The Romance of Golden Star ...
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George Chetwynd Griffith >> The Romance of Golden Star ...
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Transcriber's note:
Some punctuation has been changed to meet contemporary standards.
Printer's errors: see the list of corrections at the end of the
text.
THE ROMANCE OF GOLDEN STAR ...
by
GEORGE [CHETWYND] GRIFFITH[-JONES]
Reprint Edition 1978 by Arno Press Inc.
Reprinted from a copy in The Library of the University of California,
Riverside
Editorial Supervision: Marie Stareck
THE ROMANCE OF GOLDEN STAR
[Illustration: Hail, Son of the Sun!
_Page 78._
THE ROMANCE OF GOLDEN STAR.
_Frontispiece._]
THE ROMANCE OF GOLDEN STAR ...
by
GEORGE GRIFFITH
Author of
'The Angel of the Revolution,'
'Olga Romanoff,' 'The Outlaws
of the Air,' 'Valdar the Oft-Born,'
'Briton or Boer?' Etc., Etc.
Illustrated by Alfred Pearse
_'To that Son of the Sacred Race
who for Honour and Faith and
Love shall take the hand of a
pure virgin of his own holy blood
and with her pass fearless through
the Gate of Death into the shadows
which lie beyond shall be given the
glory of casting out the Oppressor
and raising the Rainbow Banner
once more above the Golden Throne
of the Incas. On that Throne he
shall sit and wield power and mete
out justice and mercy to the Children
of the Sun when the gloom
that is falling upon the Land of
the Four Regions shall have passed
away in the dawn of a brighter
age.'_
--THE PROPHECY CONTAINED
IN THE ANCIENT LEGEND
OF VILCAROYA-INCA AND
GOLDEN STAR, HIS SISTER-BRIDE.
London: F. V. White & Co....
14 Bedford Street, Strand, W.C. 1897
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
PAGE
HIS HIGHNESS THE MUMMY 1
A PHYSIOLOGICAL EXPERIMENT 16
CHAPTER I
BACK THROUGH THE SHADOWS 32
CHAPTER II
BROTHERS OF THE BLOOD 47
CHAPTER III
IN THE HALL OF GOLD 66
CHAPTER IV
THE SISTER STARS 86
CHAPTER V
HOW DJAMA DID HIS WORK 105
CHAPTER VI
THE WAKING OF GOLDEN STAR 124
CHAPTER VII
IN THE THRONE-ROOM OF YUPANQUI 145
CHAPTER VIII
HOW THE SOUL OF GOLDEN STAR CAME BACK 168
CHAPTER IX
THE TREACHERY OF DJAMA 188
CHAPTER X
ON THE RODADERO 209
CHAPTER XI
HOW WE TOOK THE CITY OF THE SUN 230
CHAPTER XII
QUEEN AND CROWN 250
CHAPTER XIII
HOW DJAMA PAID HIS DEBT 262
CHAPTER XIV
THE RE-KINDLING OF THE SACRED FIRE 271
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
BY
ALFRED PEARSE
PAGE
'HAIL, SON OF THE SUN!' _Frontispiece_
'AM I ONLY DREAMING THAT THE DEATH-SLEEP IS OVER?' 26
THE DAGGER-POINT DROPPED TILL IT WAS WITHIN AN INCH
OF GOLDEN STAR'S BREAST 119
THEY THRUST HIM IN WITH HIS ARMS STILL BOUND 205
IT HAD SMITTEN HIM TO THE HEART 228
NOW THE MOMENT FOR THE GIVING OF THE SIGN HAD COME 280
The Romance of Golden Star
PROLOGUE
I
HIS HIGHNESS THE MUMMY
'Ah, what a thing it would be for us if his Inca Highness were really
only asleep, as he looks to be! Just think what he could tell us--how
easily he could re-create that lost wonderland of his for us, what
riddles he could answer, what lies he could contradict. And then think
of all the lost treasures that he could show us the way to. Upon my
word, if Mephistopheles were to walk into this room just now, I think I
should be tempted to make a bargain with him. Do you know, Djama, I
believe I would give half the remainder of my own life, whatever that
may be, to learn the secrets that were once locked up in that withered,
desiccated brain of his.'
The speaker was one of two men who were standing in a large room,
half-study, half-museum, in a big, old-fashioned house in Maida Vale.
