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+Project Gutenberg's The Aztec Treasure-House, by Thomas Allibone Janvier
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Aztec Treasure-House
+
+Author: Thomas Allibone Janvier
+
+Release Date: May 26, 2007 [EBook #21618]
+Last Updated: September 16, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AZTEC TREASURE-HOUSE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Geetu Melwani, Chuck Greif, Mary Meehan and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned
+images of public domain material from the Google Print
+project.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                        THE AZTEC TREASURE-HOUSE
+
+                       By Thomas Allibone Janvier
+
+
+
+
+Copyright, 1890, by Harper & Brothers.
+
+_All rights reserved._
+
+
+
+
+TO C. A. J.
+
+
+
+
+Departimiento y ha entre los engaños. Catales y ha que son buenos,
+e tales que malos, e buenos son aquellos que los omnes fazen a
+buena fe e a buena intencion.--ALONZO el SABIO, Setena Partida,
+Titulo xvi., Ley ii.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: The Dying Cacique.]
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+          PROLOGUE
+
+       I. FRAY ANTONIO
+
+      II. THE CACIQUE'S SECRET
+
+     III. THE MONK'S MANUSCRIPT
+
+      IV. MONTEZUMA'S MESSENGER
+
+       V. THE ENGINEER AND THE LOST-FREIGHT MAN
+
+      VI. THE KING'S SYMBOL
+
+     VII. THE FIGHT IN THE CAÑON
+
+    VIII. AFTER THE FIGHT
+
+      IX. THE CAVE OF THE DEAD
+
+       X. THE SWINGING STATUE
+
+      XI. THE SUBMERGED CITY
+
+     XII. IN THE VALLEY OF DEATH
+
+    XIII. UP THE CHAC-MOOL STAIR
+
+     XIV. THE HANGING CHAIN
+
+      XV. THE TEMPLE IN THE CLOUDS
+
+     XVI. AT THE BARRED PASS
+
+    XVII. OF OUR COMING INTO THE VALLY OF AZTLAN
+
+   XVIII. THE STRIKING OF A MATCH
+
+     XIX. THE SEEDS OF REVOLT
+
+      XX. THE PRIEST CAPTAIN'S SUMMONS
+
+     XXI. THE WALLED CITY OF CULHUACON
+
+    XXII. THE OUTBREAK OF REVOLUTION
+
+   XXIII. A RESCUE
+
+    XXIV. THE AFFAIR AT THE WATER-GATE
+
+     XXV. THE GOLD-MINERS OF HUITZILAN
+
+    XXVI. THE GATHERING FOR WAR
+
+   XXVII. AN OFFER OF TERMS
+
+  XXVIII. THE SURRENDER OF A LIFE
+
+    XXIX. THE ASSAULT IN THE NIGHT
+
+     XXX. THE FALL OF THE CITADEL
+
+    XXXI. DEFEAT
+
+   XXXII. EL SABIO'S DEFIANCE
+
+  XXXIII. IN THE AZTEC TREASURE-HOUSE
+
+   XXXIV. A MARTYRDOM
+
+    XXXV. THE TREASURE-CHAMBER
+
+   XXXVI. THE VENGEANCE OF THE GODS
+
+  XXXVII. THROUGH DARKNESS TO LIGHT
+
+ XXXVIII. KING CHALTZANTZIN'S TREASURE
+
+          EPILOGUE
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+
+THE DYING CACIQUE
+
+THE LETTER FROM THE DEAD
+
+PACKING IN THE CORRAL
+
+THE FIGHT IN THE CAÑON
+
+THE CAVE OF THE DEAD
+
+AFLOAT ON THE LAKE
+
+EL SABIO'S PREDICAMENT
+
+MAKING THE PEACE-SIGN
+
+THE FULFILMENT OF THE PROPHECY
+
+THE STRIKING OF A MATCH
+
+CHECKING YOUNG'S OUTBREAK
+
+THE LEAP FROM ABOVE THE WATER-GATE
+
+THE TLAHUICOS AND THEIR GUARDS
+
+IN THE GATE-WAY OF THE CITADEL
+
+THE LAST RALLY
+
+EL SABIO'S DEFIANCE
+
+FRAY ANTONIO'S APPEAL
+
+YOUNG'S STRUGGLE WITH THE PRIEST CAPTAIN
+
+IN THE LIBRARY BEFORE THE OPEN FIRE
+
+
+
+
+    _Who'd hear great marvels told--
+          Come listen now!
+    Who longs for hidden gold--
+          Come listen now!
+    Who joys in well-fought fights,
+    Who yearns for wondrous sights,
+    Who pants for strange delights--
+          Come listen now!_
+
+    _For here are marvels told
+          To listen to!
+    Here tales of hidden gold
+          To listen to!
+    Here gallant men wage fights,
+    Here pass most wondrous sights,
+    Here's that which ear delights
+          To listen to!_
+
+
+
+
+THE AZTEC TREASURE-HOUSE
+
+
+
+
+PROLOGUE.
+
+
+"God sends nuts to them who have no teeth:" which ancient Spanish
+proverb of contrariety comes strongly to mind as I set myself to this
+writing.
+
+By nature am I a studious, book-loving man, having a strong liking for
+quiet and orderliness. Yet in me also is a strain that urges me, even
+along ways which are both rough and dangerous, to get beyond
+book-knowledge, and to examine for myself the abstractions of thought
+and the concretions of men and things out of the consideration whereof
+books are made. And I hold that it is because I have thus sought for
+truth in its original sources, instead of resting content with what
+passes for truth, being detached fragments of fact which other men have
+found and have cut and polished to suit themselves, that I have gathered
+to myself more of it, and in its rude yet perfect native crystals, than
+has come into the possession of any other modern investigator. In making
+which strong assertion I am not moved by idle vanity, but by a just and
+reasonable conception of the intrinsic merit of my own achievement: as
+will be universally admitted when I publish the great work, now almost
+ready for the press, upon which, in preparatory study and in convincing
+discovery, I have been for the past ten years engaged. For I speak well
+within bounds when I declare that a complete revolution in all existing
+conceptions of American archæology and ethnology will be wrought when
+_Pre-Columbian Conditions on the Continent of North America_, by
+Professor Thomas Palgrave, Ph.D. (Leipsic), is given to the world.
+
+Upon this work I say that I have been engaged for ten years. Rather
+should I say that I have been engaged upon it for forty years; for its
+germs were implanted in me when I was a child of but six years old.
+Before my intelligence at all could grasp the meaning of what I read, my
+imagination was fired by reading in the pages of Stephens of the wonders
+which that eminent explorer discovered in Yucatan; and my mind then was
+made up that I would follow in his footsteps, and in the end go far
+beyond him, until I should reveal the whole history of the marvellous
+race whose mighty works he found, but of whose genesis he could only
+feebly surmise. And this resolve of the child became the dominant
+purpose of the man. In my college life at Harvard, and in my university
+life at Leipsic, my studies were directed chiefly to this end.
+Especially did I devote myself to the acquisition of languages, and to
+gaining a sound knowledge of the principles of those departments of
+archæology and ethnology which related to the great work that I had in
+view. Later, during the ten years that I occupied (as I believe usefully
+and acceptably) the Chair of Topical Linguistics in the University of
+Michigan, all the time that I properly could take from my professorial
+duties was given exclusively to the study of the languages of the
+indigenous races of Mexico, and to what little was to be found in books
+concerning their social organization and mode of life, and to the broad
+subject of Mexican antiquities. By correspondence I became acquainted
+with the most eminent Mexican archæologists--the lamented Orozco y
+Berra, Icazbalceta, Chavero, and the philologists Pimentel and Peñafiel;
+and I had the honor to know personally the American archæologist
+Bandelier, the surpassing scientific value of whose researches among the
+primitive peoples of Mexico places his work above all praise. And by the
+study of the writings of these great scholars, and of all writings
+thereto cognate, my own knowledge steadily grew; until at last I felt
+myself strong enough to begin the investigations on my own account for
+which I had sought by all these years of patient preparation fittingly
+to pave the way.
+
+But inasmuch as my life until a short time since has been wholly that of
+a scholar, and wholly has been passed in quiet ways, I truly have had no
+teeth at all for the proper cracking of the nuts which have come to me
+in the course of the surprising adventures that I have now set myself to
+narrate. For in the course of these adventures (necessarily, yet sorely
+against my will) I have been thrust by force of circumstances into many
+imminent and prodigious perils; much time that I gladly would have
+devoted to peaceful, fruitful study I have been compelled to employ in
+rude and profitless (except that my life was saved by it) battling with
+savages; and--what most of all has pained me--many curious and
+interesting skulls that I gladly would have added entire to my
+collection of crania, I have been driven in self-defence to ruin
+irreparably with my own hands.
+
+All of which diversities of my likings and my happenings will appear in
+due order, as I tell in the following pages of the strange and wonderful
+things which befell me--in company with Rayburn and Young and Fray
+Antonio and the boy Pablo--in our search after and finding of the great
+treasure that was hidden, in a curiously secret place among the Mexican
+mountains more than a thousand years ago, by Chaltzantzin, the third of
+the Aztec kings.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+FRAY ANTONIO.
+
+
+My heart was light within me as I stood on the steamer's deck in the
+cool gray of an October morning and saw out across the dark green sea
+and the dusky, brownish stretch of coast country the snow-crowned peak
+of Orizaba glinting in the first rays of the rising sun. And presently,
+as the sun rose higher, all the tropic region of the coast and the brown
+walls of Vera Cruz and of its outpost fort of San Juan de Ulua were
+flooded with brilliant light--which sudden and glorious outburst of
+radiant splendor seemed to me to be charged with a bright promise of my
+own success.
+
+And still lighter was my heart, a week later, when I found myself
+established in the beautiful city of Morelia, and ready to begin
+actively the work for which I had been preparing myself--at first
+unconsciously, but for ten years past consciously and carefully--almost
+all my life long.
+
+Morelia, I had decided, was the best base for the operations that I was
+about to undertake. My main purpose was to search for the remnants of
+primitive civilization among the more isolated of the native Indian
+tribes; and out of the fragments thus found, pieced together with what
+more I could glean from the early ecclesiastical and civil records, to
+recreate, so far as this was possible, the fabric that was destroyed by
+the Spanish conquerors. Nowhere could my investigations be conducted to
+better advantage than in the State of Michoacan (of which State the city
+of Morelia is the capital) and in the adjacent State of Jalisco; for in
+this region tribes still exist which never have been reduced to more
+than nominal subjection, and which maintain to a great extent their
+primitive customs and their primitive faith, though curiously mingling
+with this latter many Christian observances. Indeed, the independence of
+the Indians of these parts is so notable that the proverb "Free as
+Jalisco" is current throughout Mexico. Moreover, Morelia is a city rich
+in ancient records. The archives of the Franciscan province, that has
+its centre here extend back to the year 1531; those of the Bishopric of
+Michoacan to the year 1538; and those of the Colegio de San Nicolás to
+the year 1540; while in the recently founded Museo Michoacano already
+has been collected a rich store of archæological material. In a word,
+there was no place in all Mexico where my studies and my investigations
+could be pursued to such advantage as they could be pursued here.
+
+From a fellow-archæologist in the City of Mexico I brought a letter of
+introduction to the director of the Museo, the learned Dr. Nicolás Leon;
+and so cordially was this letter worded, and so cordially was it
+received, that within the day of my coming into that strange city I
+found myself in the midst of friends. At once their hearts and their
+houses were opened to me, and they gave me with a warm enthusiasm the
+benefit of their knowledge and of their active assistance forwarding the
+work that I had in hand.
+
+In the quiet retirement of the Museo I opened to that one of its members
+to whom the director especially had commended me, Don Rafael Moreno, the
+purposes which I had in view, and the means by which I hoped to
+accomplish them. "Surely," I said, "among the free Indians in the
+mountains hereabouts much may be found--in customs, in tone of thought,
+in religion--that has remained unchanged since the time of the
+conquest."
+
+Don Rafael nodded. "Fray Antonio has said as much," he observed,
+thoughtfully.
+
+"And as your own distinguished countryman, Señor Orozco y Berra, has
+pointed out," I continued, "many dark places in primitive history may be
+made clear, many illusions may be dispelled, and many deeply
+interesting truths may be gathered by one who will go among these
+Indians, lending himself to their mode of life, and will note accurately
+what he thus learns from sources wholly original."
+
+"Fray Antonio has professed the same belief," Don Rafael answered. "But
+that his love is greater for the saving of heathen souls than for the
+advancement of antiquarian knowledge, he long ago would have done what
+you now propose to do. He has done much towards gathering a portion of
+the information that you seek, even as it is."
+
+"And who is this Fray Antonio, señor?"
+
+"He is the man who of all men can give you the wisest help in your
+present need. We see but little of him here at the Museo, though he is
+one of our most honored members, for his time is devoted so wholly to
+the godly work to which he has given himself that but little remains to
+him to use in other ways. He is a monk, vowed to the Rule of St.
+Francis. As you know, since the promulgation of the Laws of the Reform,
+monks are not permitted in our country to live in communities; but, with
+only a few exceptions, the conventual churches which have not been
+secularized still are administered by members of the religious orders to
+which they formerly belonged. Fray Antonio has the charge of the church
+of San Francisco--over by the market-place, you know--and virtually is a
+parish priest. He is a religious enthusiast. In God's service he gives
+himself no rest. The common people here, since his loving labors are
+among them while the pestilence of small-pox raged, reverently believe
+him to be a saint; and those of a higher class, who know what heroic
+work he did in that dreadful time, and who see how perfectly his life
+conforms to the principles which he professes, and how like is the
+spirit of holiness that animates him to that of the sainted men who
+founded the order to which he belongs, are disposed to hold a like
+opinion. Truly, it is by the especial grace of God that men like Fray
+Antonio are permitted at times to dwell upon this sinful earth."
+
+Don Rafael spoke with a depth of feeling and a reverence of tone that
+gave his strong words still greater strength and deeper meaning. After
+that moment's pause he resumed: "But that which is of most interest to
+you, señor, is the knowledge that Fray Antonio has gained of our native
+Indians during his ministrations among them. It is the dearest wish of
+his heart to carry to these heathen souls the saving grace of
+Christianity, and for the accomplishment of this good purpose he makes
+many journeys into the mountains; ministering in the chapels which his
+zeal has founded in the Indian towns, and striving earnestly by his
+preaching of God's word to bring these far-wandered sheep into the
+Christian fold. Very often his life has been in most imminent peril, for
+the idolatrous priests of the mountain tribes hate him with a most
+bitter hatred because of the inroads which his mild creed is making upon
+the cruel creed which they uphold. Yet is he careless of the danger to
+which he exposes himself; and there be those who believe, such is the
+temerity with which he manifests his zeal, that he rather seeks than
+shuns a martyr's crown."
+
+Again Don Rafael paused, and again was it evident that deep feelings
+moved him as he spoke of the holy life of this most holy man. "You will
+thus understand, señor," he went on, "that Fray Antonio of all men is
+best fitted by his knowledge of the ways of these mountain Indians to
+advise you touching your going among them and studying them. You cannot
+do better than confer with him at once. It is but a step to the church
+of San Francisco. Let us go."
+
+What Don Rafael had said had opened new horizons to me, and I was
+stirred by strange feelings as we passed out together from the shady
+silence of the Museo into the bright silence of the streets: for Morelia
+is a quiet city, wherein at all times is gentleness and rest. For
+priests in general, and for Mexican priests in particular, I had
+entertained always a profound contempt; but now, from an impartial
+source, I had heard of a Mexican priest whose life-springs seemed to be
+the soul-stirring impulses of the thirteenth century; who was devoted in
+soul and in body to the service of God and of his fellow-men; in whom,
+in a word, the seraphic spirit of St. Francis of Assisi seemed to live
+again. But by this way coming to such tangible evidence of the survival
+in the present time of forces which were born into the world six hundred
+years ago, my thoughts took a natural turn to my own especial interests;
+and, by perhaps not over-strong analogy, I reasoned that if this monk
+still lived so closely to the letter and to the spirit of the Rule that
+St. Francis, six centuries back, gave to his order, most reasonably
+might I hope to find still quick something of the life that was in full
+vigor in Mexico only a little more than half that many centuries ago.
+
+We turned off from the Calle Principal by the little old church of La
+Cruz, and passed onward across the market-place, where buying and
+selling went on languidly, and where a drowsy hum of talk made a
+rhythmic setting to a scene that seemed to my unaccustomed eyes less a
+bit of real life than a bit lifted bodily from an opera. Facing the
+market-place was the ancient church; and the change was a pleasant one,
+from the vivid sunlight and warmth of the streets to its cool, shadowy
+interior: where the only sign of life was a single old woman, her head
+muffled in her _rebozo_, praying her way along the Stations of the
+Cross. For more than two hundred and fifty years had prayer been made
+and praise been offered here; and as I thought of the many generations
+who here had ministered and worshipped--though evil hearts in plenty, no
+doubt, both within and without the chancel there had been--it seemed to
+me that some portion of the subtle essence of all the soul-longings for
+heavenly help and guidance that here had been breathed forth, by men and
+women truly struggling against the sinful forces at work in the world,
+had entered into the very fabric of that ancient church, and so had
+sanctified it.
+
+We crossed to the eastern end of the church, where was a low door-way,
+closed by a heavy wooden door that was studded with rough iron nails and
+ornamented with rudely finished iron-work; pushing which door open
+briskly, as one having the assured right of entry there, Don Rafael
+courteously stood aside and motioned to me to enter the sacristy.
+
+From the shadowy church I passed at a step into a small vaulted room
+brilliant with the sunlight that poured into it through a broad window
+that faced the south. Just where this flood of sunshine fell upon the
+flagged floor, rising from a base of stone steps built up in a pyramidal
+form, was a large cross of some dark wood, on which was the life-size
+figure of the crucified Christ; and there, on the bare stone pavement
+before this emblem of his faith, his face, on which the sunlight fell
+full, turned upward towards the holy image, and his arms raised in
+supplication, clad in his Franciscan habit, of which the hood had fallen
+back, knelt Fray Antonio; and upon his pale, holy face, that the rich
+sunlight glorified, was an expression so seraphic, so entranced, that it
+seemed as though to his fervent gaze the very gates of heaven must be
+open, and all the splendors and glories and majesties of paradise
+revealed.
+
+It is as I thus first saw Fray Antonio--verily a saint kneeling before
+the cross--that I strive to think of him always. Yet even when that
+other and darker, but surely more glorious, picture of him rises before
+my mind I am not disconsolate; for at such times the thought possesses
+me--coming to me clearly and vehemently, as though from a strongly
+impelled force without myself--that what he prayed for at the moment
+when I beheld him was that which God granted to him in the end.
+
+Some men being thus broken in upon while in the very act of communing
+with Heaven would have been distressed and ill at ease--as I assuredly
+was because I had so interrupted him. But to Fray Antonio, as I truly
+believe, communion with Heaven was so entirely a part of his daily life
+that our sudden entry in nowise ruffled him. After a moment, that he
+might recall his thoughts within himself and so to earth again, he arose
+from his knees, and with a grave, simple grace came forward to greet us.
+He was not more than eight-and-twenty years old, and he was slightly
+built and thin--not emaciated, but lean with the wholesome leanness of
+one who strove to keep his body in the careful order of a machine of
+which much work was required. His face still had in it the soft
+roundness and tenderness of youth, that accorded well with its
+expression of gracious sweetness; but there was a firmness about the
+fine, strong chin, and in the set of the delicate lips, that showed a
+reserve of masterful strength. And most of all did this strength shine
+forth from his eyes; which, truly, though at this first sight of him I
+did not perceive it fully, were the most wonderful eyes that ever I have
+seen. As I then beheld them I thought them black; but they really were a
+dark blue, and so were in keeping with his fair skin and hair. Yet that
+which gave them so strong an individuality was less their changing color
+than the marvellous way in which their expression changed with every
+change of feeling of the soul that animated them. When I first saw them,
+turned up towards heaven, they seemed to speak a heavenly language full
+of love; and when I saw them last, stern, but shining with the exultant
+light of joy triumphant, they fairly hurled the wrath of outraged Heaven
+against the conquered powers of hell. And I can give no adequate
+conception of the love that shone forth from them when pitying sympathy
+for human sorrow, or even for the pain which brute beasts suffered,
+touched that most tender heart for which they spoke in tones richer and
+fuller than the tones of words.
+
+Don Rafael, standing without the door that he had opened in order that I
+might precede him, did not perceive that we had interrupted Fray Antonio
+in his prayers; and began, therefore, in the lively manner natural to
+him, when I had been in due form presented as an American archæologist
+come to Mexico to pursue my studies of its primitive inhabitants, to
+commend the undertaking that I had in hand, and to ask of Fray Antonio
+the aid in prosecuting it that he so well could give.
+
+Perhaps it was that Fray Antonio understood how wholly my heart already
+had gone out to him--assuredly, later, there was such close sympathy
+between us that our thoughts would go and come to each other without
+need for words--and so was disposed in some instinctive way to join his
+purposes with mine; but, be this as it may, before Don Rafael well could
+finish the explanation of my wishes, Fray Antonio had comprehended what
+I desired, and had promised to give me his aid.
+
+"The señor already has a book-knowledge of our native tongues. That is
+well. The speaking knowledge will come easily. He shall have the boy
+Pablo for his servant. A good boy is Pablo. With him he can talk in the
+Nahua dialect--which is the most important, for it is sprung most
+directly from the ancient stock. And I will arrange that the señor shall
+live for a time in the mountains--it will be a hard life, I fear--at
+Santa María and at San Andrés, in which villages he can gain a
+mouth-mastery of both Otomí and Tarascan. A little time must be given to
+all this--some months, no doubt. But the señor, who already has studied
+through ten years, will understand the needfulness of this short
+discipline. To a true student study in itself is a delight--still more
+that study which makes the realization of a long-cherished purpose
+possible. The señor, I know, reads Spanish, since so perfectly he speaks
+it"--this with a gracious movement of the hands and a courteous
+inclination of the body that enhanced the value of the compliment--"but
+does the señor read with ease our ancient Spanish script?"
+
+"I have never attempted it," I answered. "But as I can read easily the
+old printed Spanish, I suppose," I added, a little airily, "that I shall
+have no great difficulty in reading the old script also."
+
+Fray Antonio smiled a little as he glanced at Don Rafael, who smiled
+also, and as he turned out his hands, answered: "Perhaps. But it is not
+quite the same as print, as the señor will know when he tries. But it
+makes no difference; for what is most interesting in our archives I
+shall be glad--and so also will be Don Rafael--to aid him in reading.
+
+"You must know, señor," he went on, dropping his formal mode of address
+as his interest in the subject augmented, and as his feeling towards me
+grew warmer, "that many precious documents are here preserved. So early
+as the year 1536 this western region was erected into a Custodia,
+distinct from the Province of the Santo Evangelio of Mexico; and from
+that time onward letters and reports relating to the work done by the
+missionaries of our order among the heathen have been here received. In
+truth, I doubt not that many historic treasures are hidden here. In
+modern times, during the last hundred years or more, but little thought
+has been given to the care of these old papers--which are so precious to
+such as Don Rafael and yourself because of their antiquarian value, and
+which are still more precious to me because they tell of the sowing
+among the heathen of the seed of God's own Word. It is probable that
+they have not been at all examined into since our learned brothers Pablo
+de Beaumont and Alonzo de la Rea were busy with the writing of their
+chronicles of this Province--and the labors of these brothers ended more
+than two hundred and fifty years ago. In the little time that I myself
+can give to such matters I already have found many manuscripts which
+cast new and curious light upon the strange people who dwelt here in
+Mexico before the Spaniards came. Some of these I will send for your
+examination, for they will prepare you for the work you have in
+contemplation by giving you useful knowledge of primitive modes of life
+and tones of faith and phases of thought. And while you are in the
+mountains, at Santa María and San Andrés, I will make further searches
+in our archives, and what I find you shall see upon your return.
+
+"With your permission, señores, I must now go about my work. Don Rafael
+knows that I am much too ready to forget my work in talk of ancient
+matters. It is a weakness with me--this love for the study of
+antiquity--that I struggle against, but that seems rather to increase
+upon me than to be overcome. This afternoon, señor, I will send a few of
+the ancient manuscripts to you. And so--until we meet again."
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+THE CACIQUE'S SECRET.
+
+
+Fray Antonio punctually fulfilled his promise in regard to the
+manuscripts, and I had but to glance at them in order to understand the
+smile that he had interchanged with Don Rafael when I so airily had
+expressed my confidence in my ability to read them. To say that I more
+easily could read Hebrew is not to the purpose, for I can read Hebrew
+very well; but it is precisely to the purpose to say that I could not
+read them at all! What with the curious, involved formation of the
+several letters, the extraordinary abbreviations, the antique spelling,
+the strange forms of expression, and the use of obsolete words I could
+not make sense of so much as a single line. Yet when, being forced into
+inglorious surrender, I carried the manuscripts to the Museo, and
+appealed to Don Rafael for assistance, he read to me in fluent Spanish
+all that I had found so utterly incomprehensible. "It is only a knack,"
+he explained. "A little time and patience are required at first, but
+then all comes easily." But Don Rafael did here injustice to his own
+scholarship. More than a little time and patience have I since given to
+the study of ancient Spanish script, and I am even yet very far from
+being an expert in the reading of it.
+
+In regard to the other promise that Fray Antonio made me--that he would
+send me a servant who also would serve as a practical instructor in the
+Nahua, or Aztec, dialect--he was equally punctual. While I was taking,
+in my bedroom, my first breakfast of bread and coffee the morning
+following my visit to the church of San Francisco, I heard a faint sound
+of music; but whether it was loud music at a distance or very soft music
+near at hand I could not tell. Presently I perceived that the musician
+was feeling about among the notes for the sabre song from _La Grande
+Duchesse_--selections from which semi-obsolete opera, as I then
+remembered, had been played by the military band on the plaza the
+evening before. Gradually the playing grew more assured; until it ended
+in an accurate and spirited rendering of the air. With this triumph, the
+volume of the sound increased greatly; and from its tones I inferred
+that the instrument was a concertina, and that whoever played it was in
+the inner court-yard of the hotel. Suddenly, in the midst of the music,
+there sounded--and this sound unmistakably came from the hotel
+court-yard--the prodigious braying of an ass; and accompanying this came
+the soft sound of bare feet hurrying away down the passage from near my
+door.
+
+I opened the door and looked out, but the passage was empty. The gallery
+overlooked the court-yard, and stepping to the edge of the low stone
+railing, I beheld a sight that I never recall without a feeling of warm
+tenderness. Almost directly beneath me stood a small gray ass, a very
+delicately shaped and perfect little animal, with a coat of most
+extraordinary length and fuzziness, and with ears of a truly prodigious
+size. His head was raised, and his great ears were pricked forward in a
+fashion which indicated that he was most intently listening; and upon
+his face was an expression of such benevolent sweetness, joined to such
+thoughtfulness and meditative wisdom, that in my heart (which is very
+open to affection for his gentle kind) there sprung up in a moment a
+real love for him. Suddenly he lowered his head, and turned eagerly his
+regard towards the corner of the court-yard where descended the
+stair-way from the gallery on which I stood; and from this quarter came
+towards him a smiling, pleasant-faced Indian lad of eighteen or twenty
+years old, whose dress was a cotton shirt and cotton trousers, whose
+feet were bare, and on whose head was a battered hat of straw. And as
+the ass saw the boy, he strained at the cord that tethered him and gave
+another mighty bray.
+
+"Dost thou call me, Wise One?" said the boy, speaking in Spanish. "Truly
+this Señor Americano is a lazy señor, that he rises so late, and keeps
+us waiting for his coming so long. But patience, Wise One. The Padre
+says that he is a good gentleman, in whose service we shall be treated
+as though we were kings. No doubt I now can buy my rain-coat. And thou,
+Wise One--thou shalt have beans!"
+
+And being by this time come to the ass, the boy enfolded in his arms the
+creature's fuzzy head and gently stroked its preternaturally long ears.
+And the ass, for its part, responded to the caress by rubbing its head
+against the boy's breast and by most energetically twitching its scrag
+of a tail. Thus for a little time these friends manifested for each
+other their affection; and then the boy seated himself on the pavement
+beside the ass and drew forth from his pocket a large mouth-organ--on
+which he went to work with such a will that all the court-yard rang with
+the strains of Offenbach's music.
+
+It was plain from what he had said that this was the boy whom Fray
+Antonio had promised to send to me; and notwithstanding his
+uncomplimentary comments upon my laziness, I had taken already a strong
+liking to him. I waited until he had played through the sabre song
+again--to which, as it seemed to me, the ass listened with a slightly
+critical yet pleased attention--and then I hailed him.
+
+"The lazy Señor Americano is awake at last, Pablo," I called. "Come up
+hither, and we will talk about the buying of thy rain-coat, and about
+the buying of the Wise One's beans."
+
+The boy jumped up as though a spring had been let loose beneath him, and
+his shame and confusion were so great that I was sorry enough that I had
+made my little joke upon him.
+
+"It is all right, my child," I said, quickly, and with all the kindness
+that I could put into my tones. "Thou wert talking to the Wise One, not
+to me--and I have forgotten all that I heard. Thou art come from Fray
+Antonio?"
+
+"Yes, señor," he answered; and as he saw by my smiling that no harm had
+been done, he also smiled; and so honest and kindly was the lad's face
+that I liked him more and more.
+
+"Patience for yet a little longer, Wise One," he said, turning to the
+ass, who gravely wagged his ears in answer. And then the boy came up the
+stair to the gallery, and so we went to my room that I might have talk
+with him.
+
+It was not much that Pablo had to tell about himself. He was a
+Guadalajara lad, born in the Indian suburb of Mexicalcingo--as his
+musical taste might have told me had I known more of Mexico--who had
+drifted out into the world to seek his fortune. His capital was the
+ass--so wise an ass that he had named him El Sabio. "He knows each word
+that I speak to him, señor," said Pablo, earnestly. "And when he hears,
+even a long way off, the music that I make upon the little instrument,
+he knows that it is from me that the music comes, and calls to me. And he
+loves me, señor, as though he were my brother; and he knows that with
+the same tenderness I also love him. It was the good Padre who gave him
+to me. God rest and bless him always!" This pious wish, I inferred,
+related not to the ass but to Fray Antonio.
+
+"And how dost thou live, Pablo?" I asked.
+
+"By bringing water from the Spring of the Holy Children, señor. It is
+two leagues away, the Ojo de los Santos Niños, and El Sabio and I make
+thither two journeys daily. We bring back each time four jars of water,
+which we sell here in the city--for it is very good, sweet water--at
+three _tlacos_ the jar. You see, I make a great deal of money,
+señor--three _reales_ a day! If it were not for one single thing, I
+should soon be rich."
+
+That riches could be acquired rapidly on a basis of about twenty-seven
+cents, in our currency, a day struck me as a novel notion. But I
+inquired, gravely: "And this one thing that hinders thee from getting
+rich, Pablo, what is it?"
+
+"It is that I eat so much, señor," Pablo answered, ruefully. "Truly it
+seems as though this belly of mine never could be filled. I try
+valiantly to eat little and so to save my money; but my belly cries out
+for more and yet more food--and so my money goes. Although I make so
+much, I can scarcely save a _medio_ in a whole week, when what El Sabio
+must have and what I must have is paid for. And I am trying so hard to
+save just now, for before the next rainy season comes I want to own a
+rain-coat. But for a good one I must pay seven _reales_. The price is
+vast."
+
+"What is a rain-coat, Pablo?"
+
+"The señor does not know? That is strange. It is a coat woven of palm
+leaves, so that all over one it is as a thatch that the rain cannot come
+through. What I was saying just now to El Sabio--" Pablo stopped
+suddenly, and turned aside from me in a shamefaced way, as he
+remembered what he also had said to El Sabio about my laziness.
+
+"--Was that out of the wages I am to pay thee thou canst save enough
+money to buy thy coat with," I said, quickly, wishing to rid him of his
+confusion. And then we fell to talking of what these wages should be,
+and of how he was to help me to gain a speaking knowledge of his native
+tongue--for so far we had spoken Spanish together--and of what in
+general would be his duties as my servant. That El Sabio could be
+anything but a part of the contract seemed never to cross Pablo's mind;
+and so presently our terms were concluded, and I found myself occupying
+the responsible relation of master to a mouth-organ playing boy and an
+extraordinarily wise ass. It was arranged that both of these dependants
+of mine should accompany me in my expedition to the Indian villages; and
+to clinch our bargain I gave Pablo the seven _reales_ wherewith to buy
+his rain-coat on the spot.
+
+I was a little surprised, two days later, when we started from Morelia
+on our journey into the mountains to the westward, to find that Pablo
+had not bought his much-desired garment; though, to be sure, as the
+rainy season still was a long way off, there was no need for it. He
+hesitated a little when I questioned him about it, and then, in a very
+apologetic tone, said: "Perhaps the señor will forgive me for doing so
+ill with his money. But indeed I could not help it. There is an old man,
+his name is Juan, señor, who has been very good to me many times. He has
+given me things to put into this wretchedly big belly of mine; and when
+I broke one of my jars he lent me the money to buy another with, and
+would take from me again only what the jar cost and no more. Just now
+this old man is sick--it is rheumatism, señor--and he has no money at
+all, and he and his wife have not much to eat, and I know what pain that
+is. And so--and so--Will the señor forgive me? I do not need the
+rain-coat now, the señor understands. And so I gave Juan the seven
+_reales_, which he will pay me when he gets well and works again; and
+should he die and not pay me--Does the señor know what I have been
+thinking? It is that rain-coats really are not very needful things,
+after all. Without them one gets wet, it is true; but then one soon gets
+dry again. But truly"--and there was a sudden catching in Pablo's throat
+that was very like a sob--"truly I did want one."
+
+When Pablo had told this little story I did not wonder at the esteem in
+which Fray Antonio held him, and from that time onward he had a very
+warm place in my heart. And I may say that but for his too great
+devotion to his mouth-organ--for that boy never could hear a new tune
+but that he needs must go at once to practising it upon his beloved
+"instrumentito" until he had mastered it--he was the best servant that
+man ever had. And within his gentle nature was a core of very gallant
+fearlessness. In the times of danger which we shared together later,
+excepting only Rayburn, not one of us stood face to face and foot to
+foot with death with a steadier or a calmer bravery; for in all his
+composition there did not seem to be one single fibre that could be made
+to thrill in unison with fear. Of his qualities as a servant I had a
+good trial during the two months that we were together in the
+mountains--in which time I got enough working knowledge of the Indian
+dialects to make effective the knowledge that I had gained from
+books--and I was amazed by the quickness that he manifested in
+apprehending and in supplying my wants and in understanding my ways.
+
+As to making any serious study of Indian customs--save only those of the
+most open and well-known sort--in this short time, I soon perceived that
+the case was quite hopeless. Coming from Fray Antonio, whose benevolent
+ministrations among them had won their friendship, the Indians treated
+me with a great respect and showed me every kindness. But I presently
+began to suspect, and this later grew to be conviction, that because my
+credentials came from a Christian priest I was thrust away all the more
+resolutely from knowledge of their inner life. What I then began to
+learn, and what I learned more fully later, convinced me that these
+Indians curiously veneered with Christian practices their native heathen
+faith; manifesting a certain superstitious reverence for the Christian
+rites and ceremonies, yet giving sincere worship only to their heathen
+gods. It was something to have arrived at this odd discovery, but it
+tended only to show me how difficult was the task that I had set myself
+of prying into the secrets of the Indians' inner life.
+
+Indeed, but for an accident, I should have returned to Morelia no wiser,
+practically, than when I left it; but by that turn of chance fortune
+most wonderfully favored me, and with far-reaching consequences. It was
+on the last afternoon of my stay in the village of Santa María; and the
+beginning of my good-luck was that I succeeded in walking out upon the
+mountain-side alone. My walk had a decided purpose in it, for each time
+that I had tried to go in this direction one or another of the Indians
+had been quickly upon my heels with some civil excuse about the danger
+of falling among the rocks for leading me another way. How I thus
+succeeded at last in escaping from so many watchful eyes I cannot say,
+but luck was with me, and I went on undisturbed. The sharply sloping
+mountain-side, very wild and rugged, was strewn with great fragments of
+rock which had fallen from the heights above, and which, lying there for
+ages beneath the trees, had come to be moss-grown and half hidden by
+bushes and fallen leaves. In the dim light that filtered through the
+branches, walking in so uncertain a place was attended with a good deal
+of danger; for not only was there a likelihood of falls leading to
+broken legs, but broken necks also were an easy possibility by the
+chance of a slip upon the mossy edge of one or another of the many
+ledges, followed by a spin through the air ending suddenly upon the
+jagged rocks below. Indeed, so ticklish did I find my way that I began
+to think that the Indians had spoken no more than the simple truth in
+warning me against such dangers, and that I had better turn again while
+light remained to bring me back in safety; and just as I had reached
+this wise conclusion my feet slid suddenly from under me on the very
+edge of one of the ledges, and over I went into the depth below.
+
+Fortunately I fell not more than a dozen feet or so, and my fall was
+broken by a friendly bed of leaves and moss. When I got to my feet
+again, in a moment, I found myself in a narrow cleft in the rocks, and I
+was surprised to see that through this cleft ran a well-worn path. All
+thought of the danger that I had just escaped from so narrowly was
+banished form my mind instantly as I made this discovery; and full of
+the exciting hope that I was about to find something which the Indians
+most earnestly desired to conceal, I went rapidly and easily onward in
+the direction that I had been pressing towards with so much difficulty
+along the rocky mountain-side. The course of this sunken path, I soon
+perceived, was partly natural and partly artificial. It went on through
+clefts such as the one that I had fallen into, and through devious ways
+where the fragments of fallen rock, some of them great masses weighing
+many tons, had been piled upon each other in most natural confusion, so
+as to leave a narrow passage in their depths. And all this had been done
+in a long-past time, for the rocks were thickly coated with moss; and in
+one place, where a watercourse crossed the path, were smoothed by water
+in a way that only centuries could have accomplished. So cleverly was
+the concealment effected, the way so narrow and so irregular, that I
+verily believe an army might have scoured that mountain-side and never
+found the path at all, save by such accident as had brought me into it.
+
+For half a mile or more I went on in the waning light, my heart
+throbbing with the excitement of it all, and so came out at last upon a
+vast jutting promontory of rock that was thrust forth from the
+mountain's face eastwardly. Here was an open space of an acre or more,
+in the centre of which was a low, altar-like structure of stone. At the
+end of the narrow path, being still within its shelter, I stopped to
+make a careful survey of the ground before me; for I realized that in
+what I was doing Death stood close at my elbow, and that, unless I acted
+warily, he surely would have me in his grasp. Coming out of the shadows
+of the woods and the deeper shadows of the sunken path to this wide open
+space, where the light of the brilliant sunset was reflected strongly
+from masses of rosy clouds over all the eastern sky, I could see
+clearly. In the midst of the opening, not far from the edge of the
+stupendous precipice, where the bare rock dropped sheer down a thousand
+feet or more, was a huge bowlder that had been cut and squared with
+ineffective tools into the rude semblance of a mighty altar. The
+well-worn path along which I had come told the rest of the story. Here
+was the temple, having for its roof the great arch of heaven, in which
+the Indians, whom the gentle Fray Antonio believed to be such good
+Christians, truly worshipped their true gods; even as here their fathers
+had worshipped before them in the very dawning of the ancient past.
+
+A tremor of joy went through me as I realized what I had found. Here was
+positive proof of what I had strongly but not surely hoped for. The
+Aztec faith truly was still a living faith; and it followed almost
+certainly that, could I but penetrate the mystery with which it was
+hedged about so carefully by them still faithful to it, I would find
+all that I sought--of living customs, of coherent traditions--wherewith
+to exhibit clearly to the world of the nineteenth century the wonderful
+social and religious structure that the Spaniards of the sixteenth
+century had blotted out, but had not destroyed. What my
+fellow-archæologists had accomplished in Syria, in Egypt, in Greece, was
+nothing to what I could thus accomplish in Mexico. At the best, Smith,
+Rawlinson, Schliemann, had done no more than stir the dust above the
+surface of dead antiquity; but I was about to bring the past freshly and
+brightly into the very midst of the present, and to make antiquity once
+more alive!
+
+As I stood there in the dusk of the narrow pathway, while the joy that
+was in my heart swelled it almost to bursting, there came to my ears the
+low moaning of one in pain. The faint, uncertain sound seemed to come
+from the direction of the great stone altar. To discover myself in that
+place to any of the Indians, I knew would end my archæological ambition
+very summarily; yet was I moved by a natural desire to aid whoever thus
+was hurting and suffering. I stood irresolute a moment, and then, as the
+moaning came to me again, I went out boldly into the open space, and
+crossed it to where the altar was. As I rounded the great stone I saw a
+very grievous sight: an old man lying upon the bare rock, a great gash
+in his forehead from which the blood had flowed down over his face and
+breast, making him a most ghastly object to look upon; and there was
+about him a certain limpness that told of many broken bones. He turned
+his head at the sound of my footsteps, but it was plain that the blood
+flowing into his eyes had blinded him, and that he could not see me. He
+made a feeble motion to clear his eyes, but dropped his partly raised
+arm suddenly and with a moan of pain. I recognized him at a glance. He
+was the Cacique, the chief, and also, as I had shrewdly guessed, the
+priest of the village--the very last person whom I would have desired to
+meet in that place.
+
+"Ah, thou art come to me at last, Benito!" he said, speaking in a low
+and broken voice. "I have been praying to our gods that they would send
+thee to me--for my death has come, and it is needful that the one secret
+still hidden from thee, my successor, should be told. I was on the
+altar's top, and thence I fell."
+
+I perceived in what the Cacique said that there was hope for me. He
+could not see me, and he evidently believed that I was the second chief
+of the village, Benito--an Indian who had talked much with me, and the
+tones of whose voice I knew well. Doubtless my clumsy attempt to
+simulate the Indian's speech would have been detected quickly under
+other circumstances, but the Cacique believed that no other man could
+have come to him in that place; and his whole body was wrung with
+torturing pains, and he was in the very article of death. And so it was,
+my prudence leading me to speak few and simple words, and my good-luck
+still standing by me, he never guessed whose hands in his last moments
+ministered to him.
+
+As I raised his head a little and rested it upon my knee, he spoke
+again, very feebly and brokenly: "On my breast is the bag of skin. In
+it is the Priest-Captain's token, and the paper that shows the way to
+where the stronghold of our race remains. Only with me abides this
+secret, for I am of the ancient house, as thou art also, whence sprung
+of old our priests and kings. Only when the sign that I have told thee
+of--but telling thee not its meaning--comes from heaven, is the token to
+be sent, and with it the call for aid. Once, as thou knowest, that sign
+came, and the messenger, our own ancestor, departed. But there was anger
+then against us among the gods, and they suffered not his message to be
+delivered, and he himself was slain. Yet was the token preserved to
+us, and yet again the sign from heaven will come. And then--thou
+knowest--" But here a shiver of pain went through him, and his speech
+gave place to agonizing moans. When he spoke again his words were but a
+whisper. "Lay me--in front of--the altar," he said. "Now is the end."
+
+"But the sign? What is it? And where is the stronghold?" I cried
+eagerly; forgetting in the intense excitement of this strange disclosure
+my need for reticence, and forgetting even to disguise my voice. But my
+imprudence cost me nothing. Even as I spoke another shiver went through
+the Cacique's body; and as there came from his lips, thereafter forever
+to be silent, a sound, half moan, half gasp, his soul went out from him,
+and he was at rest.
+
+When a little calmness had returned to me, I took from his breast the
+bag of skin--stained darkly where his blood had flowed upon it--and then
+tenderly and reverently lifted his poor mangled body and laid it before
+the altar. And so I came back along the hidden path, safely and
+unperceived, to the village: leaving the dead Cacique there in the
+solemn solitude of that great mountain-top, whereon the dusk of night
+was gathering, alone in death before the altar of his gods.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+THE MONK'S MANUSCRIPT.
