Part 13

He relaxed, however, his strenuous exertions, for the great object of the past months of terrible toils had been in a measure accomplished in the building of the brigantines. While the work went on beneath his eye, he allowed himself a little recreation, and amid the delights of Isla Rica indulged in dreams of future conquests. One evening, while reclining in company with some comrades on a couch of palm-leaves spread upon the sands, he pointed to a particular star in the heavens above them, and said: "There is the planet that holds my fate in its keeping. See you yon star, my friends? Well, I was told by Micer Codro (the Venetian astrologer who was with us, you remember, when we first found these shores) that when that star appeared in this position in the firmament my life would be in jeopardy. But should I survive this period of peril, I would become the richest, the most renowned man in the Indies!

"Now, what think ye, comrades? That was more than three years ago, and, according to Micer Codro's prophecy, I should be in peril of my life; yet here am I, almost within reach of my desires, sound in health, with four brigantines and three hundred good men at my command, and on the point of exploring the great Southern Ocean, which I was the first to find! Out upon all astrologers, say I. That man is surely womanish who gives credit to diviners, and especially to old Micer Codro. Star, I salute thee! Continue thou to shine; but thy baleful radiance is not for Vasco Nunez de Balboa!"

"He was a learned man," replied one of his companions. "Of a truth, I have heard fearsome stories of his sagacity. But what is that? See, yonder on the sea: a canoe approaches. What can fetch a boat hither from the main, save unwelcome tidings?"

"I cannot conceive," rejoined Balboa, "except that the new governor has arrived and it is a summons for us to return. But we shall see as to that, for while the isthmus intervenes between him and me, no power shall stay us nor cause us to delay."

Propelled by the sinewy arms of naked Indians, the canoe darted over the sea and through the surf to the strand, when a man in the garb of a king's official leaped out and approached the group. Going up to Balboa, who was standing expectantly, he bowed low, then said: "Senor Adelantado, a letter I bring you from his excellency the governor."

"Which I receive as his dutiful servant," answered Balboa, taking it in his hand, and reading it by the light of a torch held by one of his aids. "It seems my intended father-in-law is desirous of seeing me and consulting with respect to our projected expedition," he explained to his comrades. "As his wishes are my desires, I shall start in the morning. Meanwhile I am gone, Francisco Companon, you will be in command of the ships and the soldiers. Messenger, what tidings in Antigua del Darien? For, sooth, my father-in-law says not a word as to happenings there. Is all well? Has the new governor arrived? Perchance not, else Pedrarias would not have written."

"The new governor, who was to supersede his excellency, died as he entered the harbor," answered the messenger; but he was silent, or evasive, as to other happenings at Antigua.

On the shore of the mainland other messengers were in waiting, who, finding that Balboa had set out unarmed and without a suspicion of the fate that was in store for him, consulted together as to the advisability of informing him. They did not do so, however, until the mountains were passed and the little party drew near Acla, when, won by Balboa's frankness and open conduct, their sympathies prevailed over their fears of the governor's vengeance, and they informed him of the snare into which he was hurrying. Balboa was astounded, and at first refused to believe in the perfidy of the man to whose daughter he was pledged in marriage.

"I am innocent of any evil intention," he finally exclaimed. "Faithfully have I served Pedrarias, and faithfully have I served my king. No, I will not retreat," he said, in answer to a suggestion that he should escape while the opportunity offered. "I have done nothing worthy of punishment, and I will go forward, for my innocence I can prove."

"To-morrow it will be too late," answered one of the messengers, "for at Acla awaits Francisco Pizarro, with a command, to arrest you. Adelantado, we entreat you: return while you may."

"Nay, never! My back I have never turned to an enemy yet. But I cannot believe that Pedrarias will continue my enemy; and as for Francisco Pizarro, have I not reared him in the profession of arms? Have we not campaigned together, fought and starved together?"