Wherever the science of archaeology was studied, Professor Martin Lamson
was known as the highest living authority on the subject of the
antiquities of South America. He had just returned from a year's
relic-hunting in Peru and Bolivia, and was enjoying the luxury of
unpacking his treasures with the almost boyish delight which, under such
circumstances, comes only to the true enthusiast. His companion was a
somewhat slenderly-built man, of medium height, whose clear, olive skin,
straight, black hair, and deep blue-black eyes betrayed a not very
remote Eastern origin.
Dr Laurens Djama was a physiologist, whose rapidly-acquired fame--he was
barely thirty-two--would have been considered sounder by his
professional brethren if it had not been, as they thought, impaired by
excursions into by-ways of science which were believed to lead him
perilously near to the borders of occultism. Five years before he had
pulled the professor through a very bad attack of the calentura in
Panama, where they met by the merest traveller's chance, and since then
they had been fast friends.
They were standing over a long packing-case, some seven feet in length
and two and a-half in breadth, in which lay, at full length, wrapped in
grave-clothes that had once been gaily coloured, but which were now
faded and grey with the grave-dust, the figure of a man with hands
crossed over the breast, dead to all appearances, and yet so gruesomely
lifelike that it seemed hard to believe that the broad, muscular chest
over which the crossed hands lay was not actually heaving and falling
with the breath of life.
The face had been uncovered. It was that of a man still in the early
prime of life. The dull brown hair was long and thick, the features
somewhat aquiline, and stamped even in death with an almost royal
dignity. The skin was of a pale bronze, though darkened by the hues of
death. Yet every detail of the face was so perfect and so life-like
that, as the professor had said, it seemed to be rather the face of a
man in a deep sleep than that of an Inca prince who must have been dead
and buried for over three hundred years. The closed eyes, though
somewhat sunken in their sockets, were the eyes of sleep rather than of
death, and the lids seemed to lie so lightly over them that it looked as
though one awakening touch would raise them.
'It is beyond all question the most perfect specimen of a mummy that I
have seen,' said the doctor, stooping down and drawing his thin, nervous
fingers very lightly over the dried skin of the right cheek. 'On my
honour, I simply can't believe that His Highness, as you call him, ever
really went to the other world by any of the orthodox routes. If you
could imagine an absolute suspension of all the vital functions induced
by the influence of something--some drug or hypnotic process unknown to
modern science, brought into action on a human being in the very prime
of his vital strength--then, so far as I can see, the results of that
influence would be exactly what you see here.'
'But surely that can't be anything but a dream. How could it be possible
to bring all the vital functions to a dead stop like that, and yet keep
them in such a state that it might be possible--for that's what I
suppose you are driving at--to start them into activity again, just as
one might wind up a clock that had been stopped for a few weeks and set
it going?'
'My dear fellow, the borderland between life and death is so utterly
unknown to the very best of us that there is no telling what frightful
possibilities there may be lying hidden under the shadows that hang over
it. You know as well as I do that there are perfectly well authenticated
instances on record of Hindoo Fakirs who have allowed themselves to be
placed in a state of suspended animation and had their tongues turned
back into their throats, their mouths and noses covered with clay, and
have been buried in graves that have been filled up and had sentries
watching day and night over them for as long a period as six weeks, and
then have been dug up and restored to perfect health and strength again
in a few hours. Now, if life can be suspended for six weeks and then
restored to an organism which, from all physiological standpoints, must
be regarded as inanimate, why not for six years or six hundred years,
for the matter of that? Given once the possibility, which we may assume
as proved, of a restoration to life after total suspension of animation,
then it only becomes a question of preservation of tissue for more or
less indefinite periods. Granted that tissue can be so preserved, then,
given the other possibility already proved, and--well, we will talk
about the other possibility afterwards. Now, tell me, don't you, as an
archaeologist, see anything peculiar about this Inca prince of yours?'