+
+
+When Pablo and I started, the day following, upon our return to Morelia,
+the village of Santa María was overcast with mourning. The Cacique was
+dead, they told us; had fallen among the rocks on the mountain-side,
+being an old man and feeble, and so was killed. And I was expressly
+charged with a message to the good Padre, begging him to hasten to Santa
+María that the dead man might have Christian burial. I confess that I
+found this request, though I promised faithfully to comply with it,
+highly amusing; for I knew beyond the possibility of a doubt that if
+ever a man died a most earnest and devout heathen it was this same
+Cacique for whom Christian burial was sought; and I felt an assured
+conviction that when the services of the Church over him were ended--and
+whatever good was to be had for him from them secured--he would be
+buried fittingly with all the fulness of his own heathen rites. But this
+matter, lying in what I already perceived to be the very wide region
+between the avowed faith and the hidden faith of the Indians, was no
+concern of mine; yet I longed, as only a thoroughly earnest
+archæologist could long, to be a witness of the funeral ceremony in
+which Fray Antonio most conspicuously would not take part. As this was
+hopelessly impossible--for only by very slow advances, if ever, could I
+reach again by considerate investigation the point that in a moment I
+had reached by chance--I came away from Santa María reluctantly, yet
+greatly elated by the discovery that I had made.
+
+So jealous was I in guarding the strange legacy that the Cacique had
+bequeathed to me that not until I was safe back in Morelia, in my room
+at the hotel, with the door locked behind me, did I venture to examine
+it. The bag, about six inches square, tightly sewed on all four of its
+sides, was made of snake-skin, and was provided with a loop of
+snake-skin so that it might be hung from the neck upon the breast like a
+scapulary. My hands trembled as I cut the delicate stitching of maguey
+fibre, and then drew forth a mass of several thicknesses of coarse
+gray-brown paper, also made of the maguey, such as the ancient Aztecs
+used. Being unfolded, I had before me a sheet nearly two feet square, on
+which was painted in dull colors a curious winding procession of figures
+and symbols. My knowledge of such matters being then but scant, I could
+tell only that this was a record, at once historical and geographical,
+of a tribal migration; and I saw at a glance that it was unlike either
+of the famous picture-writings which record the migration of the Aztecs
+from Culhuacan to the Valley of Mexico, and then about that valley until
+their final settlement in Tenochtitlan. I was reasonably confident,
+indeed, that this record differed from all existing codices; and I was
+filled with what I hope will be looked upon as a pardonable pride at
+having discovered, within three months of my coming to Mexico, this
+unique and inestimable treasure.
+
+My natural desire was to carry my precious codex at once to Don Rafael,
+that I might have the benefit of his superior knowledge in studying it
+(for he had continued very intelligently the investigation of Aztec
+picture-writing that was so well begun by the late Señor Ramirez), and
+also that I might enjoy his sympathetic enjoyment of my discovery. As I
+raised the bag, that I might replace in it the refolded paper--which I
+already saw heralded to the world as the Codex Palgravius, and
+reproduced in fac-simile in _Pre-Columbian Conditions on the Continent
+of North America_--some glittering object dropped out of it and fell
+with a jingling sound upon the stone floor. When I examined eagerly this
+fresh treasure I found that it was a disk of gold, about the size and
+thickness of a Mexican silver dollar, on which a curious figure was
+rudely engraved. The engraving obviously represented an Aztec
+name-device, the like of which, in the ancient picture-writings,
+distinguish one from another the several generations of a line of kings.
+This name-device was strange to me; but, as I have said, I had not at
+that time studied carefully the Aztec picture-writings, and there were
+many names of kings which I would not then have recognized. But that the
+gold disk was the token concerning the meaning of which the dying
+Cacique had given so strange a hint, I felt assured.
+
+Being still further gladdened by this fresh discovery, I carried my
+treasures at once to the Museo; and Don Rafael's enthusiasm over them
+was as hearty as I could desire. Being so deeply learned in such
+matters, he was able in the course of a single afternoon to arrive at
+much of the meaning of my codex; and his rendering of it showed that it
+possessed a very extraordinary historical value. In the Codex Boturini,
+as is well known, are several important lapses that neither that eminent
+scholar, nor any other archæologist whose conclusions can be considered
+trustworthy, has been able to supply. All that reasonably can be
+imagined concerning these breaks is that the historian of the Aztec
+migration deliberately omitted certain facts from his pictured history.
+The astonishing discovery that Don Rafael made in regard to my codex was
+that it unquestionably supplied the facts concealed in one of the
+longest of these unaccountable blanks. This was not a mere guess on his
+part, but a demonstrable certainty. On a fac-simile of the Codex
+Boturini he bade me observe attentively the pictures which preceded and
+which followed the break in question; and then he showed me that these
+same pictures were the beginning and the ending of my own
+codex--obviously put there so that this secret record might be inserted
+accurately into the public record of the wanderings of the Aztec tribe.
+
+Further, the geographical facts set forth in the Codex Boturini having
+been very solidly established, it was easy to determine approximately
+the part of Mexico to which the beginning and the end of my codex
+referred. But the migration here recorded was a very long one, and all
+that Don Rafael could say with certainty concerning it was that it told
+of far journeyings into the west and north. He was much puzzled,
+moreover, by a picture that occurred about the middle of the codex, and
+that seemed to be intended to represent a walled city among mountains.
+To my mind this picture tallied well with what the dying Cacique had
+told me touching the hidden stronghold of his race. But Don Rafael
+attached very little importance to the Cacique's words; and on
+archæological grounds maintained that a walled city was an impossibility
+in primitive Mexico--for while walls were built in plenty by the
+primitive Mexicans, and still are to be found in many places, no mention
+of a walled city is made by the early chroniclers, and of such a city
+there never has been found the slightest trace.
+
+In regard to the engraved disk of gold, Don Rafael said at once and
+positively that it represented a name-device which never had been
+figured in any known Aztec writing; and he was of the opinion--being led
+thereto by consideration of certain delicate peculiarities of the figure
+which were too subtle for my uninstructed apprehension to grasp--that
+the name here symbolized was that of a ruler who was both priest and
+king. That the piece of gold was found associated with picture-writing
+unquestionably belonging to the theocratic period lent additional color
+to this assumption. The sum of our conclusions, therefore, was that we
+had here the name-device of a priest-king who had ruled the Aztec tribe
+during some portion of the first migration. And, assuming that he had
+lived during the period to which my codex referred, and accepting the
+system of dates tentatively adopted by Señor Ramirez, we even fixed the
+ninth century of our era as the period in which he had lived and ruled.
+
+During two whole days Don Rafael and I worked together over these
+matters in the Museo; and it was not until our investigations were
+ended--so far, at least, as investigations could be said to be ended
+while yet no definite conclusions were reached--that my thoughts
+reverted to Fray Antonio, and to the requirement of courtesy that I
+should report to him the result of my course of study in the Indian
+tongues. It is but justice to myself to add that, knowing him to be gone
+to Santa María to attend to the Cacique's burial, I had temporarily
+dismissed this matter from my mind.
+
+But when I was come to the Church of San Francisco--carrying with me the
+Codex Palgravius and the engraved disk of gold, in both of which I knew
+that he would take a keen interest--I had no immediate opportunity of
+exhibiting to him my treasures.
+
+As I pushed open the sacristy door, when I had knocked upon it and he
+had called me to enter, he came towards me at once in excitement so
+eager that his face was all lit up by it; and almost before I could
+greet him he exclaimed: "You are most happily come, my friend. At this
+very moment I was about to send for you; for I have found that which
+will stir your heart even as it has stirred mine. Yet perhaps," and he
+spoke more gravely, "it will not stir your heart in the same way that
+mine is stirred by it--for if I can but find the key that will unlock
+the whole of the mystery that here partly is revealed, I see before me
+such opportunity to garner the Lord's vintage as comes but seldom to His
+servants in these later ages of the world."
+
+So strange was Fray Antonio's manner, and so wayward seemed his speech,
+that I was half inclined to think his religious enthusiasm fairly had
+landed him in religious madness; which thought must have found utterance
+in my look of doubtfulness, for he smiled kindly at me, and in a quieter
+tone went on:
+
+"My wits still are with me, Don Tomas; though I do not wonder at your
+thinking that I have lost them. Sit down here and listen to the story of
+my discovery; and when it is ended you will perceive that I very well
+may be excited by it and still be sane."
+
+Being assured by this calmer speech that Fray Antonio had not taken
+leave of his senses, I made a weak disclaimer, that he smilingly
+accepted, of my too clearly expressed doubts in that direction; and so
+seated myself to listen.
+
+"You know, señor," he began, "that common report has declared that
+beneath this Church of San Francisco is a secret passage that extends
+under the city and has its exit in the outlying meadow-lands. I may
+confide in you frankly that this passage does exist, and that I, in
+common with all members of my Order who have dwelt here, know precisely
+where its entrance is and where its outlet. These matters need not be
+exposed, for they are not essential to my purpose. But you must know
+that in the midst of this passage I found on the day preceding your
+return from the mountains a little room of which the door was so well
+concealed that my finding it was the merest accident. And in the room,
+with other things which need not here be named, I found a chest in which
+are certain ancient papers of which I have been long in search. In the
+archives are frequent references to these papers--they are of much
+importance to our Order--but as with all my search I never could
+discover them, I had decided in my mind that in one or another of the
+troublous periods that our Church has passed through they had been
+destroyed. It is plain to me now that in one of these periods of danger
+they were hidden in this safe place.
+
+"Some of these papers, dealing with mere matters of history, you will
+have pleasure in examining in due time. But that which I shall show you
+now, and which has so excited me that you not unnaturally thought that I
+had gone mad over it, has got among the rest, as I verily believe, by
+simple accident. Among the books and papers in the chest was a parchment
+case on which was written 'Mission of Santa Marta,' and the date '1531.'
+Within it were some loose sheets of paper on which were records of
+Indian baptisms, as is evident by the strange mixing of Christian and of
+heathen names. Plainly, this was the register of some mission station of
+our Order in that far-back time. But as I pried into the case more
+closely, I found, within a double fold of the parchment--yet not as
+though intentionally hidden, but rather as though there placed for
+temporary safety--a sealed letter directed to the blessed Fray Juan de
+Zumárraga, who was of our Order, and who, as you know, was the first
+bishop of our holy Church in this New Spain. As I drew forth the
+letter, the seal, that time had loosened, fell away and left it open in
+my hand. That this letter never until now has been read I am altogether
+confident, for the prodigy of which it tells would have made so great a
+stir that ample record of it would have been preserved. Nor is it
+difficult to account for the way in which it missed coming to the eye
+for which it was intended. In that early time many and many of our
+Order, going out to preach God's Word among the barbarians, came happily
+to that end which is the happiest end attainable in God's service: a
+blessed martyrdom." Fray Antonio's voice trembled with deep feeling as
+he spoke, and I remembered that Don Rafael had told me that this good
+brother, it was believed, himself longed for a death so glorious. "And
+being thus slain," Fray Antonio in a moment continued, "the mission
+stations which they had established were left desolate, with what they
+held--save such few things as might be cared for by the savage
+murderers--remaining there within them. In later times, as the
+conquering Spaniards overspread the land, many of these stations were
+found, with nothing to tell save nameless bones of those who had died
+there that God's will might be done.
+
+"It is my conjecture, therefore, that this parchment case was found--how
+many years after the death of him who owned it, who can tell?--in one of
+the many stations that the savages thus ravaged; that the soldiers, or
+whoever may have found it, brought it hither, the nearest important
+abiding-place of our Order; and that, being carelessly examined, it was
+carelessly thrown aside when found to contain, apparently, only the
+little record of the work which our dead brother accomplished before God
+granted him his crown of earthly martyrdom and so made quick his way to
+heaven. Had the letter ever reached that 'first hand' for which the
+writer says he waits to send it by, it assuredly would have come to the
+knowledge of the gold-loving Spanish conquerors, and armies would have
+gone forth to answer it. But our dead brother, having written it and
+placed it in this fold of the parchment for safety until the chance to
+send it southward should come, was cut off from life suddenly; and so,
+of the prodigious marvel of which knowledge had so strangely come to
+him, only this mute and hidden record remained."
+
+"But the letter itself?" I asked, with more energy than politeness.
+"What _is_ the story that it contains? What is this mystery? Tell me of
+it first, and then explain as much as you please afterwards."
+
+Fray Antonio smiled at me kindly. "Ah, you too are becoming excited," he
+said. "But, truly, it is not fair that I should thus have kept you
+waiting. Indeed, I am so full of it all that I forgot that as yet you
+know nothing. Come out with me into the court-yard, where the light is
+stronger--for the writing is very faint and pale--and I will read you
+this letter in which so wonderful a story is set forth."
+
+Together we passed out through a little door in the rear of the sacristy
+into what had been the inner and smaller cloister court-yard of the old
+convent--a lovely place in which a fountain set in a quaint stone basin
+sparkled, and where warm sunshine fell upon the rippling water and upon
+beds of sweet-smelling flowers. And here it was, standing among the
+flowers in the sunshine, beside the quaint fountain, that Fray Antonio
+read to me the letter--that in this strange fashion had come to us from
+a hand dead for much more than three centuries, and that yet brought to
+us two a vital message that wholly was to shape our destinies.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+MONTEZUMA'S MESSENGER.
+
+
+The letter was without date, but, being addressed to the Bishop
+Zumárraga, the phrase that occurred in it--"this New Spain, wherein,
+Very Reverend Father, you have labored in God's service this year and
+more past"--showed that 1530 was the year in which it was written. As to
+place, there practically was no clew at all. The writer referred
+repeatedly to "this mission of Santa Marta, in the Chichimeca
+country"--but the mission had perished utterly but a little while after
+it was founded; and at that period the term Chichimeca country was used
+by the Spaniards in speaking of any part of Mexico where wild Indians
+were.
+
+Being shorn of a portion of its pious verbiage, and somewhat modernized
+in style, the ancient Spanish of this letter contained in effect these
+English words:
+
+[Illustration: THE LETTER FROM THE DEAD.]
+
+     "VERY REVEREND FATHER,--This present letter will be sent
+     forward to you by the first hand by which it may be hence
+     transmitted; and in your wisdom, with God's grace also guiding you,
+     I doubt not that you will take measures for sending missionaries of
+     our Order to the great company of the heathen whose whereabouts I am
+     to disclose to you. And also, no doubt--keeping the matter secret
+     from the pestilent Oidores of the Audiencia--you will communicate
+     this strange matter through safe channels to our lord the King: that
+     with our missionaries an army may go forth, and that so the great
+     treasure of which I give tidings may be wrested from the heathen to
+     be used for God's glory and the enriching of our lord the King.
+
+     "Know, Very Reverend Father, that a month since, I being then
+     abroad from this mission of Santa Marta, preaching God's word in a
+     certain village of the Chichimecas that is five leagues to the
+     northward, was so strengthened by God's grace that many of the
+     heathen professed our holy faith and were baptized. And of these
+     was one who among that tribe was held a captive. Which captive, as
+     I found, was of the nation that dwelt in Tenochtitlan before our
+     great captain, Don Fernando Cortés, reduced that city to
+     submission. But little of earthly life remained to this poor
+     captive when I, unworthily but happily, opened to him the way to
+     life glorious and eternal; for in the fight that happened when he
+     was captured--of which fight he alone of all his companions had
+     survived--he was sorely wounded; and though in time his wounds had
+     healed he remained but a weakly man, and the service to which his
+     captors forced him was hard. So it was that I had but little more
+     than time to put him in the way leading to heaven before his spirit
+     gladly forsook its weary body and went thence from earth.
+
+     "That he truly was a convert to our holy faith I am well assured,
+     by the signs of a spirit meet for repentance which he showed in his
+     own person; and still more by his strong longing, most earnestly
+     expressed, that this same glorious faith of freedom should be
+     preached to a certain great company of his people, whereof he most
+     secretly told me, who still remain bound in the bondage of
+     idolatry. And it is what he told me of these, Very Reverend Father,
+     and of the marvellous hidden city wherein they dwell, and of the
+     mighty treasure which there they guard, that I desire now to bring
+     to your private knowledge, before it shall be known of by the
+     Oidores, and through you to our lord the King. Here now is the
+     whole of the mystery that he recited:
+
+     "In very ancient times, he said, his people came forth from seven
+     caves which are in the western region of this continent, and
+     wandered long in search of an abiding-place. And in the course of
+     ages it came to pass that a certain wise king ruled over them to
+     whom was given the gift of prophecy. Which king, by name
+     Chaltzantzin, foretold that in the later ages there should come an
+     army of fair and bearded men from the eastward, who would prevail
+     over the people of his race: slaying many, and making of the
+     remainder slaves. Being sorely troubled by thought of what he thus
+     foresaw, he set himself to provide a source of strength whereon his
+     descendants in that later time might draw in the hour of their
+     peril--and so save themselves from cruel death and from yet crueler
+     slavery. To which end, in a certain great valley that lies securely
+     hidden among the mountains of this continent, he caused to be built
+     a walled city; and this city he then peopled with the very bravest
+     and strongest of his race. And he made for those dwelling there a
+     perpetual law that commanded that all such as showed themselves
+     when come to maturity to be weak or malformed in body, or coward of
+     heart, then should be put to death; to the end that their natural
+     increase ever should be of the same stout stuff as themselves, and
+     also that there might be no lack of victims for the sacrifices
+     which are acceptable to their barbarous gods. And thus he provided
+     that in the time of need there should be here a strong army of
+     valiant warriors, ready to come forth to fight against the
+     fair-faced bearded men, and by conquering them to save safe the
+     land.
+
+     "And yet more provision did King Chaltzantzin make for the
+     strengthening and the saving of his race in the later ages. Within
+     this walled city of Culhuacan he caused to be builded a great
+     treasure-house, wherein he garnered such store of riches as never
+     was gathered together in one place since the beginning of the
+     world. And his order was that if even the power of the army which
+     should go forth from that city sufficed not to conquer the foreign
+     foemen, then should this vast treasure be used to buy his people's
+     ransom, that they might not perish nor be enslaved.
+
+     "Having set all which great matters in order, King Chaltzantzin
+     came forth from the Valley of Aztlan, leaving behind him the noble
+     colony that he had there founded; and so with his people wandered
+     vagrant--even as their gods had commanded that they should go until
+     by a sign from heaven they should be shown where was to be their
+     lasting home. And that the fulfilling of his purpose might be made
+     the more sure, he brought his people forth from that valley by most
+     perilous passes and through strait ways so that they might not
+     return thither; and that they who remained might not follow, he
+     closed the way behind him with mighty bars.
+
+     "In the fulness of time this wise king died, and others reigned in
+     his stead; and at last the ages of wandering of the Aztec tribe
+     were ended by the sign coming from heaven whereby they knew that
+     the Valley of Anahuac was to be their abiding home. There built
+     they the city of Tenochtitlan: which city the valiant captain, Don
+     Fernando Cortés, conquered this short time since--and by conquest
+     of it verified precisely the prophecy that King Chaltzantzin
+     uttered in very ancient times.
+
+     "But the captive Indian told me, further, that before the coming of
+     the Spaniards there was seen the sign of warning that King
+     Chaltzantzin had promised should tell when the danger that he had
+     so well prepared for should be near; which sign was the going out
+     of the sacred fire that the priests guarded on a certain high hill.
+     Meantime, all knowledge of their brethren hidden in the Valley of
+     Aztlan for their help in time of peril was lost to the Aztec tribe
+     in dim tradition; for the King had commanded, in order that his
+     people might not fall into weakness through trusting in the
+     strength of others for protection, that no open record of the
+     colony that he had founded should be preserved. Therefore was this
+     matter a secret known only to a few priests whose blood was of the
+     royal line; in whose keeping, also, was the token that King
+     Chaltzantzin had commanded should be sent to the walled city of
+     Culhuacan when its warriors were to be called forth, and a map
+     whereby the way thither was made plain. And so it was that,
+     when the sacred fire ceased burning, the priests were alert
+     for the threatened danger; and when the landing of the
+     Spaniards--'fair-faced and bearded men, coming from the
+     eastward'--was known to them, they warned their king, Montezuma,
+     that the prophecy was fulfilled, and that the time for sending for
+     the army and the treasure had come.
+
+     "For the bearer of this message was chosen a priest of the blood
+     royal, with whom went also a younger priest, his son. And with
+     these went a guard, whereof the captive Indian was one, that they
+     might be carried in safety through the region where the wild
+     Indians were. But the valor of the guard was useless, for the wild
+     Indians set upon them in such prodigious numbers--in a place not
+     far from where is this present mission of Santa Marta--that all of
+     the company, save only this single Indian who was wounded and made
+     captive, was overpowered and slain. Yet among the slain, the Indian
+     said, was not found the body of the priest's son; nor was there
+     found on the priest's body the token that he had been the bearer
+     of, nor the map that showed the way. For a time the Indian had
+     hoped that the younger priest had escaped out of the fight alive,
+     and had carried to them who dwelt in the walled city of Culhuacan
+     the message of summons; but as the years went onward and nothing
+     came of it, this hope had died within his heart.
+
+     "This, Very Reverend Father, is the strange story told me by this
+     Indian; who spoke with the urgent sincerity of one devout in the
+     Christian faith who knew by sensible perception that his death was
+     near at hand. Eagerly he begged that to these Gentiles, his
+     brethren by blood, might be sent in their secret fastnesses the
+     blessed Word whereby they would be delivered from the chains of
+     their idolatry into the freedom of Christian grace. And, surely,
+     the treasure that they ward very well may be wrested from these
+     heathen that it may be used in part in this land in God's service,
+     and that in part it may go to the just enriching of our lord the
+     King.
+
+     "Nor is the matter one that is difficult of accomplishment. For a
+     token which shall give us the right of entry into this walled city
+     of Culhuacan we need only the Word of God and a sufficient force of
+     men well armed with swords and matchlocks. Nor is it any bar to our
+     quest that the map showing the way thither has been lost. The
+     Indian told me that this way is so plainly marked that one who had
+     found it could not lose it again. For at spaces of not more than a
+     league or two apart, upon flat places of the rock convenient for
+     such purpose, was cut the same figure that the token of summons had
+     engraved upon it; and, with this, an arrow pointing towards where
+     the next carving would be found: and so these signs went onward,
+     the heathen priest had told him, even to the very entrance of the
+     Valley of Aztlan. And that this matter might be made sure to me, he
+     led me to a spot but a league to the westward of this mission of
+     Santa Marta and there showed me one of these signs, with the
+     pointing arrow carved also on the rock beside it--of all of which
+     the drawing here made is an indifferent good copy. And by that
+     guiding arrow we went onward to another like carving at a little
+     less than two leagues away to the northward. Therefore, Very
+     Reverend Father, I, of my own knowledge, am a witness to a part, at
+     least, of the truth of what that Indian told. And with all my heart
+     do I add mine own entreaty to his simple pleadings for the
+     salvation of the souls of his brethren; and also do I venture to
+     entreat that among those who go to carry the Word of God to this
+     hidden heathen host I may be one; so that I, though all unworthy of
+     such honor, shall have a part in rendering to God so glorious a
+     service.
+
+     "The more urgently do I ask this favor because here, in this
+     mission of Santa Marta, it is but too clear to me that I am
+     laboring in a barren field. Some hundreds of the heathen I have
+     indeed baptized; but among all these who have professed our
+     Christian faith scarce a score show outward and visible signs of a
+     true regeneration. Many, I am sadly sure, still practise in secret
+     their old idolatry--and find little more than mere amusement in the
+     rites of our most holy Church. When they tire of this novelty,
+     which, in the case of folk of such light natures no doubt will be
+     in a little while, they will return openly to their idolatry; and
+     it probably may happen that they then will sacrifice me to their
+     heathen gods. That, in one way or another, they do intend to kill
+     me, and that soon, I feel quite sure. I am but twenty-three years
+     old, Very Reverend Father; and that is an early time in life to end
+     it. No doubt, also, in killing me they will use torture. And I long
+     fervently to live, not only for the pleasure of it, but also that I
+     may do good service to God, and to our Father Saint Francis, by
+     saving many heathen souls. Therefore I beg that when the army
+     marches to the reduction of this hidden city that I may be one of
+     our brethren who will go with it, to hold by tender preaching of
+     God's goodness and mercy such heathen as may remain alive after our
+     soldiers shall have conquered that city with the sword.
+
+     "I commend you, Very Reverend Father, to the care of Our Lord in
+     all things, and pray that he may guard your most illustrious and
+     very reverend person, and protect you in all matters of your
+     temporal and spiritual estate. And I am the least worthy of your
+     servants,
+
+     FRANCISCO de los ANGELES."
+
+"Of a truth," said Fray Antonio, as he ceased reading, "this brother of
+mine adhered closely to the truth when he subscribed himself the least
+worthy of the bishop's servants. Were it not here in his own hand, I
+should refuse to believe that one of our Order at that time in New Spain
+had any thought of saving his own life when God's work was to be done."
+
+For myself, I must own that my heart was deeply touched by the very
+humanity of this poor Brother Francisco's cry for help that came up out
+of the dead depths of the past; and that was the more keen and pitiful
+because the cruel death at the hands of the barbarous Indians that he so
+dreaded assuredly had overtaken him. His could not have been a strong
+nature, and it was the weaker because of his youth; but, after all, it
+was the nature that God had given him, and there must have been a strain
+of strength in it, else he never would have braved the dangers which
+overcame him in the end. And he was "but twenty-three years old"!
+
+Yet when I sought to lead Fray Antonio's mind to such consideration of
+the matter he replied, sternly: "This weak brother failed in his duty.
+To him God gave an opportunity to die gloriously for the Faith; but,
+instead of accepting that noble reward joyfully, his strongest wish was
+that he might find a way by which he might escape alive. Had all
+professors of the Christian creed so conducted themselves, that creed
+long since would have perished from off the earth. _Semen est sanguis
+Christianorum_ is well said of Tertullian the Carthaginian, and, later,
+of the blessed Saint Jerome."
+
+As Fray Antonio thus spoke he so drew up his slight figure, and in his
+sweet voice was a ring of such commanding sternness, that he was for the
+moment transformed. Here was a man wholly different from the gentle
+scholar whom I had already learned to love. In the glimpse that I thus
+had of his underlying character I saw vivified again the spirit of the
+early Christian Church; and I understood, as I never had understood
+before, of what stuff they were made who heard pronounced upon them the
+sentence, "To the lions!" and joyfully accepted their cruel fate,
+defiant of what man might do to them because of the perfection of their
+faith in the merciful forgiveness and upholding steadfastness of their
+Christian God.
+
+But in a moment a look of sadness and regret came into Fray Antonio's
+face, and he added, sorrowfully: "God forgive me for thus judging my
+brother, who long since was judged! Who can say that when the hour of
+trial came he did not meet his death as bravely as any martyr of them
+all? And who can say," he went on, but speaking softly, as one communing
+with his own soul, "how I myself--But God gives strength." And then he
+ceased to speak aloud, but his lips moved silently as though in prayer.
+As I close my eyes I see him again as clearly as I saw him
+then--standing beside the old stone fountain, amid the flowers, in the
+gladness of the bright sunshine; in his eyes a strange, far-away look,
+as though the future for a moment had been opened to him; and on his
+strong, fine face a sternly resolute expression, which yet was softened
+by the traits which were so strong within him of holiness and gentleness
+and love. I cannot know what Fray Antonio prayed for, there in the old
+convent garden; but I can guess, and I am well persuaded that his prayer
+was heard. Truly, I think that it was something more than chance that
+led us thus at first to talk, not of the wonder that was in Brother
+Francisco's letter, but of Brother Francisco himself and of his end.
+
+And then the subject-matter in chief of the letter claimed our
+attention. In itself this was sufficiently marvellous; but what
+increased the marvel of it was the conviction, strong within us both,
+that if the hidden city of Culhuacan ever had existed at all it existed
+still. Our belief was so entirely logical that, assuming the truth of
+the story told by the Indian captive, it admitted nowhere of a doubt.
+That the city had been hidden for a long period, through at least
+several hundreds of years, from the Aztecs themselves, and that no
+knowledge of it had been conveyed to them by wild Indians who had come
+by chance upon the valley wherein it was, was evidence enough of the
+security of its concealment. There was nothing surprising, consequently,
+in the fact that the Spaniards had not discovered it when they first
+overran Mexico, nor that it had remained unknown to the Mexicans of
+modern times. As is well known, there are to this day prodigious areas
+in Mexico which remain utterly unexplored. In the region west of
+Tampico; in the north-western States of Sinaloa, Durango, and Sonora; or
+in the far southern States of Oajaca and Chiapas, a valley as great as
+that in which the City of Mexico now stands might lie utterly hidden and
+unknown. And if, as the Indian's narrative implied, this particular
+valley had been selected deliberately because it was so hidden and so
+inaccessible, and if the described precautions had been taken to isolate
+its inhabitants, it very well might have continued to be lost in its
+deep concealment through an almost infinite range of years. That it
+never had been found since the Spaniards came into Mexico we were
+absolutely certain, for the outcry over so great a wonder would have
+echoed throughout the whole of the civilized world. Finally, in the name
+of the city, Culhuacan, we had a substantial fact which connected the
+extraordinary story that had come to us so strangely with matters within
+our own knowledge. For this name not only is given in the Aztec
+traditions as that of the sacred spot in which their god Huitzilopochtli
+spoke to them, but survives until this present day in the name of the
+village that lies at the foot of the sacred mountain, in the Valley of
+Mexico, called by the Aztecs the Hill of Huitzachtla, and by the
+Spaniards the Hill of the Star--on which, at the end of each cycle of
+fifty-two years, the sacred fire was renewed. Surely it was no accident
+that had caused the name Culhuacan to be given to this village on this
+sacred spot; rather must it have been so named by the elect few to whom
+the secret was known as a perpetual reminder to them of the reserve of
+men and treasure upon which they could draw should danger threaten their
+country and their gods.
+
+"No doubt," said Fray Antonio, "what is here told of a secret record,
+known only to the priests, supplies one of the lapses in the pictured
+history of the Aztec migration; but as we know not which break in the
+history is thus filled in, we have no clew whatever as to the
+whereabouts of this hidden place. Nor have we any clew as to the
+whereabouts of the mission of Santa Marta, whence we might go onward,
+guided by the carvings upon the rocks, until we found at last the place
+we sought. The mission of Santa Marta, where my brother Francisco long
+ago ministered, might have been anywhere in all Mexico; and being so
+small a mission, and enduring for so short a period, it is not likely
+that any record of it anywhere has been preserved. Had we but the map
+and the token of which my brother writes, our way would be clear;
+without these guides it well may be a toilsome way and long. Yet do I
+know," Fray Antonio continued, earnestly, "that I shall find this hidden
+city. In my soul is a strong and glad conviction that God has called me
+to the most glorious work of carrying to the heathen dwelling there the
+message of His saving love. He has worked one miracle already to call me
+to this duty; in His own good time and way I doubt not that He will work
+another miracle by which I may be set in the way of its accomplishment."
+
+As Fray Antonio spoke of the map of the Aztec migration, a hope came
+into my heart that, as I considered it, seemed surely to be a certainty.
+In the excitement of listening to this strange letter--concerning which
+not the least strange matter was, that between the writing and the
+reading of it had passed three hundred and fifty years--I had forgotten
+my own discoveries, and that my purpose was to show him the pictured
+paper and the curious piece of gold. But as he spoke of the migration
+this matter was called to my mind suddenly; and then in an instant the
+conviction thrilled through me that the clew which would lead us to the
+hidden city was in my possession.
+
+"God already has worked that other miracle," I cried, joyfully. "Here is
+the token, and here is the map that shows the way!" and, so speaking, I
+opened the snake-skin bag that I had taken from the breast of the dead
+Cacique and drew forth its precious contents.
+
+For myself, I needed no additional proof that here was all that was
+needful to guide us to the hidden city. Yet was I glad that in so grave
+a matter we should have added to absolute conviction the weight of
+absolute proof. And this we had most clearly; for Fray Antonio, cooler
+than I, compared the drawing in the letter with the engraving upon the
+piece of gold, and found the two to be essentially identical, save that
+the engraving lacked the sign of the arrow pointing the way.
+
+"And now," I cried, enthusiastically, "for such discoveries in
+archæology as the world has never known!"
+
+"And now," said Fray Antonio, speaking slowly and reverently, "for such
+glorious work in God's service as has been granted but rarely to man to
+do!"
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+THE ENGINEER AND THE LOST-FREIGHT MAN.
+
+
+That the weight of a strange destiny was pressing upon us, neither Fray
+Antonio nor I for a moment doubted. It was something more than chance,
+we believed, that had brought us together, and that thereafter, by such
+extraordinary means, had put into our hands, in places far asunder, yet
+at almost precisely the same moment, these two ancient papers; either of
+which, alone, would have been meaningless; but the two of which,
+together, pointed clearly the way to a discovery so wonderful that the
+like of it was not to be found in all the history of the world.
+
+At the moment that I comprehended how great an adventure was before me,
+and what honorable fame I was like to get out of it, I determined that I
+would keep the whole matter secret from my fellow-archæologists until I
+could tell them, not what I intended doing, but what I actually had
+done--for I had no desire to divide with any one the honors that fairly
+would be mine when I published to the world the result of my
+investigation of this hidden community that had survived,
+uncontaminated, from prehistoric times. Having this strong desire within
+me, it was with great pleasure that I acceded to Fray Antonio's request
+that our project of discovery should not be published abroad. His motive
+for secrecy, as I presently perceived, was bred of the one single strain
+of human weakness that ever I found in him. Even as I was determined
+that no other archæologist should share with me the honor of discovering
+this primitive community, so was Fray Antonio determined that to him
+alone should belong the glory of carrying into that region of dense
+heathen darkness the radiant splendor of the Christian faith. If this
+were sin on his part, it certainly was a sin that he shared with many
+saints long since in Paradise. Even the blessed Saint Francis himself,
+when, at the Council of Mats, he portioned out among his followers the
+heathen world that they might preach everywhere Christianity, reserved
+for himself Syria and Egypt; in the hope that in one or the other of
+those countries he might crown his labors by suffering a glorious
+martyrdom. And perhaps in this matter Fray Antonio was not unmindful of
+the example set him by the great founder of the Order to which he
+belonged.
+
+But while we were thus firmly decided to keep to ourselves the honors
+that so great an archæological discovery and so great a Christian
+conquest must bring to us severally, we perceived that it would not be
+the part of prudence to essay our adventure without any companions at
+all. Some portion of the country through which we were to pass we knew
+to be frequented by very dangerous tribes of Indians, against the
+assaults of which two lonely men--neither of whom had any knowledge
+whatever of the art of war--could make but a poor stand. And even should
+we escape the wild Indians, we knew that we might get into many evil
+straits in which our lives might be ended, yet through which a larger
+company might pass in safety. And for my own part, I must confess that I
+had a strong desire to have with me some of my own countrymen. For the
+gallantry of the Mexicans, which gallantry has been proved a thousand
+times, I have the highest respect; yet is it a natural feeling among
+Anglo-Saxons that when it comes to facing dangers in which death looms
+largely, and especially when it comes to a few men against a company of
+savages, and standing back to back and fighting to the very last,
+Anglo-Saxon hearts are found to be the stanchest, and Anglo-Saxon backs
+to be the stoutest which can be thus ranged together. But in our own
+case I did not at all see whence such an Anglo-Saxon contingent was to
+be obtained.
+
+We had been talking over this matter of a fighting force one afternoon
+in Fray Antonio's sacristy--where our many colloquies were held, for we
+moved with a thoughtful deliberation in setting agoing our
+adventure--and we had come almost to the determination of organizing a
+little force of Otomí Indians, and calling upon two brave young
+gentlemen of Fray Antonio's acquaintance to join us as lieutenants.
+Although I was willing to adopt this plan, since no other was open to
+us, I was far from fancying it; both for the reason which I have already
+named, and also for the reason--and this Fray Antonio admitted was not
+without foundation in probability--that our young allies would be more
+than likely, by their indiscreet disclosures, to make our purpose fully
+known. Therefore, it was in no very pleasant frame of mind, our
+conference being ended, that I returned to my hotel.
+
+As I entered the hotel court-yard I heard the sound of Pablo's
+mouth-organ, and with this much laughter and some talk in English; and
+as I fairly caught sight of the merrymakers, I heard said, in most
+execrable Spanish, "Here's a _medio_ for another tune, my boy; and if
+you'll make the donkey dance again to it, I'll give you a _real_."
+
+That I might see what was going forward without interrupting it, I
+stepped behind one of the stone pillars that upheld the gallery; and for
+all that my mind was in no mood for laughter just then, I could not but
+fall to laughing at what I saw.
+
+Over on the far side of the court-yard, with Pablo and El Sabio, were
+two men whose type was so unmistakable that I should have known them for
+Americans had I met them in the moon. One was a tall, wiry fellow, with
+a vast reach of arm, and a depth of chest and width of shoulders which
+allowed what powerful engines those long arms of his were when he set
+them in motion. His face was nearly covered by a heavy black beard, and
+his projecting forehead and his resolute black eyes under it gave him a
+look of great energy and force. The other was short and thick-set, with
+a big round head stockily upheld on a thick neck, and with a
+good-humored face, which, being clean-shaven, was chiefly notable for
+the breadth and the squareness of the jaws. He had merry blue eyes, and
+his crown--he was holding his battered Derby hat in his hand--was as
+bare as a billiard ball. Below timber-line, as he himself expressed it,
+he had a brush of close-cut sandy-red hair. I had encountered both of
+these men when I first came to Morelia, and during two or three weeks I
+had seen a good deal of them, for we had met daily at our meals; and the
+more that I had seen of them the better was I disposed to like them. The
+tall man was Rayburn, a civil engineer in charge of construction on the
+advanced line of the new railway; the other was Young, the lost-freight
+agent of the railroad company--whose duty, for which his keen quickness
+peculiarly well fitted him, was that of looking up freight which had
+gone astray in transit. Both of those men had lived long in rough and
+dangerous regions, and both--as I then instinctively believed, and as I
+came later to know fully--were as true and as stanch and as brave as
+ever men could be.
+
+What they were laughing at, there in the court-yard, was an
+extraordinary performance in which the performers were Pablo and El
+Sabio. With a grin all over the parts of his face not engaged in the
+operation of his mouth-organ, Pablo was rendering on that instrument a
+highly Mexicanized version of one of the airs from _Pinafore_ that he
+had just acquired from hearing Young whistle it. To this music, with a
+most pained yet determined expression, the Wise One was lifting his feet
+and swaying his body and nodding his head in a sort of accompaniment,
+his movements being directed by the waving of Pablo's disengaged hand.
+The long ears of this unfortunate little donkey wagged in remonstrance
+against the unreasonable motions demanded of his unlucky legs, and every
+now and then he would twitch viciously his fuzzy scrap of a tail; but
+his master was inexorable, and it was not until Pablo's own desire to
+laugh became so strong that he no longer could play the mouth-organ that
+El Sabio was given rest. As he ended his dancing I must say that there
+was on El Sabio's face as fine an expression of contempt as the face of
+a donkey ever wore.
+
+"Hello, Professor!" Young called out, as he caught sight of me, "have
+you given up antiquities an' gone into th' circus business? This outfit
+that you've got here will make your fortune when you get it back into
+th' States. If you don't want to run it yourself, I'll run it for you
+on th' shares; an' I guess Rayburn'll be glad t' go along as clown. He'd
+make a good clown, Rayburn would. You see, we're both of us out of work,
+an' both lookin' for a job."
+
+"What do you mean by being out of work?" I asked, when I had shaken
+hands with them. "What's become of the railroad?"
+
+"Oh, th' railroad's got into one of its periodical bust-ups," Young
+answered. "A row among the bondholders, an' construction stopped, an'
+working expenses reduced, an' pretty much all hands bounced, from th'
+president down. I guess Rayburn an' I can stand th' racket, though, if
+th' company can. I've been wantin' t' get out of this d----d Greaser
+country for a good while, an' I guess now I've got my chance. I must
+say, though, I wish it had come a little less sudden, for I haven't
+anything in particular in sight over in God's country, an' Rayburn
+hasn't either. So if you want to start your circus we're ready for you
+right away. Where did you get that boy-an'-donkey outfit from, anyway?
+They're just daisies, both of 'em an' no mistake!"
+
+"I don't know that you can count on me for a clown, Professor," Rayburn
+said, "but I might go along as door-keeper, or something of that sort.
+But I don't believe that Young and I will need to go into the circus
+business. We are out of work, that's a fact; but the company has done
+the square thing by us--paid us up in full to the end of next month and
+fitted us out with passes to St. Louis. We're all right. Young is
+heading straight for home, but I rather think that I'll take a turn
+around the country and see what the civilized parts of it look like.
+Ever since I came down here, nearly, I've been at work in the wilds. I
+want to see some of the old temples and things too. You can put me up to
+that, Professor. Where's a good ruin to begin on?"
+
+From the moment that I laid eyes on these two men, as I came into the
+court-yard, my mind was made up that I would do my best to induce them
+to join with Fray Antonio and me in our search for the hidden city; and
+I had listened very gladly to what they told me, for it showed me that I
+should not have to ask them to abandon profitable work in order to join
+in our doubtful enterprise. So we talked lightly about the circus and
+other indifferent matters for a while; and then we had a lively supper
+together at La Soledad (which always seemed to me a very original name
+for a restaurant), and then I brought them to my room to smoke their
+cigars.
+
+It was while they were in the comfortable frame of mind that is begotten
+of a good meal and subsequent good tobacco--over there in Morelia we
+smoked the Tepic cigars, which are excellent--that I opened to them the
+great project that I had in hand. I told them frankly the whole story:
+of my strange adventure in the Indian village, of the paper and the gold
+token which the Cacique unwittingly had given me, of the letter that
+Fray Antonio had found, and of how our joint discoveries set us clearly
+in the way of finding an Aztec community that certainly had existed
+unchanged, save for such changes as had been developed within itself,
+since a time long anterior to the Spanish conquest of Mexico. I dwelt
+with enthusiasm, and I think forcibly, upon the inestimable gain to the
+science of archæology that would result from the investigations that we
+intended to make; and I touched also upon the scientific value that
+would attach to a careful and accurate description of the effect
+produced upon this primitive community by Fray Antonio's preaching; for
+this would be, as I pointed out, the first occasion in the history of
+the world when a record would be made, from the stand-point of the
+unprejudiced ethnologist, of the reception accorded by a heathen people
+to the doctrine of Christianity. In a word, I presented the case most
+glowingly--so glowingly, in fact, that my own heart was quite fired by
+it--and ended by urging them earnestly to join us in a work that
+promised so greatly to increase the sum of human knowledge touching the
+most interesting subjects that can be presented to the consideration of
+the human mind. And I am pained to state that I discovered, when I
+finished my appeal, that Young was sound asleep!
+
+Rayburn did not go to sleep, and he did take a certain amount of
+interest in what I said, but I was discouraged by his very obvious
+failure to respond to my enthusiasm.
+
+"You see, Professor," he said, "the fact of the matter is that I can't
+spare the time. I might take a month or two, but you seem to think that
+a year is the least time in which any substantial results can he
+accomplished. I can't give a year, or anything like a year, to what, so
+far as I am concerned, will be sheer idleness. I've got a mother and
+sister at home on Cape Cod who depend on me for a living, and I must get
+to work again. You see, there is glory enough in all this, and glory
+that I should like to have a share in; but glory is a luxury that I
+can't afford. I've got to go to work at something that has money in it."
+
+The sound of Rayburn's voice had the effect on Young of waking him up.