Sorrowfully, then, the little band of unarmed Spaniards held on their way to Acla, in the environs of which they were met by Pizarro and a company of soldiers, who barred the way. Pizarro drew from his corselet an order of arrest and proceeded to read it, while Balboa regarded him with reproachful astonishment. When it was concluded, he exclaimed: "How is this Francisco? You were not wont to come out in this fashion to receive me!" His former comrade made no reply, for he was only obeying the orders of his superior, and had no alternative but to choose between the two: Pedrarias, supreme in authority, and Balboa, discredited commander. He chose to serve the former, and, as shown in the light of future events, he may have chosen wisely, for it was under Pedrarias, then governor of Panama, that he made his first voyage southward, eventually achieving the conquest of Peru, and tearing Balboa's laurels from his brow.

At a muttered command from Pizarro, two soldiers stepped forward with manacles, which they placed upon Balboa's wrists and ankles, and in chains he was conducted to Acla and thrown into prison. There he was soon visited by the wily Pedrarias, who could scarce conceal his exultation at having in his power the man he hated because his reputation was greater than his own. But, concealing his true feelings, he said to Balboa: "Be thou not afflicted, my son. Thou art here through the charges brought against thee by Alonzo de Puente, who, being the king's treasurer, hath compelled me to this proceeding. But, doubtless, an investigation will not merely establish thy innocency, but serve to render thy zeal and loyalty to the crown the more conspicuous."

Balboa made no reply, for, frank and generous himself, without the power of dissembling, he despised, detested a hypocrite. He knew that Puente's charge was a mere pretence behind which were cloaked deeper designs than had yet been revealed; and so it proved, for when, in the course of a few days, Pedrarias was satisfied that the grounds of the legal process were sufficiently strong to secure Balboa's conviction of treason and enable him to put his unhappy prisoner to death, he threw off the mask. Returning to the prison, he said to Balboa, with the hard and threatening countenance which he habitually wore: "Hitherto I have treated you as a son, because I gave you credit for fidelity to the king, and to me, in his name. Since, however, I find myself mistaken, you have no longer to expect from me the conduct of a father, but of a judge and an enemy, as I shall henceforth treat you."

"As for your feelings towards me," indignantly replied the prisoner, "it matters not to me one whit; but as to my conduct towards the king, my sovereign, your charges are false! If what you impute to me were true, holding as I did at my command four ships and three hundred men, by whom I am beloved, why should I not have gone straight to sea without permitting anything to impede my purpose? Safe in the consciousness of my innocence, I returned at your command; and little did I dream of being treated so rigorously and with such enormous injustice. This is my reward for trusting you: a dungeon, with slander, indignities, and chains."

"Yea, traitor," rejoined Pedrarias, hotly, "a dungeon is truly your merited reward for despising the alliance I would have made with you. Truly, I shudder to think of what my family has escaped: of the foul blot which the marriage of my daughter with one of your stamp would have spread upon my proud escutcheon. And all the time you had an Indian mistress, for whom you sent to accompany you on the expedition which would have placed you well beyond my reach. But know, traitor and scoundrel, that she has confessed, and thus the means by which you would have covered my daughter's name with obloquy have been those for encompassing your own destruction!"

"Who, Cacica, the pledge of amity between me and Careta? She has confessed? Nothing had she to confess, for I sent her no message. After my word was given to you that I would not see her, of a truth, I saw her no more. You are a liar, Pedro Pedrarias, and were I but free, with my good sword in hand, fain would I render you unable to utter more false statements against me and those who were once true to me!"

"Ha! Would you, then? Here, jailer, double this fellow's irons, and if he protest, weight him to the floor with them! My throat you would slit, eh? Old as I am, you will find that when it comes to the cutting of throats, Don Pedrarias de Avila needs not rely upon his own unaided sword. There is one in my employ who wields a more potent weapon--mark you--and that is Gomez, the headsman. I go to tell him now to sharpen his axe for four!"

