Henty George Alfred
With Cochrane the Dauntless
“Why for you, señorita?”
“If you were to be captured,” she said, “you would be questioned as to who aided you, and there are means in these prisons by which they can wring the truth from the strongest and bravest. There are tortures, señor, that flesh and blood could not withstand.”
“You are right, Donna Inez,” Stephen said gravely. “For myself I should be ready to run the risk of getting through to the south, but what you have said decides me. I would die rather than say a word that could betray you and your cousin. But no one can say what one would do under fiendish tortures; therefore I at once accept your plan.”
“That is right,” the girl said. “Filippo said that he was sure that for our sake you would consent to it. Now for your instructions. Nurse will, in the first place, take me home; then she will return here; she will be back in half an hour. She will take away with her the things that you have worn, and will to-night cut them up and burn them, so that no trace may remain of your visit here. When she returns she will guide you through the town. At a cottage a quarter of a mile outside a muleteer with two animals is awaiting you; he does not know who you are, but believes you to be a Brazilian who has been on this side of the continent for some years, chiefly in Chili, and so speak that language, and now, being afraid to proceed by water, are about to return by the passes. How far you will be able to get him to accompany you I cannot say, but at present he has promised to take you over the Andes. The best course to take then you can talk over with the muleteer. You will find many details of the various routes in a letter Filippo has given him for you. And now adieu, señor. We shall think of you often, and I shall pray for your safe return to your friends. Possibly we may meet again some day, for Filippo has a powerful relation who, it is expected, may some day be the Spanish ambassador in London, and he says that he shall try and get him to take him on his staff.”
“I should indeed be glad if it could be so, señorita. I shall to the end of my life entertain the liveliest feelings of gratitude to you and Don Filippo for your kindness. Have you a pencil and paper?”
The girl pointed to the table, on which stood writing materials. Stephen wrote his father’s address upon it and handed it to her.
“That is my address in England,” he said. “I pray you, when you return to Spain, to beg Don Filippo to write to me there, and I am sure to get it sooner or later. Directly I receive his letter I shall make a point of taking a passage for Spain in order to thank you more fully and heartily than I can now do. It would be dangerous were I to write to you here.”
She nodded. “Adieu, señor.”
“Adieu, señorita. May your life with Don Filippo be as happy as you both deserve!”
He put the hand she gave him to his lips. A minute later she and her nurse left the house, and Stephen remained wondering over the events that had happened.
“It is certainly the best plan,” he said to himself. “I daresay there will be lots of hardships to go through, but it will be a glorious trip. Fancy going down the Amazon from almost its source to the sea! The señorita said nothing about money, but Filippo has shown himself so thoughtful in every other way that I have no doubt he has not forgotten that for such a journey some money at least will be required. Happily I am now in a position to pay anything he may advance me, so I need not scruple to take it. He told me that his father was very rich, but that money was very little good to him in Peru, and that he had a very handsome allowance, but no means whatever of spending it, especially in such a place as San Carlos. I will write him a line or two now, and will give it to the old woman after I have read his letter.”
He sat down and wrote a note expressive of his warmest gratitude to Filippo, and concluded: “In other matters too I am deeply your debtor, but this fortunately I can, as I told you, discharge far more easily than I can my debt of gratitude. As soon as I reach England I will pay in the amount to a house having connections in Spain, and order them to have it placed to your account with some good firm there, with instructions to write to you saying that they hold it payable to your order. My name will not be mentioned, so that in case of any accident the money will not be traceable to me. My other and greater debt must for ever remain unpaid, but to the end of my life I shall remain the debtor of you and Donna Inez. Wishing you both a long life and every happiness together, I remain always your grateful friend.”
He folded the letter up and put it into his pocket, and then waited until he heard the three knocks on the door. Stephen blew out the candle, went along the passage to the front door, opened it, and went out. Without a word the old woman turned and walked along the street. He followed at a short distance, and was presently in a busy thoroughfare. Twenty minutes walking took them beyond the town, and they presently stopped at a cottage where a candle was burning in the window.
