At last, up from beneath there was a sharp crack and a loud cry.  The crack was neither the snapping of a branch, nor the tapping of a woodpecker; the cry was neither the scream of the parrot, nor the howl of the monkey.

“That was a whip’s crack,” said Yeo, “and a woman’s wail.  They are close here, lads!”

“A woman’s?  Do they drive women in their gangs?” asked Amyas.

“Why not, the brutes?  There they are, sir.  Did you see their basnets glitter?”

“Men!” said Amyas, in a low voice, “I trust you all not to shoot till I do.  Then give them one arrow, out swords, and at them!  Pass the word along.”

Up they came, slowly, and all hearts beat loud at their coming.

First, about twenty soldiers, only one-half of whom were on foot; the other half being borne, incredible as it may seem, each in a chair on the back of a single Indian, while those who marched had consigned their heaviest armor and their arquebuses into the hands of attendant slaves, who were each pricked on at will by the pike of the soldier behind them.

“The men are mad to let their ordnance out of their hands.”

“Oh, sir, an Indian will pray to an arquebus not to shoot him; he sure their artillery is safe enough,” said Yeo.

“Look at the proud villains,” whispered another, “to make dumb beasts of human creatures like that!”

“Ten shot,” counted the business-like Amyas, “and ten pikes; Will can tackle them up above.”

Last of this troop came some inferior officer, also in his chair, who, as he went slowly up the hill, with his face turned toward the gang which followed, drew every other second the cigar from his lips, to inspirit them with those pious ejaculations to the various objects of his worship, divine, human, anatomic, wooden and textile, which earned for the pious Spaniards of the sixteenth century the uncharitable imputation of being at once the most fetish-ridden idolaters and the most abominable swearers of all Europeans.

“The blasphemous dog!” said Yeo, fumbling at his bow-string, as if he longed to send an arrow through him.  But Amyas had hardly laid his finger on the impatient veteran’s arm, when another procession followed, which made them forget all else.

A sad and hideous sight it was:  yet one too common even then in those remoter districts, where the humane edicts were disregarded which the prayers of Dominican friars (to their everlasting honor be it spoken) had wrung from the Spanish sovereigns, and which the legislation of that most wise, virtuous, and heroic Inquisitor (paradoxical as the words may seem), Pedro de la Gasca, had carried into effect in Peru,—­futile and tardy alleviations of cruelties and miseries unexampled in the history of Christendom, or perhaps on earth, save in the conquests of Sennacherib and Zingis Khan.  But on the frontiers, where negroes were imported to endure the toil which was found fatal to the Indian,