"For four?" exclaimed Balboa, as the old man retreated from the cell. "Who else have you enmeshed in your net, base wretch? Will not one victim suffice you? Who are they? Tell me."

"Who?" repeated the old man, mockingly, peering at his victim through the bars. "Why, who but Hernan de Arguello, Hernan Munos, Valderrabano, and Botello. Were they simply your friends, it were enough; but they are more: they are traitors to the king, and to me, Pedrarias de Avila, governor-in-chief of Darien, whose authority you have endeavored to usurp."

"They, my officers, condemned to die merely because they were friends, and loyal to me," groaned Balboa as, left in the solitude of his cell, he sank helpless to the floor. "Truly is this Pedrarias a fiend, an intimate of the devil, and scarce human! And they will die, being my friends, but no man's enemies."

Realizing that he had proceeded so far it was impossible to leave Balboa alive in the same land with himself, Pedrarias left no stone unturned to accomplish his death. Urged to activity by promise of the command of Balboa's expedition in the event of his death, the vile lawyer, Espinosa, found an indictment against the five which warranted his master in proclaiming they were doomed to die for treason against the king. The proclamation was made at Acla, and not in Antigua, where resided most of the settlers, because, as Pedrarias knew, it would provoke an uprising of the people.

While they were supremely loyal to the crown, and, in their timidity, afraid to declare against its representative, Pedrarias, the people of Darien were yet well inclined towards Vasco Nunez de Balboa, and most of them his friends, because of his possessing many lovable qualities which the governor lacked.

When, affrighted at the vindictiveness of Pedrarias, Espinosa explained to him that the verdict against Balboa was technical only, and that on account of his great services he should be inclined to mercy, the fiend replied: "No, if he has merited death, let him suffer it. Die he must, and shall, and on your head be his blood!"

XX

THE END OF VASCO NUNEZ DE BALBOA

1517

We are compelled, in this chapter, to narrate the details of a horrible crime, to commit which the name of justice was invoked by its perpetrator, Pedro Arias de Avila, the one-time governor of Darien. We have followed the hero of this story, Vasco Nunez de Balboa, through the various stages of his career: a penniless adventurer, self-elected governor of Darien, savior of the settlement when on the point of dissolution, subjugator of the caciques, discoverer of the Pacific, faithful servant of the king, builder of the first brigantines that ploughed the waters of the great Southern Ocean. We are now to behold him led forth from his prison cell as a criminal, a traitor to his sovereign, and executed in the very town which was founded, through his unwearied efforts, in chief Careta's province.

He was then scarcely forty-two years of age, in the prime of life, seven long years of which had been passed in the wilderness of Darien. He had labored, he had fought, he had committed crimes against humanity--all that his sovereign might acquire a realm beyond the sea--and this was his reward: to perish as a felon, to die as a traitor, "in the full career of his glory, one of the most deserving of the Spanish discoverers--a victim to the basest and most perfidious envy." He had, indeed, deserved well of his king, for of all the Spaniards who explored the regions of America, he was one of the greatest, the most persistent in carrying the flag of his country into unknown lands, in compelling the inhabitants to accept his religion and acknowledge the sovereignty of Spain.

He was not the first of the Spanish explorers and conquistadores to experience that king's ingratitude, nor the last to meet a violent death. Columbus and Cortes died in their beds, but they were victims of their sovereign's neglect. De Soto, worn out by his toils, perished on the bank of the Mississippi, which became his grave. Ponce de Leon, returning to Florida, the land he had discovered, received his death-wound from an Indian arrow. Pizarro was assassinated, by men he had reduced to poverty and exasperated by his taunts.