+He listened, in a sleepily approving way, to Rayburn's practical
+comment, and then, giving a prodigious yawn, added, on his own account:
+"Yes, that's about the size of it. We're neither of us here for our
+health, Professor; what we're after is spot cash. If there was any money
+in your scheme I'd take a hand in it quick enough; but as there
+isn't--Well, not this evening, Professor; some other evening."
+
+"No money in it!" I answered. "Why, haven't I told you that there is
+stored in this hidden city the greatest treasure that ever was brought
+into one place since the world began?"
+
+"No, I'll be d----d if you have!" Young replied, with great energy and
+promptness. "Not a word, unless it was while I was asleep. What's he
+said about a treasure, Rayburn? I'm awake now, an' I'll keep awake if
+there's anything like that to be talked about."
+
+"You certainly haven't said anything about a treasure so far,
+Professor," Rayburn said. "I'd like to hear about it myself. If there is
+a treasure-hunting expedition mixed up with this scientific expedition
+of yours, that puts a new face on the whole matter. I can't afford the
+luxury of scientific investigation pure and simple, but if there is
+money in it too, that is quite another thing. So tell us about your
+prospect, Professor, and if the surface indications are good you can
+count on me to go in."
+
+I confess that I was a trifle disappointed upon finding how eagerly
+these young men sought information in regard to a matter that I
+considered so unimportant that I had forgotten even to mention it. But I
+reflected that, after all, the motive by which they were induced to join
+in our adventure was immaterial, while our need for the strength that
+their joining in it would give us was so pressing that upon gaining them
+for allies very likely depended our eventual success. Being moved by
+which considerations, I dilated upon the magnitude of the hidden
+treasure with such vehemence that presently their eyes were flashing,
+and the blood had so mounted into their brains that their very foreheads
+were ruddy and their breath came short. And I must confess that my own
+pulses beat quicker and harder as I talked on. Of this treasure I had
+not before thought at all, being so thoroughly taken up with the
+scientific side of the discovery that I hoped to accomplish; but now I
+was moved profoundly by thoughts of what I could do for the advancement
+of science had I practically limitless wealth at my command. And
+especially was I thrilled by the thought of the magnificent form in
+which my own magnificent discoveries could be given to the world.
+Compared with my _Pre-Columbian Conditions on the Continent of North
+America_, Lord Kingsborough's great work, both in form and in substance,
+would sink into hopeless insignificance. And in all that I said of the
+vastness of the hidden treasure I felt certain that I was keeping well
+within the bounds of truth, for I had the positive assurance that in the
+Aztec treasure-house in that hidden valley the ransom of a nation was
+stored.
+
+"Will you go with us?" I asked, when I had brought my glowing
+description to an end.
+
+"Well, I should smile, Professor," was Young's characteristic answer.
+
+"You can count me in now, and no mistake!" said Rayburn, and added, "By
+Jove, Palgrave, I mean to take a part of my share and buy the whole of
+Cape Cod!"
+
+And so the make-up of our party was decided upon. Fray Antonio joined it
+for the love of God; I joined it for the love of science; and Young and
+Rayburn joined it for the love of gold. In regard to the boy Pablo, he
+could not strictly be said to have joined it at all. He simply went
+along.
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+THE KING'S SYMBOL.
+
+
+Fray Antonio was well pleased when I told him of the stout contingent
+that I had secured; and when he had seen Rayburn and Young, and had
+talked with them--though his talk with Young did not amount to much, for
+Young's Spanish was abominable--he was as thoroughly satisfied as I was
+that for our purposes we could not possibly have found two better men.
+
+In the course of this conference we made short work of our preparations
+for departure. Rayburn's experience in fitting out engineering parties
+had given him precisely the knowledge required for putting our own
+little party promptly and effectively in the field; and in this matter,
+and in all practical matters connected with the expedition, he took the
+lead. He and Young already possessed the regulation frontier outfit of
+arms--a Winchester rifle and a big revolver--which they increased by
+another big revolver apiece; and I armed myself similarly with a pair of
+revolvers and a Winchester: concerning the use that I should make of
+which, in case need for using them arose, I had very grave doubts
+indeed. Fray Antonio declined to carry any arms at all; and after he had
+accidentally discharged one of my pistols, which he had picked up to
+examine, so that the ball went singing by my ear and actually cut
+through the brim of Young's hat, there was a general disposition to
+admit that the less this godly man had to do with carnal weapons the
+safer would it be for all the rest of us. Young's hat was a battered
+Derby, and about as unsuitable a hat for wear in Mexico as possibly
+could be found; but for some unknown reason he was very much attached to
+that hat, and he was so wroth over having a hole shot through it in that
+unprovoked sort of way that he manifested a decided coolness towards
+Fray Antonio for several days.
+
+In the matter of armament, the happiest member of our party was Pablo.
+He was a handy boy, and when he had demonstrated his ability to manage a
+revolver by doing some very creditable shooting with mine (at mark that
+I had stuck up in the corral, in order that I might gain ease in the use
+of this unknown weapon), I delighted him inexpressibly by buying him a
+pistol for his very own. I think that Pablo, upon becoming the possessor
+of that revolver, at once grew two inches taller. The way that he
+strutted as he wore it, and his eager thrusting forward of his left hip,
+so that this gallant piece of warlike furniture might be the most
+conspicuous part of him, were a joy to witness. For a time his
+mouth-organ was entirely neglected; and coming quietly into the corral
+one day, I found him engaged in exhibiting the revolver to El Sabio; who
+regarded it with a slightly bored expression that I do not think Pablo
+took in good part.
+
+Rayburn decided that our expedition could be made more effectively with
+a small force than with a large one. He argued that unless we took into
+the Indian country a really powerful body of men, we would be safer with
+a very few: for a few of us would feel keenly the necessity of keeping
+constantly on guard; could be more easily managed and held together in
+running away; and in case a fight was forced upon us we would fight more
+steadily because each of us would know surely that he could rely upon
+the support of all the rest. Which reasoning we perceived to be so sound
+that we promptly accepted it.
+
+Rayburn added to our company, therefore, only three men: two Otomí
+Indians of whom Fray Antonio gave a good account, and Dennis Kearney,
+who had served as axeman on the recently disbanded engineering corps.
+He was a merry soul, this Dennis, with a stock of Irish melodies in his
+head that would have made the fortune of an old-time minstrel. He and
+Pablo took to each other at once--though, since neither of them spoke a
+word of the other's language, music was their only channel of
+communication--and Pablo presently presented us with a rendering on his
+mouth-organ, from a strictly Mexican stand-point, of "Rory O'More" that
+quite took our breaths away. While Pablo played, Dennis would stand by
+with his head cocked on one side, and with an air of attention as
+closely critical as that which El Sabio himself exhibited; and when
+Pablo went wrong, as he invariably did in his attempted _bravura_
+passages, Dennis would stop him with a wave of his hand, and an "Aisy
+now, me darlint! That's good enough Mexican, but it ain't good Irish at
+all, at all," and then would show him what good Irish was by singing
+"Rory O'More" in a fashion which made the old stone arches ring with a
+volume of music that could have given odds to an entire brass band. Poor
+Dennis! Only the other day I heard an organ-grinder grinding forth "Rory
+O'More," and the memory of the last time I heard Dennis sing that song,
+and of what heroic stuff that merry-hearted rough fellow then showed
+himself to be made, came suddenly over me, and there was a choking in my
+throat, and my eyes were full of tears.
+
+Well, it was a good thing--or a bad thing, as you please to put it--that
+we could not see far into the future that morning when we packed our
+mules in the corral of the hotel, and set out upon the march that was
+to lead us through such perilous passages before we reached its end.
+
+[Illustration:  PACKING IN THE CORRAL]
+
+That I might fill to the brim the cup of Pablo's happiness--for my
+conscience pricked me a little that I suffered him to go with us--I had
+bought him the rain-coat of palm leaves for which his heart so long had
+pined. What with this and his revolver, and the delight of going upon a
+journey (for he had very fully developed that love of travel which is so
+strong in his race), his wits seemed to be completely addled with joy.
+He insisted upon putting on his absurd rain-coat at once; and he did so
+many foolish things that even El Sabio looked at him reproachfully--this
+was when he tried to place on that small donkey's back some of the heavy
+pack-stuff destined for the back of one of the big mules--and we got
+along much better with his room, as he presently enabled us to do, than
+we did with his company. When the time for starting came, we had quite a
+hunt for him; and we might not have found him at all had we not been
+guided by the sound of music to the sequestered spot to which he had
+retired in order to give vent to his pent-up feelings by playing on his
+mouth-organ "Pop goes the weasel"--an air that Young had been whistling
+that morning and that had mightily taken Pablo's fancy.
+
+We made rather an imposing cavalcade as we filed forth from the great
+gate of the hotel, and took our way along the Calle Nacional, the
+principal street of the city, towards the Garita del Poniente. Fray
+Antonio and I rode first; then came Rayburn and Young, followed by
+Dennis Kearney; then the two pack-mules, beside which walked the two
+Otomí Indians; and closing the procession came Pablo, wearing his
+rain-coat, with his revolver strapped outside of it, and riding El Sabio
+with a dignity that would have done honor to the Viceroy himself. Pablo
+certainly was in the nature of an anti-climax; but I would not have told
+him so for the world. Fray Antonio wore the habit of his Order, this
+privilege having been specially granted to him by the Governor of the
+State as a safeguard for all his expeditions among the Indians. It was
+understood, indeed, that he now was going forth on one of his missionary
+visits among the mountain tribes, and simply rode with us, so far as our
+ways should lie together, for greater security. I had announced that I
+was going among the Indians again in order to increase my knowledge of
+their manners and customs; and Rayburn--to whom the rest of the party
+was supposed to belong--had stated that he was taking the field in order
+to make a new reconnaissance along the line of the projected railway. It
+was in order to maintain these several fictions that we went out by the
+western gate, and that we continued for two days our march westward
+before turning to our true course.
+
+Of our progress during the ensuing fortnight it is not necessary that I
+should speak, for beyond the ordinary incidents of travel no adventures
+befell us. During this period we went forward steadily and rapidly; and
+at the end of it we had covered more than three hundred miles, and had
+come close to where--supposing our rendering of the Aztec map to be
+correct, and that we had rightly collated it with the dead monk's
+letter--the mission of Santa Marta had stood three centuries and a half
+before. There was no possibility that any trace of this mission would be
+found; but every rock that we came to was most eagerly scrutinized, for
+on any one of them might we find the King's symbol engraved.
+
+For two or three days we had been travelling through a region very wild
+and desolate. Far away along the western horizon rose a range of
+mountains whose bare peaks cut a jagged line along the sky. The country
+between us and these far-away mountains was made up of many parallel
+ranges of rocky hills; which ranges were separated by broad, shallow
+valleys, where cactus and sage-brush covered the dry ground thickly; and
+the only trees that broke this dreary monotony were pita-palms, the most
+dismal thing in all created nature to which the name of a tree ever has
+been given by man. There was no trail, and travelling through this
+tangle of briers was very difficult. All of Rayburn's skill, which long
+practice had developed to a high degree, was required to enable us to
+pick a way through so thorny a wilderness. At times the Indians with
+their _machetes_, and Dennis with his axe, had to cut a path for us; and
+despite all our care, our own hands were cut and torn, and the legs of
+our poor beasts were red with blood.
+
+The deadly dryness of this arid waste added to our discomfort. A strong
+dry wind blew steadily from the north, building up out of fine dust
+which was over all the surface of the baked ground little
+whirl-winds--_remolinos_, as the Mexicans call them--which went dancing
+down the valleys as though they were ghostly things; and occasionally,
+when one of these struck us, we were covered with a prickly dust that
+fairly burned our skins. What water we got was to be had only by digging
+in the _arroyos_ which traversed the centre of each valley
+longitudinally; and although this water always was muddy, and had a
+strongly alkaline taste, it is the only thing that I remember with
+pleasure in all that weary land. Of animal life there was nothing to be
+seen, save a-plenty of rattlesnakes; and a few great buzzards which
+wheeled above us from time to time as though with the intention of
+keeping track of us until we should fall down and die of thirst and
+weariness, and they should be able to feast upon us at their ease.
+
+At the end of the third day of this dreary travelling we had come close
+to the great western range of mountains, and our camp that night was
+made in the mouth of a little valley that opened from among the
+foot-hills. The night before we had made a dry camp, and for the whole
+of the twenty-four hours we had had but a pint of water apiece. Pablo, I
+am sure, had given half of his own scant allowance to El Sabio. The
+other animals--it was all that we could do for them--had only their
+dusty mouths and nostrils wiped out with a wet sponge. They were
+pitiable objects, with their bleeding legs, their haggard eyes, their
+out-hanging tongues, and their quivering flanks. As Fray Antonio
+unsaddled his horse I saw that there were tears in his eyes; but the
+rest of us, I fear, were too thoughtful of our own misery to feel much
+sorrow for the misery of our beasts.
+
+I suppose that a man must suffer the lack of it, as we then did, in
+order to know how precious a thing water is. And to give some notion of
+its preciousness to those who not only are free at any time to drink
+their fill of it, but even can fill bath-tubs with it, and feel the joy
+of it on their bare bodies whenever they are so minded, I will say that
+when a little digging gave us that night as much water as we wanted, our
+joy was far greater than it would have been had we there found the
+hidden city of which we were in search.
+
+Our well was sunk in the broad sandy bottom of the _arroyo_, in the
+midst of a narrow and delectably grassy valley between two foot-hills.
+And the abundance and the sweetness of the water, as well as the
+presence of grass, showed us that but a little way up this valley there
+must be an open stream. We drank, and our beasts drank, until all of our
+skins were nigh to bursting; and the abundance of water was so great
+that we even could wash the dust at last from our parched faces and
+necks and arms; and much like raw beef our skins looked when our washing
+was ended, and the stinging of them was as though we had been whipped
+with nettles. It was our intention now to leave the plains and to march
+along the edge of the foot-hills parallel with the main range, otherwise
+we should not have ventured thus to wash ourselves. In a region where
+alkali dust is in the air, washing is to be shunned; for each time that
+the skin is cleaned the new deposit of dust takes a deeper biting hold.
+
+It was rather that we might escape the misery of further travel on the
+arid plains than because we had any strong hopes of thus finding the way
+of which we were in search that we had decided to change our line of
+march. Young had begun openly to express his contempt for the Aztec map,
+and in the hearts of all of us had sprung up some doubts as to its
+trustworthiness as a guide. After all, it was not in the least a map in
+the true meaning of the word; and that it should show us rightly our way
+depended not only upon our having interpreted correctly its curious
+symbolism, but also upon the correctness of the interpretation that
+Mexican archæologists had given to the map of the first Aztec
+migration--of which map, as we believed, our map was a reserved and
+secret part. If either interpretation were wrong, then we might be
+hundreds of miles distant from the region in which the way marked by
+gravings of the King's symbol should be sought.
+
+Four or five hours of daylight still remained to us after we had dug our
+well, and with the delicious water flowing into it had satisfied our
+thirst; but we had no intention of going farther that day. We had no
+need to hobble the animals, for they could be trusted to stay near the
+water-hole while they feasted on the grass, and we needed food and rest
+quite as much as they did. Young and Dennis together got us up a famous
+meal, and when it was ended we lighted our pipes and held a sort of
+council of war. That we might talk the more freely, in both English and
+Spanish, we drew away a little from where the two Otomí Indians and
+Pablo were stretched out upon the grass together; and we bade Dennis
+take a look around the shoulder of the first hill, so that we might know
+something of what our way would be like when we started in the morning;
+for we were not as yet ready that the minor members of the expedition
+should know the purpose that we had in mind. We had decided that when,
+by the finding of the course indicated by the gravings of the King's
+symbol, our quest fairly had a beginning, being no longer a matter of
+mere hope and conjecture, we then would give Dennis and Pablo and the
+two Indians some notion of what we intended doing; with the option of
+deciding for themselves whether or not they would have a part in it. And
+the thought never once occurred to our minds that circumstances might
+arise of such a nature that neither they nor we would have any choice in
+the matter at all.
+
+As we consulted together we had spread out before us a map of Mexico,
+and with this the map that the Cacique had given me, and a copy of the
+map showing the great Aztec march. Yet the more that we councilled the
+less could we come to any reasonable conclusion as to what was best for
+us to do. As nearly as we could tell from the strange guides that we
+needs must be led by, we had beaten thoroughly the region where once the
+mission of Santa Marta was; and not a trace of the gravings on the rocks
+had we found. To go over this region again, searching still more
+minutely, was too great an undertaking even to be thought of; and yet
+the only alternative to this painful course seemed to be that we should
+abandon our search altogether; in short, we were completely at sea.
+
+"What _I_ think," said Young, "is that that old dead monk, an' that old
+dead Cacique, have set up a job on us. They're both of 'em lyin' like
+fiddlers; that's what's th' matter with _them_. There ain't any hidden
+city, or hidden treasure, or hidden d----n anything; it's all a fraud
+from beginnin' t' end. I vote t' pull up stakes an' go home."
+
+A cool refreshing wind was beginning to sweep down to us from the
+mountains; but it was blowing only in puffs as yet, for the night would
+not be upon us for several hours. Borne faintly and fitfully upon this
+uncertain wind came to us the strains of "Rory O'More"; with which
+melody, as we inferred, Dennis was beguiling his solitude while he
+explored the route that we were to take the next day. Pablo, sitting
+comfortably on the grass, his back propped against the back of El Sabio,
+also caught the sound; and straightway began to play an accompaniment on
+his mouth-organ to Dennis's distant singing. The strains gradually grew
+louder, showing that Dennis was returning; but when they stopped
+suddenly we thought that he had only tired of the sound of his own
+voice, or, perhaps, did not think anything about the matter at all.
+
+But when a sound of hurried, irregular steps came down the wind to us,
+we all were on our feet in a moment and had our arms ready, for it was
+evident that Dennis was running from something; and the danger was
+likely to be a serious one, for running was not at all in Dennis's line.
+We wondered why he did not call out; but the explanation of his silence
+was plain enough, ten seconds later, as he came around the shoulder of
+the hill, staggered in among us, and fell on the grass at our feet--with
+the blood streaming from his mouth and nostrils, and with an arrow clear
+through his breast.
+
+"Indians!" he gasped, with an effort that brought a torrent of blood
+spurting from his mouth; and he added, faintly, "But I've bate 'em, th'
+divvils, in their hopes of a soorprise!"
+
+These triumphant words were the last that Dennis Kearney uttered on
+earth. As he spoke, a fresh outburst of blood came from his nostrils and
+mouth, a quiver went over him--and then he was dead. I do not believe
+that many men would have done what Dennis did: run a good quarter of a
+mile with an arrow through his lungs, and then die exulting because he
+had succeeded in warning the camp.
+
+Rayburn had the situation instantly in hand. "Get the packs and saddles
+on quick!" he cried. "The Indians 'll come around that hill and try to
+scoop us here in the open. They won't close in; they'll keep off, and
+just lie around for a week till we're played out, and then they'll step
+in and finish us; they'll do that, likely enough, anyway. But our one
+chance is to get to a place up the valley here, where they can tackle us
+only from in front. There's water up there, so we'll be all right, and
+we may be able to shoot enough of them to make the rest give it up, or
+they'll close in, and we'll have the comfort of getting the whole thing
+ended without any useless fooling over it."
+
+All the while that he spoke he was working away, and so were we all, at
+saddling and packing; and, luckily, the animals, although the water and
+the food and the rest had put new strength into them, still were too
+tired to give us the trouble that animals give at such times when they
+are fresh. In a surprisingly short time we were ready to start; and yet
+not a sign had we had, save the warning that Dennis had brought us, that
+there was an Indian within a hundred miles of us. Indeed, but for his
+dead body on the ground beside our camp-fire, we might have imagined
+that our scare was only a bad dream. That it was a very bad reality was
+shown just as the last pack went on, when one of our Otomí Indians gave
+a howl as an arrow went through his leg, and I felt a sharp little nip
+on my forehead where an arrow just grazed it, and there was that queer,
+faint whirring sound in the air that only a flight of a good many arrows
+together will produce.
+
+Rayburn took the body of poor Dennis before him on his own horse; he'd
+be d----d if the Indians should get Dennis yet, he said; and away we
+went up the sandy bed of the _arroyo_, driving the mules before us, and
+the Otomí Indians pelting along on a dead-run. The Indian who had been
+hit coolly broke the arrow off short, and then pulled it out through the
+wound.
+
+Suddenly we saw Young, who was riding a little ahead of the rest of us,
+half pull up his horse and look earnestly at a great shoulder of rock
+that jutted out from the mountain-side. "There's your King's symbol,
+and be d----d to it!" he shouted; and added, "What's the good of a
+King's symbol when we're all goin' to lose our hair?"
+
+He was under full head-way again in a moment. As we shot past the rock we
+all turned to look; and there, sure enough, was the long-sought-for
+sign.
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+THE FIGHT IN THE CAÑON.
+
+
+As we fled along the valley, and in a few moments heard the sound of the
+Indians pursuing us, my mind was chiefly occupied with considerations of
+the quality which we denominate fear. I perceived that this purely
+occasional passion had a very direct bearing upon my own especial
+science of archæology. I reflected that had I been engaged in building a
+city at the moment when that irritating flight of arrows fell among
+us----the sting of one of which I still felt smarting upon my
+forehead----I should assuredly have ceased at once the building of that
+city, and should have moved rapidly away. And thus an excellently
+well-built city, that would have delighted archæologists of the future,
+would have been lost to the world. Putting the matter yet more closely:
+here I had just found the sign for which I and my companions had been
+toilsomely searching for a considerable time; the sign which
+unquestionably would lead us to the most interesting archæological
+discovery that ever had been made. And yet, instead of stopping to
+study this sign earnestly, that I might understand all the meaning of
+it, I was hastening away from it with all possible speed; and for no
+better reason than that certain barbarians, whose knowledge of
+archæology was not even rudimentary, were pursuing me that they might
+take my life--an imperfectly expressed concept, by-the-way; for life can
+be taken only in the limited sense of depriving another of it; it cannot
+be taken in the full sense of deprivation and acquisition combined.
+These several reflections so stirred my bile against the Indians in
+pursuit of us that I began to have a curiously blood-thirsty longing for
+our actual battling with them to begin; for I was possessed by a most
+unscientific desire to balance our account by killing several of them.
+And I confess that this desire was increased as I looked at the dead
+body of poor Dennis, lying limply across the fore-shoulders of Rayburn's
+horse.
+
+It was with real satisfaction, therefore, that I obeyed Rayburn's order
+to halt, that we might make ready for the fight to begin. The valley up
+which we had been riding had narrowed by this time into a strait way
+shut in between high and nearly perpendicular walls; and the place that
+Rayburn had chosen for us to make our stand in was the mouth of a cañon
+setting off from the valley nearly at right angles. The walls of this
+cañon came almost together above, far overhanging their bases, so that
+assault from overhead was impossible; some fragments of fallen rock made
+a natural breastwork for us to fight behind; and a little stream of
+pure, sweet water flowed at our feet. Had this place been made for us
+expressly it could not better have suited our purposes; and finding it
+so opportunely put fresh heart into us. There was not, of course, a
+shadow of resemblance between the two, but, somehow, I fancied that the
+place where we stood resembled my old class-room at Ann Arbor; and I
+actually found myself repeating the opening sentence of the address that
+I delivered when I was formally inducted into the Chair of Topical
+Linguistics. I mention this fact not because it is of the slightest
+importance in this present narrative, but because I think that it well
+illustrates the tendency towards illogical association that is so
+curious a characteristic of the human mind.
+
+I was not able to observe this phenomenon attentively, for Rayburn
+hustled us all about so sharply that I had no available time just then
+for abstract thought. The mules and the horses and El Sabio were driven
+into the cañon, and we were ranged behind the fragments of rock almost
+in a moment. Each man had his Winchester and revolvers in readiness, and
+a couple of cases of cartridges had been broken out from the packs and
+put where we all had easy access to them. While this work was going
+forward we could hear the Indians coming hotly up the valley, and we
+were barely ready for them when the foremost of their party came in
+sight.
+
+"Wait a little," said Rayburn, quietly. "They don't know which turn
+we've taken, and they'll probably get into a bunch to do some talking,
+and then we can whack away right into the flock."
+
+While we were thus making ready I could see that Fray Antonio was in
+great distress of mind. He was a very brave man, and I know that his
+strong desire was to fight with the rest of us. And yet, just as the
+Indians showed themselves, he deliberately turned his back upon them and
+walked away into the cañon's depths. His very lips were white, and there
+were beads of sweat upon his brow, and I saw that his fingers twitched
+convulsively. I know what he wanted to do, and I saw what he did. If
+ever a man showed the high bravery of moral courage, Fray Antonio showed
+it then. Even Young, in whom I did not look for appreciation of bravery
+of that sort, said afterwards that it was the pluckiest thing he ever
+saw.
+
+As Rayburn had expected, the Indians halted--but keeping more under
+cover than he had counted upon--and held some sort of a council. But it
+did not seem, from what we could see of their gestures, to relate to the
+way that we might have taken so much as to the cañon in which we
+actually were concealed. They pointed towards the mouth of the cañon
+repeatedly, and it struck me that in their motions there was a curious
+indication of dread or awe. One old man was especially vehement in
+gestures of this unaccountable nature; and when at last the younger men
+in the council seemed to revolt against his orders, this man, and all
+the older men with him, retired down the valley whence they had come.
+
+[Illustration:  THE FIGHT IN THE CAÑON]
+
+The young men, left to themselves, hesitated for a moment, and then with
+a cry--as though for their own encouragement--came charging towards us
+in a body. As we got a full view of them we perceived with much
+satisfaction that their only arms were bows and arrows and long spears,
+and that there were not more than twenty men in the lot. And then
+Rayburn gave the order to fire. I confess that my hand so trembled as I
+pulled the trigger of my rifle that I was not at all surprised to find
+that the man whom I had fired at--a very tall, powerful young fellow,
+who seemed to be in command--was not hit; but a man just behind him
+dropped, and I had a queer feeling in my throat, and certain odd
+sensations in my stomach, as I realized that I had shot him. Indeed, I
+was so engrossed with meditations upon the curious ease with which a
+man's life is let out of him, that I quite forgot for some seconds to
+continue firing. The others, luckily, conducted themselves in a more
+practical manner; and the little whirlwind of balls which sped from the
+Winchesters made it wonderful, not that so many of the Indians fell dead
+or wounded, as that any of them remained alive and unhurt. But eight of
+them did survive their charge in the face of the storm of bullets that
+we pelted at them; and these--headed by the tall fellow, who seemed
+bullet-proof--came rushing at us over our breastwork of rocks, shouting
+and flourishing their long spears.
+
+I cannot say very accurately what happened during the next five minutes
+or so, for one of the Indians came directly at me, and before I could at
+all stop him--for I found that shooting at him with my revolver did him
+no harm at all; and this struck me as odd, for I had repeatedly hit the
+mark while practising in the corral--he had prodded his spear through
+the fleshy part of my left arm. It hurt severely. He had aimed his
+thrust, doubtless, at my heart, and he certainly would have penetrated
+that vital organ had I not at that moment slipped, and so disarranged
+his aim. He pulled the spear out of my arm, which action also gave me
+great pain, and his manner indicated that he was about to thrust it into
+some other part of me; which he surely could have done, for I was wholly
+at a loss as to what measures should be taken to assure my own safety.
+Indeed, I was very well convinced that my life was as good as ended, and
+a curious flash of thought went through me that I cannot coherently
+remember, but that was in the nature of a query as to whether or not in
+a future state the many scientific truths which as yet are but
+imperfectly understood will be wholly revealed to us.
+
+However, the opportunity that I confidently expected would be given to
+me in a moment to obtain an answer to this interesting question did not
+then occur. Just as the Indian was lunging at me--I can see his ugly
+face now, as I close my eyes and let my thoughts turn backward to that
+critical moment--there was a flash of some bright object before me, and
+then the Indian's entire head seemed to shut up suddenly, something like
+an opera-glass, and he went down to the ground like a stone. As I
+turned, I saw that my deliverance had come from Pablo, and even in that
+very exciting moment I observed with astonishment that the weapon with
+which he had slain the Indian was a great jagged sword--if the
+_maccuahuitl_ can be called a sword--such as the Aztecs used in ancient
+times. I could not then conveniently stop to question him whence he had
+obtained that very interesting weapon, for there was another Indian
+already close upon me; and I am pleased to say--for I do not wish the
+belief to go abroad that scientific men are worse than useless in
+practical emergencies--that, without assistance from Pablo or from
+anybody else, I managed to pick up my rifle, and with the heavy iron
+barrel of that weapon, used clubwise, I mashed the head of that Indian
+into a perfect pulp. I know positively that I mashed it into a pulp, for
+I tried afterwards to measure it, and found that for craniological
+purposes it was utterly valueless.
+
+Even had I required Pablo's aid in this encounter he could not possibly
+have given it to me, for he was himself just then very hotly engaged.
+Indeed, but for assistance that come to him from an unexpected quarter
+his life assuredly would have been lost. He was in the act of hauling
+back to strike at the fellow facing him, and he did not at all know that
+he was in imminent danger of a thrust in the back from a wounded wretch
+who, having struggled upon his knees, was using what little life was
+left in him to deliver yet another blow. Just at this critical instant
+it was that Fray Antonio dashed into the thick of the fighting, and
+covered Pablo's body with his own against this assault in the rear; so
+that, as the Indian struck, the knife only cut through the monk's habit
+and slightly scratched his arm, instead of making a hole between Pablo's
+shoulder-blades that would have let the life out of him. Young, who was
+close beside Pablo, saw what was going on, and checked it before further
+harm was done by turning quickly and shooting off the top of the wounded
+Indian's head; and then Fray Antonio retired out of the fighting in
+which, without himself striking a blow, he had taken so gallant a part.
+
+So far as I was concerned, the fight was at an end when I had so
+cleverly mashed the head of my second assailant. No more Indians came at
+me, and as I looked around I perceived that this was for the excellent
+reason that there were no more to come. Two were just advancing on
+Young; who had them covered with his revolver, and dropped them, one
+after the other, in less time than is required to tell about it. The
+only other survivor among the enemy--at least the only one able to keep
+his feet--was the tall young chief, and he and Rayburn were just
+finishing the last round of what probably was as fine a fight as ever
+was fought. They were well matched in size and in weight; and if the
+Indian was any stronger than Rayburn, I can only say that he must have
+been a most wonderfully strong man. They were fighting on even terms;
+for the Indian was armed only with a short club, that he held in his
+left hand--and this left-handed method made him all the more awkward to
+deal with--while Rayburn, having emptied his revolver, was using as a
+club its heavy barrel.
+
+As I caught sight of them, the Indian was in the act of springing
+forward and delivering a tremendous blow; but Rayburn most skilfully
+parried this blow by throwing out his rifle, still retained in his left
+hand, in such a manner and with such force that the Indian's arm--at
+the same time striking and being struck with the iron barrel--was broken
+just above the wrist. He gave a yell of pain, as he well might; but he
+was a plucky fellow, and instead of dropping his club he only shifted it
+to his right hand. He never had a chance to strike again with it; for in
+that same instant Rayburn swung his revolver at arm's-length through the
+air and brought it down on his head with a sound so muffled and so
+hollow that I can liken it only to the staving-in of the head of a full
+cask. For a moment, while Rayburn drew back to strike again, the
+Indian's body swayed heavily; and then all his muscles relaxed, and he
+fell heavily and limply to the ground--while his brains spurted out from
+the ghastly trench made by that mighty blow from back to front across
+the entire top of his skull.
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+AFTER THE FIGHT.
+
+
+Rayburn stood panting for a moment over the Indian's body; and then,
+having satisfied himself by a look around among our fallen enemies that
+every one of them was either dead or dying, he stooped down beside the
+stream to drink from it, and then to bathe an ugly gash in his forehead
+made by a spear thrust that luckily had glanced aside.
+
+Indeed, we all had wounds or bruises by which we were likely to
+remember our fight for a good many days to come. In addition to the cut
+on his forehead, Rayburn had an arm badly bruised by a crack from a
+club; Young had a cut in the calf of his leg that must have been made by
+one of the Indians after he had fallen wounded; Fray Antonio had the
+slight cut in his arm that he received in rescuing Pablo; a blow from a
+club on my shoulder had completely disabled my left arm, and my head was
+beginning to ache from the wound in my forehead where the arrow had
+nipped me; and Pablo, by a square knock-down blow on the head that
+tumbled him among the rocks, had a bad gash in his cheek and was bruised
+all over. And yet the very first thing that boy did when the fight was
+ended--being still dazed, no doubt, by the blow on his head--was to play
+a bit of "Rory O'More" on his mouth-organ in order to make sure that his
+beloved "instrumentito" had not been injured by his fall. The sound of
+this air gave my heart a wrench, as I thought of poor Dennis; whose
+gallant race with death assuredly had saved all of us from dying without
+a chance to strike a blow. And both of our Otomí Indians were dead too.
+
+But while we had suffered thus severely we had the satisfaction of
+knowing that we had inflicted a most signal punishment upon our enemies.
+Of the whole company that had attacked us--eighteen in number, as we
+found by counting their bodies--only two remained alive when the fight
+ended; and these two speedily relieved us of all responsibility
+concerning them by dying of their wounds. As Young tersely expressed
+it, we had "given the whole outfit a through bill of lading to Kingdom
+Come!"
+
+Notwithstanding the pain that I was in, the first thought that came to
+me after we had achieved peace (by the effective yet somewhat radical
+process of killing all of our enemies) was concerning the strange weapon
+with which Pablo had been fighting; and by his prompt use of which in my
+defence my life had been saved. He had laid it upon a rock--while
+testing the integrity of his mouth-organ--and as I now carefully
+examined it I found that my glimpse of it as Pablo had mashed the
+Indian's head had not deceived me. It truly was a maccuahuitl, the
+primitive Aztec sword, but very unlike any description of that weapon
+that I had ever seen. The maccuahuitl, as described by the Spaniards at
+the time of the conquest and as shown by the Aztec pictures of it
+preserved in various museums, was a wooden blade from three and a half
+to four feet long and from four to five inches wide. Along its two
+edges, like great saw teeth, fragments of obsidian, about three inches
+long and two inches wide, were inserted; and as these were keenly sharp
+the weapon was a most ferocious one. The sword that I held in my hand
+was identical in its essential features with this primitive design; but
+it was shorter, narrower, and thinner. What was still more extraordinary
+about it was that, while it seemed to be made of brass, it had the
+bright glitter of gold and the temper and the elasticity of steel. Being
+tested by bending, it instantly sprung straight again; and
+notwithstanding the vigorous use that Pablo had been making of it on the
+bones of several Indians, the thin edges of the projecting teeth were
+only nicked a little--as the edge of a steel sword would have been
+nicked under like circumstances--and not one of these teeth was bent out
+of place, as assuredly would have been the case had the metal been
+ordinary brass.
+
+Fray Antonio, by this time, had returned to us again--looking rather
+shamefaced because of the part that he had taken in the fight--and I
+eagerly showed him this strange weapon that had been so strangely found;
+for Pablo's account of it was simply that, just as his revolver was
+emptied upon the Indians charging towards us, when there was no time to
+reload, his eyes were caught by the glitter of the sword as it stuck in
+a cleft in a rock; whereupon he most gladly seized it--and instantly
+used it to good purpose upon the Indian who was so close to ending me with
+his spear, and subsequently contrived with it to send two more Indians
+to their account.
+
+Fray Antonio's knowledge of the matter having a wider practical range
+than mine, for he knew well the contents of the several Mexican museums
+in which specimens of the primitive weapons are preserved, I thought it
+possible that he might be able to match this curious maccuahuitl with an
+account of another like it which he somewhere had seen. That there was
+no record in the books of this weapon made of metal I knew very well.
+But Fray Antonio's surprise over it was greater than my own; and he
+certainly found more in it to please him than I did; for this metal
+maccuahuitl, supposing it to belong to ancient times, settled in his
+favor a controversy that for some time past we had been amicably but
+earnestly carrying on. I had adopted the ingenious theory of my friend
+Bandelier that the serrated edge of the Aztec sword was accidental;
+resulting from the breaking away in use of portions of what at first was
+a continuous edge of obsidian. Fray Antonio, on the other hand, had held
+firmly to the ordinarily accepted opinion that the sword was such as I
+have described above (I must confess regretfully) the primitive weapon
+to have been.
+
+My contention therefore was that the sword that Pablo had found was not
+an antique; and I fortified my position, as I considered impregnably, by
+the fact that while Aztecs, before the Spanish conquest, did make some
+slight use of copper and gold, they assuredly had no knowledge whatever
+of either brass or steel. And my natural irritation very well may be
+imagined, by any one familiar with controversies of this nature, when I
+add that Fray Antonio endeavored to cut the ground from under me by
+asserting that, inasmuch as the weapon obviously was not made of brass
+or steel, my argument was based upon false premises and consequently led
+to illogical conclusions. I am afraid that I showed a little temper on
+this occasion; for Fray Antonio manifested a persistence in his defence
+of what I regarded as his wholly untenable position that amounted to
+what I held to be downright pig-headedness. And so, for a considerable
+length of time, we stood there, among the bodies of the dead Indians,
+and first one of us and then the other handled the sword, and expressed
+with increasing warmth our views respecting it and each other; and we
+might have stood there much longer had not Young--with the best of
+intentions, no doubt, but in a way the certainly was not
+agreeable--taken upon himself to bring our controversy for the time
+being to an end.
+
+"I don't exactly know what you and the Padre are jawing about at such a
+rate, Professor," he struck in; "but as well as I can catch on, it's
+about things which happened three or four hundred years ago. I don't
+want to interrupt you, of course; but I do want the Padre--he knows
+something about surgery, as I saw the other day when he took that cactus
+thorn out of Pablo--to do something to plug up this hole in my leg. It's
+bleeding a good deal, and it hurts like the very devil. And I guess
+Rayburn'd be glad to have that slit in his forehead tied up too."
+
+To do Fray Antonio justice, he took this interruption in better part
+than I did; for I was deeply interested in the argument in which we were
+engaged, and wished to continue it. But when I explained what Young
+wanted, he turned to him at once, and very tenderly as well as very
+skilfully dressed his wound; and then bandaged the gash in Rayburn's
+forehead, and the cut in Pablo's cheek. Pablo decidedly objected to this
+bandaging, for it put a peremptory stop for a while to his playing on
+his mouth-organ. For me no surgery was required. Fray Antonio carefully
+felt my shoulder while he moved my arm--thereby hurting me most
+horribly--and as the result of his investigations he assured me that the
+bones were neither broken nor out of place.
+
+Rayburn also examined the maccuahuitl with much interest. "Of course it
+is not brass," he said, "and of course it cannot possibly be
+phosphor-bronze. But, if such a thing were a metallurgical possibility,
+I should say that it was gold--treated in some manner that gives it as
+great a hardness as bronze receives when treated with phosphorus, but
+with some chemical change wrought in its constitution that gives it also
+the tempered quality of steel. Nothing but gold, you see," he added,
+"could lie around out-of-doors this way and not get tarnished by
+oxidization."
+
+"What's the reason that it's not some queer thing belonging to the folks
+we're looking for?" Young asked; and his question expressed a thought
+that already had found a lodging in my own mind. For such good-luck as
+this would be I was quite willing to concede that Fray Antonio was right
+in his unpleasantly positive views in regard to the shape of the Aztec
+swords. And what Young said also put me sharply in mind of the graving
+on the rock of the King's symbol, that we had found only in the same
+moment to lose it again. To this matter I now adverted; and I said some
+very unpleasant things about the Indians who had prevented us from
+following the trail, that we had sought for so laboriously, when we did
+find it at last--and who still, for we doubted not that the main body
+was in wait for us lower down the valley, prevented us from returning to
+the spot where we had seen the sign and thence systematically continuing
+our search.
+
+"If I was you, Professor," said Young as I ceased speaking, "I wouldn't
+be so everlastin'ly down on these poor devils of Indians for what
+they've done. They killed Dennis, an' that's a pretty bad business; an'
+they got away with our two _mozos_, too; an' they've pretty well
+battered th' rest of us. But I take it that we've about evened things up
+by killin' eighteen of 'em--or six of their crowd dead for each one dead
+in ours. I guess we can call that part of th' business about square. But
+what I'm gettin' at is, if it hadn't been for the Indians we'd never
+have come up this valley; an' so we'd never have struck th' King's
+symbol trail at all."
+
+"But what good did it do us to find it, when we could not follow it?" I
+asked. "We cannot go back to examine the sign without risking our lives;
+and unless we do examine it we cannot know where the next one is, and so
+the trail is lost."
+
+"I've just been waitin'," said Young, "t' see if I was th' only man in
+this party that God-a-mighty'd given a pair of eyes to. I guess I am.
+Suppose you just get up, Professor, an' turn around, an' take a look at
+that place where there's a brown mark on th' side of th' rock; an'
+suppose th' rest of you look there too. If that isn't th' King's symbol,
+just as plain as th' noses in all your faces, I'll eat every dead Indian
+in this cañon."
+
+And Young spoke the truth. Just above the cleft whence Pablo had taken
+the sword, graven so deeply in the rock that after all the weathering of
+centuries it still remained distinct and clear, was identically the same
+figure that Fray Francisco in the far past time had represented in his
+letter, and that was repeated also on the far more ancient piece of
+gold. Above it was cut an arrow that pointed directly up the cañon.
+
+It was a good thing that something came to cheer us just then; for what
+with the death of Dennis and of our two poor Indians, and our own hurts,
+and the melancholy feeling that must oppress men always--save those of
+cruel and hardened natures--when a fight is ended in which they have
+spilled freely human blood, we all were oppressed sensibly by a
+consuming sadness.
+
+But here was cheer indeed. Not only had we surely found the trail at
+last, but we found it leading in precisely the direction that at that
+moment we desired to go. For us to return down the valley to the open
+country, we knew was full of most signal danger; for the Indians who so
+unaccountably had declined to take part in attacking us assuredly were
+lying in wait for us by the way. Our only chance to escape them was to
+strike into the mountains; and the sign that we now had gave promise
+that we should find some sort of a path along which we might go.
+Therefore it was with good heart that we set about getting as far into
+the depths of the cañon as possible before night should be wholly upon
+us; trusting, in regard to possible pursuit, somewhat to the
+superstition of the Indians which so unaccountably yet so obviously had
+been aroused, and also to the wholesome dread that they must have of us
+upon finding that every one of their companions had been slain. The
+bodies of our poor Otomís we placed in a deep fissure in the rock, and
+there heaped stones upon them, while Fray Antonio said over them the
+briefer office; but the body of Dennis we carried with us, that we might
+give him a more tender and reverent burial in gratitude for his brave
+struggle to save our lives when he knew that his own life was lost. As
+for the eighteen dead Indians--who had invited the death that so
+promptly had come to them--we did not bother ourselves about them at
+all. We left them to the coyotes.
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+THE CAVE OF THE DEAD.
+
+
+Very dismal was our procession of faintly seen figures moving cautiously
+through that wild solitude. At its head went Rayburn, leading his horse,
+on which was Dennis's dead body; all of us, being bruised and cut and
+bleeding, walked slowly and painfully; and behind us, ghastly forms torn
+by bullets and crushed by blows, lay the slain Indians in all manner of
+unnatural attitudes, made yet more hideous and fantastical by the
+gathering gloom of night. Indeed, night now was so close upon us that
+had not the cañon in which we were run east and west, we would have been
+for some time past in darkness. As it was, though shut off from the west
+by the great range of mountains, a faint light came down into its depths
+from the still bright eastern sky, where lingered ruddy reflections of
+the sunset: and so we could see to pick our way, along the edge of the
+little stream, among the rough masses of rock and trunks of trees which
+had fallen from above.
