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Updated: June 19, 2025
Among them we observed, raised above their heads, a gaily ornamented litter or covered palanquin, in which sat a person richly dressed with the regal border or red fringe of the Incas on his head. We learnt that he was intended to represent Atahualpa.
Yet, while many of those near drew back in terror, Atahualpa maintained an unflinching dignity and composure, hiding every show of dread, if any such inspired him. To the envoys he said, through an interpreter the Spaniards had brought, "Tell your captain that I am keeping a fast, which will end to-morrow morning. I will then visit him with my chieftains.
I thought our guest was the mild and unfortunate Huascar, the rightful Inca of Peru, who was a prisoner in the hands of his fierce brother Atahualpa when the Spaniards attacked Peru with their small but determined band of robber-warriors. I thought I was aiding Huascar to escape from among his brother's army. We had passed the guards, who were fast asleep, when we came to a broad river.
The latter, who related his tales at Santa Fe, at Venezuela, and perhaps at Porto Rico, must have combined what he had heard from the Caribs with what he had learned from the Spaniards respecting the town of the Omaguas seen by Huten; of the gilded man who sacrificed in a lake, and of the flight of the family of Atahualpa into the forests of Vilcabamba, and the eastern Cordillera of the Andes.
Unfortunately, this ill-timed attack had put the Peruvians thoroughly on the alert, and as soon as daylight appeared they hauled their fleet, consisting of the Union, Rimac, Chalaco, Oroya, and Atahualpa into shoal water behind the breakwater of the stone docks, where were also the Talisman and two hulks, the Apurimac and Maranon.
Was he given his liberty, in accordance with the compact? Yes, the liberty which such men as Francisco Pizarro give to those whom they have injured and have reason to fear. The total ransom offered by Atahualpa had not been brought in, but the impatient Spaniards had divided the spoil without waiting for the whole, and the Inca demanded his freedom.
Atahualpa had stipulated also that the gold was not to be smelted that is, he would not be required to fill the spaces solidly with ingots, but that it should be put into the room just as it was brought in and allowed to take up as much space as was required, even though it might be in the shape of a manufactured article.
His brother and rival, Huascar, though a captive, might escape and seize the control of the state, and he learned that the prisoner had sent a private message to Pizarro, offering to pay for his liberty a much larger ransom than that promised by Atahualpa. The Inca was crafty and cruel enough to remove this danger from his path, if we may accept the evidence of his captors.
Certainly De Soto would have sought to dissuade him. Pizarro realized this and got rid of De Soto by sending him away to investigate as to the truth of rumors that Atahualpa was conspiring to obtain his freedom. I have no doubt that he was so conspiring. I hope so, for if he was, it was about the only manly thing that he did.
"It is written here in this book," cried the priest, and handed the breviary to the king. Atahualpa held the book to his ear, listened, and said as he threw the breviary on the ground, "Your book does not speak." Without warning, a massacre was commenced. The cannon and muskets of the Spaniards ploughed red furrows in the ranks of the Peruvians.
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