Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 63, No. 392, June, 1848

"Robber!" he said, "wouldst thou slay the animal for defending faithfully the person of its master? Down with thy weapon, or, by the might of Moses! I will smite thee dead with my mace!"

"A Jew! – a Jew!" roared Valverde; "a palpable, self-acknowledged Jew! Down with him, cavaliers! – hew the circumcised villain to pieces! – trample him under foot, as ye would tread on the forehead of an asp!"

But the sanguinary orders of the monk were not so easily obeyed. Quick as lightning, Manco Capl had grappled with the gigantic trooper, and for once the Peruvian agility proved a match for the European strength. Encumbered with his armour, Herrera staggered and fell, dragging his antagonist with him, who, however, kept the upper hold.

"In the name of the fiend!" shouted Pizarro, "rid me of this monster! Juan! Diego! O'Rafferty! – will you see me murdered before your eyes?"

"Hold!" cried the Inca to the soldiers; "no violence! I will call the creature off. Come hither, Bicerta!" and the jaguar quitted its hold of Pizarro, and came crawling to the feet of its master.

"Ye are trusty knaves indeed!" said Pizarro, when he had risen from the earth; "had it depended upon your succour, I might have been torn limb from limb."

"Troth, ye're no that far wrang," observed the Scot; "it's an unchancy beast to deal wi', and far waur nor a wull-cat!"

"But what is this?" cried Pizarro. "Herrera down? By Heaven! the best and bravest of my soldiers has been slain!"

And so it was. Unable to shake off the superincumbent weight of the young Inca, Herrera had felt for his poniard, and aimed a desperate stroke at the bosom of Manco Capl. But the active youth caught him by the wrist, and with a dexterous turn forced the steel from his hand. The clutch of the dragoon was by this time fastened in his hair, and no means of extrication were left save to use the weapon. The steel flashed thrice, and each time it was buried in the throat of Herrera. Gradually he relaxed his hold, his huge frame quivered strongly, a film gathered over his eyes, and he lay a senseless corpse. The black blood flowed lazily from his wounds – the jaguar crept forwards, and purred as he licked it up.

Meanwhile, where was Oneiza? Pale as death, she had been clinging to her father while the conflict lasted; but now, when her husband was victorious, and standing, brave and beautiful, over his prostrate foe, his large eye flashing with indignation, and his nostril dilating with triumph, she sprang forward, and threw her arms around him.

"Back! – back, Oneiza!" cried the Inca; "this is no place for women! To the temple all of you, save those who have strength to fight for their Emperor and their homes! These are no gods, but bloody, desperate villains, whom it is ours to punish. See! – one of them is already smitten down, and his blood is sinking into the floor. Gods do not bleed thus. O my friends! be true to yourselves, and we may yet save our country! Away – away, Oneiza, if thou lovest me! Axtloxcl, carry her hence! To the temple; and if we join you not there, fire dome and shrine, and leave nothing but ashes to the invader!"

The women and the priests obeyed, and none save the combatants remained in the palace. The Peruvians, though numerically superior to their opponents, were yet at a great disadvantage in point of arms. Unaccustomed to warfare, they carried such weapons only as were more useful for show than for defence, whilst every one of the Spaniards was armed from head to heel. At one end of the hall stood Atahualpa, surrounded by his native chivalry, each eager to shed his lifeblood in defence of his beloved monarch; at the other was gathered the small phalanx of the Spaniards, to whom retreat was impossible, and remorse or pity unknown.

"Why wait we further?" cried Pizarro: "the blood of Herrera calls out for vengeance. Be firm, men – unsling your hackbuts – fire!" and the first deadly discharge of musketry thundered through the Peruvian hall.

Several of the Peruvians fell, but their fall was of less moment than the terror which seized the survivors on witnessing the effect of these unknown engines of destruction.

"The gods! the gods are wroth with us! We have seen them in the smoke and the fire!" cried several, and they fell unwounded on their faces, in fear and consternation, among the dead.

Manco Capl alone stood unappalled.

"Be they gods or no!" he cried, "they are our foemen, and the enemies of Peru! Can those be of the sun, who come hither to massacre his children? Let us meet fire with fire – kindle the palace – and try how these strangers will breathe amidst the roar of the devouring elements!"

So saying, the intrepid young man, as if actuated by the spirit of his great ancestor, the indomitable Judge of Israel, caught up a torch, and applied it to the hangings of the wall. Quick as thought, the flames ran up – their fiery tongues licked the ceiling – the beams began to crackle and to blaze – the smoke descended in thick spiral wreaths throughout the room. Once again, and but once, sped the volley of the Spaniards: next moment they were engaged hand to hand with Manco Capl, and a body of the young Incas, whom his words had roused to desperation. The struggle was terrible, but not long. The Europeans, trained to the use of arms from their infancy, made wild havoc among their slender assailants. One by one they fell, vainly defending their king, who was soon within the grasp of Pizarro.

