The Crimson Conquest 59

The Crimson Conquest 59

Now began a weary watch, broken by short spells of uneasy sleep and

startled awakenings. Once, roused by voices in the court and hurried

steps, he saw two Cañares, evidently servants, enter the dining-hall.

They came out with the silver, just as a cavalier, a stranger to

Cristoval, emerged from another room with a bundle of papers and wearing

apparel. The man was in full armor and looked haggard and anxious, but

seemed intent only upon the movements of the Cañares, whom he ordered

impatiently to hasten. He followed them out at length, and again the

court was quiet. After a glance at the whirling bank of smoke to the

north, Cristoval stretched himself out once more and soon was

slumbering.

 

Toward midday he started out of a tortured dream and sat up. The sun

was high in the north, rushing, as it seemed to his bewildered eyes,

madly across the sky, a mere disc of burnished copper, now deepening

into bronze, now flashing into a brazen glare through the scurrying

cloud, but unutterably strange and unnatural. Before he had fully gained

his startled senses, he was on his feet and had crossed himself a dozen

times, only to grin blankly at his own consternation. Another instant

revealed the real peril, grave enough. The flames seemed leaping from

the roofs across the street, and the sinister roar and crackle were

terribly distinct. Cristoval crossed himself again, took up sword and

buckler, and ran to the door. The roofs opposite were untouched, but

their immunity would be short. The crossing where the sentinels had

stood was vacant. A glance in the opposite direction promptly dashed

his hope. The street partly cleared of smoke for a moment, and at its

foot were cannoneers and one of Candia’s guns covering the bridge across

the Tullamayu. They were looking alertly toward the suburbs, and one

held a lighted match. Cristoval rushed to the door in the rear. A

survey from the end of the passage was sufficient. At the first corner

to the south was a cluster of pikemen, evidently part of a column which

occupied the cross-street. The prisoner slowly regained his

concealment. For the next hour he gloomily watched the fire, until,

convinced by the rate of its approach that it was farther away than he

had thought, he dozed again. While he slept, the wind shifted to the

north.

 

Sometime in the afternoon—late, it seemed from the uncertain light—he

was awakened by the report of a falconet, and smiled grimly. "The

Inca’s forces are attacking," he muttered. "May no man of them fail to

duck in time—and may they come this far! It would—Mother of God!"

 

A crackling sound, heard vaguely, had started him to his feet. He

struck aside the foliage. There was no sky!—only a flying mass of gray

and white, near enough, it looked, to be touched with his hand. The

palace was afire. At a bound he was clear of the shrubbery. The roof

over the entrance was a solid flame. While he stood, transfixed, it

swept forward right and left with the speed of wind. He dashed through

a shower of fire to the doors. The building opposite was a furnace.

"Bang!" snapped the falconet at the foot of the street.

 

He rushed to the rear, racing with the flames roaring along the roofs on

both sides of the court, and reached the passage, now full of smoke.

From its mouth he saw the pikemen looking toward him at the fire.

Should he venture a dash to cut through their lines? Hopeless,

hopeless! But to be burned alive! Yet the main court was broad. Would

he not be out of reach of the flames in its centre? It was the one

chance. A flash of fire overhead drove him back into the palace. The

passages and rooms were dense and stifling, and once he lost his way;

found it again, and crept the rest of the distance to the court on his

hands and knees; reached it, blind, and half stupefied.

 

Gasping and choking, he dragged himself to the shrubbery, only half

conscious of the leaping, blazing tumult surrounding him. The entrance

had disappeared, curtained by burning thatch fallen from the eaves. The

air was growing hot, and the open doorways which before had been

obscure, now showed a dull illumination. For a few minutes the

atmosphere was fairly free to breathe, but as the roof timbers began to

give way the rooms filled with burning straw from above, and great

spurts and volumes of smoke rolled into the court from the doors and

windows.

 

Cristoval lay with face pressed to the earth for its coolness and the

stratum of purer air. Overhead the leaves were shrivelling and

drooping. Burning wisps of thatch, then sheaves and armfuls, were

soaring upward in the blast and strewing the ground about him. He was

protected by his armor, but in danger of suffocation, and his breathing

grew momentarily more labored, until every inspiration was like a

draught of fire itself.

 

Cristoval was coughing and breathing stertorously, sweating in his mail.

Nothing was visible now but the hot, white shroud through which the

nearest shrubs showed like dim skeletons. Strangely, at times they were

all in motion, going round and round; vanishing for moments, to reappear

slowly and resume their wavering reel. He wondered at it very little,

occupied mostly with the effort to breathe, the pain of it, and the

torture of the heat. He had ceased to think, connectedly, of anything;

but a series of rapidly moving pictures traversed his brain, chiefly of

Rava and Xilcala, with others interspersed, of no relevancy. His head

was aching, and singing wildly—or, was it the whistling of wind through

a ship’s rigging? It was that, for he felt the roll and plunge.

_Madre_!—dreaming! He saw Pedro, then Father Tendilla, then Rogelio.

Something was burrowing beneath his chest, squeaking pitifully, and

roused him. A _coy_—guinea pig! Another scurried past, and languidly

he wondered whither. Toward the fountain! _Jesu_! At once his mind

cleared. Why had he not thought of it before? He began crawling toward

the water, reanimated by hope which, but now, had gone. Slowly, for his

way was strewn with fire, and his steel of crushing weight. Miles away,

the pool; hardly to be attained, but reached at last, and he rolled in

at full length.

