The Romance of Golden Star ...Griffith, George Chetwynd
Science
The Romance of Golden Star ...
Griffith, George Chetwynd
Fantasy fiction
The Governor turned and stared at me, dumb with amazement at these
strange words, and all the others stared too, for, like him, they had
no doubt heard the legend of my strange fate. He drew his sword, and as
he did so I covered him with my revolver, and extended my hand to take
it. He held the hilt out to me with a trembling hand. I took it in
silence, and then I turned from him and said to my men,--
'Bring these Spaniards out and bind them safely, then follow me to the
Seat of the Incas.'
When they saw that the victory was with us, and that the Governor
himself was our prisoner, together with many of the chief of his
officers, those of the soldiers who had not been for me when they came
were glad enough now to secure themselves by shouting my name and
obeying my orders, and when I moved away towards the seat, they followed
me, laughing and cheering, well pleased to see their hated masters
prisoners in their midst.
The great carved rock which is called the Inca's Seat is, as I have
already said, a great rounded mass of stone rising up from the plain of
the Rodadero, and carved into many seats. On the top there are three
broad seats, the middle one higher than all the rest, and it was here
that my forefathers had sat to watch the building of the great fortress,
and sometimes to give audience to their people.
Now I sat on it, and the soldiers drew themselves up round the rock,
with the prisoners in the midst of them, and I spoke to them, and told
them freely of the strange things that had happened to me, and how I had
come back to the Land of the Four Regions to drive out their oppressors
and restore the just and gentle rule of my ancestors. Then I had the
Governor brought up and stood before me, and bade Francis Hartness come
and sit on my right hand and speak to him for me, and by his lips I told
him that unless the city was surrendered to me before evening he and all
his officers should die, and all the houses of the Spaniards in the city
should be given to the flames and no pity shown to any man, woman or
child of them, for as they had treated my people so I had sworn to treat
them unless they yielded.
You may think how troubled he was at hearing such words as these, since
he knew from what he had seen that there was conspiracy and treachery
among his own men, and he had no knowledge of how far this had gone, or
which of his men he could trust, and so this man, who but a few hours
before had been master of the whole valley, and had looked upon the
Indios, as he called them, as little better than slaves, now answered me
humbly enough and prayed me not to murder him when he was helpless in my
power. And to this I answered him that the blood of my people had been
crying out for many generations against his people, and that this was
the day not of mercy but of vengeance, and that I would do as I had said
unless the city were delivered to me.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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