Soon the flickering of the flames, and the rolling columns of smoke which issued from the burning hall, announced to those who had taken refuge in the adjacent temple the nature of the awful catastrophe.

"O Axtloxcl – O my father! let me go!" cried Oneiza. "My husband is perishing in the fire! Oh, let me go and die with him, if I cannot hope to save him!"

At this moment a door of the palace burst open, and Manco Capl, his vesture bloody, and his long plumes broken, rushed through the intervening space. The jaguar followed at his heels.

"My bride – my Oneiza! where art thou!" he cried; and, with a loud scream of joy, his wife tore herself from the grasp of her father, and leaped into the young man's arms.

"Thou art safe! thou art safe!" she cried.

"Hush, Oneiza! The Great Spirit has been very merciful, but there is danger yet. Canst fly, beloved?"

"With thee, my love? – to the boundary of the solid earth."

"Then away with me, for death is near at hand!"

The horses of Pizarro and his followers had been picketed close to the gates of the temple. Whether from negligence, or the conviction that the fear which the Peruvians had already manifested at the sight of these strange animals would be their safeguard, or from the impossibility of sparing one single soldier of the scanty band, these had been left without a sentry. Actuated by an impulse, which perhaps in a calmer moment he would scarcely have felt, Manco Capl snatched the reins of one of them, a splendid piebald charger, which indeed was Pizarro's own, lifted Oneiza upon a second, sprang into the saddle, and in an instant was galloping away.

"Fire upon the dog!" cried Pizarro, who was just then rushing out, sword in hand. "Fire upon him, I say! I would not lose Onagra for his weight in virgin gold!"

Three shots were fired, but none of them struck the fugitives. Onward they rushed towards the lake with the jaguar bounding by their side.

"Mount and after them!" shouted Pizarro.

O'Rafferty and the Scot obeyed – threw themselves hastily on horseback, and gave spur in pursuit.

We throw a veil over the deeds of atrocity which were that night perpetrated in Caxamalca.

Short and sweet, said I, as I laid down my pen: I question whether Dumas ever turned out any thing more dramatic. At all events, I have done a material service to the public, by exterminating Herrera the dragoon. I hardly suppose that, after this, the hidalgo will venture to bring him forward again. Peace to his manes! It was a tough job to kill him, but I think I have effected it at last, rather neatly than otherwise.

CHAPTER V

THE CATARACT OF THE ROCKS

"Huzza, huzza! along the shore, across the desert wild, none meet the Inca and his bride, the free, the undefiled! Huzza, huzza! our steeds are fleet, the moon shines broad and clear; at every stride a tree goes by, we pass them like the deer! Hold up, hold up, my only love! the desert paths are near. I know the ways that skirt the rocks where foemen cannot ride. Nay, never wring thy hands and weep, my own devoted bride. We leave behind a ruined home, but freedom lies before; and hostile bands and savage arms shall never vex thee more. Why dost thou start so wildly, love? Why look in terror back? Fear'st thou the mailed enemies that follow in our track?"

"Oh, my husband! there are two!"

"Were there twenty, love, I fear not! Give thy willing steed the rein. Ho, Bicerta! noble creature, how he bounds along the plain! See, his eager eye is glowing with a fierce and sullen fire! Let the caitiffs dare to harm us, he will rend them in his ire. Onward, onward, love! the mazes of the forest now are past. Hark! I hear the hollow roaring of the mountain stream at last."

They were nearing a gloomy crevice of the rocks, through which a rapid river found its way. The chasm was a fearful one. More than a hundred feet below, the torrent boiled and whirled. The precipices on either side were sheer – a fall was inevitable death. The Inca saw and felt the danger, but there was no retreat. Grasping with one hand the reins of Oneiza's horse, he smote with the other the flank of his own. The dagger of Herrera, which the Peruvian still held, did service as a spur – both animals cleared the gulf, and alighted panting on the farther side.

"Deil's in your beast, O'Rafferty!" shouted the Scot, "pu' up hard, man, or ye're intil a hole as deep as the cauldron at the Yetts o' Muckart!"

The warning came too late. The young Irish horse upon which the foremost trooper was mounted went steadily at the chasm, gathered itself like a cat for the leap, and very nearly succeeded in achieving it. But the weight of the rider, sheathed as he was in heavy armour, was too much for its strength. It alighted, indeed, with its forefeet on the turf, made one convulsive struggle, and then fell heavily down the precipice. There was a sullen plunge, but no cry arose from the abyss.

"Weel," said the Scot, as he dismounted and peered over the edge of the rock, "that was a maist fearsome loup! Puir O'Rafferty! I aye tellt him he was a fule, and noo the fact has become maist veesible to ocular demonstration. I maun hae a shot, tho', at that lang chield wi' the feathers."