“This is the house, señor,” she said, speaking for the first time.
She went up to the door and tapped at it. It was opened by a man in the attire of a muleteer.
“This is the señor who will accompany you, Gomez,” she said. “Now, señor, my work is done.” And she turned to go.
“Wait a moment,” he said. “Gomez has a letter for me, and I want to read it before I give you a note that I wish you to take back and to hand to Donna Inez.”
“Here is the letter, señor,” the muleteer said.
Stephen took it to the light and opened it. It was a long one, but he skipped the first part, which was full of directions and hints for the journey. Running his eye down it fell upon some figures, and he read: “Gomez will hand you a bag containing eight hundred dollars. This, I have no doubt, will be sufficient for your journey down the Amazon and to pay your passage-money home. You are heartily welcome to it. Some day, if it please you, you can pay me back; but if aught befalls you on your way down do not let the thought of this paltry debt trouble you in any way. I know not whether this will ever reach your hands, but pray that it may do so, and that I may have the satisfaction of knowing that Inez and I have had some part in saving the life of a brave English gentleman.” Then with a few more words of adieu the letter closed.
Stephen had already felt that there was some money in the pockets of his trousers, and he now handed his letter to the old woman and pulled out some gold.
“No,” she said, drawing back; “I would die to please my young mistress, but not one penny would I touch from the hand of a foreign heretic.”
A minute later and she was gone. The muleteer laughed at her outbreak. “Well, well,” he said, “how people differ; now, for my part, when I receive payment for the work of my mules I care not in the least whether it comes from a heretic’s pockets or those of a good Catholic. But I did not know that you Brazilians were heretics, señor.”
“As a rule we are not,” Stephen said, “but my case is an exception; I will tell you more about it on the journey. Callao is not the town where it is safe to be a heretic.”
“No, indeed,” the muleteer said with a laugh; “however, it is no business of mine, señor. A gentleman whose name I know not, but to whom I was recommended by a cousin of mine, who is a relation of the old woman who has just left us, made a bargain with me to take you to the Amazon or a river running into it. He agreed to give me my own terms. He paid me a third of the money in advance, and said that you would pay me the remainder at the end of the journey. He said that you were a Brazilian, and spoke Chilian better than our tongue; though, indeed, they are so much alike that one passes as well as the other, or did till this war began. That account of you may be true or it may not, it is no business whatever of mine. A man says to me, I want you to carry a bag of salt to such a place. I agree as to the terms, and it is no matter to me whether the sack contains salt or sand as long as the weight is the same. Your things all came up here to-day, señor—your wallet, and your sword, and a brace of pistols, a rifle and a bird gun. You will find everything right. I understood that it was your wish, for some reason which was again no business of mine, to start as soon as you arrived, and I have three mules standing saddled in the stable if you are ready to start.”
“I should certainly be glad to do so, Gomez. I have, as you say, my reasons for wanting to be off as soon as possible.”
Accordingly the three mules were at once brought round, the baggage divided between them, and five minutes later, after blowing out the candle and locking the door behind him, the muleteer mounted and rode off with Stephen.
CHAPTER XVI.
AN INDIAN GUIDE
“Of course we must go through Lima,” Stephen said as they started.
“Assuredly, señor, the roads over the passes all start from there, and it would take us a long circuit to avoid the town.”
“Oh, there is no occasion to avoid it,” Stephen said. “It is about five miles, is it not?”
“That is the distance; but, as the road ascends a good deal, we generally count it as six. It is a fine city Lima, and I hope that it will not be very long before we shall be able to enjoy it without the presence of the Spaniards; we think they cannot remain here much longer. If the Chilian army would but move from the sea-coast the whole country would be up in arms. We would rather have done without the Chilians if we could, for there has never been any great friendship between them and the Peruvians. I do not say between them and us, for I am almost as much Chilian as Peruvian, seeing that I was born within half a mile of the frontier and high up in the hills. But there is more money to be made here. In the first place, the Peruvians have more towns beyond the passes, and there is more traffic; and in the next place, in Chili most men are ready to work if there is money to be made, whereas most of the Peruvians are too lazy to pick up gold if it lay at their feet. Most men in our business come from the hills.”