The professor had been looking keenly at his friend during the delivery
of this curious physiological lecture. He seemed as though he were
trying to read the thoughts that were chasing each other through his
brain behind the impenetrable mask of that smooth, broad forehead of
his. He looked into his eyes, but saw nothing there save a cold, steady
light that he had often seen before when the doctor was discussing
subjects that interested him deeply. As for his face, it was utterly
impassive--the face of a dispassionate scientist quietly discussing the
possible solution of a problem that had been laid before him. Whether
his friend was really driving at some unheard-of and unearthly solution
of the problem which he himself had raised, or whether he was merely
discussing the possible issue of some abstract question in physiology,
he was utterly unable to discover, and so he thought it best to confine
himself to the matter in hand, without hazarding any risky guesses that
might possibly result in his own confusion. So he answered as quietly as
he could:
'Yes, I must confess that there are two perhaps very important points of
difference between this and any other Peruvian mummy that I have ever
seen or heard of.'
'Ah, I thought so,' said Djama, half closing his eyes and allowing just
the ghost of a smile to flit across his lips. 'I thought I knew enough
about archaeology and the science of mummies in general to expect you to
say that. Now, just for the gratification of my own vanity, I should
like to try and anticipate what you are going to say; and if I'm wrong,
well, of course, I shall only be too happy to be contradicted.'
'Very well,' laughed the professor; 'say on!'
'Well, in the first place, I believe I'm right in saying that all
Peruvian mummies that have so far been discovered have been found in a
sitting posture, with the legs drawn close up to the body by means of
bindings and burial-clothes, so that the chin rested between the knees,
while the arms were brought round the legs and folded over them. Then,
again, these mummies have always been found in an upright position,
while you found this one lying down.'
'Quite so, quite so!' said the professor. 'In fact, I may say that no
one save myself has ever discovered such a mummy as this among all the
thousands that have been taken out of Peruvian burying-places. And now,
what is your other point?'
'Simply this,' said Djama, kneeling down beside the case, and laying his
hands over the abdomen of the recumbent figure. 'In the case of all
mummies, whether Egyptian or Peruvian, it was the invariable practice of
the embalmers to take out the intestines and fill the abdominal cavity
with preservative herbs and spices. Now, this has not been done in this
case. Look here.'
And deftly and swiftly he moved the dusty, half-decayed coverings from
the body of the mummy, while the professor looked on half-wondering and
half-frightened for the safety of his treasure.
'That has not been done here. You see the man's body is as perfect as it
was on the day he died--to use a conventional term. Now, am I not
right?'
'Yes, yes; perfectly right,' answered the professor, who felt himself
fast losing his grip of the conversation which had taken so strange a
turn. 'But what has all this got to do with the most unique mummy that
ever was brought from South America? Surely, in the name of all that's
sacred, you don't mean--'
'My dear fellow, never mind what I mean for the present,' replied Djama,
with another of his half smiles. 'If I mean anything at all, the meaning
will keep, and if I don't it doesn't matter. Now, do you mind telling me
exactly how and where you came across this extraordinary specimen
of--well, for want of a better term--we will say, Inca embalming?'
'Yes, willingly,' said the professor, glad to get back again on to the
familiar ground of his own experiences. 'I found it almost by accident
in a little valley about four days' ride to the westward of Cuzco. I was
on my way to Abancay across the Apurimac. My mule had fallen lame, and
so I got belated. Night came on, and somehow we got off the track
crossing one of the Punas--those elevated tablelands, you know, up among
the mountains--and when the mule could go no farther we camped, and the
next morning I found myself in an almost circular valley, completely
walled in by enormous mountains, save for the narrow, crooked gorge
through which we had stumbled by the purest accident. The bottom of this
valley was filled by a little lake, and while I was exploring the shores
of this I saw, hidden underneath an overhanging ledge of rock, a couple
of courses of that wonderful mortarless masonry which the Incas alone
seemed to know how to build. I had no sooner seen it than all desire of
getting to Abancay or anywhere else had left me. I made my arriero turn
the animals loose for the day, and then I sent him back to a village we
had passed through the day before to buy more provisions and bring them
to me.
'As soon as he had got out of sight I set to work to get some of the
stones out and see what there was behind them. I knew there must be
something, for the Incas never wasted labour. It was hard work, for the
stones were fitted together as perfectly as the pieces of a Chinese
puzzle; but at last I got one out and then the rest was easy. Behind the
stones I found a little chamber hollowed out of the rock, perfectly
clean and dry, and on the floor of this I found, without any other
covering than what you see there, the mummy of His Highness lying on
what had once been a bed of soft Vicuna skins, as perfect and as
lifelike as though he had only crept in there twelve hours before, and
had laid down for a good night's rest.