+
+Our march ended sooner than we had counted on. Before we had
+accomplished more than half a mile of this rough travelling, there
+loomed before us a wall of rock which shut in the end of the cañon, and
+which rose as high and as sheer as did the cañon's sides. Our hearts
+sank within us, for we perceived that we were in a cul-de-sac; whence
+escape was possible only along the way by which we had come--and so to
+return, with the Indians still in wait for us, was to walk straight into
+the jaws of death. And, further, if our course in this direction was cut
+off, it was evident that the King's symbol graved upon the rock at the
+entrance of the cañon was a useless and misleading sign.
+
+In the hope that we might find a sharp turn, not to be perceived until
+we were close upon it, we pressed on through the dusk until we came to
+the very end of the cañon, and the dark wall of rock that barred our way
+rose directly above our heads. And then we found, not a turn in the
+cañon, but a narrow opening (through which came forth the little stream)
+into the body of the mountain itself. Yet we hesitated about entering
+this black gap--for who could tell what depths, unseen in that dense
+darkness, we might not plunge into headlong?
+
+Much dry pine wood, branches and whole trees, lay about us in the cañon;
+and of this apt material Rayburn presently constructed a great torch.
+Lighting this in the open cañon was not to be thought of, for while we
+felt tolerably certain that the main body of our enemies had not
+followed us, we could not be wholly certain that they were not close
+upon our heels and ready to open upon us with a volley of arrows and
+spears. Rayburn therefore struck a wax-match--with which excellent
+article of Mexican manufacture we were supplied plentifully--and with
+this to light his way, entered the narrow pass; and in his wake the rest
+of us followed. Almost in a moment the walls on each side of us spread
+out beyond the reach of the narrow circle of light, and we perceived
+that we were come into a cave. But before we could at all discern our
+surroundings the match was blown out by a sudden suck of wind setting in
+from the entrance, and we were in thick darkness. The air around us was
+so sweet and so fresh that we knew that the cave must be large, and with
+more than one opening--as, indeed, the suck of wind inward through the
+passage by which we entered clearly showed. While Rayburn struck another
+match, wherewith to light the torch, we all stood still in our places;
+and certain tremors went through our breasts because of the eeriness of
+our surroundings.
+
+[Illustration: THE CAVE OF THE DEAD]
+
+When the great torch blazed up, and threw everywhere save towards the
+high roof a flood of light, a real and rational fear took possession of
+us. The cave was nearly circular, and at its back, directly facing the
+entrance, was a roughly hewn mass of stone on which rested a huge stone
+figure--identical with the figures in the Mexican National Museum to
+which Le Plongeon, the discoverer of one of them, at Chichen-Itza, has
+given the name of Chac-Mool. But what filled us with dread was not this
+impassive stone image. Our alarm came from a much more natural cause,
+as we beheld, squatted on their haunches in long semicircular rows,
+facing the great stone idol, more than a hundred Indians. Truly,
+considering that our rifles were outside the cave and that we had with
+us only our revolvers, our momentary thrill of terror was highly
+natural.
+
+Yet it was only momentary. The Indians, undisturbed by our presence and
+by the sudden blaze of light, remained unmoved in silent worship of
+their god; and Rayburn, the first of us to recover equanimity, set all
+our fears to flight as he exclaimed: "These are not the fighting kind.
+Every man Jack of 'em is as dead as Julius Cæsar. We've struck an Indian
+bone-yard."
+
+Here, then, was the reason why a part of the force that had attacked us
+had drawn off when we made our stand at the mouth of the cañon that led
+to this home of the dead. Yet when, by the light of the torch, we
+examined our silent fellow-tenants of the cave, it did not seem that
+they had been placed there in recent times. Indeed, the more that Fray
+Antonio and I looked closely at their wrappings and noted the way in
+which their mummied forms had been ranged before this idol--that
+certainly belonged to a primitive time--the more were we inclined to
+believe that this weird sepulchre belonged to the very far back past.
+But for the moment it mattered not to us whence these dead forms came:
+the essential matter was that while we remained in the cave with them we
+were in absolute safety.
+
+"Well," said Young, when we had reached this comforting conclusion,
+"since it's a sure thing that we're all right here, I move that we make
+ourselves comfortable. Let's bring in th' stock, an' get th' packs off;
+an' then we'll build a fire an' eat another supper. Fightin' Indians is
+hungry work, an' I feel as if I hadn't had anything to eat for a
+week"--which suggestions were so reasonable that we at once proceeded to
+act upon them.
+
+It was hard work for us, wounded and sore and tired as we were, to
+unfasten the pack-cords; and still harder work to collect the wood for
+our fire. But we managed to accomplish it all at last; and most
+comforting and refreshing was our supper amid those extraordinary
+surroundings. There was even cheerfulness about our meal--and yet over
+in the shadows at the back of the cave, touched now and then by a
+brighter flash of firelight, lay before the heathen altar of old the
+body of our poor Dennis; and close beside us were the long rows of dead
+Indians. I sometimes have thought that it was strange that we then had
+any heart to eat at all, surrounded by so desolate a company. But there
+is that about killing one's fellow-creatures, and being in imminent
+peril of being killed one's self, I have found, that blunts for a while
+the souls of those who survive and makes them careless of death's awful
+mystery. As the fire crackled and blazed, giving out a plentiful warmth
+that in that chill place was most grateful to our aching bodies, our
+spirits seemed to brighten with its brightness; and when the rich smell
+of strong coffee mingled with the smell of stewing meats told that
+Young's cooking was nearly ended, we sniffed hungrily and eagerly; and
+when we actually fell to upon our meal I remember that we even laughed
+over it.
+
+Yet it is but just to Fray Antonio to say that his fine spirit did not
+fall to the level of grossness that ours were brought to by what, as it
+seems to me, was an instinctive gladness on the part of our fleshly
+bodies that, for a while longer, they would not return to the dust
+whereof they were made. Through our meal he sat gravely silent, yet with
+so sweet and so tender an expression upon his gentle face that in his
+silence there was no suggestion of reproof. And when our meal was ended,
+and we were for stretching out upon our blankets before the fire and
+smoking our pipes comfortably, he reminded us, with no touch of
+harshness in his voice, that a last duty was claimed of us by our dead
+companion.
+
+And, truly, the funeral ceremonies over Dennis in that strange place of
+burial made the most curious ending of a man that ever I saw. In the
+fine dry sand wherewith the cave was bedded, directly in front of the
+altar on which was the heathen idol, we dug his grave--toilsomely and
+with pain, for all of our bodies were hurt and sore. While we labored,
+two great torches flared upon the altar, propped against the idol; and
+long, flickering rays of light shot out to us across the mummied bodies
+of the dead Indians--striking across their gleaming teeth, so that they
+seemed to smile at us--from the huge blaze of the fire.
+
+From our stores Fray Antonio took out a little salt, and from the clear
+spring that bubbled up within the cave a cup of water, which elements
+he blessed and mingled as the rites of his Church prescribed; and with
+the water thus consecrated he sprinkled the body lying before the
+heathen altar, while his strong, sweet voice chanted the _De Profundis_
+so that all the cave rang with the rich melody of the holy strain, and
+our own breasts were thrilled by it. Gently we bore the body of poor
+Dennis from its resting-place before the altar to its last resting-place
+in the grave that we had dug there, while Fray Antonio said the
+_Miserere_; and as with our pack-ropes we lowered the body into the
+earth, the priest sang the _Benedictus_, with its promise of a better
+life to come; and then a prayer ended all, and we filled in the grave.
+
+"I'm Congregational, myself," Young said, when our work was finished;
+"at least I was brought up that way; an' I'm down on th' Scarlet Woman
+from first t' last. But I go in for lettin' folks believe what they've
+got a mind to; an' when it comes t' buryin' 'em it's only square t'
+give 'em th' sort of send-off that they'd really like. For a Catholic, I
+guess Dennis was a pretty good one; an' I must say I think it would 'a'
+done him good to see th' way we've given him a first-class funeral, just
+in th' shape he'd 'a' fixed things up for himself. But I guess what
+we've been at would have everlastin'ly shook up these dead fellows here,
+if they could have come t' life for about five minutes while it was
+goin' on!"
+
+There was an element of grim humor in this suggestion of Young's that
+tickled my fancy; and it was, indeed, allowing for the quaintness of his
+phrasing of it, but an expression of my own thoughts. But my reflection
+was upon the curious incongruity of it all, and upon the way in which
+religious faiths supplant each other; even as the different races of men
+who formulate them and believe in them supplant each other upon the face
+of the earth. Together in this same cave were now the dead of two faiths
+and two races. Who could tell what dead of other faiths and races yet
+unborn would lie here also before the end of time should come?
+
+When all was ended we were glad enough to lie down to give our battered
+bodies rest in sleep. We felt sure that no attack would be made upon us;
+yet we rolled some fragments of rock into the narrow entrance to the
+cave, arranging them in such a way that they would fall with a crash
+should any attempt be made to move them from outside. And, this
+precaution having been taken, we lay down upon our blankets thankfully,
+and never troubled ourselves to keep any watch at all.
+
+It was brilliantly light when we awoke, for the rays of the just-risen
+sun were striking strongly into the cave through its entrance-way; and
+much light came also through a crevice higher up, and through a great
+hole in the vastly high roof. Viewed in this clearer light, there was a
+horrible ghastliness about the mummies ranged in their orderly rows, and
+presided over by the coarsely carved, coarsely conceived stone figure
+that in life they had worshipped as their god. On this image the
+sunshine fell full, and we perceived that its position evidently had
+been chosen carefully, so that the very first ray of light from the
+rising sun would strike upon it. No doubt, in ancient times, this cave
+had been a temple as well as a place of sepulchre.
+
+We were well rested by our long and sound sleep; but the pain which was
+everywhere in our bodies, from our many bruises, and from our wounds,
+and from the aching stiffness of our muscles, made life for a time
+almost intolerable. Moreover, the languorous reaction following the
+undue exaltation that came of our battling and escape was upon us; so
+that our pain of body was accompanied by a most sombre and melancholy
+cast of mind. Yet, again, did the more balanced and delicate temperament
+of Fray Antonio shine out by contrast with our coarser make; for while
+he also suffered pains of the body, his mind was filled with a serene
+cheerfulness that found expression in kindly, comforting words, by which
+our flagging spirits were strengthened and upheld. There was in Fray
+Antonio's nature, surely, a fund of gentle lovingness the like of which
+I never knew in any other man.
+
+And, in truth, our plight was such that we stood in much need of
+comforting. Not only were we sick with our many hurts, but we were also
+prisoners. By the full light of day we examined carefully the cave, and
+found no outlet to it; and we examined carefully, also, the walls of the
+cañon throughout its full length, and made sure that there was no path
+leading upward whereby a man could go. And escape down the valley was
+cut off, for the Indians--who knew, no doubt, the manner of place we
+were caught in--were on guard and watching for us; which fact came
+sharply to our knowledge with a half-dozen arrows that dropped among us
+as we went out a little way beyond the mouth of the cañon to see if the
+way was open to us. Had we been whole, we might have made a dash and
+fought our way through; but even this poor plan was not possible when
+our bodies were stiff and sore. Our one comforting thought was that, as
+we had an abundance of provisions and an ample supply of water, we could
+hold out for so long a time that the Indians at last would get tired of
+waiting for us. If they ventured to attack us in the cave, we knew that
+we could defend ourselves against any number of them successfully. If
+they simply abandoned the siege, then we would be free without fighting
+at all. But it was dismal work waiting in that dismal place for one or
+the other of these two ends to come.
+
+And the fact that the King's symbol had proved a false guide also was a
+source of deep concern to us. By the full strength of daylight we again
+examined the graving at the entrance to the cañon, and there was no
+mistaking the way in which the arrow pointed. And, what was even more
+perplexing and disheartening, we found the graving repeated at the
+entrance to the cave, and the arrow pointing directly towards the statue
+of Chac-Mool. It was impossible that this cave, with mummies only for
+inhabitants, could be the walled city wherein the reserve force of men
+and treasure had been hid; and yet here, obviously, was the end of the
+trail. Of this we convinced ourselves by searching the cave exhaustively
+for another outlet--even sounding the walls in the hope that we might
+find a passage that had been artificially concealed. As Rayburn tersely
+put it, we were no better than so many rats in a trap with terriers
+waiting for us outside.
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+THE SWINGING STATUE.
+
+
+Four more days went by very wearily. Our wounds were healing--for we all
+were in good condition as the result of our vigorous life in the open
+air--but they still kept us in constant pain, and so tended to increase
+our melancholy. Out in the valley, beyond the mouth of the cañon, the
+Indians maintained their watchful guard. Rayburn tried the experiment of
+holding a hat and coat out on a pole, standing himself under cover of
+the rock, and in an instant a pair of arrows went through the dummy; and
+as one of these came from the right and the other from the left, it was
+evident that in both directions the valley was picketed.
+
+We were safe enough for the time being, of course. Even should the
+Indians overcome their superstitious dread and enter the cañon--which
+was not probable, for they had not even ventured to remove their
+dead--they could not possibly make a successful attack upon us in the
+cave. Behind the breastwork that we had built in the narrow entrance,
+and armed with our repeating rifles and revolvers, we were absolutely
+secure.
+
+"It's not a bad thing that we're safe," said Young, "an' that we've got
+plenty of grub an' water, an' even lots of firewood; if we've got t' be
+shut up here we might as well be comfortable. But what I want is a
+through ticket for home. This treasure business has gone back on us th'
+worst kind. That old Fray Francisco had his eye shut up by th' tall talk
+of th' fellow who pretended to be converted; and th' Cacique just
+promiscuously lied. That's about the size of it. An' for bein' fools
+enough to swallow their stuff, here we are, as Rayburn says, like rats
+in a cage."
+
+There was so much probability in what Young said that I did not attempt
+to argue with him; yet was I convinced that in what Fray Francisco had
+written, and still more in what the dying Cacique had said to me, there
+was a substantial element of truth.
+
+Finding that nobody replied to him, for all of us were sore at heart and
+so disposed to silence, Young turned to the statue of Chac-Mool and
+proceeded to abuse it vigorously, on the ground that it was an
+idolatrous product of the Aztec race that was at the root of all our
+troubles. For, as he truly said, had there been no Aztecs to begin with,
+our departure on a wild-goose chase after an Aztec treasure-house would
+have been an impossibility. His attention having been thus fixed upon
+the idol, his habit of investigation got the better of his ill-will
+towards it, and he mounted the altar to examine it more
+closely--continuing the while to address it in language that was
+eminently unparliamentary.
+
+"A pretty-looking sort a specimen _you_ are!" he said, in a tone of
+vast contempt. "But you're about what I'd expect folks like that friend
+of th' Professor's, th' Cacique, t' worship. It takes a low sort of a
+heathen, even in his blindness, t' bow down to a stone like you--with
+your twisted head, an' your stubby legs, an' your little fryin'-pan over
+your stomach. Why, where I come from they wouldn't have you even for a
+stone settee in a park. No, you're not fit even t' sit on--unless,
+maybe, it's on th' flat top of your crooked head;" and by way of testing
+this possibility, Young seated himself on the head of Chac-Mool.
+
+And then a very extraordinary thing happened. The idol, and the great
+slab of stone on which it rested and of which it was a part, slowly
+moved; the head sinking, and the other end of the slab, on which the
+legs were carved, rising in the air! Young sprang up with a cry as he
+felt the stone sinking beneath him; and the figure, relieved of his
+weight, settled back into its former position with a slight jar. In a
+moment that the slab was in the air there had come from under it a gleam
+of light.
+
+In the excitement wrought by this strange accident our hurts were
+forgotten; and we eagerly clambered upon the altar to investigate the
+matter further, while hope and wonder thrilled our hearts.
+
+"Now, then, Young," said Rayburn, "try it again. It looks as though this
+idol wasn't all the blackguard things you've been calling it, by a long
+shot."
+
+"No, I'll be hanged if I'll try it again," Young answered. "Try it
+yourself, if you want to. How do I know what's goin' t' happen with a
+stone thing that goes tippin' around that way? I don't mind sayin' that
+I'm a good deal jolted, an' don't feel like foolin' with it any more.
+Try it yourself, if you want to, I say."
+
+"All right," Rayburn answered. "You and the Professor stand here where
+you can grab me if anything goes wrong. It looks to me as though there
+was a chance for us of some sort here, and I mean to see what it is."
+
+Young and I stood on each side of Rayburn and held him by the arms as he
+seated himself on the idol's head. Borne down by his weight, the head
+slowly sank, the whole fore-end of the stone slab falling away into the
+rock, and the after-end correspondingly rising and disclosing a squared
+opening, through which came a strong burst of light. When the head was
+down to the level of the rock, and the slab stood up at an angle of
+nearly fifty degrees, the movement ceased. Looking into the opening we
+saw a flight of a dozen stone steps. On the bottom step the sun shone
+brightly, and in our faces blew a draught of fresh, sweet air. On the
+rock, beside the stair-way was carved the King's symbol, with the arrow
+pointing downward.
+
+"Hurrah!" cried Young. "Here's a way out--an' it looks as if that old
+monk an' th' Cacique weren't such a pair of blasted liars after all!"
+
+Rayburn jumped up to have a look with the rest of us; but before he
+could see anything the statue had fallen into place again and the
+opening was closed. "No matter, we know how to work it, now," he said.
+"We must prop it up somehow; that's all. I want to have a look at this
+thing. There's some mighty good engineering shown in the way the centre
+of gravity of that stone has been calculated; and there's a good
+mechanism in the way it's hung. Here she goes again. Just chock it with
+a bit of rock when I swing it open."
+
+"Well, what I'm interested in," said Young, "is findin' out what sort of
+a place it'll get us into. It looks to me as if we might be goin' to
+strike the treasure right smack here."
+
+Much the same notion was in all of our heads by this time, and we were
+full of eagerness--the statue having been swung again, and propped in
+place with a fragment of rock--as we went down the little stair. But
+what we found was only a continuation of the cañon--as though, by some
+curious freak of nature, the thin walls of rock enclosing the cave had
+been left thus in the very middle of it. Rayburn drew our attention to
+the fact that we were on the crest of a divide, for a spring that
+bubbled up here flowed away from us; and this also was a cheering sign
+that the cañon had an outlet. How far away the outlet might be we could
+not tell; for the cañon, half a mile or so from where we stood, bent
+sharply to the right. But being thus assured that a way of some sort out
+of our prison was open to us, we turned to examine the work of the
+skilled mechanics who in some far past time had set this swinging statue
+in its place. From below, the simple apparatus, that yet for its fitting
+required so high a grade of scientific knowledge, was plainly disclosed
+to us. Into the great slab of stone, presumably running through it from
+side to side, was set a round bar of metal--the same bright metal of
+which the sword was made--more than a foot in diameter; and this worked
+in two concave metal sockets in much the same manner that the sockets of
+a gun-carriage hold the trunnions of a gun. What struck Rayburn as
+especially remarkable was the trueness to a circle of both the sockets
+and the bar; both showing, as he declared, that they had been worked
+upon a lathe. And he was puzzled, as in the case of the sword, as to the
+composition of the metal that thus defied oxidization through long
+periods of time. "Gold is the only thing that fills the bill," he said;
+"but a bar of gold, even of that size, would bend double under such a
+strain. I'd give ten dollars for a chance to analyze it--for there's a
+bigger fortune in putting a metal like that on the market than there is
+in finding this treasure that we're hunting for: especially if it turns
+out that there isn't any treasure to find."
+
+"Now, don't you go t' runnin' down that treasure," Young struck in.
+"Just now treasure stock is up. Me an' that idol have just boomed th'
+market. I'm sorry I called Jack Mullins, or whatever his name is, such a
+lot of cuss-word names. I take 'em all back. He isn't just th' sort of
+an idol that I'd pick out t' worship myself, at least not as a steady
+thing; but there are good points about him--especially th' way he tips
+up. I always did like an idol that tipped up. He's done th' square thing
+by us in gettin' us out all right from th' worst sort of a hole; an' I
+guess th' best thing we can do is t' yank our traps out of that cave
+an' get started again. Why, for all we know, th' treasure may be right
+around that corner."
+
+There was no doubt as to the soundness of Young's suggestion in regard
+to resuming our march; but the very serious fact confronted us that we
+now must do our marching on foot. To get the horses and mules down
+through the narrow opening was simply impossible, and there was nothing
+for us but to leave them behind. Rayburn looked very grave over this
+phase of the matter, for leaving the mules meant also that we must leave
+the greater part of our ammunition and stores. That these things would
+be abundantly safe in the cave, for any length of time, was not to the
+purpose; the essential matter was that we would be deprived of them. It
+was hard, too, to think that our animals would fall into the hands of
+the Indians--for our only course with them must be to turn them loose in
+the cañon, whence they certainly would go out in search of pasture into
+the valley, and so be captured; but it was still harder to think that we
+must go ourselves on foot and with a scant outfit of supplies.
+
+It was not very cheerfully, therefore, that we went back into the cave
+and began to sort out from our packs the articles which would be
+absolutely necessary to our preservation in the rough work among the
+mountains that probably was before us; and our shoulders already ached a
+little in anticipation of the heavy loads which they must bear.
+
+It was while we were thus engaged that Pablo begged that I would step
+aside with him for a moment that he might speak to my ear alone. I saw
+that there were tears upon his cheeks, and as he spoke he scarcely
+could restrain his sobs.
+
+"Señor," he said, "you know El Sabio?"
+
+"Surely, Pablo."
+
+"You know, señor, that he is a very small ass."
+
+"It is true."
+
+"And you know--you know, señor, how very tenderly we love each other.
+Since I came away from my father and my mother, in Guadalajara, and from
+my little brother and sister there, El Sabio is everything in the world
+to me, señor. I--I cannot leave him, señor. I should die if we were
+parted; and El Sabio would die also. And you say that you have perceived
+that he is a very small ass. Do not ask me to leave him, señor."
+
+"But we cannot take him with us, Pablo. What would you have?"
+
+"That is it, señor; truly, I think that we can take him with us. You
+see, he is so little; and it is quite wonderful through how small a
+place El Sabio can crawl. He can creep like a kitten, señor, and he can
+make himself into a very little bunch. And so I think that he can--if we
+help him, you know, señor--and speak to him so that he will not be
+alarmed, and will try to do his very best to make a small bunch of
+himself--I think that we can get him down through the hole, and so take
+him with us. But if we cannot, señor, then--you must forgive me,
+señor--I love him so very dearly, you know--then I will stay with him
+here. It would be better so than that El Sabio should think I no longer
+loved him. And he would think that, señor, were I to go with you and
+leave him here among these dreadful dead gentlemen alone."
+
+It had not occurred to any of us that El Sabio might be condensed
+sufficiently to go through the narrow way; but if he truly were the
+collapsable donkey that Pablo declared him to be, we had a good deal to
+be thankful for. He was a sturdy little creature, and his small back
+could bear easily twice as much as any two of ours. With his assistance
+we certainly would be able to carry with us all of our ammunition and
+arms--of which defensive stuff we could not well afford to spare the
+smallest part.
+
+And El Sabio, after Pablo had made a long explanation of the case to
+him, and had told him precisely what we expected him to do--to all of
+which he listened gravely and with an astonishing air of comprehending
+what was said to him--seemed to enter into the spirit of the situation,
+and to try his very best to meet its requirements. It is a puzzle to me
+to this day how El Sabio managed to shrink himself so that we got him
+through that narrow hole; but he certainly did manage it--and then went
+down the stone stair-way backward, as though he had been trained to be a
+trick donkey from his youth up. When the feat was accomplished, and he
+stood safely out in the cañon, the expressions of love, and of
+congratulation upon his cleverness, which Pablo lavished upon him were
+enough to have turned completely a less serious-minded donkey's head.
+
+Such of our stores as we were compelled to leave behind us, including
+our saddles, and the pack-saddles, and all the heavier portion of our
+camp equipage, we heaped in one corner of the cave and piled rocks
+over; and then we turned our poor horses and the mules loose in the
+cañon, feeling certain that their instinct would lead them out to the
+valley in search of food. It went to our hearts to know that these good
+beasts of ours were doomed to hard service under Indian masters to the
+end of their days.
+
+All being thus in readiness for our advance, we went down the stair-way
+beneath the swinging statue, and from beneath pulled out the piece of
+rock which propped up the great mass of stone. With a heavy jar it fell
+and closed the passage-way, and we prepared to start. Just then Fray
+Antonio remembered that he had left on a ledge in the cave--that we had
+used as a shelf for the storage of various small matters during our
+sojourn there--a little volume that he dearly loved: the _Meditations of
+Thomas à Kempis_. He was full of remorse for his forgetfulness, and did
+not ask that we should turn back to get his book for him; yet his
+distress over the loss of it was so evident that we had not the heart to
+go on.
+
+"It will take only ten minutes to go back," said Rayburn, and as he
+spoke he ran up the stair-way and set his shoulders to sway up the
+stone. In a moment he called: "Just come here, Young, and help, will
+you? It don't work as easily from this side." But even with Young's help
+the stone did not move. Then the rest of us joined these two, and all
+five of us together pushed with all our strength--and the stone did not
+yield by so much as the breadth of a hair! And then rather a queer look
+came into Rayburn's face, and he said: "I think that I understand what
+is the matter. The point of leverage falls beyond the edge of the hole.
+From where we have a chance to push, we are working against the whole
+weight of the stone. We might as well try to lift the mountain itself!"
+And then he added, "I guess we'd better give this thing up and start."
+
+Very curious feelings were in our breasts as we picked up our packs and
+set off along the cañon; for we knew that by that way only could we go,
+and that, no matter what was ahead of us, our retreat was cut off.
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+THE SUBMERGED CITY.
+
+
+A sweet, warm wind blew in our faces as we set off along the cañon; the
+sun shone joyously upon us, and there was that fresh, tingling quality
+in the air that is peculiar to regions high above the level of the sea.
+In spite of the fact that the way behind us was irrevocably barred, and
+that no matter what dangers were ahead of us we had no option but to
+face them, our spirits were strong within us, and we went blithely on
+our way. Young, who was in advance, began to whistle "Yankee Doodle";
+and presently, from the rear of our procession, where Pablo walked
+beside the heavily laden El Sabio, there broke forth a mouth-organ
+accompaniment to this spirited melody.
+
+The bed of the cañon, through which a little stream ran, fell away
+before us along a slight down grade; which descent, since we found also
+a good foot-way beside the stream, made walking comparatively easy
+notwithstanding our heavy back-loads. Now and then our way would be
+barred by masses of rock fallen from above, and by whole trees blown
+down from their insecure roothold on the rocky cliffs; and twice we came
+to steep descents which would have given us trouble had we not brought
+along the ropes wherewith our packs had been bound. Shifting El Sabio
+down these places was our hardest task; but with the ropes, and the
+intelligent part that he took in the performance, we managed it
+successfully.
+
+So we went on for half a dozen miles or more through the windings of the
+cañon, but keeping all the while a sharp lookout ahead--for in the mouth
+of this end of the cañon, supposing it to open as at the other end upon
+a grassy valley, we well enough might come upon an Indian camp. And that
+we had come upon such a camp we felt quite sure when, late in the
+afternoon, Rayburn signalled us from his advanced position--he having
+gone to the head of the line in Young's place--to stand still until he
+should reconnoitre a little. Being thus halted, we unslung our rifles
+and loosed our pistols in their holsters, so that we might be ready in
+case fighting suddenly should begin; and Rayburn went on around a turn
+in the cañon, and for a while we lost sight of him.
+
+Presently he returned and signalled us to join him, but to move
+cautiously. When we came up with him he led us to the bend in the cañon,
+and there a broad view opened to us; for the cañon suddenly widened
+into a great valley, that was everywhere, so far as we could see,
+surrounded by walls of rock almost perpendicular and vastly high. In the
+bottom of the valley was a broad expanse of delectably green
+meadow-land, broken here and there by groves of trees; and in the
+valley's middle part, reaching from side to side of it, was a lovely
+lake, whereof the blue was flecked by white reflections of certain
+little idly drifting clouds: the sight of all which greenness and fair
+water and broad range of sky--after being for so long a season pent up
+in rocky fastnesses and wandering over brown, sun-baked plains--fairly
+brought tears into my eyes because of its fresh and open loveliness. And
+in the tender feeling that thus stirred my heart, as I could see in the
+quick glance that he gave me, Fray Antonio also keenly sympathized; for
+his nature was very open at all times to such gentle influences.
+
+But Rayburn and Young, as was evident from their anxious looks, were
+thinking only of the dangers which this lovely valley might hold in
+store for us; for the shore of the lake nearest to us had many houses
+built upon it, and we could see faintly, for the width of the lake was
+nearly two miles, that there were other houses upon its farther shore.
+Standing hidden behind a rock, Rayburn examined the valley carefully
+through a field-glass for a long while.
+
+"I must say this place beats me," he said at last, as he put the glass
+down from his eyes. "There's no doubt about there being a town down
+there; but I can't make out a sign of a single living thing. And what
+is still queerer, the houses seem to go right down into the lake. If
+you'll take the glass, Professor, you'll see that a few of them, on this
+side, stand all right on dry ground; and then, farther down the sloping
+bank, are a lot in the water; and beyond these there seem to be some
+roofs just showing above the level of the lake. And as far as I can make
+out, things are just the same over on the far shore. It looks as if the
+lake had risen after the town was built."
+
+As I looked through the glass I saw that what Rayburn had said was true;
+and I observed with much interest that many of the houses were large,
+and that all seemed to be well built of stone. Their construction
+reminded me of the buildings which M. Charnay examined at Tula, and I
+was eager to get down to them and examine them closely. Young and Fray
+Antonio took the glass, in turn, and as none of us saw any signs of life
+in the valley, we decided to go on. And we were mightily stimulated in
+this resolve by finding, just at the end of the cañon, where the sharp
+descent began, a graving of the King's symbol on the rock, with the
+arrow pointing directly down the steep path.
+
+"Here's a walled city, for sure," said Young; "and if this is where th'
+treasure-house is, we won't raise a row because th' folks have gone off
+an' left it. Just whoop up that burro of yours, Pablo, an' let's be
+gettin' along. It's a pity we had t' leave th' mules behind. If th'
+treasure's in silver, we can't get away with much of it with nothin' but
+El Sabio t' pack it on."
+
+Pablo did not understand this speech, of course, but he recognized his
+own name and the name of El Sabio, and Young's gestures helped out the
+meaning of his words. Therefore Pablo grinned, and "whooped up" El
+Sabio; and we all set off briskly down the steep decline.
+
+Presently we found our way much easier than we had been led to expect by
+its rough beginning. As we advanced along it there was ample evidence
+that the path had been graded and smoothed by the hand of man. In
+several places it was carried on a terrace supported by a well-laid
+retaining wall; a deep crevice was spanned by long slabs of stone, so
+placed as to form a bridge; and where it turned sharply around a high
+shoulder of rock, the face of the cliff had been quarried away. Yet that
+this all had been done in a very remote time was shown by the fragments
+of rock which had fallen into it here and there, and which were
+blackened by age. "The same fellow who set that statue in place probably
+was in charge here," was Rayburn's comment, "and he was a first-rate
+engineer. I wish I knew how he managed to swing those stone slabs over
+that crevice. There's no room there to set up a derrick, and it would
+puzzle me to set blocks like that without one."
+
+And Rayburn's admiration for the professional skill of this engineer of
+a long past age was still further excited when the path came fairly into
+the valley, and thence was carried downward along the gentle slope
+towards the lake, by a perfectly even two-per-cent. grade, over a broad
+way paved smoothly with squared blocks of stone. And Fray Antonio and I
+were much interested in this work also, for we both perceived the
+identity of its structure with the paved way that is found on the east
+coast of Yucatan, and that is continued on the island of Cozumel.
+
+By this paved avenue we entered the city--for, as we presently found, it
+was entitled to this more dignified name. The first houses that we came
+to were but small buildings enclosing a single room--such as are found,
+inhabited by working-people, on the outskirts of any Mexican city at the
+present day. They were silent and deserted; but they gave, at first
+sight, the impression of being but momentarily abandoned, for the
+belongings of their owners still remained in them as though the
+every-day affairs of life still went on within their walls. In the first
+that we entered we found an earthen pot still standing on a sort of
+fireplace, and beside the fireplace a little pile of charcoal. There was
+a fragment of bone in the pot, and beneath it were some scraps of
+charcoal which remained unconsumed. It was as though cooking had been
+going on here but an hour before. Rayburn even put his hand into the
+ashes to feel if they still were warm. But closer investigation gave us
+a juster notion of the long lapse of time that must have occurred since
+any fire had burned upon this hearth. In one corner of the room we found
+a pile of mats, but on touching these they crumbled into fragments in
+our hands; and the bone in the pot was so dry and so porous that it was
+light as cork.
+
+As in this first house that we examined, so was it in all of them. All,
+at the first glance, seemed to have been but a moment before deserted;
+but all had signs about them which showed that they had been abandoned
+for a very long time. In one we found a loom--in construction very like
+that which the Navajo Indians use at the present day--on which hung,
+partly completed, a sheer filament that once had been some sort of heavy
+woollen cloth. In another, a cotton garment was lying carelessly upon a
+shelf, as though but a moment before cast aside; yet, as I tried to pick
+it up, it crumbled between my fingers into a fine powder.
+
+Of humanity, the only sign that we found anywhere about this grim and
+desert place was the dried, shrivelled remnant of a woman that we came
+upon in an upper room of one of the larger houses farther on. She was
+lying upon a bed of mats, partly turned upon her side, and one arm was
+stretched out towards an earthen cup that stood just beyond her reach
+upon the floor. There was strong pathos in the action of the figure, for
+it told of the keen thirst of fever--of weakness so extreme that the
+inch or two between the hand and the cup was a gulf impassable--of a
+moaning struggle after the water so longed for--and then, at last, of
+death in that utter and desolate loneliness. And what added to the
+ghastliness of it all was that a thin ray of sunlight, coming through a
+crevice in the wall, struck upon the woman's teeth--whence the lips had
+dried away--and by its gleaming there made on her face a smile.
+
+As we came close to the lake, we perceived, as Rayburn already had
+discerned by the aid of the glass, that houses, partially submerged,
+actually rose from the water, and that houses of which only the roofs
+were visible were farther on. That this whole valley was the crater of
+an extinct volcano was sufficiently evident; and we could only surmise
+that in later times some fresh cataclysm of nature had poured suddenly
+into it a vast body of water, and so had submerged the city that had
+been builded here. Whatever had brought about the catastrophe, it
+evidently had come with a most appalling suddenness. Everywhere the
+condition of the houses showed how hastily they had been abandoned; and
+the wild hurry of flight was shown still more clearly in the case of the
+woman--whose surroundings gave evidence that she had been a person of
+consequence--deserted in her age or infirmity and left lonely to die.
+
+Young's face wore a melancholy expression as we stood upon the shore of
+the lake, and looked out across it towards the faintly seen western
+shore. "If this is th' place we're huntin' for," he said, "I guess our
+treasure stock is pretty badly watered, unless somebody's had th' sense
+t' keep th' treasure dry over on th' other side. We'd better move over
+there, I reckon, an' take a look for it, especially as we've got t' go
+that way anyhow in order t' get out. There ought t' be some sort of a
+path around th' lake, between th' edge of th' water and th' cliffs."
+
+But when we came to examine into this matter we found that there was no
+path at all. On each side of the valley the walls of rock rose directly
+from the water, sharp and sheer.
+
+"Well," said Rayburn, when we had finished our inspection, "we've got
+to get across somehow. I guess we'll have to sail in, the first thing
+to-morrow morning, and build a raft. These pine-trees down here by the
+water will cut easy and float well, and there's some comfort in that,
+anyway. But what I'm after right now is my supper."
+
+Pablo already had started a fire, having first unpacked El Sabio, that
+he might refresh himself by rolling on the soft, green grass and by
+eating his fill of it, and Young presently had some ham fried and some
+coffee boiled. We had counted upon having fresh meat for supper that
+night, for there was everything in the look of the valley to promise
+that we would find game there; but, so far, not a four-footed thing nor
+a bird had we seen, nor even signs of fish in the lake.
+
+In the morning we got out the axes and went to work at the building of
+the raft; and, notwithstanding what Rayburn had said in regard to the
+ease of cutting them, I must confess that for my part I found the
+cutting of pine-trees very wearying and painful. My hands were blistered
+by it, and the muscles of my back were made extremely sore by it for
+several days. Indeed, the construction of a raft big enough to float us
+all, and our heavy packs, and El Sabio, was a serious undertaking. We
+spent two days and a half over it, and I never in my life was more
+thankful for anything than I was when at last that wretched raft was
+done. As Young observed, as he regarded our finished work critically,
+there was no style about it--for it was only a lot of rough logs, of
+which the upper and lower layers ran fore and aft and the middle layer
+transversely, the whole bound together by our pack-ropes--but it was
+large enough for our purposes, and it was solid and strong.
+
+In the late afternoon we carried our belongings on board of it, and
+Pablo succeeded by dint of much entreaty in inducing El Sabio to board
+it also, and we pushed off from shore. For driving the clumsy thing
+forward we had made four rough paddles, which well enough served our
+purposes, for there was no current whatever in the lake and the air was
+still.
+
+[Illustration: AFLOAT ON THE LAKE]
+
+As we went onward we discovered how considerable the city was that here
+lay submerged. Through the perfectly clear water we could see to a great
+depth, and beneath us in every direction were paved streets, lined with
+houses well built of stone. Near the centre of the valley the size of
+the houses greatly increased, and the fashion of their building was more
+stately; and fronting upon a great open square in the very centre of the
+city was a building of such extraordinary size that we took it to be the
+palace of a king; but here the water was so deep that we could make out
+but faintly the looming far below us of its mighty walls. Never have I
+been more pained than I then was; for in that place I found myself close
+to making discoveries of surpassing archæological value, and yet I was
+as completely cut off from them as though they had no existence.
+
+Just beyond the palace, as we went onward, our raft almost touched the
+roof of a noble building that stood upon the top of a vast pyramidal
+mound, the base of which we could see but dimly far down through the
+waters of the lake. This, evidently, had been the chief temple of the
+city; and as we passed over it and came to its eastern side, we had
+ghastly and certain proof of the terrible suddenness with which the city
+had been overwhelmed. On the broad terrace before the temple was the
+sacrificial stone, and upon this dark mass we saw distinctly the
+gleaming of human bones; and as we peered down into the water we
+perceived that all the terrace was strewn thickly with human bones also,
+showing that when the rush of water came many thousands of human beings
+had here perished miserably. For a little while, no doubt, all the
+surface of the water round about where we were had been dotted thickly
+with the bodies of the drowned which had floated upward; and then, one
+by one, they had sunk again to the place where death first found
+them--where their flesh wasted away from them until only their gleaming
+bones remained.
+
+I pictured to myself the dreadful scene that once had passed, down there
+below us, where now was only the calm serenity of ancient death: the
+great crowd collected to witness the sacrifice, and then the sudden
+coming of the waters--possibly so quickly that the victim, held down by
+the neck-yoke upon the sacrificial stone, was drowned ere there was time
+to slay him. This great mound would be the last of all to be covered,
+and the wretched people gathered there must have seen their city
+disappear beneath the waters before death came to them. No doubt they
+thought themselves safe in that high place, made sacred by the presence
+of their gods. And when the water did reach them, what a writhing and
+struggling there must have been for a little while; what a crushing of
+the weak by the strong in mad efforts to gain even a moment's safety
+upon some higher standing-place! And then, at last, the water rose
+triumphant in its swelling majesty over all--and beneath its placid
+surface were hid the silenced terrors of all that commotion of mortal
+agony, whereof the outcome was the peaceful and eternal calm of death.
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+IN THE VALLEY OF DEATH.
+
+
+As the raft approached the western shore of the lake we perceived
+beneath us no longer houses, but large walled enclosures which plainly
+had been gardens of pleasure--for gaunt trees, symmetrically planted in
+groves and beside stone-paved path-ways, yet stood in them; and seats of
+carved stone were placed in what once had been shaded nooks; and in many
+of the gardens were carved stone fountains of elegant design. Between
+the city and what once had been its charming suburb extended a broad
+paved way, like that which we had found upon the eastern shore; and this
+paved way was continued on the dry ground above the present level of the
+lake towards the cliffs westward. On the high western shore were a few
+houses, large and handsome, and having walled gardens around them,
+which evidently had belonged to persons of great wealth and consequence.
+
+In these we found shadowy remnants of a past magnificence. On many of
+the walls were hangings, once rich and heavy, that now were mere films
+of ghostly stuff held together by the many gold threads which had been
+woven into their fabric. Pottery, wrought into beautiful shapes, yet
+ornamented with designs that told of but half-redeemed barbarism, was
+scattered about everywhere, and scarcely a piece was broken. Some very
+handsome weapons we found also--swords and spears and knives--of the
+same curious metal as the sword which Pablo so opportunely had laid
+hands upon in the cañon, but far more finely finished and more delicate
+in design. And of this same metal was made a great throne, as it seemed
+to us to be, that was in the largest room of the finest of all the
+houses; a house that we believed was once the pleasure palace of the
+king. The audience-chamber in which this throne stood was of finely
+wrought stone-work, whereof the whole surface was covered with
+low-reliefs of men and animals--scenes of battle, of council, and of the
+chase--surrounded by curious tracery of such orderly design that Fray
+Antonio agreed with me in the belief that it was some sort of
+hieroglyphic writing. But this matter is treated of so fully in my
+_Pre-Columbian Conditions on the Continent of North America_ that I need
+not enter upon discussion of it here.
+
+But in none of these houses, much to the disappointment of Rayburn and
+Young, did we find any scrap of the treasure for which they so
+earnestly longed. And, truly, if treasure remained in this wrecked city,
+it was less likely to be in these outlying country houses than in some
+strong building in the city's heart; and so beyond their reach in the
+depths of the lake. If this were indeed the walled city for which we
+were searching--as well it might be, for never was a city surrounded by
+grander walls than the mighty cliffs wherewith the valley was
+encompassed--our search was like to be a vain one so far as mere
+treasure was concerned; though I, for my part, felt myself well repaid
+for all that I had thus far suffered by the discovery of so much that
+was of archæological value. In this purer pleasure Fray Antonio shared;
+yet was he also dissatisfied--for he had come with us that he might
+preach Christianity to living souls: and here were only the bones of
+countless dead.
+
+The paved way still led westward, and we followed it--for to the
+westward must be the valley's outlet. As it rose to a higher level the
+way widened; and on each side of it was a stone statue of the god
+Chac-Mool. As we came to these statues Young proceeded, in a most
+business-like way, and with no apparent appreciation of the queer figure
+that he cut, to sit down in turn on each of their heads. And he was
+mightily disappointed when he found that neither of them stirred.
+"They're not th' tippin' kind," he said, ruefully, as he got down from
+the head of the second one and looked at it with an expression of
+reproach.
+
+But his countenance brightened, when we had gone a little farther, as he
+caught sight of another and much larger statue of the god that was set
+in a great niche cut in the cliff at the end of the paved way. To
+prepare here the god's abiding-place very arduous labor had been
+undertaken. For a space fully one hundred feet high and as many broad
+the whole face of the cliff had been quarried into; making a deep recess
+that was rounded above, and that from beneath was approached by a long
+flight of steps cut from the solid rock. In the centre of the recess,
+upon the terraced space above the stairs, was a huge squared mass of
+stone, on which the great stone figure of Chac-Mool rested. The opening
+faced directly eastward, and as we approached it the stone figure was
+seen but indistinctly in the duskiness of the recess, over which, and
+far beyond which into the valley, fell the shadow of the mighty cliff.
+From in front of this great altar all the valley was open to us; and
+hence, before the lake swallowed it, every part of the city must have
+been clearly visible in ancient times. As we mounted the steps and
+approached the idol I observed that Pablo hung back a little; as though
+in the depths of his nature some chord had been touched, some ancient
+instinct in his blood aroused, that filled his soul with awe.