The reward, then, of exploration and discovery mainly inheres in the accomplishment itself, for few of the world's great explorers have lived to receive the fruits of their labors, as witness Magellan and Hudson and Cook. Of them all, however, perhaps there was none who was so basely requited as Vasco Nunez de Balboa. Were it not for the fact that there was in Darien, at the time Pedrarias wreaked his vengeance upon Balboa, a veracious chronicler of events, whose name has survived as author of a great history, we should be loath to accept as true this story of revenge, ingratitude, and crime. But we have it from Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo, a contemporary of the chief characters in this tragedy, who was sent out by King Ferdinand as inspector of mines, and who subsequently, as historiographer of the Indies, wrote a great work, which first appeared in 1526. He was intimate with both Pedrarias and Balboa, and after the death of the latter had access to his private papers, from the perusal of which, and from his knowledge of our hero, he drew conclusions as to his merits, which were long since sanctioned by the voice of posterity.

The day arrived in which the sentence of death was to be carried out, and found the little town of Acla overspread with gloom. The horrified inhabitants moved about as in a dream, unable to wholly comprehend the nature of their dread surroundings, hardly daring to allow their tears to flow, much less their voices to be raised in protest. For they realized that in Pedrarias, the governor, they had a man to deal with not in his right mind, warped by envy, malice, jealousy, until he had become a frenzied maniac. They dared not provoke his wrath by protest, even in a whisper, for they were cowards all, rendered so by their subserviency to the crown, which might commit any atrocity and yet be accounted blameless.

Pedrarias had sentenced his prisoner to death in the name of the king, yet he allowed him no appeal, either to the king or to the Council of the Indies; for he knew that sentence would be reversed and the discoverer set free should his voice reach the throne. It never reached it, save as wafted across the sea and ocean in the indignant outcry of the people--after the deed was done by which Balboa lost his head. Then it did not avail to redress Balboa's wrongs nor to bring Pedrarias to justice, for he continued in his crimes for years, and at the last died in his bed, like many another wretch of lesser note.

But the day had arrived, Balboa's last on earth. The hot afternoon wore away, and the sun sank towards the mountains which the prisoner had been the first to explore, and touched with its rays the roofs of the dwellings he himself had erected. The dungeon door was thrown open, and forth came Balboa, preceded by his jailer and loaded with clanking chains. But the burden of the chains was as naught to the armor he had carried in the days of his great deeds, and he bore himself erect, dauntless in mien as of yore.

He searched the village square with flashing eye, sweeping his glance over the assembled crowd of cowards, held back by mailed soldiers under the command of his former comrade and lieutenant, Francisco Pizarro. He was no coward--that Balboa knew; but he had his own reasons for serving Pedrarias, as already narrated. If Pizarro had but weakened, if he had allowed his sense of justice to prevail over his lust for power and lucre, and said one word for Balboa, all the men under him would have joined in an effort to save the man they loved from him they loathed and hated. But Pizarro was a clump, a stick, a stone--anything inanimate, or, in other words, a soldier--and when Balboa's piercing glance fell on him he looked to the ground and remained immovable.

Preceding the prisoner walked the public crier, who announced: "This is the punishment inflicted by command of the king and his lieutenant, Don Pedrarias de Avila, governor of this colony, upon this man, as a traitor, and usurper of lands belonging to the crown."

"Nay, nay," exclaimed the still loyal Balboa when he heard this lie proclaimed; "it is false! You, my former comrades, know it is false. Never hath thought of such a crime entered my mind. I have ever served my king with truth and loyalty, and ever sought to augment his dominions!"

He raised his eyes to heaven and stretched forth his manacled hands, while a murmur of compassion went around the throng in the square of Acla. But there was no demonstration in his favor, for there was no man left in Darien, apparently, with a heart in his breast. The best of Balboa's followers, the original conquerors of the territory, were awaiting his return to Isla Rica, where lay the brigantines ready for exploration, where were gathered the men for a voyage Balboa was never to make, for a conquest he was never to achieve.

There was no man present capable of leading an uprising against the tyrant, save Pizarro, and he was unready. There was no man in authority who could resist the tyrant's authority, for Bishop Quevedo had returned to Spain; but a priest was present, who offered Balboa the sacrament as he ascended the scaffold, and whispered words of consolation. It is doubtful if Balboa heeded them, for, coming from such a source, from a man in the hire of Pedrarias, his words must have seemed meaningless and a mockery.