 

The shock revived him, but before he could struggle to his knees he

thought he must drown. Once upright, he found the air cooler and far

less stifling. As he knelt, the water came to his breast, and now he

was safe at least from being burned to death, if not from asphyxiation.

It was minutes before his thoughts became connected, and then he saw the

_coys_ cowering on the steps in front of him.

 

Beyond the rim of the pool nothing could be seen for the smoke. On

every side was the roar of the burning and the muffled crash of falling

beams. The air was full of dropping brands, spitting and hissing as

they touched the water, or starting frenzied squeaks when they fell upon

the rodents. Moved by their common suffering with himself, he dashed

water over them with his hands, only half sensible of the mercy of the

impulse.

 

The smoke thickened from minute to minute, and the heat, even in the

pool, grew maddening; but by frequent immersions of his head and face he

retained his senses, wondering in a stupid, dreamy way, how long he

could endure.

 

At last, daylight was waning. The thatch had burned out by this, and

the smoke become less dense, permitting occasional glimpses of the

flames still tossing about him. He was growing chilled and stiffened by

long immersion, and rose to his feet from time to time, first dropping

his visor to protect his face. Through the obscurity he could see the

dull red of the doorways, and the walls with their topping of fire, but

as evening came on the heat grew less intense, and he found that he

could stand, dipping at intervals to cool his armor.

 

Night fell and grew late. The worst of the fire had passed to the

southward. Around him the flames barely reached above the blackened

walls, though the glare from the doors revealed the desolation of the

court. It was hideous and infernal, and he was seized with a frantic

longing to be away from its horror, but hours dragged before he could

even quit the pool. Slowly, however, the fire subsided, and he mounted

the steps unheeded by his fellow refugees. Now he could see the

entrance, with fragments of the doors hanging to the hinges and still

feebly burning. He would attempt it.

 

He found his sword and shield, among the leafless stalks of the bushes,

and after a final plunge in the pool, left the court. Filling his

lungs, he bolted through the door and into the street. It was full of

embers, starting into flame and swirled about by eddies of hot wind. He

could see but a short distance ahead, but with a hurried prayer he

dashed forward through the stifling heat. The end of the street was not

far, but before he had reached it his feet and legs were blistered. In

his struggles for breath, and in the dread doubt whether he would attain

his goal, he hardly felt the pain, but rushed blindly on, ploughing up a

spray of fire in his passage. At length, the foot of the street, and he

staggered into the open, across the quay, and down the steps to the

stream.

 

At the farther end of the bridge was the falconet with its gunners. The

fire had not crossed the rivulet, but the heat had driven them to the

opposite side. One of the cannoneers beheld Cristoval rushing through

the fiery dusk of the street, and his affrighted exclamation drew the

attention of his mates. They saw the arch-fiend, clad in red-hot steel,

with blazing eyes, and brandishing a sword of flame, charging toward

them through a burst of fire. There was one gasping yell, and they fled

into the darkness.

 

 

 

 

*CHAPTER XXXV*

 

_*The Lurking Morisco*_

 

 

During the half-hour it took the sergeant commanding the gun to

reassemble his panic-stricken cannoneers, Cristoval was passing slowly

down the Tullamayu, secure in its shadows. In his thankfulness for

escape from death his scorched feet and legs seemed naught, and he was

eager only to pass the fire ahead, cross the city to the other stream,

and find the Amarucancha. To find the Amarucancha; for not an instant

did his purpose flag, nor would while he had strength to creep.

 

He reached the point where the stream is bridged by the Rimac Pampa,

climbed a stairway, and found himself at the edge of that square. The

entire district south and east had burned the night before, and the

ruins were still smouldering, with small fires here and there in the

_débris_ lighting up the plaza, but rendering its greater extent the

more obscure. To the north-east, the suburbs of Toco Cachi and Munay

Cenca were burning fiercely, but the advance of the conflagration thence

had been retarded by the wind, so that between the burning zone and the

Tullamayu lay an area yet untouched, while the fire which had swept over

him was now in the rear. In the west was a huge, roseate bank of smoke,

rolling upward in colossal and endless transformation. Overhead were

fragments of sky, densely black, with sickly stars briefly seen, then

extinguished by the pallid fleece whirled and driven by the wind.

Everywhere above the horizon, a stupendous activity impressive in its

silence.

 

Cristoval turned from it oppressed, to listen and reconnoitre before

venturing from shelter. About him, gloom and stillness profound, the

desolation of vacant streets, the mournfulness of abandonment; and over

all, a wan, unnatural twilight. He felt the weight of loneliness and a

vague dread of the shadowy thoroughfares and sombre buildings. He shook

it off with resolution, and stole out into the street. Not far ahead an

intersecting way admitted a narrow illumination from the north. He was

within fifty paces of this when a dim figure crossed the light and

vanished in the darkness beyond. It appeared and disappeared so quickly

and silently that he was uncertain lest he had been deceived by a swirl

of smoke. He paused uneasily, unresolved whether to advance or go back.

"No Spaniard, that," he reflected, "and _cierto_, not a sentinel! A

mere rag of a figure—if not a rag of mine imagination. But what an

unholy, shivery manner of gait!—a flit, and ’t was gone. Murder! I had

liefer seen a pikeman." He stood for a moment peering and hearkening, then advanced with drawn sword.