+
+Certainly there was no suggestion of awe in Young's demeanor towards the
+statue. With a monkey-like quickness, that I would not have given his
+stout legs and heavy body credit for, he climbed upon the altar and
+plumped himself down on the head of the figure almost in a moment. But
+again he was disappointed, for the idol did not stir. As we examined it
+closely we perceived that its fixedness was not unreasonable; for the
+figure, and the altar on which it rested, were one solid mass of rock
+that itself was a part of the cliff--left standing here when the niche
+around it was hollowed out. A very prodigious piece of stone-cutting all
+this was, and as I contemplated it I was filled with admiration of the
+skill of them who had achieved it. But Young came down from the idol
+moodily; and he said that the way these people had of playing tricks on
+travellers, by making Mullinses that didn't tip when they ought to tip,
+was quite of a piece with their putting their treasure where it couldn't
+be got at without a diving-bell.
+
+Behind the altar the niche was cut into the cliff so far that the depths
+of it in the waning daylight were dusky with heavy shadows; indeed, so
+dense were these that Young came near to breaking his bones by falling
+into a little hole in the floor, that was the less easily seen because
+it was hidden behind a jutting mass of rock. But he caught the rock in
+time to save himself from falling, and eagerly struck a wax-match that
+he might see if here were a passage-way for us. Descending into the rock
+was a stair-way, the steps whereof were smoothed as though many feet had
+trodden them; and down these steps he promptly went, holding the lighted
+match before him--these Mexican wax-matches are as good as tapers--and
+having with him the full box of matches should further light be
+required. A minute later we heard his voice calling to us, but where it
+came from we could not tell--for he had descended into the rock below
+us, and the sound that we heard seemed to come from the air above.
+While we listened we saw the gleam of the light in the darkness below,
+and then he came up the stair laughing.
+
+"Well, that's just th' boss trick," he said. "I guess th' old priests
+who used t' run this place would be everlastin'ly down on me if they
+knew that I'd tumbled to it. There's a hole right up into th' idol an'
+room inside of him for half a dozen men, an' there's a crack in his head
+that you can see out through while you're lettin' off prophecies an'
+that sort o' thing. Why, if you had a crowd t' work with who really
+believed in Jack Mullins, you could set 'em up for almost anything with
+a rig like that!"
+
+But this curious discovery, in which Fray Antonio and I were deeply
+interested, did not forward our immediate purpose, which was to find a
+way out of the valley. We still cherished a faint hope, indeed, that we
+might find the King's symbol with the arrow pointing the way onward, and
+so be assured that the city buried in the depths of the lake was not the
+city of which we were in search. But in any event the need for getting
+out of the valley pressed upon us; and that we might accomplish our
+deliverance from this shut-in place, we examined closely the whole
+circuit of the cliffs at the western end. Not an inch of this great
+expanse of rock, for as far up the wall as our eyes could see clearly,
+escaped our attentive observation; yet nowhere was there, even by bold
+climbing, a place where the cliff might be scaled, still less an open
+path. And so, having walked slowly along the bottom of the cliffs to
+the edge of the lake on the north, and there turned upon our steps and
+come slowly back again to where we started from, and having made a like
+double journey of inspection to and from the edge of the lake to the
+south, we came at last to our first point of departure, and rested
+before the statue of Chac-Mool, disconsolate.
+
+One discovery we had made in the course of our explorations which
+enabled us to understand how the fate that had overtaken the drowned
+city had fallen upon it. Close by the northern border of the valley we
+saw, high up above us, a vast rift more than a thousand feet wide in the
+face of the cliff; and below this the ground was torn into a deep wild
+channel, and everywhere huge fragments of rock were scattered over the
+ground. Here it was, then, that the water had poured in--bursting forth
+from a lake above--by which the city at one stroke had been overwhelmed.
+Some little notice, by the mighty roaring that must have accompanied so
+great a crash of rocks and so vast a rush of water, the dwellers in the
+city must have had; and the gleam of the pouring waters would have shown
+them the nature of the ruin that was upon them. There would have been
+time, before the water was waist-deep in the city streets, for them to
+make their way to the high mound on which their temple stood; and in the
+appalling horror of it all they might have clamored to their priests
+that a victim should be sacrificed to stay this terrible outburst of
+anger on the part of their gods. But it was more than likely that before
+the sacrifice could be completed they all--people, priests, and he who
+was to be sacrificed--perished together beneath the flood.
+
+"Why," said Young, "th' Mill River disaster wasn't anything to it, an'
+that was pretty bad. I was runnin' th' way-freight on th' Old Colony
+road when that happened, an' I took a day off an' went up an' had a look
+at it. But this just lays that little horror out cold. It's as big as
+lettin' loose on Boston the whole of Massachusetts Bay."
+
+That we should be prisoners in a place where death had wrought so
+swiftly such tremendous havoc was quite enough to fill our souls with a
+brooding melancholy. But in addition to the sombre thoughts which thus
+were forced upon us, bred of sorrow for the thousands who had here
+untimely perished, the gloomy dread of a more practical sort assailed us
+that we also in a little while would join the silent company of the
+thousands who had died here in a long past time. And the death that
+seemed to be in store for us was less merciful than that which had come
+to them. Theirs had been a short struggle, and then a gentle ending as
+the waters closed over them. But our ending was like to be a lingering
+one and miserable--by starvation.
+
+With the loss of our mules and horses we had been compelled to leave
+behind us the greater portion of our stores; and for our protection
+against savages, and in the belief that in the mountains we should meet
+with an abundance of game, we had left almost all of our provisions, and
+made our lading mainly of ammunition and arms. But in this valley, so
+smiling and so beautiful, there was no live thing except ourselves. Not
+a beast, not a bird had we seen since we entered it; and in the lake, as
+we found presently, there were no fish; the only sign that animal life
+ever had existed here was that dried and withered remnant of a woman
+that we had found in the deserted house, and the bones which we had seen
+gleaming below us in the lake. This was, in truth, as we came thus to
+call it, the Valley of Death.
+
+While we worked at building the raft we had not thought to be sparing in
+our eating--for building that raft was hungry work--and now that
+consideration of the matter was forced upon us, we found that we had
+with us food barely sufficient for three days. We could, of course, eat
+El Sabio--though such was our feeling towards that excellent animal that
+eating him would be almost like eating one of ourselves; and Pablo, we
+knew, would regard eating this dear friend of his as neither more nor
+less than sheer cannibalism. And even if we did eat El Sabio, the meat
+of his little body would but prolong our lives for a week, or possibly
+for two weeks more. And what then?
+
+Had there been room in our souls for yet more sorrow, we could have had
+it in the thought that in all that we had set out to do we had
+completely failed. If this Valley of Death were indeed the place that we
+had been seeking, little good came to us from finding it. Of the souls
+which Fray Antonio had come forth to save, here there were none. Of
+archæological discovery, truly, I had something to make me glad; yet
+little compared to what was hidden beneath the waters; and even this
+little, since knowledge of what I had found soon must die with me, was
+of no avail. As for Rayburn and Young, the treasure which they sought
+might or might not be near at hand; but they certainly could no more
+come at it than, were it heaped up before them, they could carry it
+away. And most of all was my heart troubled by the fate that was like to
+overtake Pablo because of his love for me. Bitterly I blamed myself for
+permitting the boy to come with me; for I should have foreseen that a
+hundred chances might intervene to render impossible my intention to
+give him his free choice to go or to stay when the decisive
+turning-point in our adventure came. In point of fact, one of these
+chances had intervened; and the attack upon us that the Indians had
+made, and the closing of the passage in the rock behind us that rendered
+return impossible, had forced him to remain with us without voice of his
+own in the matter; and now would bring him, as it would bring the rest
+of us, to the most horrible death of which a man can die.
+
+Night was falling as we ended our search along the cliffs for a way of
+escape, and found none, and so came again in front of the great
+idol--where our packs had been left heaped up, and where the Wise One,
+happily unmindful of the fate that might soon be in store for him, was
+energetically cropping the rich grass. We built a fire, for the air in
+that deep valley, mingling with the mists rising from the lake, was damp
+and chill; and beside the fire we made our evening meal. There was no
+good in talking about what was so apparent to all of us; but Young, who
+was our cook, showed his appreciation of the situation practically by
+serving only half rations and by making our coffee very thin and poor.
+
+Silently we ate our short allowance of food; and thereafter we smoked
+our pipes with but little talk for seasoning, and that little of a
+melancholy sort. Of our own plight we did not speak at all, but in what
+we said there was constantly a reflection of the bitter sorrow with
+which all our hearts were charged. I remember that Young, who truly was
+as merry a man naturally as ever I knew, told us that night only of
+dreadful railroad accidents--of wrecks in which men lay crushed among
+the heaped-up cars, shrieking with the agony of their hurts; and then
+shrieking with dread, and with yet greater pain as the fire that seized
+upon the ruin around them came nearer and nearer until they fairly were
+roasted alive. And Rayburn told of a prospecting party besieged by
+Indians upon a mountain peak in Colorado; how, one by one, they slowly
+died in a raving horror of thirst until one man alone was left; and how
+this one man prolonged his life until rescue came by drinking the blood
+of his own body, and yet died in raging madness almost at the moment
+that he was saved.
+
+For myself, I had nothing to add to these horrors; yet such was my frame
+of mind that I found a certain bitter gladness in listening to the
+telling of them, and in tracing between them and our own case the
+ghastly parallel. In our talk, which wont on in English, Fray Antonio
+took no part; but he could follow well enough the meaning of it in our
+tones. On his face was an expression of tender melancholy that seemed to
+me to tell of sorrow for us rather than of dread of what might be in
+store for himself; and that this truly was his mood was shown when the
+others paused, sated and appalled by the horrors which they had conjured
+up, and he spoke at last.
+
+It was not a sermon that Fray Antonio gave us; but out of the abundant
+store of faith by which he himself was sustained he strove to comfort us
+with thoughts of better things than life can give. And with the promise
+of hope that he held out to us with the solemn authority that was vested
+in him by reason of the service to which he was vowed, he mingled a
+certain yearning for us, very moving, that came of the love and the
+tender gentleness that were in his own heart. And yet, though he knew
+that, excepting Pablo, we all were heretics according to his own creed,
+there was no word of doctrine in all of his discourse. Rather was what
+he said a simple setting forth of that primitive Christianity which has
+its beginning and its ending in a simple faith in an all-pervading,
+all-protecting love. And of this love, as it seemed to me, he himself
+was the human embodiment. Looking in his gentle face, which yet had such
+high courage, such noble resolution in it, I felt that in him the spirit
+of the saints and martyrs of long past ages lived again.
+
+With our souls soothed and strengthened by what Fray Antonio had spoken
+to us, we lay down at last to sleep; yet was it impossible for us to
+drive out from our hearts that natural sadness which men must feel who
+know that they have failed in a strong effort to accomplish a project
+very dear to them, and who know also that they are standing upon the
+very threshold of a most tormenting death.
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+UP THE CHAC-MOOL STAIR.
+
+
+We awoke the next morning at the very moment that the sun rose above the
+mountain peaks to the eastward; and our waking was due in part to the
+sunshine striking upon our faces, but more to the prodigious braying,
+that echoed thunderously from the cliffs around us, with which El Sabio
+welcomed the advent of the god of day.
+
+"It is a good sign, señor," said Pablo, "when El Sabio brays thus nobly
+at sunrise. He does not do it often, but when he does I know beyond a
+doubt that I am to have a lucky day."
+
+"An' I must say," Young struck in, "that for a man who expects t' have
+t' eat his boots in th' course of a day or two I'm feelin' this mornin'
+most uncommonly chipper myself. For one thing, I mean t' have another
+look around that idol. I'm not at all sure that he's not th' tippin'-up
+kind. Maybe we didn't put enough weight on him yesterday; or he may do
+his tippin' up from th' other end. Anyhow, I'm goin' t' have another
+whack at him as soon as I've eat my breakfast; an' that's a performance
+that won't take long t' get through with, considerin' how thunderin'
+little there is t' eat."
+
+Truly, the eating of our breakfast did not consume much time; and, so
+short did Young make our rations, I am not sure that we were not
+hungrier at the end of it than we were at its beginning. When we
+finished, the sun was still low in the east; and the bright rays struck
+full upon the statue of Chac-Mool, on the great stone altar, and into
+the depths of the niche that had been hollowed behind it in the face of
+the cliff. We observed that the idol was so placed that the very first
+rays of the sun, coming through a cleft between two great peaks to the
+eastward, shone brightly upon it, while yet all the rest of the valley
+save the cliff above the niche remained in shade.
+
+With the strong sunlight deeply penetrating it, the recess behind the
+altar no longer was filled with the black shadows that had obscured it
+on the previous afternoon; and even the hole into which Young so nearly
+had fallen was plainly visible. Taking advantage of the better light,
+the lost-freight agent--who certainly had found a fitting berth in that
+department of railway service, for such a man for hunting for things,
+and for finding them, I never came across--made a more careful
+examination of the deeper portion of the recess, and presently he gave a
+shout that told of a discovery.
+
+As we gathered around him he pointed in great excitement to a row of
+metal pegs, which were fixed in the rock one above the other,
+diagonally; and then to the point in the roof of the recess towards
+which these pegs tended. Even with the strong light that now aided us
+it was some time before I could make out among the black shadows of the
+roof a small opening; but the longer that I looked at it the more
+distinct it grew.
+
+"We've struck th' trail once more," Young cried. "We've struck it sure.
+It don't look promisin', but here it is--for if this ain't th' King's
+symbol carved right by th' first of these pegs, then you're all at
+liberty t' kick me right smack over th' top of that idol for a d----n
+fool! Hurrah!"
+
+Pablo could not understand what Young was saying, but it was easy to
+perceive from his gestures the nature of the happy discovery that he had
+made. In a tone in which deference and triumph were curiously blended,
+Pablo said to me: "Did I not tell you, señor, that a good thing always
+happens when El Sabio brays at the rising sun?"
+
+Before Pablo had ended this short but exultant deliverance, Young was
+half-way up to the roof of the cave, treading gingerly upon the metal
+bolts and testing each one before he trusted his weight to it. In a
+couple of minutes he reached the roof and disappeared through the hole;
+and almost instantly he called down to us: "We're solid--here's a
+regular staircase. Come along!"
+
+We followed him promptly enough; while our hearts thrilled, and all our
+bodies trembled, with the gladness that possessed us as we found this
+way opening to us from the valley wherein we had thought that surely we
+must die. In a little chamber, cut in the rock above the opening into
+which the ladder of bolts led us, Young was waiting for us; and from
+this chamber a spiral stair-way ascended that was dimly lighted by
+crevices cut from it out to the face of the cliff. With Young leading
+us, up this we went; at first rapidly, but, later, slowly and wearily,
+for it seemed as though the stair would never end. Yet though our bodies
+were heavy our spirits were very light; for we knew by the wearisome
+length of it that the stair must lead to the very top of the towering
+cliffs by which we had believed ourselves to be irrevocably shut in. And
+at last there was a gleaming of light above us; and this grew stronger
+and stronger until we came out with a shout of joy into the glad
+sunlight--and saw far below us the valley that we once more thought
+beautiful, now that it no longer held us fast.
+
+In the depth below us we could discern El Sabio, looking no bigger then
+a rabbit; and he must have caught the sound of our shouting with those
+long ears of his, for there came up to us faintly from him an answering
+bray.
+
+"It's pretty hard lines on that jackass," said Young, "leaving him
+behind down there. But he might be left in a worse place, after all."
+
+I could perceive that Pablo was stirred by uneasy thoughts of the
+separation that now so clearly must take place between him and his dear
+friend; and he looked wistfully along the path across the mountain to
+the westward--cut and smoothed so that it was an easy path to go on--and
+evidently thought how simple a matter it would be for El Sabio to travel
+on with us if only once he were up the stair. But he did not speak, and
+I hoped that he was nerving himself to bear manfully this sore trial.
+For the rest of us, we had but one thought: to get our packs up the
+stair-way as quickly as possible--and at its quickest this work would be
+slowly and painfully done--and then once more go forward. Just as we
+turned to descend again an eagle came sailing slowly towards
+us--evidently without fear of us--and Rayburn was so fortunate as to
+bring him down with a pistol-shot. We tossed him over the edge of the
+cliff; and a famous breakfast we made on him when we returned into the
+valley again. I can't say that I would have much stomach for so dirty a
+bird now, but I certainly did think that eagle most delicious eating
+then.
+
+The hearty meal that we made on him strengthened us mightily, and we
+went to work with a will at getting our traps up the stair. With our
+pack-ropes we hauled the various articles first into the little room at
+the stair-foot, and then toilsomely carried them to the heights above.
+Saving only that this work did not blister my hands, it was worse than
+the building of the raft had been; and all of us, using in climbing and
+in descending the stair certain muscles which normally are not brought
+often into play, found our legs so stiff and sore for the next day or
+two that walking gave us very lively pain.
+
+It was as this heavy work went slowly forward that Pablo said to me,
+speaking in an insinuating and deprecating tone: "Up a stair such as
+this is, señior, the Wise One would bound like a deer."
+
+I did not call in question Pablo's simile, for I knew that the boy's
+heart must be very sad. Laying my hand kindly upon his shoulder, I
+answered in a way to show that I was truly sorry for him: "The Wise One
+will lead a happy life, Pablo, in this beautiful valley--where nothing
+can do him harm, and where he will have an abundance of water and of
+rich fresh grass. Up the stair no doubt he could climb, for he knows
+wonderfully well how to use those dainty little feet of his; but even
+the Wise One could not climb up the ladder of metal bolts. Therefore
+must thou strengthen thy heart against the bitterness of this parting
+from him; for even if thou wouldst stay behind with him it is not
+possible--for thou canst not live, like the Wise One, on water and
+grass."
+
+"But he is so little and so light an ass, señor," Pablo urged, "that
+surely, all of us pulling together, we could pull him up by the ropes,
+even as the other things have been pulled up; surely, surely, señor,
+that would be an easy thing for four men to do--and I also can pull at
+the ropes, señor, almost as well as any man."
+
+It did not seem to me that even all of us pulling together could sway El
+Sabio up a hundred feet through the air; but Pablo was so pitiful in his
+entreaties, and seemed so resolutely bent upon remaining behind in the
+valley and dying there with his dear friend rather than go on without
+him, that I opened the matter to Rayburn and joined my plea to Pablo's
+that this curious effort should be made. And in addition to the
+sentimental reason for taking the ass with us, I pointed out to
+Rayburn--as, indeed, he understood without my telling him--how
+practically valuable El Sabio was to us in helping us to bear our heavy
+loads. Rayburn thought with me that the dead lift of so considerable a
+weight to such a height, without tackle of any sort to help us, was
+impossible. But Young, who had an inventive strain in his composition,
+was of the opinion that he could set up such rough tackle as would
+answer our purpose; upon understanding which, Pablo at once embraced El
+Sabio and danced for joy.
+
+Young was, I think, the handiest man I ever knew. He had a natural
+genius for mechanics; and in the many years of his railroad life he had
+gained a knowledge of all manner of expedients by which the work of
+complicated machinery could be accomplished by very simple means. "When
+you have a freight smash-up right in the middle of the section," he
+said, "with nobody to help you inside of forty miles, and the express
+due to come bouncing down on you inside of two hours, you've just _got_
+to get things out of the way whether you've got anything to do it with
+or not. If I had the equipment of a first-class freight-cab here I'd
+yank that burro up inside of twenty minutes; and if I don't do it,
+anyway, inside of two hours I'll promise to eat him."
+
+I did not translate the whole of this speech to Pablo, for talk even in
+fun about eating El Sabio was rather a delicate matter, considering how
+close a shave that worthy animal had had to being eaten in dead earnest;
+but I did tell him that the Señor Young felt sure that he could swing El
+Sabio up through the air to where the stair began. And with Pablo--who
+also could use his hands well--most willingly helping, Young contrived
+in a surprisingly short time to make a rough windlass, that was
+effective enough for the work to be done with it, and to pull it up bit
+by bit into the chamber in the rock and there fit it together over the
+hole. El Sabio, being brought into the recess behind the idol, regarded
+us all with a doubting expression that even Pablo's repeated assurances
+that we meant well by him could not change into a look of trustfulness.
+Pablo declared, however, that in his heart of hearts the Wise One knew
+that we all were his friends, and that even though we should hurt him a
+little he would understand that it was for his good. And the conduct of
+the ass during the exceedingly bad half-hour that he then went through
+seemed fully to bear out Pablo's words. Around his small body, with
+stays running forward around his neck and aft to his tail, we rigged
+looped ropes--which ropes were gathered together above his back and
+there made fast to the line that was pendent from the windlass above.
+From time to time, as this operation was going forward, El Sabio turned
+his head upon one shoulder or the other and gazed with a wistful
+expression at what we were doing to him; and the slow shake that he gave
+his head, whereby his great ears were set to wagging mournfully, as he
+finished each of these inspections, betrayed the grave wonder that was
+within him as to what it all could mean, together with a not unnatural
+apprehension of what might be its ultimate outcome.
+
+By a good chance, the effect upon the Wise One of finding the solid
+earth drop suddenly from beneath his feet--when at last all was in
+readiness, and Young and Rayburn began to hoist away at the
+windlass--was to render him quite rigid with terror; and there was a
+most agonized look upon his face as he went sailing up through the air.
+Pablo, standing below with me, that we might steady the ass with a
+guy-rope during his ascent, addressed to him all manner of tender and
+comforting words; but for once the Wise One seemed to be insensible to
+his master's voice. Neither with his eyes nor his ears did he respond;
+and he well enough might have been taken for a dead ass going
+heavenward, but for the sharp twitchings of his tail. And when at last
+he was safely within the upper chamber, he fairly fell down upon the
+rocky floor of it in sheer exhaustion begot of fright. It was not until
+we had passed up a bucket of water to him, whereof he drank the very
+last drop, and had been soothed by Pablo's fondling of him and by
+Pablo's gentle words, that his broken spirit revived. And so limp and
+weak was he that it was a long while before we could in conscience urge
+him to ascend the stair. When at last he set himself to this
+undertaking, he was far from accomplishing it in the bounding and
+deer-like manner that Pablo had promised for him; but he certainly did
+at last get to the top--which was all that was required of him--and
+there drank gratefully the bucketful of water that Pablo had carried up
+that great height for his comforting when his toilsome climbing should
+end. And Pablo went down into the valley once more that night in order
+to bring back to his friend a hearty supper of rich grass.
+
+[Illustration: EL SABIO'S PREDICAMENT]
+
+By the time that all this hard work was accomplished the day was nearly
+at an end; and even had there been light for us to see our way by we
+were too tired to go on--for every bone and muscle in our bodies was
+weary and sore. Therefore we made our camp for the night on the flat
+expanse of rock where the stair ended; and we were thankful that enough
+of the eagle remained to us for our supper--and, indeed, we made our
+breakfast on him also, for he was a prodigiously large bird. Very
+different were our feelings as we wrapped ourselves in our blankets and
+settled ourselves to sleep on that open mountain-top--with the path
+clear before us, and with the cheering hope in our hearts that among the
+mountains we should find a plenty of wild creatures suitable for
+food--from the dull despairing languor that had possessed us as we sank
+to sleep the night before. And with our joy was also a reverent
+thankfulness--that was more strongly stimulated by certain words which
+Fray Antonio spoke ere we lay down to rest--that our deliverance was
+accomplished from that death-stricken valley wherein we ourselves so
+surely had expected that we must die.
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+THE HANGING CHAIN.
+
+
+By the winding way which we followed along the mountain-top (and that
+this was the way we wished to follow the King's symbol and the pointing
+arrow plainly showed), we came presently close beside the rift in the
+cliffs through which the waters of the upper lake had been discharged
+upon the city in the valley below and so had buried it. And here we made
+a very surprising discovery--which was no less than that the great rift
+in the rocks through which the water had been let loose was not, as we
+had supposed, the result of some fierce convulsion of nature, but very
+plainly was the fiercer work of man. Along the face of the opening
+whence the water had poured forth the rock was grooved, showing that
+drill-holes had been made, close together, from the edge of the cliff
+backward to the lake that once had filled all the valley now lying bare
+and empty before us; and with the field-glass we could see that there
+was a like channelling of the rock upon the farther side of the break.
+And all doubt in our minds in regard to this matter was removed by our
+finding a vastly long drill--made of the bright, hard metal that we now
+were familiar with, yet could not at all understand its
+composition--lying close beside the chasm upon the bare rock.
+
+"There has been the devil's own work here!" said Rayburn, as he fully
+took in this extraordinary situation. "Whoever did this must have spent
+months over it, perhaps years, working with such tools as these. They
+evidently went at it systematically, with the deliberate intention of
+drowning the whole crowd down below. From an engineering stand-point I
+must say that it's a good piece of work. See how cleverly they've picked
+out this particular spot, where the wall of rock went down almost
+perpendicularly into the lake, and so got the full value of the thrust
+of the water when their cuts were finished. If I'm not mistaken, there
+was a third line of drill-holes sunk in the middle of the mass that they
+meant to cut loose. That's the way I should have done it: then there
+would have been a little giving in the centre that would have helped to
+loosen the sides. But what a lot of incarnate devils they must have been
+to go at such a job!"
+
+Truly, there was something chilling to the blood in the thought of the
+slow labor of them who had toiled here, day after day and month after
+month, until their ghastly purpose was accomplished, and they had slain
+a whole city without striking a single honest blow. Such vengeance upon
+an enemy as here was taken never had its equal for cold, malignant
+cruelty since the world began. Down in the valley below we had seen
+gleaming beneath the calm surface of the lake the bones of the thousands
+who had perished when this diabolical work was completed, and the waters
+bounded forth, shining and sparkling in the sunlight, on their mission
+of death. And whoever let them loose must have stood just where we now
+were standing; and at sight of what came of their long labor there must
+have been such joy as no hell could adequately punish in their black
+hearts.
+
+Our bodies shuddered as we turned and left the scene of this tremendous
+tragedy; that was the more appalling to us because of the profound
+mystery in which was buried everything related to it save the fact that
+it had been.
+
+For a long distance our way went onward beside the bare, deep valley
+that had been the basin of the lake, and so the thought of the horror
+which had been wrought so devilishly with its innocent waters lingered
+gloomily in our minds. Involuntarily we associated the unknown people of
+a long past time who had perpetrated this hideous wholesale murder with
+the people for whom we now were searching, and an uncertain dread filled
+our souls as to what might be our own fate should we end by finding what
+we sought. From the tender mercies of a race in which stealthy craft and
+cold, malignant cruelty evidently were such conspicuous characteristics,
+little was to be expected. Therefore, it was in a sombre mood, and with
+but little talk among us, that we went forward upon our way.
+
+The path that we followed showed the same care in the making of it that
+we had found in the path leading down from the cañon into the valley
+where the drowned city was. Throughout the length of it, by carrying it
+skilfully along the windings of the mountain-sides, an equable, easy
+grade was maintained; where it led across open spaces the loose stones
+had been cleared away and stood heaped along each side of it; where it
+skirted precipices the solid rock had been cut out in order to give a
+wider and a surer foothold; and here and there in its course crevices
+which traversed it were bridged with great slabs of stone. Rayburn was
+lost in admiration of the engineering skill that was shown in its
+construction, and declared that a very little extra work put on it would
+fit it for the laying of a line of rails.
+
+The valley on our right, in which the lake had been, narrowed as we
+advanced; and as the path that we followed had a steadily rising grade
+(according to Rayburn's estimate, of a trifle more than three per
+cent.), the bottom of it fell away rapidly. As we reached what had been,
+as we found, the foot of the lake, we discovered fresh evidence of the
+enormous amount of labor that had been expended in order to make its
+waters an effective engine of destruction. Far in the depths beneath us,
+extending across the whole width of the valley--but here the valley had
+so narrowed that it was less a valley than a cañon--we saw a high and
+vastly broad stone wall. It was then that we perceived fully the whole
+of the devilish design, and realized the years that must have been given
+to its execution. By the building of the wall the level of the lake had
+been raised fully three hundred feet, and so a head of water had been
+obtained strong enough to thrust out the mass of rock that had been
+loosened by drilling through its centre and at its sides. It would have
+been possible, also, for the rock that was to be broken away to be
+greatly thinned by quarrying its open face while the water was rising
+slowly after the great dam was built. Clearly, the whole work had been
+planned with a calm, diabolical ingenuity that assured with absolute
+certainty the accomplishment of the horrible purpose that those who
+labored at it had in view. It seemed impossible, but for the proof that
+we here had of it, that human hearts could have in them enough of purely
+devilish cruelty to spend years in thus working out to perfection so
+hideous a vengeance; and to me it seemed all the more dreadful because
+of the time that had passed since this most evil deed was done.
+Centuries had vanished, and the slayers--living out the few years of
+their lifetime--had perished from off the earth as utterly as had the
+slain; yet here the whole proof of the great crime that had been wrought
+lived on in enduring stone that was like to last until the very end of
+the world should come. Thus had these sinners left behind them, raised
+by their own hands, a monument telling of their sin; which sin had not
+even the redeeming quality of passionateness, but was slow and subtle
+and cruelly cold.
+
+We were glad to turn from sight of this place and press onward into the
+cañon, for such the valley now had become; and we found in the dark
+shadows which enveloped us in this deep cleft between the mountains a
+sombreness in keeping with the feelings in our hearts. So high above us
+towered the cliffs that at their top they seemed almost to meet, showing
+between them only a narrow ribbon of bright blue sky, and below us the
+chasm went down sheer for a thousand feet; a gloomy depth that our eyes
+could not have penetrated had there not gleamed at the bottom of it the
+foam and sparkle of a little stream. Here the path was hewn almost
+continuously out of the solid rock; and we could see that a like path
+was cut in the rock on the other side. That so prodigious a piece of
+work should be thus duplicated seemed to us a very astonishing waste of
+energy; for even Young did not have much faith in his own suggestion
+that two prehistoric railway companies had secured rights of way along
+the opposite sides of the cañon, and had begun the building there of
+rival lines.
+
+But the matter was explained, presently, by our finding that this other
+path was but a doubling of the path that we were on. As we rounded a
+turn in the cañon we came suddenly to a broad natural ledge in the rock,
+over which hung a great projection of the cliff so that the sky above
+was hid from us. Here our path went off into the air, and began again on
+the other side of the vastly deep chasm, a good sixty feet away. "Rather
+long for a jump," was Rayburn's curt comment as we pulled up on the edge
+of the precipice and looked at each other blankly. Yet it was evident
+that those who had made with such great expense of toil and time these
+path-ways on the opposite sides of the cañon had crossed in some way
+from the one to the other at this point, and the only surmise that
+seemed to fit the facts of the case was that there had been stretched
+across the chasm a swinging bridge of _lianas_--such as still are to be
+found spanning streams in the hot lands of Mexico--and that in the
+course of ages this had rotted entirely away. But as this bridge, if
+ever there had been one here, was absolutely gone, we found ourselves in
+as shrewdly strait a place as men well could be in. To go ahead was as
+clearly impossible as was the hopelessness of turning back upon our
+path. At the most, we could only return to the valley out of which we
+had climbed with such thankfulness; and rather than go back to die of
+starvation in that place, so beautiful and so desolate, there was not
+one of us but would have chosen to end all quickly by springing into
+the gulf above which we stood.
+
+But while we thus stood in dreary contemplation of the miserable
+prospect before us, Young, as his habit was, was spying about him
+sharply, and so spied out a way of deliverance for us. The announcement
+of his discovery was made in a very characteristic way.
+
+"You set up to be some punkins of an engineer, now don't you?" he said,
+addressing Rayburn. "But did you ever happen to hear of a bridge that
+was hung up at one end an' that was operated by swingin' it backward an'
+forward like a pendulum?"
+
+"No," Rayburn answered, promptly and decisively, "I never did."
+
+"So I thought," Young went on. "Well, you've admitted that in sev'ral
+things th' man who was in charge of construction on this line could have
+given you points, an' this swingin' bridge notion is one of 'em. I can't
+say that I think much of it. It wouldn't do in railroads, for sure; but
+there is a good deal to be said in favor of it when it helps folks out
+of such a hole as we're in now--an' if it still is in workin' order,
+that is just what it's going to do. There it is. Do you catch on?"
+
+We all looked in the direction in which Young pointed, for his gesture
+was so earnest that even Fray Antonio and Pablo caught the meaning of
+it, and so saw--pendent from a point far up on the overhang of rock, and
+but indistinctly showing in the shadow--a great chain that at its lower
+end was caught in a metal hook set in the face of the cliff at the
+extreme back of the ledge on which we stood. For my part, I did not at
+once catch the meaning of Young's words even when I saw the chain, but
+Rayburn understood it all in a moment.
+
+"By Jove!" he exclaimed, "that _is_ a notion! You grab the end of it and
+just swing across to the other side!"
+
+Young already had loosened the chain from the hook and was testing its
+strength by putting his weight on it. At the end of it was a crossbar
+big enough to get a good grip upon; and this, and the chain itself, were
+wrought of the bright, hard metal of which we had encountered so many
+specimens. The upper end was made fast high above us in the out-jut of
+rock, very nearly over the centre of the cañon; so that no great force
+was required to carry whoever grasped the crossbar, and so swung out
+boldly, clear across the chasm to the ledge on the other side. But I
+confess that the thought of such a passage made me feel a little dizzy
+and sick; and never did I long to be safely back in my class-room at Ann
+Arbor as I did just then!
+
+"It seems t' be all right," said Young, "but I guess you may as well
+take a pull on it with me, Rayburn. There'd be no fun in havin' it fetch
+away when a man was about half across, an' we may as well make th' thing
+sure." And then, as the chain still held firm under the double strain,
+he added, "Well, here goes;" and, so speaking, took a running start and
+went swinging out over the abyss.
+
+My heart was in my mouth as he leaped forth and shot out from and far
+below us; but in a moment he rose along the curve that he was traversing
+and was safely landed on the other side. "It's a boss invention.
+Workin' it is just as easy as rollin' off a log," he called across to
+us; and to show how easily the passage was made, he instantly swung
+himself back again.
+
+Pablo had manifested signs of strong uneasiness while this talk and
+action were in progress, and in a very anxious tone he now inquired:
+"But how will it be with the Wise One, señor?"
+
+"Why, gettin' _him_ across will be as easy as open an' shut," Young
+answered, speaking in English to Rayburn and to me. "We'll just rig him
+in th' rope slings again, an' make him fast to th' chain, an' give him a
+good boost to start him, and over he'll go before he fairly knows he's
+started."
+
+But when we came to apply this brisk statement of the case practically,
+we found it by no means easy of execution. El Sabio grew restive as we
+arranged the slings of rope about his body, evidently remembering,
+fearfully, the strange journey that he had made in the air when we had
+rigged him in a like manner in order to trice him up to where the stair
+began; and he grew yet more restive as we fastened the rope slings to
+the end of the chain. Rayburn had crossed to the other side--passing the
+chain back by weighting it with a rock--and stood ready to receive El
+Sabio when he was swung across. But partly owing to a want of skill in
+our management of him, yet more to his own unruliness--for just as we
+started him, with a strong push, he clapped down his fore-feet upon the
+edge of the cliff and so checked his swing outward--he did not swing
+within reach of Rayburn's hands. And so he came back towards us again,
+and then out once more towards Rayburn; and so swung slowly and yet more
+slowly until at last he hung motionless over the very middle of the
+gulf, with nothing between him and the rocks below but a thousand feet
+of air. And then El Sabio began to kick with a vigor that set to
+rattling every link in the chain!
+
+Pablo was cast by this mischance into a veritable frenzy of fright; and
+we were most seriously frightened also--not only because the destruction
+of the poor ass was imminent, but because of the danger which menaced
+ourselves. Our party was divided, and should the chain give way, under
+stress of El Sabio's kicks and plunges, all possibility of our coming
+together again was at an end. Rayburn might leave us and go on; and so,
+perhaps, save his own life. But for the rest of us there would be no
+hope. Behind us was death by starvation. In front of us was this
+impassable gulf.
+
+From Pablo, who was quite wild with dreadful anticipations of the
+parting of the chain and the loss to him forever of his friend, least
+was to be expected in the strait wherein we were; yet it was from Pablo
+that our rescue came. With a quick apprehension of the needs of the
+case, he rove a running-knot in the end of one of the pack-ropes, and
+with a dexterous cast of this improvised lasso set the loop of it about
+El Sabio's neck as that unfortunate animal for a moment ceased his
+strugglings and hung still. And then we all strained on the rope
+together, and in a minute had El Sabio safely with us again; but in such
+a state of terror that pity for him wrung our hearts.
+
+But the limpness which the reaction from such deadly fear threw him into
+made handling him easy; and this time, when we launched him forth
+(taking the precaution, however, to fasten one end of a rope to the
+chain), he went sailing across the full width of the chasm, and Rayburn
+in a moment had him landed in safety. The instant that the chain was
+loosened Pablo hauled it back, and an instant later swung lightly across
+the cañon, and straightway fell to fondling the terrified creature and
+comforting him with all manner of tender words. And he so piteously
+besought us to give El Sabio one good drink that we passed the water-keg
+and the bucket across, and permitted the poor ass to drink half of our
+stock of water without debate of the sacrifice. Indeed, this refreshment
+was so necessary to him that without it I doubt if he could have gone
+on.
+
+While El Sabio thus gathered courage and strength again, Young swung
+over to the other side, and we passed our stores across from ledge to
+ledge--having ropes made fast to the chain, and so steadying each load
+from the one side while we hauled from the other. This was easy work,
+and we quickly finished it. When it was ended I braced myself for the
+flying journey through the air across that gulf so deep that the bottom
+of it was lost in black shadows, through which the sparkling water
+faintly gleamed; and my heart so throbbed within me as I took the bar in
+my hands, with the knowledge that should I lose hold of it death waited
+for me below in those dark shadows, that my breath came irregularly and
+I heard a dismal ringing in my ears. Yet I had less to fear than either
+of the others who had crossed before me, for the ropes still were fast
+to the chain; and should I not swing far enough I would be helped to
+safety by my companions. But for shame, I should have made my body fast
+to the chain by a rope sling, and so have gone across as our stores had
+gone rather than as a man. But my pride forbade my surrender in this
+fashion to my fears; and it was a lucky thing for me that it did.
+
+Holding the bar in my hands, I ran briskly across the ledge, and, with a
+strong kick on the edge of the cliff to give me additional impetus, I
+went spinning out into space. For an age, as it seemed to me, I sank
+rapidly; while that horrible feeling possessed me--the like of which
+people subject to sea-sickness feel as the ship drops away beneath them
+into the trough of the sea--of falling away from my own stomach. And
+then, just as my strength seemed to be failing, and my hold on the bar
+loosing, I perceived that I was rising again; and this put a little
+fresh heart in me, and I tightened my grip on the bar. Ten seconds, no
+doubt, was the full extent of the time that my passage consumed; but it
+seemed to me then, and it seems to me still as I think of it, a long ten
+years. And a thrill of terror goes through me as I think also of how
+near I then came to a horrible death; for at the very moment that I
+reached the farther side of the cañon there was a little tinkling sound
+in the air above me, and the bar that I held was twitched out of my
+hands, and then came a loud jingling of metal on rock, and as I turned
+quickly I saw a gleam of sunlight catch the great chain as it went
+twisting downward into the black gulf below.
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+THE TEMPLE IN THE CLOUDS.
+
+
+Doubtless the violent strain to which the chain had been subjected by El
+Sabio's kicking and plunging had loosened the fastenings, centuries old,
+which held it to the rock; for the chain had not broken, but had come
+away entire. I sank down on the rock as weak with terror as the poor ass
+had been; and like him I drank greedily of water, and panted for a
+while, and at last found my courage coming back to me.
+
+Yet my case was a happy one compared with that of Fray Antonio.
+Howsoever narrow my escape had been, the fact remained that I had come
+out from my encounter with Death safe and unharmed; but on Fray
+Antonio's shoulder we could but dread that Death already had laid his
+hand. And that he knew how close to him Death was standing we could see
+by a certain elate and confident air of courage in his bearing, and by
+the wonderful tenderness and sweetness of his smile. Truly, never did I
+know a man so ready at all times as this man was to lay down the life
+that God had given him; holding it but as a trust that might at any
+moment be called back to the source whence it came. Yet because it was a
+trust, meant to be put to useful purposes, Fray Antonio valued his life
+and cared for it. And at this time it was he himself who devised a plan
+by which it might be saved.
+
+The ropes which were fastened to the chain, being held stoutly on the
+one side by Fray Antonio and on the other by Young, fortunately had
+broken as the great weight of the chain suddenly had come upon them, and
+had broken so close to the knots which held them that nearly the whole
+of their length remained. The plan that the monk now devised for coming
+across to us--and a bold heart was required even to think of this daring
+enterprise--was that with the two ropes fastened about his body at one
+end, and held by all of us at the other, he should swing down into the
+chasm and far under the promontory of rock on which we stood, and then
+that we should haul him up to us. The great difficulty in the way of
+executing this plan was in getting the line across between us; its great
+danger lay in the probability--notwithstanding the depth of the recess
+beneath us--that he would be dashed against the rocks with such force as
+to kill him outright.
+
+But Young, who usually was ready for any emergency that might arise,
+roused out a ball of twine that was a part of our stores, and one end of
+this he made fast to a fragment of rock, and by a strong heave of it
+landed it safe on the other side; whereafter the rigging of the double
+rope across was an easy matter.
+
+Very carefully, testing the knots as he made them, Fray Antonio fastened
+the double line about his body, beneath his shoulders, and so stood
+ready on the edge of the chasm; while we four stood holding the line,
+with all our muscles braced for the strain that would come upon it as
+he swung downward. For a moment he paused, with his face turned upward
+while his lips moved. Then he waved his hand, and smiled as he called
+across to us, "It is as God wills!" and so dropped away from the ledge,
+and like a flash went down beyond our range of sight.
+
+We felt the jar on the ropes as his body struck against the face of the
+cliff far below us, and the reflex action as he swung out again, and
+thereafter the slower motion of the ropes as he swayed back and forth
+dangling over that black and awful chasm. And as the ropes settled into
+steadiness we drew him up towards us; yet dreaded, because of the dull
+weight of it, and because no assuring cry came up to us, that what we
+lifted was a corpse.
+
+And, in truth, as we raised the body of Fray Antonio over the edge of
+the cliff it seemed as though this dread were realized; for a great
+bloody gash was upon his temple, and his limbs were limp and lifeless,
+and his face was deathly pale. At sight of which there came into my
+heart a bursting pain, as though some one had stabbed me there; and
+there were tears in Young's eyes; and Rayburn gave vent to his sorrow in
+a great curse that was half a groan. As for Pablo, whom no danger could
+daunt, and who would bear without flinching any hurt of his own, this
+dreadful sight so moved him that he fainted dead away.
+
+Yet even in the moment that such deep sorrow seemed to be settling down
+upon us, Fray Antonio slightly moved his lips, and there came forth from
+them a low faint sigh--whereupon Young jumped up with a shout and
+relieved his mind by administering to Pablo a hearty kick, which he
+accompanied with the remark: "You infernal fool of a Greaser Indian,
+what do you mean by swoundin'? He ain't dead at all!"
+
+As tenderly as I could for the trembling of my hands, I washed away the
+blood from about the cut and bathed Fray Antonio's pale face, while
+Rayburn gave him a sup of whiskey from his flask. And then, presently,
+his eyes opened and energy came into his body once more. In a little
+while he was on his feet again, and as well as ever, save for the
+smarting of his cut, and in his head a dizziness and a dull throbbing
+pain. Just what had happened he could not tell. He knew that he had
+struck against the rock with his feet, as he had planned to do; but he
+must have swung around, when the force of the impact had been thus
+partly broken, and struck his head against some sharp projection, and so
+have been cut and stunned. But it made no great difference how his hurt
+had come to him, since it had not proved to be a deadly one; therefore
+we forbore to question him further concerning it, and sought by quiet
+talk, that led softly into silence, to take his thoughts away from the
+peril that he had been in. Indeed, we all were glad to rest quietly
+where we were for the night, for our bodies were tired and our nerves
+were racked and strained.