'You may imagine how delighted I was at such a find. I hardly knew how
to contain myself until my man came back. I put the stones back into
their places as well as I could, and when Patricio returned the next day
I had the animals saddled up, and started off in a hurry to Cuzco. There
I had this case made, bought two extra mules, brought them to the
valley, packed up my mummy, took it back to Cuzco, and from there to the
railway terminus at Sicuani and took it down by train to Arequipa, where
I left it in safe keeping until I had finished the rest of my
exploration. Then I went back, took it down to Mollendo, got it on board
the steamer, and here it is.'
'And you didn't find any traces of other treasure-places, I suppose, in
the valley?' said Djama, who had listened with the most perfect
attention to the professor's story.
'No, I didn't, though I must confess that one side of the cave in which
I found this was walled up with the same kind of masonry as there was in
front of it; but, to tell you the truth, the Peruvian Government has
such insane ideas about treasure-hunting; and the life of a man who is
believed to have discovered anything worth stealing is worth so little
in the wilder districts of the interior, that I was afraid of losing the
treasure I had got, perhaps for the sake of a few little gold ornaments
which I might have dug out of the hill, and so I decided to be content
with what I'd found.'
'H'm!' said the doctor. 'Well, you may have been wise under the
circumstances; I daresay you were. But we can see about that afterwards.
Meanwhile there is something else to be talked about.'
He stopped suddenly, took a quick turn or two up and down the room, with
his hands clasped behind him and his eyes fixed on the floor. Then he
went to the door, opened it, looked out, shut it and locked it, and then
came back again and sat down without a word in his chair, staring
steadily at the impassive face of the mummy in the packing-case.
'Why, what's the matter, doctor?' said the professor, a trifle sharply.
'You don't suppose I am afraid of anyone coming to steal my treasure, do
you?'
'My dear fellow,' said Djama, looking him straight in the eyes, and
speaking very slowly, as though his mind was doing something else
besides shaping the thoughts to which he was giving utterance, 'I don't
for a moment suppose that there are thieves about, or that, if there
were, any burglar with a competent knowledge of his profession would
think of stealing your mummy, priceless as it may prove to be. I locked
the door because I don't want to be interrupted. I want to talk to you
about a very important matter.'
'And that is?'
'Mephistopheles.'
'WHAT?'
'Gently, my friend, gently, don't get excited yet. You will want all
your nerves soon, I can assure you. Yes, I am quite serious. You know
that in the good old days, when people still believed in His Majesty of
Darkness, such a speech as the one you remember making a short time ago
was quite enough to call up one of his agents, armed with full powers to
make contracts and do all necessary business.'
'Look here, Laurens, if you go on talking like that, I shall begin to
think you have gone out of your mind.'
'My dear fellow, to be quite candid with you, I don't care two pins what
you think on that subject. I have been called mad too many times for
that. Now, suppose, just for argument's sake, that I were
Mephistopheles, and staked my diabolic reputation on the statement that
in that thing you possess a possible key to those lost treasures of the
Incas, which ten generations of men have hunted for in vain, what kind
of a bargain would you be inclined to make with me on the strength of
it? Half the rest of your life, I think you said, and as that wouldn't
be very much good to me, suppose we say the half of any treasures we
may discover by the help of our silent friend there? Eh?--will that suit
you?'
'Are you really serious, Djama, or are you only dreaming another of
these wild scientific dreams of yours?' exclaimed the professor, taking
a couple of quick strides towards him. 'What connection can there
possibly be between a mummy, about four centuries years old, and the
lost treasures of the Incas?'
'This man was an Inca, wasn't he?' said the doctor, abruptly, 'and one
of the highest rank, too, from what you have said. He lived just about
the time of the Conquest, didn't he--the time when the priests stripped
their temples, and the nobles emptied their palaces of their treasures
to save them from the Spaniards? Is it not likely that he would know
where, at anyrate, a great part of them was buried? Nay, may he not even
have known the localities of the lost mines that the Incas got their
hundredweights of gold from, and of the emerald mines which no one has
ever been able to find? Why, Lamson, if these dead lips could speak, I
believe they could make you and me millionaires in an hour. And why
shouldn't they speak?'
'Don't talk like that, Djama, for Heaven's sake! It is too serious a
thing to joke about,' said the professor, with a half-frightened glance
in his set and shining eyes. 'I should have thought you, of all men,
knew enough of the facts of life and death not to talk such nonsense as
that.'