“And why don’t the Peruvians and Chilians like each other?”
“Who can tell. The Chilians have a colder climate, and the people for the most part came from the north of Spain; they are hardier and more active; then, too, they are not so strict in church matters, and here they call them heretics, and a Peruvian hates a heretic a great deal worse than he does the father of all evil. We muleteers pray to the saints for protection on our journeys, and before we start on a long expedition burn a few candles at the shrine of our patron saint, and we never pass a shrine or a wayside cross without making a prayer; but we don’t concern ourselves with other people’s religion; that is their business, not ours. But that is not so with the Spaniards, and the Peruvians are just as bad. You may kill a man in a knife fight and no one cares much about it. But if you were to pass a village shrine without raising your sombrero they would be ready to tear you in pieces as a heretic.”
“What is the country like when you once get over the mountains?”
“It is a tree country and generally flat. Here you see the hillsides are mostly bare; but on the other side of the ranges of mountains—for there are two chains—the forest grows almost to the top, and, as I have heard, they extend thousands of miles over the country beyond. In these great forests there are swamps and rivers, great rivers. Very few white men know where they rise or how they go, but they all run into the largest of them all, which, when it gets near the sea, is called the Amazon, but which has many names at different points of its course. They say that some of these rivers have many rapids and falls, and on almost all of them there are Indians who are more dangerous still; some of them they say eat men who fall into their hands.
“It is a terrible journey that you are undertaking, señor. One thing is certain, you must take with you some man of courage and resolution, one who at least knows something of the country. No man knows much, but there are men, Indians, who make it their business either to trade or to guide traders. Of course they never go very far, but they have gone far enough to know much of the nature of the dangers and difficulties.”
“Do you think that you would be able to find me such a man?”
“There are many,” the muleteer said; “but it is not everyone that can be trusted. I know of one man who, if he happened to be at home and disengaged, would suit you well if he would undertake such a journey. He would go if anyone would, for no dangers terrify him, and he has made, before now, perilous expeditions with officers and others who have sought to discover the sources of the rivers. He lives in a village but a few miles from the summit of the pass, and if you have not as yet decided on your route, he will at any rate, if he cannot go himself, give you better advice than you can obtain from anyone else I know of.”
They passed through the city of Lima unnoticed. There were still numbers of people in the streets, and the sound of musical instruments came from the open windows. Parties of ladies stood on the balconies and were enjoying the coolness of the night air, and it was evident that Lima had no thoughts of going to bed for a long time yet.
“You would hardly see a soul in the streets while the sun is high,” the muleteer said upon Stephen remarking on the number of people still about. “The whole town goes to sleep from eleven to four or five, the shops are all closed, and save on a business of life or death no one would think of going out. About six the day really begins, and goes on until one in the morning; then people sleep till five or six, and for a time the streets are busy; the marketing is done then, the ladies all go to early mass, the troops do their exercises; by nine the streets begin to thin, and by ten they are deserted.”
Stephen was much struck with the appearance of the town, which had been laid out with great care, the streets running at right angles to each other, and being all precisely the same width, dividing the town into regular blocks. It contained at that time some 70,000 inhabitants. He was surprised at the want of height in the houses, comparatively few of which had more than one story. On remarking on this to the muleteer, the latter said:
“It is because of the earthquakes; nowhere are there such bad earthquakes as here. If it were not for that Lima would be perfect. The country round is very fertile, there is an abundance of pure water, the climate is healthy, and it lies 600 feet above the sea. But the earthquakes are terrible, there has not been a bad one lately, but it might come at any time. Every twenty or thirty years there is a very bad one. The worst were those of 1687 and 1746; the first destroyed every house in Lima, and the second was almost as bad, but was much worse at Callao. There they not only had the earthquake but a tumult of waves such as never was before seen. The sea went right over the town, and almost every soul there, and at other towns along the coast, perished. There were twenty-three ships in the harbour at Callao, nineteen of these were sunk and the other four carried half a mile inland. Since then there has been nothing like that, but the Indians say that we may expect another before long. I don’t know what they go by, but people say that they predicted the others long before they came. Have you ever felt an earthquake, señor?”