+
+We should have been most thankful for a big potful of coffee, but there
+was no wood with which we could make a fire. The best that we could do,
+and there was not much comfort in it, was to chew some coffee grains
+after we had made a supper upon one of our few remaining tins of meat;
+and then we rolled ourselves in our blankets and lay down upon the bare
+rock. And I must say that if anybody had asked me at that moment if
+archæology was a study that paid for the trouble that it cost, I should
+have said most unhesitatingly that it was not.
+
+Even sleep, which I greatly needed, and for which I earnestly longed,
+did not come to me easily; for each time that I seemed to be dropping
+gently away into unconsciousness I would be roused by the feeling that I
+was holding fast to the chain again, and so was sliding down the long
+curve among the shadows, with the great walls of the cañon towering
+infinitely above me, and with the black depth below. And in my sleep I
+made again the dreadful passage, and heard the clinking of the chain as
+it parted, and the rattle of it as it struck the rocks, and felt the
+grasp of Rayburn as he caught me, just as the bar was twitched out of my
+hands--and so woke to find Young shaking me, and to hear him say:
+"There's no earthly sense in your kickin' around that way, Professor;
+an', anyhow, it's time t' get up. It's just a wonder how these Mexican
+mornin's put life into a man. Why, there's a freshness in th' air that's
+goin' t' waste in this cañon that's fit t' make a coffin stand right up
+on end an' dance a jig!"
+
+Even Fray Antonio, but for the soreness of his hurt, felt strong and
+well; and we ate another tin of meat--which was much less than we
+wanted to eat--and so started along the path hewn out of the side of the
+cliff; and what with the brightness and joyfulness of the morning, we
+certainly were in much higher spirits than was at all reasonable in the
+case of men who had had such close companionship with Death so short a
+time before, and who still stood a very fair chance of dying dismally of
+starvation. The knowledge that, by the falling of the chain, our retreat
+had been again cut off did not at all trouble us. Even could we have
+crossed the cañon, and so have retraced our steps, we could have gone no
+farther than the valley of the lake; and we could as well die here as
+there. And we were stayed by the reasonable conviction that the path
+which we were travelling upon certainly would lead us out of the
+mountains at last--even if it did not lead us to the hidden city that we
+sought.
+
+For five or six miles we doubled on our course of the day before, going
+back along the cañon and seeing the path that we had followed a little
+below us on the other side; then, by a very easy grade, our course began
+to ascend, and went on rising until the other path was so far below us
+that it ceased to be distinguishable. Thus we came to within a few
+hundred feet of the top of the cliffs, when a sudden turn to the left
+carried us into a narrow cleft in the rock. Here the path was very
+sharply inclined upward for a little way; and for the remainder of the
+distance to the top we ascended a long series of rudely cut steps, so
+steep that our legs fairly cracked under us as we neared the end of
+them.
+
+But we forgot our weariness as we came out upon the summit at last, and
+a great view of clouds and mountain peaks burst upon us; the like of
+which I never have seen approached save by the view out over the
+Gunnison country from the crest of the Marshall Pass. But here we saw
+all around us what there is seen only in one direction; for we were on a
+vastly high, square crest--very like that called the Gigante, which the
+traveller by the Mexican Central Railroad sees to the left as he nears
+Silao--and clouds and mountain peaks rose up about us on every side.
+
+But we did not long contemplate this heroic landscape, for a cloud,
+which almost enveloped us as we finished our ascent of the stair, was
+swept still farther away by the brisk wind then blowing; so that
+suddenly a vast building loomed largely through the flying vapor, and in
+a moment was clear and distinct before our eyes. To find upon this bare
+mountain-top, among cloud solitudes so profound as these, such
+overpowering evidence of the labor and strength of man, sent thrilling
+through our breasts a wonder that was akin to awe. It seemed unreal,
+impossible, that in such a place such work could be accomplished; and
+the very tangible reality of it made it seem to me one of those
+prodigies of man's creation which old stories tell of as having been
+wrought by a league with the devil and at the cost of a human soul.
+
+Had there been any signs at all of human life about this solemn and
+majestic building, or upon the mountain-top whereon it stood, the
+chilling hold that it took upon our imaginations would have been less
+strong. What wrought upon us was the deadly silence, and the absolute
+stillness of everything save the drifting clouds. It seemed to us as
+though we had come out from the living world and our own time into a
+dead region belonging to a long dead past; and I remembered with a
+shudder that we had entered this region through that gloomy cavern,
+where hundreds of the ancient dead were clustered in silent worship
+about the great silent idol carved in everlasting stone. It seemed as
+though some evil spell hung over us, that doomed us forever to wander in
+wild solitudes--which were the more appalling because constantly uprose
+before us tangible evidence of the strong current of eager human life
+that had pulsed through them in former times. Young but put into his own
+rough language the thought that was in all our hearts when he declared,
+with a great oath, that for the sake of getting safe out of this lonely
+hole he'd contract to fight Indians three days in every week for the
+rest of his life, and be glad to do it for the comfort of having
+somebody around who was alive.
+
+
+
+
+XVI.
+
+AT THE BARRED PASS.
+
+
+The whole top of the mountain, near a mile square, had been so levelled
+by nature that little remained to be done for its further smoothing by
+the hand of man. But the amount of work that had gone into the mere
+preparation for the building of the great temple was almost incredible.
+In the centre of the plateau a pyramidal mass of rock near a thousand
+feet square, of a piece with the mountain itself, had been so shaped and
+hewn that it rose in three great terraces to the square apex on which
+the temple stood. These terraces slanted upward, surrounding the pyramid
+by a continuously ascending way that had its beginning and its ending in
+the centre of the eastern front--so that, allowing for the diminishing
+size of the pyramid, the distance by this way from the bottom to the top
+of it was more than a mile and a half.
+
+"It just took a slow-goin', lazy heathen Greaser t' think out a thing
+like this," Young observed as we went up the path. "Now, if th'
+Congregationalists that I was brought up among had put a church on a
+place like this--an' they wouldn't have been likely t' be fools enough
+t' do anything of th' sort--they'd 'a' had a set of steps runnin' smack
+from th' bottom t' th' top, an' folks would have got up in no time. It's
+just th' Greaser fashion all over t' spend a hundred years or so in
+makin' a path five miles long around a hill about as high as th' Boston
+State-house, so's they can get up it easy an' save their wind. But I
+wish they'd put in drinkin' fountains along th' road. I'm as thirsty as
+a salt cod--an' there's so precious little water left in th' keg that
+I'm afraid t' begin at it for fear of suckin' it all up."
+
+"Drinking fountains?" Rayburn, who was a little in advance, called back
+to us. "Well, so they did. Come along and drink as much as you want to."
+
+"Cut that, Rayburn," Young answered. "I'm too dead in earnest about my
+being thirsty to stand any foolin'."
+
+"I'm not fooling"--we had caught up with him by this time--"look for
+yourself."
+
+To which Young's only reply was to spring forward eagerly and drink a
+long deep draught from a stone basin beside the path into which trickled
+a tiny stream from above. Finding water in this unlikely place was as
+great a surprise as it was a joy to us; for we all longed for it, yet
+dared not drink freely because our supply was nearly gone. It was
+touching to hear the long sigh of happiness that El Sabio gave when at
+last he lifted his dripping snout out of the basin; and then to see the
+look that he gave Pablo, as though to thank him for so blessedly
+plentiful a drink. In truth, the Wise One had not tasted a drop of water
+for nearly twenty-four hours--not since his perilous passage of the
+cañon--and his throat, and his poor little inside generally, must have
+been very dry.
+
+When we came out on the top of the pyramid at last, which at that moment
+was wrapped in clouds almost as dense as London fog, we perceived the
+ingenious plan that had been adopted in order to secure water
+plentifully on this mountain-top. By careful scoring of the rock with
+many little channels, all leading to a cistern that seemed to be of
+great dimensions, the warm vapor of the clouds as it condensed into
+water on touching the chill stone surface was captured and safely stored
+away. And from the overflow of the cistern the fountain below was fed.
+
+But we did not stop to examine very carefully into this matter, so eager
+were we to press on to the temple close before us. This stood upon a
+terraced platform, cut from the living rock, and was a perfectly plain
+structure--with walls slightly receding inward as they rose, and wholly
+destitute of ornamentation. For its majestic effect it depended upon its
+great size and upon its admirable proportions; and being built of the
+dark rock of which the mountain was formed, and having about it much of
+the sombre feeling that characterizes Egyptian architecture, it had an
+air of great solemnity and gloom.
+
+In silence we ascended the short flight of steps that led to the broad,
+doorless entrance--the only opening through the massive walls--and so
+came into the vast shadowy hall that these great walls enclosed. From
+front to back of this hall extended many rows of stone pillars--like the
+single row found in the great chamber among the ruins of Mitla--and by
+these were upheld the huge slabs of stone of which the roof was made.
+Far away from where we stood, down at the end of a long vista of
+pillars, was a stone altar on which was carved in stone a colossal
+figure of the god Chac-Mool. Looking back through the open entrance, I
+saw a break in the mountain peaks to the eastward; and so perceived that
+the first rays of the rising sun must needs enter here and strike full
+upon the disk that was poised in the figure's hands. As Pablo caught
+sight of the great idol recumbent there, a momentary shudder went
+through him and he made certain motions with his hand before his eyes
+that were strange to me.
+
+As we drew near to the altar we found that in front of it was a
+sacrificial stone, still darkly stained where blood had flowed upon it;
+and beneath the stone neck-yoke, still resting there, was a withered
+remnant of human vertebræ. There was something very ghastly in
+finding--preserved by the very stone that had held him down while life
+was let out of him--this mere scrap of the last human victim who had
+perished here. As in the desolate valley, so also on this desolate
+mountain-top, the only proof that human life ever had been here was
+found in proof of human death.
+
+Save that our curiosity was gratified, and the blessing of the water
+which we found, our ascent of the great pyramid and our examination of
+the temple bore no fruit. Young, who still seemed to think that tilting
+up and disclosing secret passages was an attribute of all statues of the
+god Chac-Mool, was here again convinced that his generalization from a
+single case was not a sound one. In a serious way--that in itself would
+have been laughable but for the gloom of our surroundings--he climbed
+upon the altar and sat first on the head of the god, and then on his
+feet, and even tried the effect of seating himself upon the stone disk
+that the god upheld above his navel. But through all of these
+experiments the stone figure remained solidly immovable.
+
+"I guess there was only one o' that tippin' kind," Young said, at last,
+"an' he sort o' flocked by himself. Let's get out of here, anyway. If
+this ever was the Aztec bank that we're lookin' for, there must have
+been a prehistoric run on it that cleaned it out. They must have done
+that sort o' thing in old times, eh, Professor? But it don't make much
+difference to us now what they did or what they didn't; an' we'd better
+fill up with water an' get out--that is, if there is any way of gettin'
+out except along the way we came. There's no good in goin' back that
+way. It would be better t' settle down here an' starve comfortably
+without wearin' out shoe-leather doin' it. But I don't mean t' do that
+until I've had a look all around th' top of this god-forsaken mountain,
+an' made sure that there's only one way down."
+
+My own thoughts had been dwelling on the possibility that Young's words
+expressed; for at this definite point to which we had come, the path
+that we had come by very reasonably might end--so leaving us in this
+lonely region among the clouds to die slowly for lack of food. And there
+was a certain fitness in our having made our way so far among the dead
+only ourselves to die that added sombre fancies to our environment of
+sombre realities. Yet there was a heartiness in Young's resolutely
+expressed determination to search for a way out of our difficulties
+before at all yielding to them that insensibly cheered me. His words had
+a plucky ring to them; and bravery is as catching as is fear.
+
+Our empty water-kegs were at the bottom of the pyramid, and when we
+reached the fountain on our downward way we waited there while Pablo
+went on with El Sabio and fetched them up to us. There was at least
+solid comfort in knowing, as we went on downward with the kegs all
+filled, that, whatever other death might come to us, at least we could
+not die of thirst. At the bottom of the pyramid we left Fray Antonio and
+Pablo, with El Sabio and the packs, and the three of us set out to
+explore the three sides of the mountain-top that were unknown to us in
+search of a downward path. A heavy mass of clouds had drifted over the
+mountain again, so thick that at a rod away all was white mist around
+us; and the light was growing faint, for the day had come nearly to an
+end. Indeed, had we been upon the lower levels of the earth night would
+have been already upon us.
+
+Making my way along the edge of the precipice, where the plateau broke
+sheer off, was ticklish work; and half humorous, half melancholy
+thoughts went through my mind touching the absurdity of an ex-professor
+of Topical Linguistics in the University of Michigan being thus employed
+in path-hunting upon a lonely mountain-top in Mexico. Truly, adversity
+brings us strange bedfellows; but far stranger are the straits into
+which a man comes who takes up with the study of archæology at
+first-hand. But my path-hunting was without result, for nowhere along
+the edge of the plateau was there a break fit for the descent of any
+creature save such as had wings. At the end of near an hour the clouds
+once more lifted; and then I saw Rayburn coming towards me, but with a
+serious look upon his face that told that he also had been unsuccessful
+in his search.
+
+"It has rather a bad look, Professor," he said, briefly, when I had told
+him that along all the face of the mountain that I had examined the rock
+went down sheer. He filled his pipe and lighted it, and we walked back
+to the base of the pyramid in silence, while he smoked. Young had not
+returned; but presently we heard a shout that had so hopeful a sound in
+it as to start us both to our feet and forth to meet him.
+
+"Have you found a way down?" Rayburn called, as he came nearer to us.
+
+"You bet I have," he called back; "and, what's more, I've seen somethin'
+to eat."
+
+"_Seen_ something!" Rayburn answered, as he joined us. "Why the dickens
+didn't you _get_ it?"
+
+"Well, because it was better'n a mile away from me. It looked like a
+mountain sheep, as well as I could make out; but there it was for sure;
+an' thinkin' how good that critter will taste roasted has given me a
+regular twistin' pain all through my empty inside! But th' point is that
+down on that side o' th' mountain there's game; I saw birds, too, but I
+couldn't make out what they were; an', somehow, it looks different down
+there. It don't look like these d--n dead places we've been prowlin'
+through for more'n a coon's age. It looks as if God remembered it, an'
+it was _alive_! Why, th' very smell that came up had somethin' good
+about it; an' there was a different taste to th' air. I tell you,
+Rayburn, I didn't know what a lonely an' mis'rable an' lost chump sort
+of a way I was in until I looked over there into that place where th'
+whole business ain't run by dead folks. An' what's more, Professor,
+that's the trail for us; for, right where it starts down, there's th'
+King's symbol an' th' arrow, all reg'lar, blazed on th' rock."
+
+"Is the trail good enough to make a start on now?" Rayburn asked; "we
+won't have more than half an hour more light, but I'd give a lot to get
+off this mountain before dark, and every foot down that we go we'll be
+that much warmer. We'd stand a pretty fair chance of freezing up here
+to-night without any fire."
+
+"Th' trail's all right for a good half-mile, anyway," Young answered;
+"an' I guess it's good all th' way. It's pretty much th' same as th' one
+we come up by, an' that's good enough, where it don't jump cañons, t' go
+along in th' dark; but we must rustle if we mean t' do much by
+daylight."
+
+We were back at the pyramid by this time, and we found Fray Antonio very
+willing to be off with us that we might try to get well down the
+mountain before night set in; for at that great elevation the quick
+beating of his heart added very sensibly to the throbbing pain of his
+wound. Therefore we lost no time in getting our packs upon our backs,
+and upon the back of El Sabio, and briskly started downward; and the
+keen cold that came into the air, as the sun sunk away behind the
+mountain peaks at last, warned us that it was safer to take the risks of
+a descent almost in darkness than to stay for the night upon that bleak
+mountain-top without a fire.
+
+In twenty minutes we perceived a comforting change in the temperature;
+and at the end of an hour--during the last half of which we walked
+slowly and cautiously through the fast-thickening darkness--there was
+enough warmth in the air about us to make camping for the night
+endurable. But we still were at a great elevation, and the thin air was
+bitingly keen, and all the more so because of the scant meal that we
+had to comfort us and to put strength into us before we wrapped
+ourselves in our blankets for sleep.
+
+"What's a mis'rable two pounds of corned-beef among five of us," Young
+exclaimed, in a tone of angry contempt, "when every man in th' lot is
+hungry enough t' eat th' whole of it, an' th' tin box it comes in, an'
+then go huntin' for a square meal? An' t' think o' that sheep I saw! I
+say, Rayburn, did you ever eat a roast fore-shoulder of mutton, with
+onions an' potatoes baked under it, an' a thick gra--"
+
+"If you don't hold your jaw about things like that," Rayburn struck in,
+"I'll murder you!"--and there was such fierceness in his voice, and he
+truly was such a savage fellow when his anger was up, that Young was
+half frightened by his outburst, and so was silent. I must say that I
+wish that he had altogether held his tongue; for, somehow, the smell of
+mutton and onions and potatoes, all cooking together, was so strong in
+my nostrils, and this smell so set to yearning my very hollow inside,
+that it was a long while before I could sleep at all; and when I did
+sleep, it was to be pursued by dreams of painful hungriness which were
+but too surely founded in painful fact. Certainly, it was very
+indiscreet in Young, to say the least of it, to make a remark of that
+nature at that untoward time.
+
+However, that was the last day that we suffered for want of food. I was
+awakened in the very early morning by the sound of a rifle-shot, and
+sprang to my feet, brandishing my revolver, with a confused belief in
+my sleepy mind that we were attacked by Indians again; and, truly, my
+first feeling was one of pleasure at the thought of meeting, even in
+deadly combat, with men who were alive.
+
+"It's all right, Professor," Rayburn said. "We're not fighting anybody.
+But I've killed a mountain sheep, and if we only can get him we'll have
+a solid breakfast, even if we have to eat him raw. He was over on that
+point of rock, and he's tumbled down clear into the valley, and the
+sooner we get down there and hunt for him the better."
+
+In the bright light of the early morning we could see below us a glad
+little valley, in which trees and grass grew, and in the centre of which
+was a tiny lake. But what gave us most joy was seeing birds flying over
+the face of the water, and half a dozen mountain sheep scampering away
+at the sound of Rayburn's shot. Truly, the sight of these live creatures
+was the most cheery that ever came to my eyes; and as I beheld them, and
+realized that at last we had emerged from the dreary, death-stricken
+region in which as it seemed to me we had spent years, a great wave of
+happiness rolled in upon and filled my heart. As it was with me, so was
+it with the others: who gave sighs of gladness as thus they found
+themselves no longer wanderers among the chill shades of ancient death,
+but once more moving in the warm living world.
+
+The path, cut out along the mountain-side, went downward by a sharper
+grade than that by which we had ascended; and we descended it joyfully
+at a swinging trot, with a new life in us that made us break out into
+lively talk and laughter that set the echoes to ringing. And presently,
+in a very jerky fashion because of his rapid motion, Pablo piped away on
+his mouth-organ with "Yankee Doodle"--and this was the first time that
+he had had the heart to play upon his beloved "instrumentito" since our
+passage of the lake beneath which lay the city of the dead.
+
+In an hour we came fairly down into that bright and lovely valley, where
+was the sweet sound of birds calling to each other, and the glad sight
+of these live creatures flying through the air. As for the sheep that
+Rayburn had killed, he was knocked pretty well into a jelly by his
+half-mile or so of tumble down the mountain-side. But we were not
+disposed to be over-fastidious, and we quickly had his ribs roasting
+over a brisk fire: that yet was not so brisk as was our hunger, for we
+began to eat before the meat was much more than warmed through. When our
+ravening appetite was appeased a little, Young got out the coffee-pot
+and set to making coffee. And then, with meat well cooked and coffee in
+abundance, we made such a meal as can be made only by half-starved men
+who suddenly have come forth from the dark shadows of threatening death
+into the glad sunshine of safety. Of what further perils might be in
+store for us we neither cared nor thought. Our one strong feeling was
+the purely animal joy bred of deliverance from gloom and danger, and the
+packing of our bellies with hearty food.
+
+When, at last, our huge meal was ended, we settled back upon our
+blankets, and fell to smoking. Presently Rayburn gave a prodigious yawn
+and laid aside his pipe. "I think I'll take a nap," he said. I saw that
+Young already was nodding and that Pablo had sunk down into slumber;
+while El Sabio, who had come even closer to starving than we had come,
+most thankfully rummaged among the rich grass. My eyes were heavy, and I
+stretched myself out on my blankets, with the warm sunshine comforting
+my stiffened body, and presently sunk softly into delicious sleep.
+
+I partly woke a few minutes later, as Fray Antonio rose, thinking that
+we all were lost in slumber, and walked a little apart from us. He alone
+had made a meal in reasonable moderation, and I saw now that he had gone
+aside to pray. For a moment the thought stirred in me that I would join
+him in what I knew was his thanksgiving for our deliverance; but sleep
+had too strong a hold upon me, and my body slowly fell back upon the
+blankets and my eyes slowly closed, carrying into my slumber the sight
+on which they last had rested: the monk kneeling upon the grass beside a
+great gray rock, with clasped hands and face turned upward, pouring his
+soul out in grateful prayer.
+
+It was well on in the afternoon when we all woke again; and Young's
+first remark was that it must be about supper-time. Rayburn fell in with
+this notion promptly, and so did I myself--rather to my astonishment,
+for it seemed unreasonable that after such a stuffing I should desire to
+eat so soon again. But we did make a supper almost as hearty as our
+breakfast had been, and in a little while wrapped ourselves in our
+blankets, with our feet towards the heaped-up fire, and went off once
+more to sleep, and slept through until sunrise of the following day. In
+truth, the mental strain, bred of our gloomy surroundings and of the
+dread of starvation that had possessed us, had taxed our physical
+strength more severely than our mountain climbing and our lack of
+nourishment. The great amount of strong food that we ate, and our long
+slumber, showed nature's demand upon us that our waste of tissue should
+be made good.
+
+When we woke again on the second morning, we all were fresh and strong
+and eager to press onward. There was little left of the sheep to carry
+with us; but Rayburn shot half a dozen birds, some species of duck, as
+we skirted the lake in our passage across the valley, so there was no
+fear that we should lack for food. At its western end the valley
+narrowed into a cañon. There was no choice of paths, for this was the
+sole outlet, and we were assured that we were on the right path by
+finding the King's symbol and the pointing arrow carved upon the rook.
+The cañon descended very rapidly, and by noon we were so far below the
+level of the Mexican plateau that the air had a tropical warmth in it;
+and so warm was the night--for all the afternoon we continued to
+descend--that we had no need for blankets when we settled ourselves for
+sleep.
+
+Rayburn was of the opinion that we were close upon the Tierra Caliente,
+the hot lands of the coast; and when we resumed our march in the morning
+he went on in advance of the rest of us, that he might maintain a
+cautious outlook. If he were right in his conjecture as to our
+whereabouts, we might at any moment come upon hostile Indians. It was
+towards noon that he came softly back to us and bade us lay down our
+packs and advance silently with him, carrying only our arms. "There's
+something queer ahead; and I thought that I heard voices," he explained.
+"But there must be no shooting unless we are shot at. Some of these
+Indians are friendly, and we don't want to start a row with them if they
+are willing not to row with us."
+
+The cañon was very narrow at this point, and high above us its walls
+drew so closely together that the shadows about us were deep. As we
+rounded a bend in it, the rock closed above our heads in a great arch,
+so that we were in a sort of natural tunnel; at the far end of which was
+a bright spot showing that a wide and sunny open space was beyond. But
+over this opening were bars which cut sharply against the light, as
+though a gigantic spider had spun there a massive web; and as we drew
+nearer to this curious barrier we saw beyond it a broad and glorious
+valley, rich with all manner of luxuriant tropical growth and flooded
+everywhere with the warm light of the sun.
+
+We approached the strange barrier cautiously, and our wonder at it was
+increased as we found that it was made of the bright metal of which we
+had found so many specimens; and still more we wondered as we found that
+the bars were fastened on the side from which we approached, so that we
+could remove them easily, while from the side of the valley they
+presented an impassable barrier. In strong excitement we drew out the
+metal pins which dropped into slots cut in the rock and so held the bars
+fast, and in a few minutes we had cleared the way for our advance. Just
+as we were making ready to pass through the opening we heard the sound
+of voices; and as we quickly drew back into the shadows two men sprang
+up suddenly before us, and cried in wonder as they saw that the lower
+bars across the opening were gone. Yet the expression upon their faces
+was not that of anger; rather did they seem to be stirred by a strong
+feeling of joy with which was also awe. Both men were accoutred in the
+fashion which the pictured records show was usual with the Aztec
+warriors, and one of them--as was indicated by his head-dress and by the
+metal corselet that he wore--was a chief; and they challenged us
+sharply, yet with gladness in their tones, in the Aztec tongue.
+
+So sudden and so ringing was this challenge, and so startling was the
+uprising of the men before us, that as we sprang back into the shadow we
+instinctively stood ready with our arms. But Fray Antonio, not having
+any intent to join in the fight, was cooler than the rest of us, and
+instantly perceived that fighting was not necessary. Therefore he it was
+who first spoke to these strangers; and his first word to them was,
+"Friends!"
+
+Then the watchmen, for such they seemed to be, spoke eagerly together
+for a moment, and pressed to the opening to look upon us; yet seeing us
+but dimly because of the dark shadows which surrounded us. Pablo was
+closest to them, and I marvelled to see how like them he was in look and
+in air. Him they first caught sight of, and as they saw him they both
+turned from the opening, and, as though calling to some one at a
+distance, gave both together a great glad shout. Instantly, at some
+little distance, the cry was repeated; and so again farther on and yet
+farther, with ever more voices joining in it; so that it swelled and
+strengthened into a great roar of rejoicing that seemed to sweep over
+the whole of the valley before us, and to fill it everywhere with
+tumultuous sounds of joy.
+
+As though the duty that they were charged with had been thus
+accomplished, the men turned again to us, and he of the higher rank,
+speaking the Aztec language, yet with turns and changes in that tongue
+which were strange to me, eagerly called to us:
+
+"Come forth to us! Come forth to us!" he cried. "Now is the prophecy of
+old fulfilled and the watch rewarded that our people have maintained
+from generation to generation through twenty cycles here at the grated
+way! Come forth to us, our brothers--who bring the promised message from
+our lord and king!"
+
+I turned to Fray Antonio as these words were spoken, and I saw in his
+face that which made me confident in my own glad conviction that here at
+last was the secret place for which so long, and through such perils, we
+had sought. Here indeed had we found the hidden people of whom the dying
+Cacique had spoken and of whom the monk's letter had told; the strong
+contingent of the ancient Aztec tribe that ages since the wise King
+Chaltzantzin had saved apart, that when their strength was needed they
+might come forth to ward their weaker brethren against conquest by a
+foreign foe. And the great happiness begotten of this glad discovery
+filled all my body with a throbbing joy.
+
+Yet as we went out through the opening that we had made between the
+bars, and the watchers saw us fairly in the sunlight, they sprang back
+as though in alarm. Rayburn met this demonstration promptly by making
+the peace-sign--raising aloft the right arm--that is common to all North
+American Indians; and after a moment of hesitation the chief answered to
+this in kind. So there was peace between us as we advanced; but it
+seemed to me that their regard of us now had in it more of wonder and
+less of awe.
+
+[Illustration: MAKING THE PEACE-SIGN]
+
+
+
+
+XVII.
+
+OF OUR COMING INTO THE VALLEY OF AZTLAN.
+
+
+So unexpectedly had we come upon these strangers, and so marvellous was
+the finding thus of the hidden tribe for which we had sought so long,
+that I could not but dread, as we advanced towards the Aztec warriors,
+lest I should wake suddenly and find that it all was a dream. And they,
+also, as it seemed to me, looked upon us doubtingly, and with somewhat
+of dread in their regard, as though uncertain whether we were beings
+from another world, or men of flesh and blood like themselves.
+
+Not until we were close upon them did further words--after that first
+challenge and answer--pass between us; and then the elder of the two,
+still making the peace-sign with his raised right hand, and speaking
+with a trembling in his voice, as though deep emotion moved him, called
+to us: "Have our brothers need of our strength? Bring ye the token that
+summons us to their aid?"
+
+I should have been glad just then for opportunity to consult with my
+companions as to what answer I should make to these questions, for I
+perceived that our position was a very critical one, and that even our
+lives might depend upon the wisdom of my reply. For a moment I waited in
+the hope that Fray Antonio would make answer; but as he remained silent,
+there was nothing for it but that I should take the hazard upon myself.
+Therefore, bringing forth the ancient piece of gold from the snake-skin
+bag--for so I had carried it constantly, even as the Cacique had done
+before me, and others before him, for more than three hundred years--I
+held it towards the man who had spoken, and said, firmly: "Here is the
+token of summons left behind him by Chaltzantzin; but we come not to
+call you forth to battle, but to bring tidings that the fate which that
+wise king and prophet foresaw for his people, long since was fulfilled.
+In the time appointed, the stranger foemen overcame and enslaved your
+brethren, bringing to pass that which Chaltzantzin foretold; and the
+message that then was sent to call you forth to their aid reached you
+not, because even the wisdom of Chaltzantzin was powerless against the
+will of the gods. Yet the gods desired not to destroy your brethren, but
+to punish them; and their punishment now is at an end. Once more are
+they free, and once more is their ruler a wise and valiant man of their
+own race. Therefore, the news which we bring you is not sorrowful, but
+glad."
+
+While I was thus speaking, the ringing cries which at the first alarm
+had sounded over all the valley grew louder and stronger; but as yet we
+saw only the two men who at the first had confronted us--for we were in
+a deep recess in the mountain, whence the ground dropped away in front,
+so that the immediate foreground was hid from us, and we saw only some
+distant meadows, and then a broad lake, and over this more meadows and a
+sweep of heavy timber, and back of all great mountains rising against
+the clear blue sky.
+
+But as my speech ended, and before those to whom it was addressed at all
+had digested the wonder of it, and so hesitated in their reply, a
+half-dozen men and a woman or two came in sight in the narrow way before
+us, panting after their rapid ascent of the acclivity; and the calls of
+others pressing up the slope behind them sounded loudly, and in a very
+little while a crowd of a hundred or more pressed about us, all gazing
+at us and questioning us with a most eager surprise. For the most part
+these seemed to be laborers from the near-by fields; for many of them
+carried agricultural implements, and their bare legs and arms were
+splashed with mud and were grimy of the soil. As for the look of them,
+save that the flowing garments of cotton cloth which the women wore were
+embroidered in a fanciful fashion, I could not have distinguished these
+people from the tallest and strongest of the Indians dwelling in the hot
+lands of the coast about Vera Cruz. The men, who wore only a cloth
+twisted about their loins, were as magnificent fellows as I ever saw.
+Every one of them was tall and straight, with broad shoulders and
+narrow hips, and the muscles of their arms and legs stood out like
+cords. From Pablo, who was an unusually tall and well-formed lad, they
+differed only in the color of their skins--which were decidedly darker
+than his, as was to be expected in the case of men dwelling in this
+tropical region at the level of the sea.
+
+Towards Pablo these people manifested a familiar curiosity quite unlike
+their reverential manner towards the rest of us, who so obviously were
+not of their own race. And Pablo was as much perplexed by their
+questions as they were by his answers; for never was a conversation
+carried on so hopelessly at cross-purposes. Our boy, being spoken to by
+folk who obviously were as entirely Mexicans as he was himself, and in a
+tongue that practically was that which he had been born to--for the
+Indians dwelling in the Guadalajara suburb of Mexicalcingo, being the
+direct descendants of a pure Aztec stock, speak the Nahua language very
+correctly--could not at all realize that he was at last among the
+ancient race for which we had searched so long. It was his belief that
+we had come out, in accordance with Rayburn's forecast, into the coast
+country, and that the people around him were the ordinary dwellers in
+the hot lands. And the Aztecs, knowing him to be one of themselves, no
+doubt believed that he knew of the purpose for which they had been left
+to dwell apart, and so plied him with questions concerning their
+brethren from whom through long ages they had been separated.
+
+As their talk went on, getting the more involved with every question
+and reply, a tendency towards ill-temper began to develop itself on each
+side; for Pablo considered that these people, who professed to be
+ignorant of so important a city as Guadalajara, were making game of him;
+and they were not less disposed to believe that he either was answering
+them falsely or that he was a fool. Fortunately, before any harm came of
+these misunderstandings, an interruption brought a temporary end to
+their talk.
+
+There was a stir among the crowd, and then an opening was made in it,
+through which came an elderly man wearing military trappings similar to,
+but much handsomer than those worn by the two warriors whom we had first
+encountered; and it was obvious, from the air of deference with which
+these saluted him, that he was their superior officer. In spite of the
+dignity of his demeanor it was evident that he was greatly excited by
+our advent, and his voice quivered and broke a little as he asked us who
+we were and whence we came. As I repeated what I had already told the
+guard, and showed the gold token, the expression upon his face was that
+of extreme perplexity. That the gold token gave us a strong claim upon
+his respect, almost upon his reverence, was apparent in his manner as I
+showed it to him; but the conditions under which it was presented
+obviously rendered him very uncertain as to what action was proper for
+him to take.
+
+When I had finished my statement, and had returned the token to its
+place in the snake-skin bag (for the wisdom of carefully retaining this
+potent talisman in our possession was evident), the officer turned to
+the two warriors, and they conversed for a while in low tones apart
+from us. Of their talk I could catch only a few words, but several times
+I heard repeated the name Itzacoatl, and frequent reference was made to
+the Twenty Lords. I gathered, too, that the name of the officer was
+Tizoc, and that the name of the elder of the two warriors, a swarthy
+man, was Ixtlilton. In the mean time, out of respect to the officer, the
+crowd had drawn away from us--being now swelled to very considerable
+numbers--but those composing it gazed at us in wonder, and among them
+was a steady murmur of low talk, like the buzzing of a hive of bees.
+
+When his conference with the warriors was ended, Tizoc approached us,
+and with him came a younger man, who carried a roll of paper in his
+hand. The face of the officer still wore a troubled, doubting
+expression, and these feelings were expressed also in the tones of his
+voice as he spoke to us. "For the coming of the token from our lord
+Chaltzantzin we who dwell in this Valley of Aztlan have waited through
+many ages," he said; "but the promise was given that the token should
+come to us from our brethren in the time of their need, and should be
+brought by those of our own race. But you tell us that the time of need
+long since is past, and ye who bring the token are of a race that is
+strange to us; and even this one among you who seems to be of our
+brethren speaks strangely of strange things. Had ye come in the way that
+long past was promised, there would have been no room for questioning
+your right of entry here nor your authority over us; and I, who am the
+Warden of the Pass--being in right succession from him whom our lord
+Chaltzantzin appointed to this high office--would have been the first to
+do you reverence and honor. But in this strange case that has arisen I
+hold it to be my duty to send news of your coming to the Priest Captain,
+Itzacoatl, that he and his Council of the Twenty Lords may decide what
+now is right to do. In this I mean no disrespect and no unkindness; and
+while we await the Priest Captain's orders I shall have the pleasure to
+offer you that rest and refreshment of which you stand in need."
+
+To this firm but courteous speech I was in the act of replying in fit
+terms of equal courtesy--for all that Tizoc had said was so reasonable
+that no exception could be taken to it--when an outburst on Young's part
+interrupted me.
+
+"Hold on there, young fellow!" he cried. "I'll be shot if I'm goin' t'
+stand bein' made a fool of that way! If you can't make a better likeness
+of me than that, you'd better shut up shop an' go out of th' business."
+
+I turned quickly, and saw Young standing beside Tizoc's attendant, and
+looking half angrily and half laughingly at the sheet of paper that he
+held in his hand. Fearful that some harm might come from Young's
+maladroitness, I joined them quickly; and only a strong sense of the
+gravity of our situation restrained me from laughing outright as I
+behold the cause of his wrath. For the secretary, as I now perceived him
+to be, had made sketches in color of each member of our party; and while
+they all did violence to our vanity, that of Young--with a bald head
+out of all proportion to the size of his body, and with most
+aggressively red hair--was so outrageous a caricature that there really
+was some justice in his resentment of it.
+
+But this was not a time when resentment could be safely manifested, and
+I hurriedly explained to Young that these pictures, no doubt, were to be
+transmitted as a part of the report that Tizoc was about to make to the
+King concerning us, and that he must find no fault with them.
+
+"He's goin' t' send that thing t' th' King an' say it's me, is he? No,
+he's not--not by a jugful! See here, Professor! here's a photograph that
+I had taken last spring in Boston. I meant t' give it to a girl before I
+came away, but she went back on me an' I didn't. It's not much of a
+photograph, but it don't look like a squash trimmed with red clover. If
+they want to send anything, let 'em send that." And before I could stop
+him, Young had taken the photograph out of his pocket-book and had
+handed it to the secretary, with the remark, "Just say t' him,
+Professor, that he is t' give that t' th' King, an' tell him t' tell th'
+King that Mr. Seth Young, of Boston, sends it with his compliments."
+
+After all, no harm came of this absurd performance, but rather good; for
+the secretary exhibited the photograph to Tizoc, and both of them, and
+the two warriors also, were lost in wonder at its marvellous likeness to
+the original, and evidently held us in increasingly great respect
+because we were the possessors of such an extraordinary work of art.
+Young was a good deal chagrined, however, because the picture of him
+that the secretary had drawn was forwarded as a part of Tizoc's
+despatches. He said that since he had set up a good likeness of himself,
+it wasn't the square thing to send the King a bad one.
+
+When the secretary, bearing the despatches, had departed, Tizoc
+requested us to accompany him to the near-by guard-house, where we could
+refresh ourselves by bathing, and where food and drink would be provided
+for us. This order, for such it was, we obeyed gladly; for we were both
+weary and hungry, and the prospect of what Young described as a good
+wash and a square meal after it, was very pleasing to us. A detachment
+of men from the guard-house, accoutred in the same handsome fashion as
+Ixtlilton and his companion, had arrived while the secretary's
+portrait-work was in progress; and I observed that all of these
+guardsmen (excepting only Ixtlilton, whose skin was dark,) were much
+lighter in color and more gracious in bearing than the men in the crowd
+around us. So marked, indeed, was this difference that they seemed
+scarcely to belong to the same race.
+
+As we moved away through the opening that the crowd made for us, with a
+platoon of guardsmen in advance, and another in our rear, Pablo touched
+my arm and was about to speak to me; but before his mouth could open
+there sounded suddenly from the hollow way in the mountain behind us a
+mighty bray. "Ah, the little angel!" Pablo cried. "Hearken to him,
+señor, calling to me." And so moved was Pablo by this evidence of El
+Sabio's affection that only my firm grasp upon his arm restrained him
+from attempting a dash through the guards to where the creature was
+penned in by the metal bars.
+
+Truly, there is no sound more terrifying to those who are strangers to
+it than the braying of an ass; therefore, I was not at all surprised
+that a very considerable part of the crowd incontinently took to its
+heels; and I needed no better evidence of the bravery of the guardsmen
+who composed our escort than the steadiness with which they faced about
+in readiness to meet whatever danger might come forth from the gap in
+the mountain in the wake of this great roaring. Yet what they saw there
+was only the mild face of the Wise One extended towards us through the
+opening in the bars.
+
+To Tizoc, who was standing beside me, and who had not displayed even the
+slightest tremor of alarm as the appalling noise had broken upon us, I
+explained that the roaring creature was not harmful, but gentle and
+biddable; and I begged that other of the bars might be removed, so that
+it might come forth and join us. That he acceded instantly to my request
+gave me a good opinion of his own faithfulness and honesty; for a man of
+a suspicious and crafty nature assuredly would have believed that my
+request was but a trap laid for his destruction; and thereupon the bars
+were removed. And the truth of my words was made manifest, as El Sabio
+came instantly to Pablo and received his caresses with every sign of
+gentleness and affection. But even Tizoc did not disguise his wonder
+upon beholding this strange beast, for the largest four-footed creature
+in all that valley, as he told me, was a little animal of the deer
+species, that was not much bigger than a hare. And when I bade Pablo
+mount upon El Sabio's back, the look of surprise in Tizoc's face changed
+suddenly to an expression of troubled doubt, in which was also alarm.
+Under his breath I heard him mutter, "Can it be that the prophecy will
+be fulfilled?" But whatever the cause of his inward disturbance was, he
+spoke not of it, but turned once more forward, and gave the order to
+march.
+
+[Illustration: THE FULFILMENT OF THE PROPHECY]
+
+The crowd, seeing that no harm was like to come to them, pressed forward
+once more, and gazed with open-mouthed wonder--and also, as it seemed to
+me, with awe--at the prodigious spectacle which Pablo, gravely riding
+upon the ass's back, presented to them. And so, with the guards before
+and behind us, we marched onward into the Valley of Aztlan.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+THE STRIKING OF A MATCH.
+
+
+As we emerged from the nook in the mountain-side the whole of the valley
+lay open before us, and never was a more lovely spot beheld by the eyes
+of man. A half-dozen leagues in front of us rose the great mountain wall
+which shut in its farther side, and about as far away to the right and
+to the left these walls swept around in vast curves and joined the
+cliffs through which we had come by the hollow way that tunnelled
+beneath them. A noble lake extended nearly the whole length of the
+valley, and covered near a third of its width, and so seemed less like a
+lake than like a calm and majestic river. From the water-side the land
+rose in broad terraces, broken by belts of timber and by many groups of
+smaller trees, which, because of the regularity of their growth, I took
+to be fruit plantations. All the open country seemed to be one vast
+garden, most carefully tended, and everywhere cut up by little canals,
+whence water for irrigation was drawn. Scattered everywhere about the
+valley were single houses embowered in trees, and from where we stood we
+could see also four or five little towns, which also were plentifully
+shaded. And on the lake many boats were passing, of which several were
+of a considerable size, and were fitted with curiously shaped sails. And
+all this exquisite tropical beauty of ample water and luxuriant foliage
+shone richly beneath the bright splendor of a deep blue tropical sky.
+
+Yet that which most strongly attracted our attention was not this
+charming display of the manifold excellencies of God's handiwork, but
+rather a wonderful manifestation of the handiwork of man. Over against
+us, on the far side of the lake, slantingwise from where we stood, rose
+a mass of buildings of such vastness and such majestic design that at
+the first glance we took it to be one of the square-topped mountains
+which are found not uncommonly in this portion of the world, and around
+the bases of which are sloping heaps of the fragments of rock which
+have broken away through countless ages from their weather-worn sides.
+Yet in a moment we perceived that what we saw was a walled city built
+upon a great promontory, that jutted out from the mountain-side; and in
+the same breath Fray Antonio and I called out together, "It is the city
+of Culhuacan!"
+
+As we uttered this name Tizoc turned towards us quickly, and with a
+startled, troubled look upon his face. "They are not of our race," he
+said, as though speaking his thoughts aloud; "yet the sacred name, that
+among us only a few know, is known to them!" and the troubled look upon
+his face deepened as we went onward.
+
+The way by which we descended was a narrow road carried zigzag down the
+cliff--for the pass by which we had entered the valley was fully six
+hundred feet above the level of the lake--and at short intervals along
+its course this road was defended by walls of very solid masonry,
+pierced with openings so narrow that only one man at a time could pass
+through them. That the walls were for defence was shown by the piles of
+metal bars on the inner side of each opening--the side towards the
+mountain--so arranged that in a moment they could be slipped into
+sockets in the stone-work, thus closing effectually the way.