'Nonsense!' said the physiologist, interrupting him almost angrily; 'may
I not know enough of the facts of life and death, as you call them, to
know that that is _not_ nonsense? But there, it's no use arguing about
things like this. Will you allow this mummy of yours to be made the
subject of--well, we will say, an experiment in physiology?'
'What! the finest and most unique huaca that was ever brought to
Europe--'
'It would only be made finer still by the experiment, even if it failed.
I know what you are going to say, and I will give you my word of honour,
and, if you like, I'll pledge you my professional reputation, that not a
hair of its head shall be injured. Let me take it to my laboratory, and
I promise you solemnly that in a week you shall have it back, not as it
is now, but either the body of your Inca, as perfect as it was the day
he died, or--'
He stopped, and looked hard at his friend, as if wondering what the
effects of his next words would be upon him.
'Or what?' asked the professor, almost in a whisper.
'Your Inca prince, roused from his three-hundred-year sleep, and able
to answer your questions and guide us to his lost mines and treasure
houses.'
'Are you in earnest, Djama?' the professor whispered, catching him by
the arm and looking round at the mummy as though he half thought that
the silent witness in the packing-case might be listening to the words
which, if it could have heard, would have had such a terrible
significance for it. 'Do you really mean to say in sober earnest that
there is the remotest chance of your science being able to work such a
miracle as that?'
'A chance, yes,' replied Djama, steadily. 'It is not a certainty, of
course, but I believe it to be possible. Will you let me try?'
'Yes, you shall try,' answered the professor in a voice nothing like as
steady as his. 'If any other man but you had even hinted at such a
thing, I would have seen him--well, in a lunatic asylum first. But
there, I will trust my Inca to you. It seems a fearful thing even to
attempt, and yet, after all, if it fails there will be no harm done, and
if it succeeds--ah, yes, if it succeeds--it will mean--'
'Endless fame for you, my friend, as the recreator of a lost society,
and for both of us wealth, perhaps beyond counting. But stop a
moment--granted success, how shall we talk with our Inca _revenant_?
Have I not heard you say that the Aymaru dialect of the Quichua tongue
is lost as completely as the Inca treasures?'
'Not quite, though I believe I am now the only white man on earth who
understands it.'
'Good! then let me get to work at once, and in a week--well, in a week
we shall see.'
II
A PHYSIOLOGICAL EXPERIMENT
Laurens Djama dined with the professor that night, and the small hours
were growing large before they ended the long talk of which their
strange bargain, and the still stranger experiment which was to result
from it, formed the subject. The next day the packing-case containing
the mummy was transferred to Djama's laboratory, and then for a whole
week neither the professor nor any of his friends or acquaintances had
either sight or speech of him.
Every caller at his house in Brondesbury Park was politely but firmly
denied admittance on professional grounds, and three letters and two
telegrams which the professor had sent to him, after being himself
denied admittance, remained unanswered.
At last, on the Thursday following the Friday on which the mummy had
been sent to the laboratory, the professor received a telegram telling
him to come at once to the doctor. Three minutes after he had read it he
was in a hansom and on his way to Kilburn, wondering what it was that he
was to be brought face to face with during the next half hour.
This time there was no denial. The door opened as he went up the steps,
and the servant handed him a note. He tore it open and read,--
'_Come round to the laboratory and make a new acquaintance who will
yet be an old one._'
His heart stood still, and he caught his breath sharply as he read the
words which told him that the unearthly experiment for which he had
furnished the subject had been successful.
The doctor's laboratory stood apart from the house in the long, narrow
garden at the back, and as he approached the door he stopped for a
moment, and an almost irresistible impulse to go away and have nothing
more to do with the unholy work in hand took possession of him. Then the
love of his science and the longing to hear the marvels which could only
be heard from the lips that had been silent for centuries overcame his
fears, and he went up to the door and knocked softly.
It was opened by a haggard, wild-eyed man, whom he scarcely recognised
as his old friend. Djama did not speak; he simply caught hold of the
sleeve of his coat with a nervous, trembling grasp, drew him in, shut
the door, and led him to a corner of the room where there was a little
camp bed, curtained all round with thin, transparent muslin, through
which he could see the shape of a man lying under the sheets.
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