n was in turning the tables, and surprising the
surprisers. Pizarro waved his scarf to Candia; and the ridiculous little
cannon on the housetop boomed across the square. It did not hit anybody,
and was not meant to; it was merely to terrify the Indians, who had
never heard a gun, and to give the signal to the Spaniards. The
descriptions of how the "smoke from the artillery rolled in sulphurous
volumes along the square, blinding the Peruvians, and making a thick
gloom," can best be appreciated when we remember that all this deadly
cloud had to come from two little pop-cannon that were carried over the
mountains on horseback, and three old flintlock muskets! Yet in such a
ridiculous fashion have most of the events of the conquest been written
about.

Not less false and silly are current descriptions of the "massacre"
which ensued. The Spaniards all sallied out at the signal and fell upon
the Indians, and finally drove them from the square. We cannot believe
that two thousand were slain, when we consider how many Indians one man
would be capable of killing with a sword or clubbed musket or cross-bow
in half an hour's running fight, and multiplying that by one hundred and
sixty-eight; for after such a computation we should believe, not that
two thousand, but two hundred is about the right figure for those killed
at Caxamarca.

The chief efforts of the Spaniards were necessarily not to kill, but to
drive off the other Indians and capture Atahualpa. Pizarro had given
stern orders that the chief must not be hurt. He did not wish to kill
him, but to secure him alive as a hostage for the peaceful conduct of
his people. The bodyguard of the war-captain made a stout resistance;
and one excited Spaniard hurled a missile at Atahualpa. Pizarro sprang
forward and took the wound in his own arm, saving the Indian chief. At
last Atahualpa was secured unhurt, and was placed in one of the
buildings under a strong guard. He admitted--with the characteristic
bravado of an Indian, whose traditional habit it is to show his courage
by taunting his captors--that he had let them come in, secure in his
overwhelming numbers, to make slaves of such as pleased him, and put
the others to death. He might have added that had the wily war-chief
his father been alive, this never would have happened. Experienced old
Huayna Capac would never have let the Spaniards enter the town, but
would have entangled and annihilated them in the wild mountain passes.
B