+
+Perceiving that we regarded with surprise this curious system of
+fortification, Tizoc explained: "These are the barriers set up against
+the Tlahuicos, who, heeding not the order given of old by our lord
+Chaltzantzin, have striven many times to break forth from the
+valley--for among these men there are many of perverse natures and evil
+minds."
+
+In _tlahuico_ I recognized a Nahua word that means "men turned towards
+the earth," but what its meaning might be in the sense in which Tizoc
+employed it I did not know. I should have asked for further
+explanation--for the manner of this man was so frank and so friendly
+that it invited a cordial familiarity--but as I was about to speak we
+passed through the narrow opening in a wall of unusual height and
+strength, and so came into a charming garden, in the midst of which
+stood a large house well built of stone. For the making of this garden a
+natural nook on the side of the mountain had been enlarged by filling in
+along its outer edge against a great retaining-wall, built up from a
+depth of a hundred feet from the slope below; and on the farther side of
+the plateau thus created, where the path down into the valley went on
+again, were heavy defensive walls. Near this exit, also, was a long low
+building that I took to be a guard-house.
+
+The crowd that had followed behind us from the height above went on
+across the plateau, and out through the gate beside the guard-house--its
+members casting many curious looks at us as they departed--and the
+guardsmen who had formed our escort, at an order from Tizoc, went on to
+their quarters. But Tizoc led us across the garden to the large house
+that stood in the midst of it, and there, with a formal courtesy, bade
+us enter. This was his home, he said, and we were his welcome guests.
+
+The house was so like the houses ordinarily found in Mexico that we had
+no feeling of strangeness in entering it. It was built of stone neatly
+laid in cement; was but a single story in height, and enclosed a large
+central court, in the midst of which a fountain sparkled, surrounded by
+small trees and shrubs and beds of flowers. All of the rooms opened upon
+this central court, and in the outer wall the only opening was the
+narrow way by which we had entered--for the prompt closing of which
+there lay in readiness a pile of metal bars. The flat roof, also of
+stone, was reached by a stone stair-way from the court, and had about it
+a heavy stone parapet that was pierced with narrow slits through which
+javelins and arrows could be discharged. But these arrangements for
+defence did not by any means produce a gloomy effect, as they would had
+we encountered them in a country-house in our own part of the world--for
+similar defence arrangements are found in every hacienda in Mexico at
+the present day, and even I, though my stay in the country had been so
+short, already had become accustomed to them.
+
+A buzzing chatter of talk, in which women's voices predominated, ceased
+suddenly as we entered the court; and from the swaying and twitching of
+the curtains hanging in the front of the openings leading into several
+of the rooms, we inferred that we were undergoing a keen inspection. In
+response to a call from Tizoc, some men-servants came out from one of
+the rooms and received his order to prepare food for us; and he then led
+us to a large room in a corner of the court that was arranged very
+delightfully as a bath. Here was a great stone tank, twenty feet or so
+square, and with a slanting bottom, so that the depth of it ranged from
+two feet to nearly five, in which was fresh running water; and over the
+portion of the room that the tank occupied there was no roof but the
+bright blue sky. On the stone floor were beautifully woven mats, and
+towels of cotton cloth hung upon pegs driven into the walls, and in
+earthen bowls were fresh pieces of a saponaceous root that I have seen
+the like of in use among the Indians of New Mexico. It seemed to strike
+Tizoc as odd that we preferred to make use of the bath successively
+rather than all together; but he was too polite a man to interpose any
+objections to our eccentricities. Pablo only--coming last of all of
+us--had a companion in his bathing in the person of El Sabio; and the
+sleekness of that excellent animal, when Pablo had brushed carefully his
+long coat when his bath was ended, was a wonder to behold.
+
+Being thus refreshed, we heartily welcomed the excellent meal that was
+served to us in the cool shade of the veranda by which the court-yard
+was surrounded. Our eating was somewhat in the Roman fashion, for the
+table was a broad slab of stone, raised but a little from the ground,
+and around it we reclined upon mats, with cushions woven of rushes to
+lean upon. The food was excellent--a small animal of the deer species,
+but no larger than a hare, roasted whole; birds very like quails,
+delicately broiled; little cakes made of maize, which were rather like
+the hoe-cakes of our Southern negroes than _tortillas_; some sort of
+sweet marmalade; and a great abundance of oranges, mangoes, bananas, and
+other fruits common to the hot lands of Mexico; all of which fruits
+were much more delicate in flavor than Mexican fruits usually are; the
+result, as we found later, of the great care bestowed upon their
+culture. Only water was served with the meal, but at the end of it a
+small jar of some sort of potent liquor was brought, very cool, and with
+an excellent spicy taste, that Tizoc warned us must be taken but
+sparingly; and truly he was right, as I found from the warm and mellow
+feeling of benevolent friendliness that but half a cup of it infused
+into me. Tizoc himself did not follow very rigidly the advice that he
+had given us; and to this fact, probably, was due the exceeding
+frankness with which he subsequently spoke with us concerning grave
+matters, of which he surely would have been reticent had he been in a
+less genial mood.
+
+"Just ask th' Colonel if he minds my smokin' a pipe, won't you,
+Professor?" Young said, when our meal was ended; and as I myself wanted
+to smoke, and as I was sure that Rayburn did also, I made the request
+general. Tizoc, to my surprise--for I believed smoking to be common to
+all the indigenous races--evidently did not at all understand my
+meaning; but perceiving that I asked to have some favor granted, he
+courteously gave the permission that I desired. As we filled our pipes
+he watched us curiously; but when we drew out our matches and struck
+fire by what seemed to him but the turn of our hands, he started to his
+feet and manifested a strange excitement, in which there seemed to be
+less of alarm than of awe. His voice shook, and his whole person
+trembled, as he asked, "Are ye the children of Chac-Mool, the God of
+Fire, and therefore the chosen servants of Huitzilopochtli the
+Terrible, that ye thus can do what among us is done only by our Priest
+Captain Itzacoatl?"
+
+[Illustration: THE STRIKING OF A MATCH]
+
+Both Fray Antonio and I heard with delight this utterance, that in a
+moment settled the long-disputed question as to whether or not Chac-Mool
+was an idol, and settled it, also, in favor of the ingenious hypothesis
+presented by the learned Señor Chavero. The moment was not a favorable
+one, however, for pursuing the matter in its archæological bearings, for
+all of our tact and skill just then were required to restore Tizoc to
+calmness. As well as this was possible in the language common to us--we
+suddenly realized how difficult it was to express in the Nahua tongue
+more than rudimentary concepts of the ideas that we sought to convey--we
+explained to him how matches were made; and illustrated our words by
+showing him how fire was induced by friction, even as the rubbing of two
+pieces of wood together produced fire also. This explanation was less
+exact than ingenious; but it was one that he could understand, and it
+had the effect of allaying his alarm sufficiently to permit him to
+resume his seat, when he at once drank off a whole bowlful of the
+strong, spicy liquor at a draught. Added to what he already had inside
+of him, this draught set his tongue to wagging in the free way that I
+have already referred to, and he grew bold enough to take a match in his
+hand. But even in his cups he manifested a certain reverence in his
+handling of it; and presently, from a little bag that was hung about his
+neck, he produced the burnt remnant of a match that he compared with it
+critically. "They are the same?" he asked, as he extended the whole
+match and the fragment together towards us that we might examine them.
+
+"They are the same," Fray Antonio answered. "Whence comes the one that
+you guard so carefully?"
+
+"From the Priest Captain--from Itzacoatl. With such things does he
+miraculously set burning the fire of sacrifice; but he does not speak of
+them lightly, as you do; he tells us that they are the handiwork of the
+Fire God, Chac-Mool; and when the fire of sacrifice is kindled he gives
+what remains of them as high rewards to those who have served well the
+State by brave acts or honorable deeds. This which I cherish was my
+reward for crushing a revolt among the Tlahuicos."
+
+Fray Antonio and I exchanged curious glances, for the conviction was
+forced upon us both that the Priest Captain of whom Tizoc spoke must
+either have invented friction matches, or that he must have some secret
+channel of communication with the outside world. In either case it was
+evident that he must be a man of unusual shrewdness; and it also was
+evident that his feeling towards us--since we also could perform a
+miracle that he obviously made use of as a means of manifesting his
+divine right to rule--must be that of strong hostility.
+
+To Rayburn and Young, who had observed wonderingly Tizoc's extraordinary
+conduct, I rapidly translated what he had said; and explained how
+serious our situation appeared in the light of this new development.
+
+"Well, it certainly _is_ cold weather for this Priest Captain fellow,"
+Young commented, "if we've got hold of his boss miracle; and I guess
+you're about right, Professor--he'll want t' take it out of our hides.
+Just poke up th' Colonel t' telling all he knows about this old dodger.
+Th' Colonel's got his tongue pretty well greased just now with his own
+prime old Bourbon--pass me that jar, Rayburn, I don't mind if I have
+another whack at it myself--and we may get something out of him that
+will be useful. Try it on, Professor, any way. Here's luck, gentlemen."
+
+That Young's tongue also was a little greased, as he put it, by this
+very agreeable beverage was quite evident; but his wits were sharpened
+rather than dulled by the drink, and his present suggestion evidently
+was a very good one. As for Tizoc, his disposition towards us obviously
+was most soft and friendly; and as his mind slowly absorbed the fact
+that, somehow or another, the Priest Captain had made a fool of him with
+a miracle that was not really a miracle at all, his choler rose in a
+manner most favorable to our purposes. Yet this very feeling of
+resentful anger--showing a growing irreverence of one to whom all the
+traditions of his people gave reverence second only to that due to the
+gods themselves--was startling evidence of the menace that our presence
+was to the theocratic ruler's temporal and spiritual power. Therefore it
+was with a keen curiosity that we listened--and Tizoc needed, to induce
+him to talk freely, but little of the poking-up that Young had
+suggested--to what was told us concerning the strange people among whom
+we had come by ways so perilous, and of their chieftain, the Priest
+Captain Itzacoatl--with whom, as no spirit of prophecy was needed to
+tell us, we were destined soon to engage in a conflict that must be
+fought out to the very death.
+
+
+
+
+XIX.
+
+THE SEEDS OF REVOLT.
+
+
+For the sake of brevity I shall summarize here the statement that Tizoc
+made to us, and for the sake of clearness I shall add to it some facts
+of minor importance which came to our knowledge later--thus at once
+exhibiting the whole of the troublous condition of affairs that stirred
+dangerously the people dwelling in the Valley of Aztlan at the time of
+our coming among them.
+
+At this period the political situation, as I may term it, was
+exceedingly critical. Three powerful factions were in existence; and
+peace was preserved only by the generally diffused belief that open
+revolt, on the part of either one, would be crushed instantly by a
+temporary coalition of the other two. The beginning of this unpleasantly
+volcanic condition of affairs dated back six cycles--that is to say, a
+little more than three hundred years--and was the direct result of a
+violation of the law set forth by the wise King Chaltzantzin when the
+colony was founded, by which it was ordained that all among the
+Aztlanecas who, on coming to maturity, were weaklings or cripples,
+should be put to death.
+
+Being once suggested, the repeal or the modification of this law found
+many advocates. Naturally, the change was urged most strongly by all
+those whose sons and daughters were sickly or malformed, and so were
+doomed to die in the very blossom of their years. It was urged by the
+nobles because the more astute among them perceived the possibility of
+so manipulating it that it would result in the creation of a
+distinctively servile class; and the priests urged it because they also
+perceived a way by which it might be made to provide more victims for
+sacrifice to the gods. And so it came to pass, through the influence of
+these diverse elements operating together towards a common end, that the
+law which Chaltzantzin had promulgated was set aside, and a law was made
+that embodied the provisions demanded by the nobles and the priests,
+whereby should be created a new social class; which class, because of
+the infirmities of those composing it, received the name of
+Tlahuicos--"men turned towards the earth." Thereafter, the sickly and
+the crippled were not slain upon reaching maturity, but then passed out
+from the class into which they were born and became servitors. And when
+the first cycle was ended after the making of this new law, and
+thenceforward every year, one in every ten among the Tlahuicos was taken
+by lot to be sacrificed to the gods--for the priests craftily had gained
+the barbarous concession that they demanded by placing the first
+fulfilment of it at a time so far in the future that all concerned in
+the granting of it would be dead in the course of nature before it
+became operative. Yet to the end that those of noble birth might be
+saved from the ignominy of servitude, it was provided that children
+which by reason of natural infirmity were doomed to become slaves, might
+be saved from that fate upon coming to maturity by being then
+surrendered by their parents to the priests for sacrifice. Other grace
+there was none. Excepting between death and slavery, there was no choice
+for the weak or the malformed.
+
+As time passed on, the Tlahuicos, marrying among themselves, had greatly
+increased in numbers; and so far from remaining a weakling race, they had
+become, by reason of their frugal mode of living and of the wholesome,
+hearty labor in which they constantly were engaged, exceptionally hale
+and strong; the weak and crippled among them being mainly those who each
+year, because of such infirmities, were added to their number from the
+higher ranks of the community. And thus was collected together material
+as dangerous as it was inflammable; for the fresh additions to the
+Tlahuicos kept constantly alive in the whole body a spirit of moody
+discontent, that time and again, at the season when the lots were cast
+by which one in every ten was doomed to death, was fanned into armed
+mutiny. These revolts ever had as their single object escape from the
+valley; which fact made evident enough the need for the elaborate system
+of defensive works by which the outlet of the valley was barred.
+
+From the Tlahuicos were drawn the house-servants of the rich; and by
+those of this wretched class who were stout of body all the heavy labor
+of the community was carried on--the tilling of the fields, the
+quarrying of stone, the building of houses and bridges and roads, the
+felling of timber, the carriage of all burdens, and the working of the
+great gold-mine, concerning which I shall hereafter have more to tell.
+And all of these people were held in absolute bondage, either as the
+serfs of individual owners or as the property of the State; for each
+year the new accessions to the class were sold publicly at an auction to
+whoever would bid the most for them; and those which none would buy,
+being too infirm to be useful as laborers, the State laid claim to--but
+only that they might be kept alive until such time as they should be
+needed by the priests for sacrifice.
+
+Yet out of this custom of sale, that on the face of it was harsh and
+barbarous, some slight mitigation of the cruelty of the system had come;
+for the practice had grown up of permitting parents to buy back their
+own children--nominally thereafter holding them as slaves--and so to
+save them at a single stroke from both death and servitude. One strong
+cause of the hatred of the Priest Captain Itzacoatl, Tizoc said (and we
+wondered then at the trembling in his voice, and at the evidently deep
+emotion that overcame him as he spoke), was that he had but lately
+forbidden the continuance of this practice, by which only the letter of
+the law was obeyed.
+
+Until the promulgation by the Priest Captain of this decree, the
+priesthood, the military aristocracy, and the mass of the army had
+constituted, politically, one single class. The civil government was
+vested in a body styled the Council of the Twenty Lords, the members of
+which originally had been chosen by Chaltzantzin, and from him had
+received authority, in perpetuity, to fill the vacancies which death
+would cause among them by selecting the wisest of each new generation to
+be Councillors. While the composition of this body was distinctively
+aristocratic--for its members were either military nobles or priests of
+a high grade--there was in it also an element of democracy; for both the
+priesthood and the army were recruited from all classes of society
+(saving only the servile class), and among the Twenty Lords there were
+always men who had risen from obscurity to distinction solely by their
+own merit. Over this body the Priest Captain presided; yet was his will
+superior to that of the Council, for he was the visible representative
+of the gods, and so centred in his own person their high authority and
+dreadful power.
+
+Until the time of Itzacoatl, each successive priest captain, in the long
+line that here had ruled, had exercised so discreetly his theocratic
+rights, and in all ways had shown such wisdom in his government, that no
+conflict had arisen between the temporal and the spiritual powers. And
+thus wisely had Itzacoatl governed in the early years of his reign. But
+as age stole upon him--and he now was a very old man--his rule had grown
+more and more tyrannical. He had drawn about him certain priests for
+intimate advisers, and these constantly led him to run counter to the
+will of the Twenty Lords, not only in matters about which divergent
+opinions reasonably might be held, but in matters wherein the will of
+the whole people was at one with the advice that the Council gave. Thus,
+gradually, two parties were built up within the State: that of the
+priests, which strongly seconded the disposition that Itzacoatl
+manifested to make the spiritual power absolutely supreme, and that of
+the nobles and people of the higher class, which sought to maintain the
+Council's ancient rights in matters temporal. In regard to these two
+factions, the affiliations of the army were so nicely balanced that
+neither side ventured to resort to open violence--for each dreaded that
+the other would turn the scale against it by invoking the aid of the
+servile class. Thus it was that the despised Tlahuicos actually held the
+balance of power. Yet of this fact, Tizoc declared--but I noticed that
+just here there was a curious hesitancy about his speech, as though he
+knew more than he was willing to disclose--the Tlahuicos were but dimly
+conscious; while they did know certainly that in the present state of
+affairs any attempt on their part to rise in mutiny would be met, as it
+had been met many times in the past, by all the forces of both factions
+of their superiors overwhelmingly united against them.
+
+But the bond that was stronger than all others in holding together this
+community, in which, beneath the surface, were working such potent
+elements of disintegration, was the loyal resolve pervading it to
+execute the mission to which its members were destined when they were
+set apart from the remainder of their race a thousand years before.
+Excepting only among the Tlahuicos--who, in the nature of things, could
+have no share in it--there had ever been among all classes a fervent
+longing for the summons that should call them forth to aid their
+brethren in the battling with a foreign foe that Chaltzantzin had
+prophesied. And by reason of this loyalty to a lofty purpose the open
+rupture that assuredly otherwise would have come had been thus far
+restrained. Honor forbade, Tizoc declared, that by falling to warring
+among themselves they should put in jeopardy their power to respond
+instantly to the summons that might at any instant come.
+
+It was therefore with a profound and solemn interest--for the grave
+import of it was plain to him--that Tizoc, having ended his own
+statement, questioned us as to the full meaning of the words which we
+had spoken when first we entered the valley: that the prophecy of
+Chaltzantzin long since had been fulfilled, and that now, having in its
+appointed time miscarried, the summons would never come.
+
+With awe, and in sorrowful silence, he listened as Fray Antonio and I
+told him how exactly the prophecy had been verified by the coming of the
+Spaniards, and by their conquest and enslavement of the Mexicans; yet
+was he cheered again as our narrative continued, and he learned of the
+brave fight for freedom that his brethren had made, and of the happy
+success that had crowned it in the end. Of the period between the
+achievement of independence and recent years we said but little--it is
+not a period of which those whose feeling towards the Mexicans is
+friendly have much desire to talk--contenting ourselves with
+emphasizing the fact that the race so long oppressed, having risen
+successfully against its oppressors, remained independent under a ruler
+of its own blood.
+
+To that part of our narrative in which we told how we had gained
+knowledge of the hidden city of Colhuacan, and possession of the token
+of summons, Tizoc gave but little heed. It was evident that his mind was
+engrossed with consideration of the more important matters of which we
+had told him, and of the direct bearing that they had upon the troubled
+condition of affairs in which his own people were involved. Seeing
+which, we left him to his own thoughts while we talked of these same
+matters among ourselves.
+
+Rayburn, in his quick, clear-headed way, grasped the situation promptly
+and accurately. "About the size of it is," he said, "that we've knocked
+the false work right from under everything that these folks have been
+building for the whole thousand years that they have been living here;
+and what they've built isn't strong enough to stand alone. As Young
+says, it's a cold day for the Priest Captain because we have got hold of
+his boss miracle; but it's still colder weather for him because the news
+that we have brought makes it all right for the crowd that wants to
+fight him to go right ahead and do it; and I guess they will do it, too,
+as soon as they get the fact fairly into their heads that there no
+longer is a chance of their being called off in the middle of their row.
+Unless I am very much mistaken, we shall see some pretty lively times in
+this valley inside of the next thirty days."
+
+"And unless _I'm_ mistaken," Young struck in, "th' Colonel here will be
+about th' first man t' take off his coat--that is, th' thing that I
+suppose he thinks is a coat--an' sail in. I don't know just what he's
+got against th' Priest Captain, except that he seems t' be a sort of
+pill on gen'ral principles, but I'm sure that he's down on him from th'
+word go. From what th' Colonel says, I judge that his crowd has a pretty
+good chance of comin' out on top--for th' other crowd seems t' be made
+up for th' most part of parsons; an' parsons, as a rule, haven't much
+fight in 'em. What we'd better do it t' tie t' th' Colonel, an' when
+we've helped him an' his friends t' wallop th' other fellows they'll be
+so much obliged to us that they'll let us bag all th' treasure we want
+an' clear out. An' that reminds me, Professor--we haven't heard anything
+about any treasure so far. Just ask th' Colonel if there really is one.
+If there isn't, I vote for pullin' out before th' row begins. It's as
+true of a fight as it is of a railroad--that runnin' it just for th'
+operatin' expenses don't pay."
+
+Tizoc answered my question on this head somewhat absently, for he
+evidently was debating within himself some very serious matter; but his
+answer was of a sort that Young found entirely satisfactory. In the
+heart of the city, he said, was the Treasure-house that Chaltzantzin had
+builded there; and within it the treasure remained that Chaltzantzin had
+stored away. What it consisted of, nor the value of it, he could not
+tell. The Treasure-house was also the Great Temple; and of the treasure
+only the Priest Captain had accurate knowledge. In the Treasure-house,
+Tizoc added, was stored the tribute that the people paid annually, and
+the metal that was taken from the great mine. This metal was the most
+precious of all their possessions, he said, for from it their arms were
+made, and also their tools for tilling the earth, and for working wood
+and stone. It had not always been of such value, for it naturally was
+too soft to serve these useful purposes; but at a remote period, until
+which time their implements had been made of stone, a wise man among
+them had discovered a way by which it could be hardened, and from that
+time onward the people dwelling in the valley had prospered greatly,
+because they thus were enabled to practise all manner of useful arts.
+
+"And what is this metal like?" I asked, with much interest, for my
+archæological instinct instantly was aroused by hearing summed in these
+few words a matter of such momentous importance as the transition of a
+people to the age of metal from the age of stone.
+
+"It is like this," Tizoc answered, simply, disengaging as he spoke a
+heavy bracelet from his arm, "only this remains in its natural state of
+softness. To be of great value it first must be made hard."
+
+I had no doubt in my own mind as to what this metal was, but I knew that
+Rayburn, who was an excellent metallurgist, could pronounce upon it
+authoritatively.
+
+"Is this gold?" I asked, handing him the bracelet.
+
+"Certainly it is," he answered, in a moment--"and it seems to be
+entirely without alloy."
+
+"Then your guess about the bright, hard metal that has been such a
+puzzle to us," I continued, "was the right one; it is hardened gold:"
+and I repeated to him what Tizoc had told me.
+
+Rayburn was deeply interested. "Scientifically, this is a big thing,
+Professor," he said. "These fellows can give points to our
+metallurgists. But for our purposes, of course, what they've caught on
+to here has no practical value. Gold has got to come down a good deal,
+or phosphor-bronze has got to go up a good deal, before it will pay us
+to turn gold dollars into axle-bearings and cogs and pinions. But it's
+mighty interesting, all the same. Fusing with silicium would give a
+gold-silicide that might fill the bill for hardness; but I can't even
+make a guess as to how they do the tempering. Ask the Colonel what the
+whole process is, Professor. It will make a capital paper to read before
+the Institute of Mining Engineers at their next meeting."
+
+As I turned to Tizoc to ask this question, I perceived that his regard
+was fixed upon something on the other side of the court-yard, and in his
+look most tender love was blended with a deep melancholy. Following the
+direction of his gaze, I saw that its object was a beautiful boy, a lad
+of twelve or fourteen years old, who was half hidden behind some
+flowering shrubs, and from this cover was peering at us curiously.
+
+"It is my Maza--my little son," Tizoc said, as he turned and saw the
+direction in which I looked. And then he called to the boy to come to
+him. For a moment Maza hesitated, but when the call was repeated he came
+out from behind the screen of flowers and so towards us across the
+court-yard; and as he advanced I perceived that he was lame. In his face
+was the look of wistfulness which cripples so often have, and there was
+a rare sweetness and intelligence in the expression of his large brown
+eyes. In a moment I understood why it was that Tizoc resented so
+bitterly the abrogation by the Priest Captain of the custom that had
+permitted parents to buy back their crippled children, and so to save
+them from slavery; and a selfish feeling of gladness came into my heart
+as this light dawned upon me--for I knew that when we faced the danger
+that threatened us (a most real danger, for our coming into the valley
+was nothing less than a deadly blow at Itzacoatl's supremacy) we surely
+would find in Tizoc an ally and a friend.
+
+
+
+
+XX.
+
+THE PRIEST CAPTAIN'S SUMMONS.
+
+
+There was so much meaning in my look as I turned towards Tizoc that I
+had no need to speak; he knew that I had comprehended the situation, and
+so answered my look in words.
+
+"Do you wonder that I rejoice over your coming, and over the news which
+you bring? The will of the gods no longer is that we shall do the work
+for which our lord Chaltzantzin destined us; therefore are we free to
+set aside the custom that he decreed by which our weak ones are
+condemned to death, and with it the custom, yet more cruel, of our own
+devising, by which they are saved from death only that they may be made
+slaves. To my boy neither slavery nor death shall come. Through you the
+gods have spoken, and he is saved. And now also is fulfilled the
+prophecy that of ancient times was spoken, that with the coming into the
+Valley of Aztlan of a four-footed beast, bearing upon its back a man,
+the power of the Priest Captain should end."
+
+Much more, doubtless, Tizoc would have said to us, for an exalted
+emotion stirred him; but at that moment there was the sound of hurrying
+feet in the outer enclosure, and then Tizoc's secretary came through the
+narrow entrance into the court-yard, followed closely by a detachment of
+the guards. The secretary spoke hurriedly to his master, apart from us,
+and from his excited manner in speaking, and from the anxious look upon
+his master's face as he listened, we inferred that some very stirring
+matter was involved in the communication that he brought.
+
+For a few moments Tizoc stood in silence, his head bowed, as though
+engaged in earnest thought. Then he turned to us and spoke. "The Priest
+Captain has sent his order that you shall be brought before him," he
+said, "and that you must go hence without delay." And then he added,
+taking me aside and speaking in a low voice: "There is great commotion
+already in the city, for the soldiers have noised abroad the news which
+you bring. The Council of the Twenty Lords has been called together, and
+I am told that a messenger from the Council is on his way hither. That
+my order to take you to the city in such haste, and directly to the
+Priest Captain, is so stringent, I cannot but think is caused by his
+desire to get you hence before the messenger from the Council shall
+arrive. His purpose towards you surely is an evil one; but fear not--you
+bring a message of freedom and deliverance that has only to be published
+to raise around you a host of friends. And now we must go."
+
+In a few moments we had quitted Tizoc's house, passed out through the
+fortified gate-way in the heavy wall by which the little plateau on the
+mountain side was defended; and so, by a broad road that descended
+sharply, went downward towards the border of the lake. Our order of
+march was the same as that adopted in bringing us from the Barred Pass:
+before us and behind us were detachments of the guards, and Tizoc walked
+with us. In accordance with his desire, that he expressed to me in a
+cautious whisper, Pablo rode upon El Sabio's back. There was no need for
+him to explain his motive in making this suggestion. It was his purpose,
+evidently, to exhibit the fulfilment of the prophecy as conspicuously as
+possible, and so to prepare the ground for the sowing of the seeds of
+revolt.
+
+I had an opportunity now to tell Rayburn and Young of what Tizoc had
+been speaking at the moment when the summons from the Priest Captain
+came; and also of the strong personal reason that he had for protecting
+us, even to the extent of forwarding the outbreak of revolution, in his
+desire to save from death or slavery the son whom he so well loved.
+
+"I'm not at all surprised to hear that what we've told 'em is going to
+start a revolution," Rayburn said. "That's just the way I sized the
+matter up, you know, as soon as I got down to the first facts. If they'd
+had a decent sort of a fellow at the head of things, they might have
+worked along so as to take a fresh start without fighting over it. But
+this Priest Captain chap isn't that kind. He goes in for Boss management
+and machine politics, I should judge from what the Colonel says, as
+straight as if he was a New York alderman or the chairman of a State
+campaign committee in Ohio. No doubt he's got a pretty big crowd back of
+him; but that kind of a crowd don't amount to much in a fight, when
+there's any sort of a show for the other side to win. It sort of gets
+out of the way, and stands around with water on both shoulders, and
+then, when one side begins to get pretty well on top--it don't matter
+which--it says that that's the side it's been fighting with all along,
+and begins to kick the fellows that are down. Where our chance comes in
+is in having the respectable element, the solid men who pay taxes and
+have an interest in decent government, to tie to. They may not pay taxes
+here, but that's the kind I mean. And that kind, when it takes to
+fighting, fights hard. Then there must be a lot of fathers with crippled
+children, like the Colonel here, who are down on the Priest Captain the
+worst kind, and will be only too glad of a chance to go for him; and
+they can be counted on to stand in with us, and to fight harder than
+anybody. I'll admit, Professor, that we're in a pretty tight place; but
+it might be a good deal tighter, and I do honestly believe that we'll
+get out of it."
+
+"And so do I," said Young, "'specially now that I know that that burro
+of Pablo's is part of a prophecy. I always did think that there was
+style about El Sabio, any way, an' now I know what it comes from. When I
+was a boy, th' one thing that used t' keep me quiet in church was
+hearin' our minister read that story about Balaam and _his_ burro; but I
+never thought then that I'd actually ketch up with a live ass that was
+in the prophesyin' line of business for itself--or had prophecies made
+about it, which is pretty much the same thing. T' be sure, this prophecy
+don't come down t' dots quite as much as I'd like it to; but I s'pose
+that that's th' way with 'em always--eh, Professor? Th' prophets sort o'
+leave things at loose ends on purpose; so's they can run 'wild' on a
+clear track, without any bother about schedule time or connections."
+
+"Well, our burro lays over Balaam's," Rayburn struck in. "In that case
+it took the combined arguments of an ass and an angel to convince Balaam
+that he was off about his location, and was running his lines all wrong;
+but, unless we count in Pablo, El Sabio is playing a lone hand; and I'm
+sure that the Colonel's not fooling us about this prophecy business,
+either. It's rubbish, of course; but that don't matter, so long as the
+people here swallow it for the genuine thing. Just look at that old
+fellow there. He's tumbled to it, and he's regularly knocked out."
+
+We were close to the shore of the lake by this time, and as Rayburn
+spoke we were passing a small house, in front of which was gathered a
+group of Indians. In the midst of the group was a very old man, who
+with out-stretched arm was pointing towards Pablo and El Sabio, and who
+at the same time was talking to his companions in grave and earnest
+tones. There was a look of awe upon his age-worn face, and as we fairly
+came abreast of him he dropped upon his knees and raised his arms above
+his head, as though in supplication to some higher power. The action,
+truly, was a most impressive one; and even more strongly than we were
+affected by it did it affect those who were clustered around him. In a
+moment all in the group had fallen upon their knees and had raised their
+arms upward; and then a low moaning, that presently grew louder and more
+thrilling, broke forth among them as they gave vent to the feeling of
+awful dread that was in their hearts.
+
+"That's business, that is," Young said, in tones of great satisfaction.
+"Those fellows do believe in th' prophecy, for a fact; and if th' folks
+once get it fairly into their heads that th' time has come for their
+rascally Priest Captain t' have an upset, that's a good long start for
+our side towards upsettin' him. It was just everlastin'ly level-headed
+in th' Colonel t' make Pablo ride El Sabio, and so regularly cram th'
+thing down these critters' throats. I don't know how much of th'
+prophecy he believes himself, but he's workin' it for all it's worth,
+any way. There don't seem t' be any flies worth speakin' of on th'
+Colonel--eh, Professor? And I guess that anybody who wants t' get up
+earlier 'n th' mornin' than he does 'll have to make a start overnight."
+
+By this time the road that we followed had come down to the lake-level,
+and presently we reached the end of it, which was a well-built pier that
+extended out from the shelving shore into deep water. Here a boat was in
+waiting for us--a barge of near forty feet in length, with twenty men to
+row it, and carrying also a mast, stepped well forward, so rigged as to
+spread a sail that was a compromise between a lug and a lateen. There
+was some little talk between the officer in charge of the barge and
+Tizoc, and then the latter motioned us to go on board. The barge-master
+gave the order to the guard to follow us, as though the command of the
+party now had devolved upon him; and it seemed to us, from the close
+group that the guard made around us in the boat, and from the anxious
+looks which the barge-master cast upon us, that very strict orders must
+have been given concerning keeping us closely in ward. Under these
+circumstances, it caused us some little wonder that we were permitted to
+retain our arms, until the thought occurred to me that these people,
+having no knowledge of such things, did not at all realize that our
+rifles and revolvers were arms at all. To test which theory I drew one
+of my pistols--not violently, but as though this were something that I
+was doing for my own convenience--and so held it in my hands that the
+muzzle was pointed directly at the heart of the soldier who sat beside
+me; yet beyond the interest that its odd shape, and the strange metal
+that it was made of aroused in him, it was evident that the man regarded
+my action entirely without concern. I drew the attention of Rayburn and
+Young to what I was doing, and to how evident it was that fire-arms
+were unknown to this people; and in their ignorance we found much cause
+for satisfaction.
+
+[Illustration: CHECKING YOUNG'S OUTBREAK]
+
+"If they don't know enough to corral our guns," Young said, "we've got a
+pretty good-sized piece of dead-wood on 'em. Th' way things are goin',
+we may have a rumpus a'most any time, I s'pose; and if it does come to a
+rumpus, they'll be a badly struck lot when we open on 'em. Robinson
+Crusoe cleaned out a whole outfit of Indians with just an old flint-lock
+musket; and I should say that we'd simply paralyze this crowd when we
+all get goin' at once with our revolvers an' Winchesters. Isn't that
+your idea of it, Rayburn?"
+
+But Rayburn did not answer, for while Young was speaking he had taken
+out his field-glass and was examining the city, to within three or four
+miles of which we now were come. "Well, that _is_ a walled city, and no
+mistake!" he said, as he lowered the glass from his eyes. "Take a look,
+Professor. These people may be easy to fool when it comes to prophecies,
+but when it comes to engineering and architecture they're sound all the
+way through. Just look at the straightness of that wall running up the
+hill, and how exact the alignment is of the two parts above and below
+that ledge of rocks. They had to get that alignment, you know, by taking
+fore-sights and back-sights from the top of the ledge; and I must say
+that for people who haven't got far enough along in civilization to wear
+trousers, it's an uncommonly pretty piece of work."
+
+As I looked through the glass I was less impressed by this technical
+detail, involving the overcoming of engineering difficulties which I did
+not very thoroughly understand, than I was by the majestic effect
+produced by the city as a whole, in conjunction with the site on which
+it was reared. At this point the lake came close up to the vastly high
+cliffs by which the valley everywhere was girt in, and here jutted out
+from the cliff a great promontory of rock, whereof the highest part was
+fully two hundred feet above the lake-level. For the accommodation of
+the houses which everywhere were built upon it, the sloping face of this
+promontory had been cut into broad terraces, of which the facings were
+massive walls of stone; and the whole was enclosed by a wall of great
+height and enormous thickness that swept out in an immense semicircle
+from the face of the cliff, and thus shut in the terraced promontory and
+also a considerable area of level land at the base of it between the
+lowest terrace and the margin of the lake.
+
+On the highest terrace, crowning and dominating the whole, was a
+majestic building that seemed to be half temple and half fort--a square
+structure, resting solidly against the face of the cliff, and thence
+projecting a long way outward to where its façade was flanked by two
+low, heavy, square towers. Architecturally, this building, unlike any
+other of which I had knowledge in Mexico, saving only the temple that we
+had found upon the lonely mountain-top, was pervaded by a distinctly
+Egyptian sentiment. Its walls sloped inward from their bases, and no
+trivial nor fretful lines weakened the effect of their massive dignity;
+for the whole of the decoration upon them was a broad panelling that was
+gained by a combination of heavy pilasters and a heavy cornice; and with
+the exception of a central entrance, the front was unbroken by openings
+of any kind. Possessing these characteristics, the building had about it
+an air of solemnity that bordered closely upon gloom; and the obvious
+solidity of its construction was such that it seemed destined to last on
+through all coming ages in defiance of the assaults of time. There was
+no need for me to question Tizoc; for I knew that what I beheld before
+me, crowning with sombre grandeur this strange city, girded with such
+prodigious walls, was the Treasure-house that Chaltzantzin, the Aztec
+King, had builded in the dim dawning of a most ancient past.
+
+Young took his turn in looking through the glass, and as he handed it to
+Fray Antonio he said: "If at any time in th' course o' th' past few
+weeks, Professor, you've got th' notion from any o' my talk that I
+thought that dead friend o' yours, th' old monk, was a liar, I want t'
+take it all back; and I want t' take back all that I've said about that
+other dead friend o' yours, th' Cacique, havin' set up a job on us. It's
+clear enough now that both o' your friends played an entirely square
+game. They said that there was a walled city, an' there it is; they said
+that there was a big Treasure-house, an' there _that_ is. They were
+perfect gentlemen, Professor, and I want t' set myself right on th'
+record by sayin' so. If one of 'em hadn't been dead for more than three
+months, and if th' other one hadn't been dead for more than three
+hundred years, and if they both were here, I'd knuckle under and ask 'em
+t' take my hat."
+
+
+
+
+XXI.
+
+THE WALLED CITY OF CULHUACAN.
+
+
+Our use in turn of the field-glass was a mysterious performance that
+aroused keenly the barge-master's curiosity. I heard him ask Tizoc for
+an explanation of it; and Tizoc, who also was much interested, referred
+his question to me. Had I been dealing with Tizoc alone I should have
+tried to make the matter clear to him; but in the case of the
+barge-master, whose feeling towards us, I was convinced, was anything
+but friendly, I thought it wiser to be less frank. Therefore, covering
+the action with a negligent motion of my hand, I screwed the glasses
+close together, so that in looking through them there was to be seen
+only a mass of indistinct objects looming up in a blurred cloud of
+light, and so handed them to him. Naturally, neither he nor Tizoc
+arrived at any very satisfactory conclusion in regard to the real use of
+them; and from their talk it was evident that they conceived the
+ceremony in which we had engaged in turn so earnestly to be in the
+nature of a prayer to our gods. Fray Antonio was both shocked and pained
+by their taking this view of the matter, and was for making a true
+explanation to them; but at my urgent request he held his peace. Yet it
+was evident that he brooded over the matter in his mind, and so was led
+to earnest thoughts of the mission that had brought him hither into the
+Valley of Aztlan. Therefore was I not surprised--though I certainly was
+alarmed by the thought of what might be its consequences--when
+presently, in low and gentle tones, he began to speak to those about him
+of the free and glorious Christian faith, which in all ways was more
+excellent than the cruel idolatry in which they were bound. Naturally,
+he was not permitted long to speak in this strain, for the barge-master
+speedily ordered him in most peremptory tones to keep silence; which
+order doubtless would have been still more quickly given had not the
+officer been fairly surprised by Fray Antonio's temerity into momentary
+forgetfulness of the dangerous outcome of this gentle talk. And Fray
+Antonio, knowing the value of the word in season that is dropped to
+fructify in soil ready for it, did not attempt argument with the
+barge-master--by which the thoughts of those who listened would have
+been diverted from the hopeful promise of a better faith that he had
+offered to them--but obeyed the order meekly and so held his peace. That
+what he had spoken had taken hold upon the hearts of some at least among
+his hearers I was well assured by their grave look of thoughtfulness,
+and especially did Tizoc seem to be deeply moved; but--as I supposed for
+fear of the barge-master--there was no open comment upon what had
+passed.
+
+By this time, the barge being all the while urged rapidly forward by the
+steady strokes of the twenty oarsmen, the city rose so broadly and so
+openly before us that we could see the whole of it distinctly with our
+naked eyes. And what at this nearer view seemed most impressive about it
+was its gloominess; that was due not less to the prison-like effect of
+its heavily built houses and its massive walls than to the dull
+blackness of the stone whereof these same were made. Nowhere was there
+sparkle, or glitter, or bright color, or brightness of any sort to be
+seen; and it seemed to me, as I gazed upon this sombre stronghold, that
+dwelling always within it well enough might wear a man's heart out with
+a consuming melancholy begotten of its cold and cheerless tones.
+
+That it was indeed a stronghold was the more apparent to us the nearer
+that we came to it. The plan of it was that of a great fan, spread open
+upon the hillside, and extending also across the broad sweep of level
+land between the base of the promontory and the lake. The promontory had
+been so cut and shaped that its gentle slope had been transformed into
+six broad semicircular terraces, above the highest of which was a
+semicircular plateau of very considerable size, on which stood the
+Treasure-house, that also was the great temple. Along the face of each
+terrace, and around the face also of the plateau, a heavy defensive wall
+rose to a height of twenty feet or more; and from the base of the
+crowning plateau, thence accessible by a single broad flight of
+stairs--being led through openings in the rampart walls of the terraces,
+and down each terrace face by means of stair-ways--twelve streets
+descended, of which the central six ended at the water-side and the
+remainder against the great outer wall. It was this outer line of
+strong defence that gave the city--which otherwise would have
+corresponded curiously closely with the fortified city of Quetzaltepec,
+described by the Mexican chronicler Tezozomoc--its most distinctive
+characteristic. Such a vastly thick wall, for the great length of it, as
+this was I never have seen in any other place; and so solid was the
+building of it that it would have been proof against any ordinary train
+of siege artillery. For defence against a foe whose only missile weapons
+would be javelins and slings and bows, this great wall made the city
+absolutely impregnable. And that the protection that it gave might be
+still more complete--and also, as Tizoc explained to us, that in the
+case of siege the water supply might be assured, together with a supply
+of fish for food--the wall was carried out into the lake so far as to
+enclose a basin of more than four acres in extent; within which, should
+an enemy gain access to the valley, all the boats upon the lake could be
+brought together and held in safety. And finally, the one entrance to
+the city was by way of a tunnel-like canal cut in the wall thus rising
+from the water; the outer end of which canal was closed in ordinary
+times by a heavy grating, while in war time the inner end also could be
+closed by means of great metal bars.
+
+It was towards this entrance that the barge that carried us was heading.
+Presently we reached it, and the grating was raised for our admission by
+means of chains which were operated from the top of the wall. So low and
+so narrow was the passage that our heads were within a few inches of the
+huge slabs of stone of which its roof was formed; and the rowers had
+need to unstep the mast and then to lay their oars inboard, while they
+brought the barge through by pushing with their hands against the roof
+and sides. The canal was fully forty feet long, and thus the enormous
+thickness of the wall was made apparent to us. It truly was, as I
+observed to Rayburn, a work that well might be attributed to the
+Cyclops.
+
+"I never met a live Cyclop, Professor," Rayburn answered, "and I don't
+believe that these fellows ever did either; but it bothers me to know
+how they managed to do work like this without a steam-derrick. If we get
+out of here with whole skins and our hair on our heads, I hope it won't
+be until I've had a chance to talk to some of their engineers, and so
+get down to the facts."
+
+A moment later we emerged from the tunnel through the wall, and so
+entered the enclosed basin that extended along the whole of the city's
+front. Within the basin were lying many canoes, and also boats of a
+larger sort that carried oars and that were rigged with a sort of
+lug-sail; but these all kept away from us, even as all the boats which
+we had seen during our passage of the lake had given us a wide berth.
+That our barge--one of those employed exclusively in the Priest
+Captain's service--was thus shunned was due, as I found later, to the
+wholesome dread in which the special servitors of the temple and of its
+head universally were held; for these very frequently abused the
+authority acquired through their semi-sacerdotal functions by using it
+as a cloak to cover acts of purely personal oppression, while at all
+times they were feared as the executors of their master's wrath. There
+was, indeed (though I did not mention this fact to Fray Antonio), a
+curiously close resemblance between the officials of this class and the
+familiars of the Inquisition, both in the duties which they performed
+and in the fear and hatred which they everywhere inspired.
