The Crimson Conquest: A Romance of Pizarro and PeruHudson, Charles B. (Charles Bradford)
History
The Crimson Conquest: A Romance of Pizarro and Peru
Hudson, Charles B. (Charles Bradford)
Peru -- History -- Conquest, 1522-1548 -- Fiction
And so throughout the day. Every sound startled his heart to his mouth,
clamored discovery, the plot revealed. At midday he was sleepy, and
dared not sleep,—or only in snatches, sitting up. Ten thousand times he
examined his counterfeit rivet-heads. Palpably, palpably false! To be
detected at a glance through a crack in the door! He hardly ventured to
move lest the bits of paste fall off. Ah, torment upon torment! It was
easier to be sure of death, as he had been the day before.
By nightfall his head was fevered, his hands clammily cold. At the
usual hour the officer of the guard came in. The new one was Zapato.
He was surly and irritable from a debauch of the previous night, and
said loudly as he entered the door:—
"Is this our ogre? Bah! For a _maravedi_ I would pull his teeth. Let
us have a look at his fastenings."
The other officer spoke a word in a low tone, evidently of warning, and
laid his hand upon his companion’s arm. Zapato shook him off roughly.
"Furies!" he retorted. "Dost think to frighten me? _Loco_ or not, I’ll
see to his irons. Here, guard, the lantern."
Cristoval’s nervousness left him in an instant, and he set his teeth.
_Por Dios!_ the man who should discover his work with the file should
never live to announce it. As Zapato approached, holding the lantern
aloft, scowling with swollen eyes, Cristoval rose slowly and stood
watching his advance with still alertness. The unsteady lantern cast a
fitful light over his rugged features, and the officer looked into a
face whose haggardness was intensified by the uncertain shadows,—cheeks
sunken and drawn by confinement and anxiety, and from their dark orbits
a pair of eyes gleaming with menacing steadiness into Zapato’s. The
latter hesitated, peering uncertainly through the gloom, then stepped
back a pace, his hand on his sword. The other officer seized him by the
arm and drew him without much resistance toward the door. Zapato looked
back over his shoulder.
"The man _is_ mad for a surety! We’ll let some one else look after his
fetters," and he laughed uneasily and went out. Cristoval smiled grimly
and seated himself to wait for Pedro.
Four long hours,—he knew from the change of sentinels outside the door,
which was made twice. At last, the welcome voice. Pedro was apparently
in unusual spirits, for his words were pitched high and he talked
volubly, now rapidly in Spanish, now with dignity in Latin. Would he
never be done? Presently he was singing. Fiends! Will he not hurry?
But listen! His words sound thick, with pauses suspiciously like
hiccoughs. At length the door opens.
"Is—is—the (hic)—man mad, sayst thou? Say, rather, ’_Faenum habet in
cornu!_’ Lat—Latin, _compadre_. Meaneth, he hath hay on (hic) his
horns—P—p— (hic) Pliny. M—more stately way of expressing it, my dear
(hic). Let us—see!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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