"Come, gentlemen, let us move! Guard him closely!"
They close round him. As they are about to leave the square, Atahualpa turns toward the heaps of his people who vainly gave their lives in his defence, and raising his hands, speaks a few words in Quichua, broken by one great sob that shakes his frame. Then he turns away, his countenance as sternly impassive and inscrutable as before.
As they enter the building which is to serve as his temporary prison, the sun is setting—setting forever upon the empire of the Incas.
Night fell before the cavalry returned from pursuing the wretched fugitives, whom they hunted almost to the confines of the Peruvian camp, riding them down in their flight, and slaying without mercy. The troops of the Inca had fled without striking a blow. It would be difficult to explain their complete demoralization did we not consider the superstitious awe with which the Spaniards had been regarded from their first landing upon the Peruvian coasts. Their aspect and the supernatural powers ascribed to them bore out the ancient tradition of the fair-faced god, Viracocha, who, it is said, had once appeared upon earth, and whose reappearance had been foretold by the oracles. The white men were his descendants and agents. Already they were known as Viracochas. A mere handful, but armed with thunderbolts, they had seized the sacred person of the Inca and destroyed his nobles and generals at a blow. The keystone, the arch itself, of the empire had crumbled and fallen under the dire calamity. The people were without a ruler, the army without leaders. The authority which had held the tribes together was dissolved in an hour. Accustomed for generations to the rule of the most absolute despotism the world has ever known, they were now incapable of initiative. The Empire of Tavantinsuyu was a rudderless ship. The army resolved itself into its elements and fell in pieces.
The Inca supped that night with the Spanish commander and his officers, as had been promised. Cristoval, the only officer fit for duty after the day’s work, had been detailed as commander of the exterior guard, glad to be relieved of the need of sitting at table with his comrades after so base a massacre, which, in his enforced role of spectator, he had seen in its full horror. He was a soldier, and possibly not less callous to bloodshed and suffering than many others of his calling, but never had he beheld butchery so wanton and unhindered. Had he been a participant—and now he fervently thanked God for preventing it—he would have been less impressed by its enormity. He must even have shared in some degree the infection of ferocity, until he should have realized, as had De Soto, the uselessness of the slaughter and revolted. But compelled to look on in cool blood, he had sickened. He sickened more at the brutal exultation, and at the ghastly sights in the square. A battlefield he could have surveyed unmoved. This slaughter-pen horrified him.