“No, there was a very slight shock when I was at Valparaiso, but it was not much more than the rumble a heavy wagon makes in the street, and did no damage whatever.”
“I have never felt a great earthquake,” the muleteer said, “but I have felt little ones. The animals always know when they are coming, and when I see the mules uneasy and apprehensive, I always choose some level spot where there is no fear of rocks coming rolling down on us, and halt there. The first shock may be so slight that one hardly feels it, but the mules know all about it. They straddle their legs and brace themselves up or else lie down on the ground. When I see them do that I know that the next shock is going to be a smart one, and I lie down too. It is nothing when you are out in the country, but in the towns it is terrible. People rush out into the streets screaming with fear, If they are near a church they make for that; if not, they kneel down in the streets, where they are pretty safe, the houses being so low and mostly thatched. I have never seen one severe enough to bring the houses down, but I have seen them crack, and parapets tumble down, and great pieces peel off the walls. What with the dust, and the screams of the women and children, and the ringing of all the church bells, it is enough to shake a man’s courage I can tell you.”
After proceeding some ten miles farther, by a road always ascending and often steep, a halt was made. The muleteer removed the valises and packs, gave a double handful of corn to each animal, and then, hobbling them, allowed them to wander about to pick up what they could. He and Stephen partook of some of the food they had brought with them, and then wrapping themselves in their cloaks lay down for a few hours’ sleep. At daylight the journey was renewed. So they travelled on, halting for five or six hours in the heat of the day, and riding in the morning early, and late on into the evening. The climate, however, scarcely necessitated the mid-day halt, and at night they were glad to wrap themselves in a blanket in addition to the cloak. At last the summit of the pass was reached. In front of them rose another chain of mountains almost as lofty as that which they had climbed. Between these great ranges lay a plain varying in width. Several towns and small villages were visible.
“That is Jauja to the right,” the muleteer said, “and that is Pasco to the left; they are both large towns. They do not look so very far apart from here. But the air of the mountains is so clear it is difficult to judge distances. You would not take them to be much more than twenty miles from us; they are nearly three times as far, and are fully eighty miles apart.”
“Where does the guide of whom you spoke live?”
“It is some twenty miles down; it is where the roads from the two towns fall into this pass. It is convenient for him, because he is in the track of merchants going either north or south.”
No stay was made on the top of the pass, for the wind was strong and piercing. There were snow-covered peaks on either hand, and so they hurried onwards, although they had already done a long morning’s march. Five miles farther they halted in a wood, and although they had already made a descent of some thousand feet they were glad to light a fire. On the following day they halted early at a solitary hut standing at the junction of two roads.
“Bravo!” the muleteer said as the door opened and a man came out at the sound of the mules’ feet, “here is Pita himself. I thought we should find him, for, since the war began, trade has gone off greatly, and he was likely to be out of employment. Well met, Pita; I was in hopes that I should find you here, for the señor has need of the services of a bold fellow like yourself.”
“Enter, señor,” the Indian said gravely, lifting his sombrero, for he was dressed in Peruvian fashion. “It is long since I have seen you, Gomez.”
“Yes, a full year,” the muleteer replied; “it was at Cuzco, and you were just starting with a party of traders.”
The hut contained little furniture, but there was a pile of skins, the proceeds of the Indian’s hunting since his return from his last expedition. He took off three or four of them, threw them on the ground, and motioned Stephen to take a seat while he busied himself in preparing a meal. Nothing was said of business until this was served. When it was finished the Indian rolled three cigars, and when these were lighted, and three cups of excellent coffee made, Pita said:
“Now, señor, in what way can I serve you?”
