“Son of the Church, fall on! Do you not see how the fields on both sides are filling with the host of the heathen? Strike now, straight and swift, ere it is too late.” Even at this supreme moment it seemed as though the soldier-soul of Pizarro made a last revolt against the treachery which he himself had planned. He knew that the splendidly arrayed guards of the Inca and the people who were now crowding fast into the square were unarmed, that they had not even taken the precaution of bringing those simple weapons which, however effective in their own warfare, would be but as children’s playthings if pitted against the shot and steel of his own troops. As Valverde reached his horse’s head he drew rein, and threw up his right hand to stop those behind him, saying, in a low, husky voice-- “Is there no other way, Father? These poor people have no arms. There are many of them, but they would only be as a crowd of children before our charge----” “There is but one way with the enemies of the Lord!” cried Valverde, raising his voice again to a shrill scream. “Fall on, I say, fall on! By my lips the Church absolves you! God Himself, whom this heathen hath insulted by casting His holy Word into the dust with contumely, will see whose hand is first raised to wipe the shame away, and ere long the king must know whether to-day an empire has been won or lost for him. Fall on! Fall on! for God and Santiago!” The words, impassioned as they were, were skilfully spoken, and they left Pizarro with but one course open to him. A scarf of white silk, the colour of peace and truce between honourable enemies, was lying across his saddle-bow. With a hand that trembled as it had never done in battle, he took it up and waved it once aloft. Pedro de Candia, who had mounted one of his guns on the little fort above the square, was standing beside it with the lighted match in his hand, and as he saw the scarf wave he raised the smouldering match to his lips, blew on it and laid it on the priming. The next instant the ears of the thronging thousands who had followed the Inca into the city were for the first time thunderstricken by the hoarse roar of cannon. For the first time their eyes saw leaping from the throat of a gun the flash which foretold the coming of the iron messenger of death. Candia had trained his piece with all too deadly certainty. The little ball struck a golden-armoured, gaily plumed Peruvian who stood at the head of a column of guards within a few paces of the Inca’s litter. He happened at the moment to be looking up towards the fortress. The shot struck him full in the face, burst his head asunder as though it had been a rotten orange, and ploughed its way through the files behind him, leaving a long row of bloody and mangled corpses to mark its path.