The tumult died away on the distant flanks of the encampment. Presently, company after company was sweeping into the low plain between the camp and the river, and forming into battalions. Here they stood motionless, broke at last into columns, and marched down to the fords, the earth shaken by the feet of their thousands, the air hideously vibrant with the fierce music of their instruments and wild chanting. A sound as of surf breaking on a shingled beach rose above the stream, its silver turned into yellow turbidity which stained its course for many a mile below, while the dark columns crept up the eastern bank and deployed on the plain in front of Caxamalca.
Pizarro, standing with a small group of officers on the parapet of the redoubt, gazed upon the dense, sinuous line of masses, silent now, stretching up and down the valley. From tens of thousands of spear-points and from myriads of brazen shields and helmets, the rays of the western sun were thrown back in a restless, quivering infinitude of scintillations. Slowly, but with a terrible steadiness, the line rolled forward, now obliterating a canal or roadway, now a garden or a field of grain; here, a battalion losing itself in a grove; there, in the aisles of an orchard; to reappear on the hither side, perfect in alignment. At length, at a distance of something less than a mile, the central battalions halted, but the wings swept on until a vast, dark semi-circle confronted the town.
Pizarro watched the progress of the movement in silence, speaking only to give an order, or in brief reply to some remark or inquiry from one of his companions. With him were several of his staff, Father Valverde, Felipillo the interpreter, and two or three orderlies. At the head of the stairway descending to the square were Candia’s two cannon, commanding the place. Close at hand was a brazier of burning charcoal for the matches of the cannoneers, who were clustered at the parapet, barefooted and stripped to the waist, watching, half-stupefied, the advancing hordes.
Below, the sunlit square, with its shadows now stealing out from the westward, was deserted—peaceful as on a Sabbath. And the Sabbath it might have been, for from one of the buildings came the unceasing murmur of the priests at prayer. All night long priests had knelt in pious invocation of the aid of the Lord of Hosts and the Holy Virgin upon this day’s undertaking. Thus, too, they had knelt since dawn, when mass had been celebrated, the soldiers joining devoutly in the hymn, "_Exsurge, Domine, et judica causam tuam_."