So saying, he unbuckled his carabine, and took deliberate aim over his saddle. But the villanous purpose was frustrated. No sooner had the fugitives halted, than the jaguar returned, creeping stealthily to the brink, and measuring the distance for its spring. The eyes of the Scot was intent upon his victim, his finger was placed upon the trigger, when, with a tremendous roar, the panther cleared the gulf, and seized the trooper by the throat. He spoke one sentence, and nothing more.

"Wha will tell this in Dysart, that I suld hae lived to be worried by a wull-cat?"

Next evening, in a cool grotto of the mountains, on a couch of the softest moss, far away from ravage and misery, and the armed grasp of the assassin, Manco Capl and Oneiza sung their bridal hymn.

"Oh, dearer than the evening star, art thou to me, my love! It gleams in glory from afar in yonder heaven above. But thou art in my arms, my sweet, nor nearer canst thou be! Where is thy soul, Oneiza?"

"With thee, my lord, with thee!"

"My humble opinion," said the Doctor, after listening to the foregoing pages – "my humble opinion is, that they manage matters better at Astley's."

SENTIMENTS AND SYMBOLS OF THE FRENCH REPUBLIC

When Lamartine, in the face of a mob still excited with battle and bloodshed, still drunken with the intoxication of victory, demanding, of those whom the chances of a destiny-fraught hour had placed at their head in the perilous post of command, they scarce knew what, and yet ready to recommence destruction and death were it not granted – when Lamartine tore aside the blood-red banner of terror, that had been seized on as the symbol of the newly proclaimed French Republic, and lifted aloft the tricolor flag as the true standard of the Republic of peace and order which he hoped to found, he did not only an act of personal courage – one to be mentioned among the great traits of heroism in the annals of history – but he consummated a deed upon which the destiny of France, perhaps of the whole world, for the moment depended. To those far away, who know not the strange compound that forms the character of the French, the mere change of one flag for another may appear a matter of but little moment: but in truth it was one of almost inestimable importance, for the destiny of the country depended on it. And this Lamartine knew. He knew his people too – he knew how easily they are led away by the outward show, how completely their sentiments would be engaged in the outward symbols; and he reared the symbol of order against the banner of violence and blood; though he raised it aloft at the hazard of his life. At that moment the poet-statesman stood forth a man ready to die for his convictions: at that moment, guns, pikes, swords, daggers, every instrument of death was directed at his head by a furious mob, screaming for that ideal, the Republic, from which it had been taught by demagogues to expect some vague, supernatural, at least wholly visionary good, as if it were a talisman to raise up a golden age by the mere power of its name; a mob, senseless, enraged, and deaf to reason, flushed with the acquisition of sudden and sovereign power, and yet goaded by the idea that treachery was at hand to snatch it from their grasp. In the face of such an assemblage, before the historical old building of the Hôtel de Ville of Paris, – upon those steps on which so many scenes of history had already passed, and none, perhaps, more important in its results than this, – he stood forth, pale, but erect and resolute: a single word from the crowd, the cry "he is a traitor! he deceives us!" might have been the signal for his massacre: a gesture might have done the deed: the wag of one nerve of a finger on the lock of the gun might have levelled him, and with him France, at once: and he knew it. He knew, too, that Fate was in his hands; he knew that in that seemingly senseless change of colours on a flag-staff lay the destiny of Paris; and he was prepared to fall a victim or to rise a hero. To the red flag popular fancy attached the idea of violence, war, revenge; it was the bloody pirate flag of propagandism by force of arms, by the terror of the scaffold. The tricolor flag, although it had waved over many a ruin, many a deed of horror, in the dreadful history of the past, had led on the nation to glory and military renown; for the last eighteen years it had typified the national watchwords of that time, "Liberty and Public Order;" and it was set forth once more, under a more democratic rule, but not a rule of anarchy – liberty, public order, peace. To each symbol was attached a sentiment. On the one symbol, on the one sentiment, Lamartine had staked the future destinies of France, as he had staked the hazard of his life. Unsupported he stood before those yelling, suspicious, infuriated thousands. He was the man of the moment. A powerful appeal to the feelings of such a mob – one of those appeals, one of those words of history that are carried down to all posterity – one of those electric touches of simultaneous sentiment, which often suddenly pervade great crowds, seemingly thrilling through all frames at once alike, coming as it were from some supernatural influence, but which few mortal men know how to direct, when, and far less as they would – such an appeal was to be made – such a word to be spoken – such a blow given. Again we repeat, he was the man of the moment – for he was the man of high poetic sentiment. Thence alone could come the electric stroke; and it was struck. The simple eloquence of the poet's heartfelt convictions fell over the crowd. He raised the tricolor banner; guns, swords, and pikes were lowered: "Vive Lamartine!" burst from every mouth: the cause of humanity was gained —for the time at least. That symbol stamped the sentiment of the future French Republic.