“I want to go down the Amazon to the coast.”
“It is a long journey, long and difficult; I have never been so far. The farthest point that I have reached has been Barra, where the Madeira falls into the Solimoes.”
“That is the Amazon,” Gomez explained. “It is called the Marañon here in Peru, but from the frontier it is known as the Solimoes.”
“As far as the frontier,” Pita went on, “there are no great difficulties, and there are many towns on the banks; beyond that to Barra there are but one or two villages. The Mozon begins at Llata, some two hundred miles north of this. The road is a good one, for we pass through Pasco and Huanuco; there you can take boat, which will carry you as far as the frontier, and beyond that you will have to take another, for no Peruvians will venture so far from here.”
“The señor wishes to escape towns,” Gomez said. “He has no papers, and wishes to escape questioning. You know what Spanish authorities are, and how suspiciously they view the passage of a stranger. Could you not take him down the Madeira?”
“It is a terrible journey,” the Indian said. “Very few white men have ever descended the river. There are bad falls and bad Indians. I myself have never gone down it more than a few hundred miles. It would need much courage, señor, and even then things might turn out badly. I would not undertake such a journey single-handed, though with a good comrade I might adventure it. You could not get a boat unless you bought one, and, as a rule, men travel on light rafts, as these are safer on the rapids than boats. That way has the advantage of being a good deal shorter than going round by the Marañon, but the difficulties and dangers are very much greater.”
“Do you love the Spaniards?” Stephen asked.
The Indian’s face darkened.
“They have been the destroyers of our race,” he said; “the oppressors of our country. I hate them with all my heart.”
“Then I may tell you at once,” Stephen said, “that I am an Englishman. I am one of the officers of the English admiral who commands the fleet that has destroyed their war-ships and is blockading their towns. I was wrecked on the Peruvian coast and thrown into prison. They were about to hand me over to the Inquisition as a heretic when I escaped, so you can understand the danger that I should run in passing through any of their towns. I speak, as you hear, the Chilian dialect, therefore I would be detected as a stranger at once, and as I could give no satisfactory reply to questions, and have no papers, I should at once be seized and sent back again to Callao.”
The Indian nodded gravely. He had heard of the misfortunes that had befallen the Spaniards, and knew that the fleet that had inflicted such damage upon them was commanded by an Englishman.
“The señor is provided with money,” Gomez said. “I did not myself know that he was an Englishman, though I suspected from the manner in which I was hired that he had trouble with the Spaniards.”
“I would have told you so, Gomez,” Stephen said, “but I thought it better that you should not know, so that if I were seized by the Spaniards you could declare that you were wholly ignorant of my being an Englishman, and believed that I was only a trader travelling on business.”
“They would not have believed me,” Gomez laughed. “You had no goods with you, and your speech showed that you were not a Peruvian. I have often wondered on the way to what nation you belonged, and how it was that one so young could be ready to undertake so desperate an enterprise as you proposed; but now that I know you are an officer under the terrible English admiral I can well understand it.”
“I would do much,” Pita said, “for any enemy of the Spaniards; and more for this reason than for the sake of money. I am ready to undertake to do my best to take you in safety to Barra; beyond that I would not go. The river below that is, as I hear, quite open, and you could journey down without difficulty save such as you would meet with from the Portuguese authorities; but the distance would be too great for me to return. Even from Barra it would be a journey fully two thousand miles home again.”
“What would be your terms for taking me to Barra?”
“I do not say that I would take you there, señor, I only say that I would try and do so. As I tell you, I have never journeyed far down the Madeira myself, and know not what the difficulties may be. For that reason I shall want half the money paid to me when we reach Cuzco, near which live my wife and family, and I must leave this with them in case I never return. I will think over what pay I shall require for myself and my comrade. It is not a matter upon which one can decide at a word.”
“I can quite understand that, Pita. I must of course keep sufficient in hand to pay my expenses down to Para, where I can doubtless obtain a passage by an English ship. But I am ready to pay any sum you may ask that is within my means. Now, Gomez, we had better go out and look to the mules, and leave Pita to himself to think the matter over.”
