ut Atahualpa, being more conceited and less prudent, had taken a
needless risk, and now found himself a prisoner and his army routed. The
biter was bitten.

The distinguished captive was treated with the utmost care and kindness.
He was a prisoner only in that he could not go out; but in the spacious
and pleasant rooms assigned him he had every comfort. His family lived
with him; his food, the best that could be procured, he ate from his own
dishes; and every wish was gratified except the one wish to get out and
rally his Indians for war. Father Valverde, and Pizarro himself, labored
earnestly to convert Atahualpa to Christianity, explaining the
worthlessness and wickedness of his idols, and the love of the true
God,--as well as they could to an Indian, to whom, of course, a
Christian God was incomprehensible. The worthlessness of his own gods
Atahualpa was not slow to admit. He frankly declared that they were
nothing but liars. Huayna Capac had consulted them, and they answered
that he would live a great while yet,--and Huayna Capac had promptly
died. Atahualpa himself had gone to ask the oracle if he should attack
the Spaniards: the oracle had answered yes, and that he would easily
conquer them. No wonder the Inca war-chief had lost confidence in the
makers of such predictions.

The Spaniards gathered many llamas, considerable gold, and a large store
of fine garments of cotton and camel's-hair. They were no longer
molested; for the Indians without their professional war-maker were even
more at a loss than a civilized army would be without its officers, for
the Indian leader has a priestly as well as a military office,--and
their leader was a prisoner.

At last Atahualpa, anxious to get back to his forces at any cost, made a
proposition so startling that the Spaniards could scarce believe their
ears. If they would set him free, he promised to fill the room wherein
he was a prisoner as high as he could reach with gold, and a smaller
room with silver! The room to be filled with golden vessels and trinkets
(nothing so compact as ingots) is said to have been twenty-two feet long
and seventeen wide; and the mark he indicated on the wall with his
fingers was nine feet from the floor!

FOOTNOTES:

[27] Pronounced Cash-a-_mar_-ca.

[28] Pronounced kay-_brah_-das.

VI.

THE GOLDEN RANSOM.

There is no reason whatever to doubt that Pizarro accepted this
proposition in perfect good faith. The whole nature of t