The rude scaffold stood in the centre of the square, a platform erected on posts, reached by a ladder, which, manacled as he was, Balboa climbed with difficulty. Why he should have climbed at all, and why he so tamely submitted to his fate, seems strange to those acquainted with his courageous nature. But probably the spell of authority was on him, for the magician who had enthralled him had invoked the name of a monster, living afar, but held to be omnipotent. That monster was the king, at mention of whose dread name the most valiant of fighters became servile and abject.

So Vasco Nunez de Balboa, mistakenly supposing himself bound by the will of a dastard king, went meekly to the scaffold. With a firm step he ascended to the platform, without a tremor viewed the block on which he was to lose his head, and looked calmly on while the grim headsman made it ready. "Now haste," growled the man with the axe, "for there are others, and the sun is low in the sky." Then Balboa gave a start--remembering the others. But it was too late now to save them, and, with a pang at his heart for those he had involved in deadly perils, he sank to the platform and laid his neck on the block. The headsman raised his axe--a thrill of horror ran through the spectators; it fell, and, as the blood spurted from the headless trunk, their groans and lamentations rent the air.

The executioner's work was not finished with Balboa, whose head was held aloft, and then, by orders of the implacable Pedrarias, stuck on a pole, where all might view the gory trophy. The three officers followed, and the head of each was taken off at a stroke. The dusk of evening gathered as the last one was beheaded. But there yet remained another victim, one Arguello, whose sole offence lay in the writing of a letter to Balboa warning him of what Pedrarias intended. The people assembled about the scaffold had witnessed--with what feelings of grief and horror may be imagined!--the execution of four gallant soldiers whose offences were such Pedrarias would not pardon them. But now, overcome by their sympathies, they entreated, with sighs and with tears, that this life might be spared, "inasmuch as God had not given daylight for the execution of his sentence." The stony-hearted governor, resentful and relentless, replied: "Never! Rather would I die myself than permit one of those traitors to escape unpunished!"

Chilled with horror, the people returned to the square, where the scaffold was but dimly visible in the gloom of approaching night, and where the last act of the horrible drama was being performed in darkness. They heard the clank of Arguello's chains as he fell across the block, and then, after an interval of breathless silence, the thud of the axe, proclaiming all was over.

Pedrarias had witnessed all, hidden behind a palisade of reeds, through the crevices of which he watched the doings on the scaffold, less than twenty feet away. There he crouched, a demon in human semblance, gloating over the anguish of the people, the groans of his victims, and counting the strokes of the headsman's axe.

Beneath a tree on the verge of the forest cowered a fearsome watcher, the Cacica, formerly beloved of Balboa. Peering through the screen of leaves, she witnessed the dreadful ending of him whom she had both loved and hated. But she did not exult, like the man-fiend Pedrarias. Believing that her testimony had sealed Balboa's fate, by the reproaches of conscience she was driven into the forest, where (as nothing more was ever heard of her) she probably perished, an outcast from her tribe, and forgotten by her family.

In Antigua del Darien, a broken-hearted woman mourned the gallant Vasco Nunez de Balboa; for he had been betrothed to her daughter, who, through her father's vengeful deed, was widowed ere she had been made a bride.

INDEX

Abebeiba, Indian cacique, 103, 104.

Acla, port of, Darien, 247, 252; scene of Balboa's arrest, 262, and execution, 269, 276.

Aerial dwellings, 101, 107.

Albitez, one of Balboa's men, 42.

Antigua del Darien, 37; description of, 206; famine in, 223, 224; under Balboa and Pedrarias, compared, 225.

Arbolancha, Pedro, sent to King Ferdinand, 200, 207.

Areito, or areyto, Indian chant, 56.

Arguello, Hernan, condemned to death, 267; executed, 277.

Armor of Spaniards, 96.

Atrato River, 100.