“The Indian will not overcharge you,” Gomez said when they were outside the hut; “the pay of these men is small. They value their lives lightly, and when, like Pita, they once take to the life of a guide, either to those who are searching for mines or to traders, they never settle down. They are proud of the confidence placed in them, and of their own skill as guides, and so long as they can earn enough to keep their families during their absence—and a very little suffices for that—they are contented.”
“I suppose there are mines to be discovered yet, Gomez?”
“Assuredly there are,” the muleteer said confidently. “The Spaniards have worked rich mines ever since they came here, but great as is the treasure that they have taken away, it is still insignificant compared with the store of gold among the Incas when they came here. Every Peruvian on this side of the Andes dreams of gold, and there are thousands of men who, as soon as they earn enough money to buy tools and provisions, set off to search for gold-mines or buried treasure. It is certain that the Incas buried a vast quantity of their treasure rather than see it fall into the hands of the Spaniards, and it has never been discovered. It is generally believed that the secret of the hiding-place is known to Indians, who have handed down the secret from father to son. This may be true or it may not. So many thousands of Indians have either been killed by the Spaniards or have died in their mines, that it may well be that all who knew the secret died centuries ago. But I do not say that it may not be known to some of them now; if so, it is more likely that these may be among the tribes beyond the boundaries of Peru. There are vast tracts there where neither Spaniards nor Portuguese have penetrated. The whole country is one great forest, or, in some places, one great desert.
“The Indians of Peru have become, for the most part, an idle, shiftless race. Centuries of slavery have broken their spirit altogether, and had the secret been known to many of them, it would have been wrung from them long since, especially as all are now Catholics and go to confession, and would never be able to keep such a secret from leaking out. It is true that there are little Indian villages among the mountains where the people are still almost independent, and here the secret may still be handed down; but I doubt if it will ever be known. Doubtless it is guarded by such terrible oaths that those who know it will never dare to reveal it. Pita has gone, in his time, with a score of expeditions in search of the treasure; most of these thought that they had obtained some clue to it, but nothing was ever discovered, and I doubt whether Pita himself was ever earnest in the search.
“In some respects he is like ourselves, in others he is still an Indian, and has a full share of Indian superstitions, so that his Christianity is no deeper than his skin. He would do his best to guide those who employed him to the neighbourhood where they thought that the treasure was hidden, but I doubt whether he would do anything to assist in their search, or would really try to gather from the Indians any clue as to its whereabouts.”
“But, at any rate, the natives could not very well have carried away their gold-mines.”
“Not carried them away, señor,—no; and that the Spaniards had such rich mines at first shows that they did learn from the natives—by torture, I daresay—where most of these were situated; but they got more silver than gold, and even now there is gold to be found in the sands of most of the rivers in South America, so that I think it was from washings more than mines that the Spaniards got their gold. Still, we all think that there must have been rich gold-mines in the times before the Spaniards, and that when the natives saw how villainously their monarch and all his chief men were treated, and how the Spaniards thought of nothing but gold and silver, they may have blocked up the entrances to all their richest mines, and in a few years all signs of the sites would be covered by thick vegetation. You see, señor, these things are talked over whenever a few of us get together, and though there are not many other things that we do know, you will scarcely meet a Peruvian who could not talk with you for hours about the lost treasure and the lost gold-mines of the Incas.
“There are many places that I know of where the sand is rich enough to pay well for washing, but they are all far away from habitations. A man would have to carry his stores and provisions and tools with him; and then, it is hard work, and a Peruvian does not care for hard work. As to the natives, there would be no keeping them at it, they would desert and run away at once; for not only do they hate work, but, above all things, they hate to work for gold. They look upon gold as an accursed thing, which brought about the conquest of the country by the Spaniards, and the centuries of oppression that have befallen their race; and even should a native alight upon a rich spot he would go away and never say a word about it, fearing that if he did, all sorts of trouble would fall upon him.”
