arms should be put into their hands; also--what was more difficult still--matters had to be so arranged that the families of these men, and all dependent upon them, should suffer neither loss nor inconvenience from the drafting of the able-bodied into the valley. Then the arrangements and preparations for the importation of arms and ammunition into the country--everything connected with which had, of course, to be done entirely without the knowledge of the authorities--involved a tremendous amount of hard and intricate work. It is therefore not to be wondered at that during the first six months of his reign the young Inca was unable to spare a single hour for amus.e.m.e.nt.

But the moment was at hand when Harry was to enjoy some sport of a quite unique character; and the way in which it came about was thus. As he stood one morning in the palace garden, gazing out over the lake, with his faithful henchman Arima close at hand, an idea suddenly occurred to him, and, turning, he remarked:

"The lake looks particularly enticing this morning, Arima. Are there any balsas near at hand? Because, if so, you shall fetch me one, and we will go out together to deep water and indulge in a glorious swim."

"A swim, Lord, in the deep water of the lake?" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Arima in horror-stricken accents. "Nay, that is impossible."

"Impossible!" repeated Harry. "And why, pray?"

"Because of the monsters, Lord," answered Arima. "Were we to venture to plunge into the lake we should almost certainly be devoured."

"Indeed!" answered Harry. "So there are monsters in the lake, are there? I was not aware of that. And what are those 'monsters'? Are they alligators, or voracious fish, or what are they? I should hardly have supposed that the water of the lake was warm enough for alligators to flourish in it."

"Nay, Lord," answered Arima, "they are not alligators. I have seen alligators in some of the northern rivers, and know them well enough to be able to distinguish between them and the monsters which haunt our lake. Nor are they fish; or if they be, they are quite unlike any other fish that these eyes of mine have ever beheld. We call them 'monsters'

because our forefathers did so, and because we have no other name for them; also because of their exceeding size and malevolence."

"Ah!" commented Harry. "Well, what are these creatures--these monsters--like, and how big are they? Have you ever seen them?"

"Yes, Lord," was the answer. "I have seen them no less than three times at close quarters, and always with the same disastrous results. The first time was when, during my pa.s.sage of the lake on a balsa, one of my companions had the misfortune to fall into the water. Ere the balsa could be stopped and paddled back to where the man was struggling, two of the monsters appeared and tore him limb from limb. The resemblance to an alligator lies chiefly in the shape of the head, which, however, is longer in proportion and more pointed than that of the alligator.

Also, our monsters have smooth skins, nearly black in colour, and instead of feet and legs they have fins. The tail also is differently shaped from that of an alligator, being wide and flat at the end."

"By Jove!" exclaimed Harry in astonishment, "they must be queer and formidable-looking creatures indeed; and fins in place of legs and feet!

I'll be shot if I can place them at all. Are there many of them?"

"We do not generally see more than two, or three at most, although it is on record that on one occasion, many years ago, four were seen, two of them being obviously young ones," answered Arima.

"Upon my word, this all sounds exceedingly interesting," commented Harry. "I should dearly like to see the creatures myself. Do they often show themselves?"

"Very rarely, Lord, save in the case of such accidents as those of which I have told you," answered Arima. "Yet," he continued, "if my Lord desires to see the monsters it could doubtless be managed. If the carca.s.s of an animal were deposited upon yonder rock,"--the Indian pointed to a rock showing slightly above the water's surface about a mile from the sh.o.r.e--"and another were cast into the water quite near it, the monsters would doubtless be attracted to the place; and if my Lord were close at hand at the time, upon a large and safe balsa, he would see them when they crawl up on the rock to reach the carca.s.s exposed there."

"Ah!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Harry; "you think so? Then let the matter be arranged for to-morrow, Arima. I confess that your description of the creatures has powerfully excited my curiosity, and made me very anxious to see them."

And on the morrow the young Inca's curiosity was fully gratified, and with something to spare.

Oh, those monsters! Harry believed he possessed a pa.s.sably fair general knowledge of natural history, but these creatures--monsters truly--were entirely new to him. In no natural history had he ever seen a representation of anything like them. And yet, when he came to think of it again, singular and terrifying as was their appearance, it was not altogether unfamiliar. He believed he had seen them portrayed somewhere, although he could not for the moment remember where. Fully forty feet long from the snout to the tip of the tail, with a head shaped midway between that of a pike and a crocodile, with enormous protruding eyes, with a smooth somewhat fish-shaped body almost black above and shading off to a dirty whitish-grey beneath, with a long tail broad and flat at its extremity, and with four seal-like flippers instead of legs and feet, the monsters looked more like nightmare creatures, evolved by reading a book on antediluvian animals after a--.

Of course, that was it, Es...o...b.. decided, as his thoughts took some such turn as above. He now distinctly remembered having read some years ago a most interesting ill.u.s.trated magazine article upon extinct animals, and one of the pictures portrayed these identical monsters, labelling them "Plesiosaurus"! Yes, the more Harry thought about it the less room did he find for doubt that these so-called monsters haunting the lake in the Valley of the Sun were actually survivors--most probably the only ones--of the antediluvian plesiosaurus. How they got there was a most interesting problem, yet it seemed by no means a difficult one to solve.

The conclusion at which Es...o...b.. speedily arrived--rightly or wrongly-- was that upon the subsidence of the waters of the Deluge a pair of plesiosauri had found themselves imprisoned in the great basin of the valley, where, the conditions presumably being exceptionally favourable, they had not only survived but had actually contrived to perpetuate their species to a very limited extent. And the reason why the lake was not swarming with them, instead of containing probably only three or four specimens at the utmost, was doubtless that the waters were too circ.u.mscribed in extent, and too unproductive in the matter of fish, to support more than that number.

The problem of how they came to be where they were was, however, not one of very great importance; the thing that really mattered was, in Es...o...b..'s opinion, that their presence in the lake const.i.tuted a horrible danger to those who were obliged to traffic upon its waters, and they must be destroyed. They must not be permitted to exist another day longer than was absolutely necessary. Why, when one came to think of it, how many hundreds of lives might not already have fallen victims to the savage voracity of those creatures? What hope for his life would a man have if he chanced to fall off his balsa at a moment when one of those monsters happened to be close at hand? Positively none. Es...o...b.. shuddered as he reflected that, ignorant as he had hitherto been of the presence of the plesiosauri in the lake, it had only been by a series of fortuitous circ.u.mstances--or was it the intervention of a merciful Providence?--that he had been from time to time prevented from bathing in the lake, ay, and actually swimming out to the distant rock, as he had several times been strongly tempted to do.

Yes, those implacably ferocious monsters must be destroyed forthwith; and the only point remaining to be settled was, how was the work of destruction to be accomplished?