Mr. Fortescue Part 34

"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, senor. No man would run into danger for a woman whom he did not desire to make his own."

"I had no desire to make Senora 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, senor?"

"Surely, Mamcuna, if you were in sorrow or distress and I could do you any good thereby."

"It is well, senor; 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 senor 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 la.s.so."

"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, senor, 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, dest.i.tute 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 gra.s.s 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 ma.s.ses 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.s, 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sing 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 hoa.r.s.e 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 pa.s.s 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 l.u.s.trous 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.

CHAPTER XXVI.

ANGELA.

"_Regardez mon pere, regardez! Il va mieux, le pauvre homme._"

"_C'est ca, ma fille cherie, faites le boire._"

I open my eyes with an effort, for the dust of the desert has almost blinded me.