+
+But even dread of entanglement with the Priest Captain's servants could
+not restrain the curiosity of the crowd that pressed towards us on the
+broad pier upon which we disembarked. It was evident that this crowd was
+not made up of the common folk of the city, and also that it was moved
+by a purpose far higher than that of a mere idle longing to see
+something that was strange. From their dress, and still more from the
+beauty of their ornaments and the elegance of the arms which many of
+them carried, it was obvious that for the most part these men were
+citizens of the highest rank; and this fact was still further attested
+by the dignity of their demeanor and by the reverent age to which the
+majority of them had attained. So far from manifesting any vulgar
+excitement, the crowd maintained an absolute silence; and with this an
+exterior air of calm that was the more impressive because the eager,
+almost awe-struck expression upon every face showed how strong was the
+emotion that thus strongly was restrained. But when El Sabio, after much
+coaxing, crossed the gang-plank between the boat and the pier, and so
+came to where he could be seen of all plainly, there was a curious low
+sound in the air as though all at once every man in the crowd had
+heaved a sigh; and the sound swelled into a loud murmur as Pablo, in
+obedience to a quick order that I gave him in Spanish, briskly mounted
+upon the ass's back. In this murmur only one word was intelligible, and
+that I caught again and again: the prophecy!
+
+But Pablo was no more than fairly seated upon El Sabio's back than the
+officer in command of our guard took him roughly by the shoulders and
+snatched him thence to the ground again; which act led Tizoc and me to a
+quick exchange of startled glances, for it showed very plainly that the
+Priest Captain--to whom the messenger telling of our coming into the
+valley had been sent before any of these people had seen Pablo mounted
+upon El Sabio's back--had anticipated this sign of the fulfilment of the
+prophecy and had given orders to prevent it. Luckily, the celerity with
+which Pablo had executed my quick order to mount had saved the day for
+us; and even more than saved it, for as we passed through the crowd, on
+our way from the water-side into the city, I caught here and there
+fragments of comment upon what had just passed which showed that not
+only was the sign told of in the prophecy recognized, but that the
+effort on the part of the officer to neutralize it was understood.
+
+But before our going into the city there was a stirring conflict of
+authority concerning us between the temporal and the spiritual powers.
+We were no more than fairly landed, indeed, when an officer addressed
+the barge-master, who continued in charge of our party, and gave him a
+formal order to bring the strangers directly before the Council of the
+Twenty Lords. And to this the barge-master replied that he already was
+under orders to bring the prisoners, immediately upon their landing,
+before the Priest Captain--and there was something both curious and
+ominous, it struck me, in the marked manner in which the term
+"strangers" was employed by one of these men and the term "prisoners" by
+the other.
+
+At this juncture we had further proof of the foresight of the Priest
+Captain, and of the determined stand that he was prepared to make rather
+than to suffer the miscarriage of big plans. While the barge-master and
+the messenger from the Council still were engaged in hot talk as to
+which of the two conflicting orders should be recognised, there was the
+sound of tramping feet and of arms clanking; and then a body of fully
+one hundred soldiers came quickly from behind a house that was near by
+the water-side and swept down on a double-quick to where we were
+standing at the end of the pier. The crowd, jostled aside to make way
+for the passage of the soldiers, evidently regarded them with
+astonishment; and this astonishment rapidly changed to anger as the
+purpose that brought them thither was made plain. In a moment they had
+closed in around us, separating us from the Council's messenger and from
+Tizoc; the barge-master placed himself at the head of them, and in
+sharp, quick tones gave the order to march; and the whole force, with
+ourselves in the centre of it, went off the pier at a round pace, and
+thence along a street that led towards the city's heart. Evidently
+acting under orders, the men broke their platoons and closed in around
+us; and I was well convinced that this unsoldierly marching was adopted
+to the end that El Sabio might not be seen.
+
+Fray Antonio agreed with me that the Priest Captain was carrying matters
+with a dangerously high hand in thus opposing the will of the Council
+with armed force. This act of his, if Tizoc had correctly represented to
+us the excited condition of popular feeling, was quite sufficient in
+itself to stir into violent activity the slumbering fires of mutiny. But
+whether the revolt that we now believed must surely come would come in
+time to be of service to ourselves, we could not but look upon as a very
+open question.
+
+"If this old scoundrel is as sharp as he seems to be," Rayburn said,
+"and if he keeps things up in the way he's begun, it's about all day
+with us. His play should be to get rid of us as quick as he can manage
+it; and I should judge, from the cards that he's put down, that that's
+precisely the way he means to manage the game. It's not much comfort to
+us to know that after he's cleaned us out somebody else will rake his
+pile."
+
+As we talked, we went on rapidly through the city; and even the danger
+that we were in, and the excitement that attended this sudden shifting
+of our fortunes, could not prevent me from studying with a lively
+curiosity the many evidences of an advanced civilization that I beheld.
+The plan of the city, as I had discerned while we were approaching it,
+was that of a wide-open fan. From the Treasure-house, on the height in
+the centre, twelve broad streets radiated outward, of which three on the
+northern side and three on the southern ended against the great
+enclosing wall, and six came down through openings in the walls along
+the several terraces directly to the water-front. All of these streets
+were well paved with large smooth blocks of stone, and were led up the
+faces of the terraces by wide and easy stairs. The transverse streets
+were true semicircles, starting from and ending at the face of the
+cliff, and were carried along the outer edges of the terraces, just
+inside their facing walls. Rayburn was even more astonished than I was
+by the exactness with which these great semicircles were laid off; for
+he apprehended, as I did not, the difficulty attendant upon running a
+line in a true and regular curve. But I am not prepared to say that this
+work could not have been accomplished by mere rule of thumb. My friend
+Bandelier, in the course of his admirable analysis of the ruins at
+Mitla, has made clear to me how easy it is to attribute to scientific
+knowledge work that is the result only of manual skill. As I have
+pointed out in my discussion of this matter in my _Pre-Columbian
+Conditions on the Continent of North America_, the plateau at the top of
+this range of terraces easily might have been laid off in a true
+semicircle by the simple means of a pointed stick at the end of a long
+rope; and from the true line thus established the line of the terrace
+below it could have been had--and so on down to the lowest terrace of
+all.
+
+There could be no doubt, however, that engineering skill of a high
+order--howsoever crude might have been the actual method of its
+application--was exhibited both in the preparation of the site, and then
+in the city's building. On the site alone an almost incredible amount of
+labor had been expended; for the rocky promontory--that primitively, as
+the result showed, had been broken and irregular--had been so cut away
+in some places, and so filled in in others, and the whole of it had been
+so carefully trimmed and smoothed, that in the end it became a huge mass
+of rock-work, in the regularity of which there was not perceptible the
+smallest flaw. And in this preliminary work, as well as in the building
+of the houses afterwards, fragments of stone were used of such enormous
+size that the moving of them, Rayburn declared, would be wellnigh
+impossible even with the most powerful engineering appliances of our own
+time. Nor was the use of these huge pieces of stone confined to the
+foundations of the houses. Some of them were high above the ground;
+indeed, the very largest that we observed--the weight of which Rayburn
+estimated at not less than twenty tons--was a single block that made the
+entire top course of a high wall.
+
+All of the stone-work was well smoothed and squared; and while the
+exteriors of the houses were entirely plain, we could see through the
+open door-ways that the interiors of many of them were enriched with
+carvings. All were destitute of windows opening upon the street; and
+their dull, black walls, and the dull black of the stones with which the
+streets were paved, gave a dark and melancholy air to the city that
+oppressed us even more heavily when thus seen closely than it had when
+we beheld it from afar off. Yet the interior court-yards, so far as we
+could tell from the glimpses that we had of them through open door-ways,
+were bright with sunshine and gay with flowers; thus showing that the
+gloom of these dwellings did not extend beyond their outer walls. I
+observed with much interest that the provision for closing the entrances
+from the street was not swinging doors of wood, but either metal bars,
+such as we had seen in Tizoc's house, or else a metal grating, that was
+arranged like a portcullis to slide up and down in a groove; and I
+attributed the absence of wooden doors less to a desire for stronger
+barriers than to the comparative recentness of the acquisition of the
+knowledge of wood-working tools. Here, I thought, was a curious instance
+of development along the lines of greatest resistance; for in itself the
+invention and the making of a swinging door of wood was a much easier
+matter than was the invention and the making of these finely wrought
+sliding doors of hardened gold.
+
+As for Young, the sight of all this gold-work quite took his breath
+away. "It regularly jolts me, Professor," he said, "t' see th' genuine
+stuff, that's good t' make gold dollars out of, slung around this way. A
+front door of solid gold is a huckleberry above Jay Gould's biggest
+persimmon; an' as t' Solomon, these fellows just lay Solomon out
+cold--regularly down th' old man an' sit on him. Why, for just that one
+front door of th' big house ahead of us I'd sell out all my shares in
+this treasure-hunt, an' be glad t' do it. But I guess I'd have to hire
+Samson--who was in that line of business--t' carry it off for me. It
+must weigh a solid ton!"
+
+By this time we had mounted all of the terraces, and the house towards
+which Young pointed as he spoke was built directly beneath the crowning
+plateau on which the great temple stood. It was the largest and by far
+the most elegant house that we yet had seen, and the sliding grating of
+gold that closed the entrance was unusually heavy, and very beautifully
+wrought. Sentinels were stationed here, wearing the same uniform as that
+of the soldiers who formed our guard; and this further indication of the
+importance of the building gave us the impression that it was the
+dwelling of some great dignitary. Close by the portal we were halted,
+while the commander of our guard spoke through the grating to some one
+inside. A moment later the grating was slowly raised, and we were
+marched through the narrow entrance, and so along a short passage-way
+into a long, narrow chamber that obviously was a guard-room; for spears
+and javelins were ranged in orderly fashion upon racks, and swords and
+shields and bows and quivers of arrows were hung upon the walls. Here we
+were halted again; and while we stood silent together, wondering what
+might be in store for us in this place, we heard the heavy grating
+behind us close with a dull clang.
+
+
+
+
+XXII.
+
+THE OUTBREAK OF REVOLUTION.
+
+
+So dismal was this sound, and so many were the dismal possibilities that
+it suggested, that as I heard it a cold chill went down into my heart;
+and I was glad enough that we at once were led forth from the
+guard-room, and that in consideration of matters of immediate moment my
+mind was diverted from dwelling drearily upon a future that seemed full
+of gloom.
+
+For all the brilliant blaze of sunlight that brightened the large
+court-yard into which we were conducted, there was about it curious
+coldness and cheerlessness. As in the case of all the other houses which
+we had observed, the stone-work of the walls and of the pavement was a
+dull black; but here there were no flowers, nor bright-colored hangings
+over the inner doors, nor brightness of any sort or kind. The carving of
+the stone was extraordinarily rich, to be sure; but the bass-reliefs
+which covered the walls were wholly of a gloomy sort--being for the most
+part representations of the slaughter of men in sacrifice, and the
+tearing of hearts out--so that the eight of them made me shiver,
+notwithstanding the warmth of the sun. From the centre of the court-yard
+a broad stair-way ascended to the plateau above on which the temple
+stood; and this direct way of communicating with it led me to the
+conclusion that the building was a dependency of the temple, and that
+very likely the higher members of the priesthood were housed here.
+
+However, little time was given for looking around us, for our guard
+hurried us--El Sabio following close at Pablo's heels--across the
+court-yard to a door-way at its farther side, before which hung in heavy
+folds a curtain of some sort of thick black cloth. Across this entrance
+the guard was drawn up in orderly ranks behind us; and then the
+barge-master, who had preserved absolute silence towards us since our
+march through the city began, held aside the curtain and silently
+motioned to us to enter.
+
+From the bright sunshine we passed at a step into a chamber so shadowy
+that we involuntarily stopped on the threshold, in order that our eyes
+might become accustomed to the semi-darkness before we advanced. The
+only light that entered it came through two narrow slits in the thick
+wall above the portal that we had just passed; and the glimmer diffused
+by the thin rays thus admitted was in great part absorbed by the black
+draperies with which everywhere the room was hung. As our eyes adjusted
+themselves to these gloomy conditions we perceived that we were in a
+hall of great size; and presently we were able to distinguish objects
+clearly enough to see that at the far end of it was a raised dais,
+having a sort of throne upon it; but not until, being urged forward by
+the officer, we had traversed more than half the length of the hall did
+we discern upon the throne the shadowy figure of a man.
+
+Being come close to the dais, the officer halted us by a gesture; but no
+word was spoken, and for several minutes we stood in the semi-darkness
+of that strange place in absolute silence. For myself, I must confess
+that I was somewhat awed by my surroundings, and by the impassive
+silence and stillness that the dimly seen figure upon the throne
+maintained, and I am sure that Fray Antonio's imaginative nature was
+similarly impressed; as for Pablo, I distinctly heard his teeth
+chattering in the dark. But neither Rayburn nor Young, as the latter
+would have expressed it, awed easily, and it was Rayburn who presently
+spoke.
+
+"This fellow in the big chair would be a good hand at private
+theatricals. He's got a first-rate notion of stage effect. Hadn't I
+better stick a pin in him and wake him up?"
+
+"There's no good in stickin' pins into _him_," said Young, in a tone of
+great contempt. "What's the matter with him is, he's not real at
+all--he's stuffed!"
+
+There was something so absurdly incongruous in these comments that they
+acted instantly upon my overstrained nerves, and I burst into a laugh,
+in which the other two immediately joined. Evidently, this was not at
+all the effect that this carefully arranged reception was intended to
+have upon us; for the seated figure started suddenly and uttered an
+angry exclamation, and at the same time gave a quick order to the
+officer.
+
+"I take it all back," said Young; "he ain't stuffed. I guess he was only
+asleep."
+
+As Young spoke there was a slight rustle of draperies, and in a moment
+the curtains which had veiled four great windows in the four sides of
+the hall were pulled aside, and the darkness vanished in a sudden blaze
+of light. While we shaded our eyes for some seconds, Rayburn said, with
+great decision: "This settles it. He must have been in the show business
+all his life."
+
+But the man whom we now saw clearly did not look like a showman. He was
+a very old man, lean and shrivelled; his brown skin so wrinkled that his
+face looked like some sort of curiously withered nut. Yet there was a
+wonderful sinewiness about him, and a most extraordinary brightness in
+his eyes. His face was of the strong, heavy type that is found in the
+figures carved on the ruins in Yucatan; a much stronger type than I have
+observed anywhere among the Mexican Indians of the present day. His
+dress was a long, flowing robe of white cotton cloth, caught over his
+left shoulder with a broad gold clasp, and richly embroidered with
+shining green feathers; and shining green feathers were bound into his
+hair and rose above his head in a tall plume. His sandal-moccasins (for
+the covering of his feet was between these two) repeated the sacred
+combination of colors, green and white; and on his breast, falling from
+his neck, were several richly wrought gold chains. Even apart from his
+stately surroundings, his dress--and especially the shining green
+feathers which were so conspicuous a part of it--would have informed me
+that this man was a priest of very exalted rank; and the conditions of
+our presentation to him assured me that he was none other than the
+Priest Captain, Itzacoatl. And I may add that if ever a high dignitary
+of a heathen religion was in a rage, Itzacoatl was in a rage at that
+particular moment. Young's comment lacked reverence, but it was to the
+point: "Well, he _has_ got his back up, for sure!"
+
+With an alertness that was astonishing in one of his years, Itzacoatl
+rose quietly from the throne; and as he pointed to us with a commanding
+gesture, he asked, sharply, why we had been allowed to retain our arms,
+and ordered them to be taken away from us; which order troubled us
+greatly, and also occasioned us a very lively surprise. As for the
+barge-master, he evidently was vastly puzzled by it; for, according to
+his notions, we were not armed. He did not venture to reply, but his
+uncertainty was to the duty that was expected of him was apparent in his
+hopeless look of entire bewilderment. It seemed to me that for a moment
+the Priest Captain was slightly confused, as though he recognized the
+incongruity between his own knowledge in this matter and his officer's
+ignorance; and in explaining his order he took occasion to refer to the
+superior knowledge with which he was endowed by the gods. Fray Antonio
+and I glanced at each other doubtingly as he spoke, for this explanation
+struck us as being decidedly forced. The gods of the ancient Mexicans
+pre-eminently were war gods; but they certainly were not likely to have
+any very extended knowledge of Winchester rifles and self-cocking
+revolvers.
+
+However, when the officer comprehended what was required of him, he was
+prompt enough in his actions. Without any ceremony at all he laid hands
+on Young's rifle, that was hanging by its strap on his shoulder, and
+endeavored to take it away from him. This was a line of action that the
+Lost-freight Agent by no means was inclined to submit to. Without any
+assistance he unslung the rifle, cocked it as he jumped back half a
+dozen steps, and then raised it to his shoulder, with his finger on the
+trigger and the muzzle fairly levelled at the officer's heart. "Shall I
+down him?" he asked.
+
+"Don't shoot!" Rayburn cried, quickly; and in obedience to this order
+Young slowly dropped the rifle from his shoulder, yet held it ready for
+action in his hands. The perfect calmness of the officer through this
+exciting episode afforded the most convincing proof that fire-arms were
+wholly unknown to him. And the conduct of the Priest Captain afforded
+equally convincing proof that he not only understood the nature of
+fire-arms, but that he was very much afraid of them; for, at the moment
+that Young made his offensive demonstration, he very precipitately
+sheltered himself by crouching behind the throne.
+
+"Don't shoot!" Rayburn repeated. "We may have a chance to pull through
+if we don't rile these follows; but if we go killing any of them now
+it's all day with us, for sure. We'd better let 'em have our guns; but
+there's something mighty odd in their having found out all of a sudden
+what a gun is."
+
+Very reluctantly Young surrendered his rifle to the officer, who looked
+at it contemptuously, as though he considered it but a poor sort of
+weapon in case real fighting was to be done. In turn, the rest of us
+gave up our rifles also; and we were mightily pleased because the
+officer did not attempt to take our revolvers away from us. But in this
+our satisfaction was short-lived, for the Priest Captain quickly ordered
+the officer to relieve us of them, and of our cartridge-belts as well;
+nor was it until we had been thus entirely disarmed that he arose from
+his undignified position and resumed his seat upon the throne.
+
+While the disagreeable process of disarming us was going on I spoke to
+Fray Antonio of the curious possibilities suggested by the knowledge of
+fire-arms which the Priest Captain, alone among all the Aztlanecas, so
+obviously possessed; and he, in reply, bade me remember what Tizoc had
+told us of the use that Itzacoatl made of wax-matches in lighting the
+sacred fire. "Can it possibly be, then, that he is in communication with
+the outside world?" I exclaimed.
+
+As I uttered these words I glanced at Itzacoatl, and the expression on
+his face was that of one who listens intently, and who is greatly
+enraged by what he hears. At the same moment Rayburn cried: "That man
+understands Spanish. He is listening to you."
+
+Doubtless, some sort of an explanation would have followed this strange
+discovery, for that we had made it was very obvious, but at that moment
+a man--seemingly, from his dress, a priest of high rank--came into the
+hall hurriedly, and very earnestly delivered a communication to
+Itzacoatl in low, excited tones. That the substance of this
+communication was highly disagreeable to him was shown by his manner of
+receiving it; and for a moment he slightly hesitated, as though very
+grave consequences might attend upon the decision that he then made. But
+it was for a moment only that he stood in doubt. Then he called the
+barge-master to him, and gave some order in a low voice; and then,
+accompanied by the priest, went out rapidly from the hall.
+
+Evidently in obedience to the order that he had received, the
+barge-master bade us follow him, and so led us into the court-yard
+again. Young proposed, since we had only this one man to deal with, that
+we should make short work of him, and so get back our arms--which
+remained where he had placed them in a pile beside the throne. But
+Rayburn's more prudent counsel overcame this tempting proposition. As he
+pointed out, the promptness with which the curtains had been pulled back
+showed that attendants of some sort were close at hand; and, in addition
+to these, we knew that the guard of soldiers was just outside of the
+entrance to the hall. It was certain, therefore, that we could not
+regain our arms without immediately using them in very active fighting;
+and no matter how well we fought, under these conditions we must
+certainly be defeated in the end. All of which was so just and so
+reasonable that Young could not in anywise gainsay its propriety; but he
+was in a very ill humor at being restrained from the pleasure of having
+it out with them, as he grumblingly declared; and as we passed out into
+the court-yard he relieved his mind by swearing most vigorously.
+
+For my part, even the peril that we were in did not suffice to distract
+my mind from curious consideration of the strange state of affairs that
+existed among the folk dwelling in this hidden valley if our surmise in
+regard to the Priest Captain's knowledge of the outer matches, his
+acquaintance with fire-arms, and his knowledge of the Spanish tongue.
+The implication was unavoidable that this extraordinary man actually had
+a more or less complete knowledge of the powers and appliances of the
+nineteenth century, and that he was using his nineteenth century
+knowledge to maintain his supremacy over a people whose civilization was
+about on a par with that of European communities of a thousand years
+ago. From the stand-point of the ethnologist, a more interesting
+situation than the one time developed could not possibly be devised.
+What I most longed for was the establishment of such friendly relations
+with Itzacoatl that I could carry out a systematized series of
+scientific investigations among the Aztlanecas before the impending
+crash of discovery came; and my keenest regret at that moment was caused
+by the conviction that the incapacity of Itzacoatl to understand the
+value of scientific inquiry into such curious ethnologic facts would
+result in his mere vulgar killing of me, whereby a precious store of
+knowledge would be withheld from the world at large.
+
+As we came out into the court-yard we heard the sound of voices, which
+seemed to be raised in angry altercation, coming from the direction of
+the main entrance, with which there was also a slight clinking sound as
+of arms being got in readiness; and, much farther away, the sound
+seemingly coming from distant quarter of the city, the tapping of a
+drum. When we first had crossed the court-yard it had been entirely
+deserted; but now many priests and soldiers were standing in groups
+about it, and more were coming down the stair from the temple; and all
+of these men had a look of eager alertness, as though some decisive
+event were imminent in which they expected to have a part. But we had
+only a moment in which to observe all this, for we were hurried away
+towards the corner of the building that was most remote from the street,
+and here, before I well could understand what was being done with me, I
+was thrust so suddenly and so violently through a narrow door-way that I
+fell heavily upon the floor. Before I could regain my feet Young had
+tumbled down on top of me, and then the others tumbled on top of us
+both--they having been in the same rude fashion injected into the
+apartment; and while we thus were lying in a heap together--my own body,
+being undermost, having the breath wellnigh squeezed out of it--we heard
+the rattle of metal upon stone as the door-way was quickly closed with
+heavy bars.
+
+We struggled to our feet in wellnigh total darkness--for outside the
+bars a curtain had been dropped that shut off almost wholly the light of
+day--and I am confident that no one room ever contained two angrier
+people than Rayburn and Young were then; for their very strength and
+hardihood made them the more ragingly resent being thus tumbled about as
+though they were bales or boxes rather than men. Rayburn's language was
+not open to the charge of weakness; but the words in which Young gave
+vent to his feelings were so startlingly vigorous that even a Wyoming
+cow-boy would have been surprised by them; yet I must confess that at
+the moment--so greatly was my own anger aroused--I thought his
+observations exceedingly appropriate to the occasion that called them
+forth, and I even was disposed to envy him the command of a technical
+vocabulary that enabled him to express so adequately his righteous
+wrath. However, I was for once well pleased that Fray Antonio did not
+understand English.
+
+But our anger quickly was swallowed up in anxious grief as we
+discovered, when our eyes had become somewhat accustomed to the very
+faint light, that only we four were in the room together; and a great
+dread fell upon us because of the imminent peril to Pablo which this
+separation of him from the rest of us implied. Assuredly there was
+strong reason why he should be an especial object of Itzacoatl's fear
+and hatred. He and El Sabio together were the visible sign which told
+that the prophecy touching the Priest Captain's downfall was about to be
+fulfilled; and, more than this, Pablo's simple statement of the
+condition of affairs among the modern Mexicans--showing that the crisis
+in their fate that Chaltzantzin had foretold, and for which he had so
+well prepared, long since had come and gone--would be far more
+convincing to the masses of the Aztlanecas than would be any exhibition
+of these same facts that we could make to them; for we were aliens among
+them, while Pablo was of their own race and class. That we all were like
+to be done to death by this barbarous theocrat we did not for a moment
+doubt; but it was plain enough that every motive of self-interest must
+prompt him to put Pablo and the poor ass most summarily out of the way.
+And as the logic of these facts irresistibly presented itself in my mind
+a keen and heavy sorrow overcame me, for I could not shirk the
+conviction that, whoever might strike the blow that killed him, I myself
+was the cause of this poor boy's death. Fray Antonio could not see my
+face in that shadowy prison, yet his fine nature divined the pain that I
+suffered and the cause of it, and he sought to comfort me with his
+sympathy. He did not speak, but he came close beside me and tenderly
+laid his hand upon my shoulder; and his loving touch, telling of his
+sorrow for me and with me, did bring a little cheer into my heavy heart.
+
+Meanwhile the commotion outside increased greatly, and even through the
+thick folds of the curtain we could hear plainly the clanking of arms,
+and the heavy tread of men, and sharply given words of command. We
+pressed close to the bars and tried to push, the curtain aside that we
+might see out into the court-yard; but the bars were so near together
+that our hands would not pass between them, and we therefore could
+gather only from the sounds which we heard what was going on outside.
+But the sounds were unmistakable. There could be no doubt whatever that
+a vigorous assault upon the building was in progress, and those within
+it vigorously were defending it; and we knew that the cause of the
+fighting certainly must be ourselves. Already, it would seem, the
+prophecy of the Priest Captain's downfall was assuming a tangible
+reality; for this rising in arms against him could mean nothing less
+than that his high-handed refusal to permit us to be carried before the
+Council of the Twenty Lords had fairly brought matters to a crisis, and
+that the long-threatened revolution actually had been begun.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII.
+
+A RESCUE.
+
+
+That the two parties should be thus battling for possession of us gave
+us a gleam of hope for the saving of our lives. While we remained
+prisoners, in the ward of the Priest Captain, we knew that our death was
+inevitable; inasmuch as the witness which we bore against him, if
+suffered to be published, must of necessity bring his authority to an
+end. But should we pass into the ward of the Council, there was every
+reason why we should be cherished and protected; because, in their
+behalf, we would be witnesses to the justice of their rebellion against
+Itzacoatl's rule. Nor would this feeling of amity towards us be confined
+to the leaders of the revolt; for we had perceived the substantial
+nature of the reasons which Tizoc had given us in support of his
+assurance that the hope of deliverance from oppression which our coming
+brought would raise up around us a host of friends. Therefore we knew
+that upon the issue of the battling that we heard the sounds of so
+loudly, and yet that might as well have been a thousand miles away for
+all that we could see of it, our fate must depend.
+
+And knowing this, it was a hard trial of our nerves and tempers to be
+forced to remain there idle in the dark, without the chance to strike in
+our own behalf a single blow. Young strode backward and forward in such
+a fashion, and the mutterings beneath his breath were so like growls,
+that the likening of him to a wild beast in a cage, while trite, is
+strictly accurate. Rayburn, not less resolute, but more self-contained,
+pressed close against the bars and never stirred, save that now and then
+he cracked his thumbs and fingers together with such vigor that the
+sound was like a pistol-shot. And even I, who am not naturally of a
+blood-thirsty disposition, found the need of walking briskly about our
+prison in order to quiet a little my strong longing to be outside with a
+weapon in my hands wherewith I could crack some skulls open. Indeed,
+among us all, only Fray Antonio maintained an outward show of calm.
+
+Thus far, all the sounds which we had heard had come to us from the
+direction of the front of the house, whence we inferred that the fight
+was being waged, greatly to the disadvantage of the assailants, through
+the grating by which the entrance was closed. But suddenly there was an
+outcry of alarm close by us in the court-yard, and then the sound of
+hurrying feet there, and then a roar of shouting mingled with the fierce
+clash of arms--so that we knew that the assailants, either by beating in
+the grating or by scaling the roof, had got inside. They and the
+defenders were engaged, hand to hand, almost within arm's-length of us.
+We could hear loudly the yells with which every stroke was accompanied,
+and the clang of metal striking upon metal, and the dull, crushing sound
+of the blows which went home truly and carved through flesh and
+bone--and we could see no more of it all than if we were dreaming, and
+these sounds of savage warfare were but the imaginings of our brains!
+One man, being, as we supposed, pursued by another from the central part
+of the court-yard--where, as it seemed, the fight raged most hotly--made
+a stand just outside the curtain that overhung the bars whereby we were
+pent in; and we could hear him panting as he struck and parried there,
+and then the splitting of his flesh and the crash of his bones as a
+tremendous blow overcame his guard, and the soft, deep groan that he
+gave as his life left him. His body fell against the curtain and dragged
+it a little; and presently, as I stood there by the bars, I found that
+my feet were in a pool of blood.
+
+It was only a moment or two after this that the sounds of conflict very
+sensibly diminished, and we heard a rush made, and the confused tread of
+feet upon the stairs that led upward to the temple, and then came so
+jubilant a shouting that we knew that to one side or the other had come
+victory.
+
+"If th' Priest Captain's outfit's on top," Young said, grimly, "I guess
+we've about got t' th' end of a division; an' there's not much chance of
+our changin' engines an' keepin' on with th' run." To which figurative
+suggestion Rayburn gave an immediate grunt of assent.
+
+But at that very instant there was a lull in the tumult outside, and we
+heard a voice that I recognized as Tizoc's loudly calling to us; and to
+his hail, that carried such joyful meaning with it, I joyfully and
+loudly answered. To Rayburn and Young, of course, the call was
+unintelligible, nor did they recognize the voice of him who called; and
+they therefore were disposed to think, when I fell to shouting, that my
+brain was addled. However, they changed their views a minute or two
+later--the dead body resting against the curtain having been thrown
+aside, and the curtain itself torn down--when they saw Tizoc's friendly
+face outside the bars, and then saw the bars rapidly removed.
+
+"Colonel," said Young, very seriously, as we stepped forth thankfully
+once more into the sunshine, "you may not know what a brick is, but you
+are one. Shake!" and very much to Tizoc's astonishment, though he
+perceived that the act was meant to express great friendliness, Young
+most vigorously shook his hand. Under more favorable circumstances
+Tizoc, no doubt, would have asked for an explanation of this curious
+ceremony, but just then his whole mind was given to making good his
+retreat and so securing us against recapture. There was not a moment to
+lose, he said; throughout the city the priests everywhere were rallying
+forces to Itzacoatl's support, and at any instant we might be attacked.
+As he spoke he drew us away with him towards the street, where the main
+body of his men still remained--for only a small part of them had joined
+in scaling the roof, and so taking the enemy by surprise in the rear.
+
+"But what of Pablo, our young companion?" I asked, stopping short as I
+spoke.
+
+"My men are looking for him; they will find him in a moment; he surely
+is safe; he may be already outside. Come."
+
+The possibility that Pablo truly might be outside of the building was
+the only argument that could have induced us to leave it without him;
+and that possibility was so reasonable a one that we made no more delay.
+Indeed, we fully realized the necessity for promptness. From all parts
+of the city came a humming, angry sound, which assured us that
+everywhere the people were aroused; and Tizoc bade us arm ourselves with
+what weapons we could use most effectively among those which were
+scattered about the pavement of the court-yard, as we surely would have
+need of weapons soon. A sword was the only instrument of warfare of
+which I had knowledge--which knowledge was acquired during my German
+student days--and I took, therefore, one of the heavy maccuahuitls; and
+the others also, excepting Fray Antonio, similarly armed themselves,
+each with a sword that they found lying beside the dead hand that never
+would wield it more. It was as we obeyed Tizoc's order that we saw how
+fierce and how bloody the fight had been; for the court-yard was red
+with blood, like a slaughter-house, and over the stones everywhere dead
+bodies were lying, all cut and gashed with ghastly wounds. Excepting a
+few of Tizoc's men, who had bound up their hurts, and who staggered
+along with us, not a wounded man remained alive; whence we inferred that
+the fight had been waged on strictly barbarous principles, and that no
+quarter had been given. And of this we had proof; for as we passed
+through the guard-room we found there a moaning wretch, belonging to the
+Priest Captain's party, in whose chest was a great hole made by a
+spear-thrust--and at a sign from Tizoc one of our men stepped aside, and
+with a blow of his heavy sword coolly mashed in the wounded man's skull,
+and so finished him.
+
+The metal grating that closed the entrance had been raised by Tizoc's
+people from the inside, and we passed out beneath it to where the main
+body of his men was drawn up in readiness to march. But of Pablo and El
+Sabio there was no sign. Tizoc was not less distressed by the loss of
+the lad than we were, for he had counted upon the moral effect which the
+exhibition of Pablo and El Sabio most certainly would produce to aid
+powerfully in fomenting the spirit of revolt. When, therefore, we
+refused to go forward until further search had been made, he did not
+oppose us; but he told us plainly that further looking for him in that
+place was useless, for already every room in the building had been
+examined without the finding of a trace of him. There could be no doubt,
+he said, that when we had been made prisoners Pablo, and El Sabio with
+him, had been taken up the stair to the temple for greater security; in
+which place, if they were not both by this time dead, they still
+remained. Whereupon Young was for making an attack upon the temple
+instantly, and in this project Rayburn and I warmly seconded him; and
+even Fray Antonio said that this was a case in which he felt justified
+in using carnal weapons, since the fighting would be to rescue from
+among infidels a Christian soul.
+
+But Tizoc hurriedly explained to us the hopelessness, at that time, of
+such an assault. The success that had attended his bold rescue of us had
+been due to the suddenness of it; for the majority of the people in the
+city, including the large force of soldiery there, assuredly was on the
+Priest Captain's side. It was outside the city that the strength of the
+revolution must be gathered; and his orders were, when his rescue of us
+should be accomplished, to carry us safely out beyond the walls with all
+possible speed. Such of the Council of the Twenty Lords as had decided
+to take the chances of revolt--being all the members of that body save
+the five priests that had belonged to it--already had gone down to the
+water-side, together with the small force that they had gathered, that
+they might seize the water-gate and hold it until we should join them.
+Even now it was certain that in going down through the city we should
+have to fight our way, and each moment that we delayed our retreat
+increased our danger. Capturing the temple now was a sheer
+impossibility. Our only hope of saving Pablo's life lay in our getting
+away promptly, and so beginning the preparations that would lead to
+ultimate victory.
+
+All the while that Tizoc spoke he was edging us away towards the outer
+face of the terrace, where steps led downward; and when the men who had
+been searching the building once more for Pablo returned without him, he
+resolutely gave the order to march. To the arguments that he had
+advanced we were compelled to yield; but our hearts were heavy with
+sorrow for the boy whom we were leaving behind us, and little hope was
+in our breasts that we ever again should see him alive.
+
+The truth of Tizoc's words about the great danger that we ourselves were
+in became apparent as we crossed the terrace next below that on which
+our march began. Where the street passed through the rampart by a narrow
+portal, and so by a flight of stone steps descended to the next level,
+soldiers were clustered together with the evident intention of disputing
+the way with us. Their number was so much less than ours that we made
+short work of them; killing a few, and driving the remainder down the
+steps before us. But those who escaped ran on ahead of us to where the
+next rampart was, and there joined themselves to a much larger body that
+lay in wait for us. Here our work was less easy; for the force that
+confronted us was nearly our equal, and some resolute fighting was
+required before we could drive it before us and so pass on. Some of our
+men were killed there, and more of the enemy; and I got a trifling hurt
+in my arm from the point of a javelin, that, luckily, did little more
+than graze the skin. I do not think that I killed anybody there, but I
+remember very plainly the look of pain and of anger on the face of that
+fellow who poked his javelin at me when I gashed his arm, and broke the
+bone of it, with a blow from my sword. I was glad, at the moment, that I
+had succeeded in giving him a worse hurt than he had given me; and then
+the absurdity occurred to me of my thus fighting with a total stranger,
+against whom I had no personal ill-will; and I could not but feel sorrow
+for him as I thought of the long time that he must suffer severe pain
+and great inconvenience because I had chanced to strike him that blow.
+However, from the way in which they went cutting and slashing about
+them, it was evident that neither Rayburn nor Young were troubled with
+any compunctions of this nature. They were only too glad, apparently, to
+get a chance to whack away at any of the Priest Captain's
+representatives; and they made such use of their opportunity that the
+Aztlanecas fighting with us cried out in admiration of their prowess and
+their strength. Fray Antonio was more sorely tried than any of us during
+this passage, for I knew that his flesh greatly longed to take part in
+the fighting, and that only the strong spirit which was within him
+subdued the flesh and so held his hands.
+
+With a final rush we succeeded in forcing the enemy through the narrow
+opening in the rampart, and so down the steps beyond; but as we pursued
+them across the next terrace, keeping close at their heels so that they
+might not have time to form again, many of our wounded fell out from the
+ranks and dropped by the way--and we had left behind us a dozen or more
+of our dead on the ground where the fight had been.
+
+Our tactics of rapid pursuit of the force that we had defeated served us
+well at the next rampart; for the men whom we pursued and we ourselves
+came to it almost in one body, and thus threw into such confusion the
+fresh force that was waiting for us that, without any long fighting
+about it, we drove right through them and went on downward; and in the
+same dashing fashion we carried the rampart beyond. However, when those
+men whom we had pushed aside from our path so easily got over their
+surprise at being so lightly handled, they formed in our rear and came
+hurrying after us; the result of which was that as we approached the
+last of the ramparts that we had to pass through, where was gathered the
+largest body of men that we had yet encountered, we found ourselves
+fairly wedged in between two bodies of the enemy and outnumbered four to
+one. Here, too, the passage through the rampart had been closed by the
+metal bars that were in readiness for that purpose. Setting these in
+place was no real barrier to our passage, for, being intended to close
+the portal against assailants from below, the fastenings which held them
+were on the side nearest to us. But to remove them it was necessary that
+we should fight our way through the crowd--with no possibility of
+driving the enemy before us, as we had done upon the upper terraces,
+since here the way was closed. What we did was literally to cut a path
+through the throng; and over the men who fell dead or wounded beneath
+our blows we made our advance. There was a curious creeping, uneasy
+sensation in the region of my stomach as I trod thus on the bodies of
+wounded men who were not dead yet, and felt them moving, and heard their
+groaning; and I was conscious of a feeling of relief when a body that I
+trod upon did not squirm beneath my foot, and so by its stillness
+assured me that I was standing only on dead flesh that had no feeling in
+it.
+
+Very slowly did we go forward, for while the living barrier that we had
+to deal with was not at the outset more than twenty feet, or
+thereabouts, in thickness, hacking it down took us a tediously long
+time. While still we faced a dozen or more very desperate fighters, who
+held us off most resolutely from the metal bars which closed the way, a
+pang of dread and sorrow went through me as I perceived that Fray
+Antonio, who a moment before had been close beside me, had disappeared.
+That he might the better restrain his longing to take part in the
+fighting he had remained in the centre of our men; and it was hard to
+understand how, in that position, harm could have come to him, for
+missiles had no share in the work that was going forward, which was a
+fiery struggle hand to hand.
+
+As I looked for him in the throng--so far as I could do this and at the
+same time keep up my guard against the man whom at that moment I was
+fighting with--I saw some signs of uneasy movement among the enemy in
+advance of us, and several of them evidently made an effort to reach
+down as though to get at something that was on the ground; which effort
+was wholly futile, for they were wedged so tightly together by our
+pressure upon them that reaching downward was impossible. By a lucky
+blow, I just then finished the man with whom I was contending, and so
+had a moment's breathing spell; and at that instant I saw one of the
+enemy, whose back was ranged against the bars, rise up in the air as
+though a strong spring had been loosed beneath him, and then fall
+sidewise upon the heads and shoulders of his fellows. And then, in the
+place thus made vacant, the cowled head of Fray Antonio instantly
+appeared--whereby I guessed, what afterwards I knew certainly, that he
+had crawled along the ground through the press until he reached the
+place that he aimed at, and then had risen up beneath one of the enemy
+with such sudden violence that he fairly had sent the man spinning
+upward into the air. What his purpose was I saw in a moment, for no
+sooner did he stand upright than he had his hands upon the metal bars,
+and then I heard the clinking together of stone and metal as he lifted
+them bodily away.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV.
+
+THE AFFAIR AT THE WATER-GATE
+
+
+Rayburn gave a great roar of gladness as the clinking sound made him
+turn and he saw what was going forward; and Young and I joined him in
+lusty Anglo-Saxon cheering, while our allies, in the savage fashion
+natural to them, vented their joy in shrill yells. In the midst of which
+cheering and yelling we pushed forward so hotly that the enemy,
+disconcerted by this sudden shifting of fortune in our favor, and the
+men directly in front of us being most seriously incommoded by their
+comrade lying sprawled out and kicking upon their heads and shoulders,
+seemed suddenly to lose heart so completely that we had no difficulty
+in cutting them down. Even had they not been too closely wedged in to
+turn upon Fray Antonio, our strong dashing upon them would have
+compelled them to leave him unharmed in order to defend themselves; and
+so it was that, by the time we had cut a path to the portal, the monk
+had released the whole tier of bars from their fastenings, and the way
+was free.
+
+As we sprang down the steps--with Fray Antonio, once more in the guise
+of a non-combatant, safe in the midst of our company--we heard a great
+outcry from below, and saw a considerable body of men marching up
+towards us steadily from the water-side; but the alarm that sight of
+them gave us was only momentary, for their shouts, and the shouts of our
+men in answer, showed us that these were friends come to our support.
+However we had no great need of them, for those of the enemy whom we
+left alive behind us seemed suddenly to have grown sick of fighting, and
+made no attempt to follow after us down the stairs. Yet the coming of
+this supporting force, to be just in the matter, no doubt was the saving
+of us; for more than half of the men who had been with us when we
+started on our march down through the city had been slain by the way,
+and nearly all in our company were more or less disabled by wounds.
+Tizoc and Young and Rayburn had come through it all without as much as a
+scratch, and because of their extraordinary strength these three were
+almost as fresh as when the fighting began; but the rest of us were
+sorely weary, and our breathing was so heavy and so tremulous that each
+breath was like a long-drawn sob. Truly, then, we were glad to fall in
+in advance of the supporting column and so make our way, with a strong
+rear-guard for our protection, across the bit of level land that lay
+between us and the lake.
+
+At the water-side boats were in readiness for us, and here we found also
+the members of the Council who had ordered, and who were the recognized
+leaders of, the revolt. There was still more fighting ahead of us, for
+the necessity of sending back the relief party had prevented the seizing
+of the water-gate; and this was a matter that had to be attended to
+quickly, for we could see bodies of men coming down several of the
+streets in pursuit of us, and unless we escaped outside the wall before
+they overtook us there was a strong and dismal probability that our
+whole plan would fail. Therefore, we tumbled aboard the boats with all
+possible rapidity, and while the pursuing parties still were far in our
+rear we shoved off from the shore.
+
+Two minutes' quick rowing sufficed to carry our flotilla of boats across
+the basin, and so brought us to the long pier that extended landward
+from beside the water-gate, and from which an open stair-way ascended to
+the top of the wall. On the pier there was no one at all to oppose our
+landing; and the force on the wall was not likely to be a large one, for
+the outbreak had come so suddenly that there had been no time to
+increase the small detail maintained in this position in times of peace.
+Only a few of our men, therefore--thirty or forty, perhaps--were ordered
+out of the boats to the attack, of which the leader was Tizoc, and with
+which Rayburn and Young went as volunteers. I also would have joined the
+party; but Rayburn, knowing that I was slightly wounded, begged me to
+stay where I was; and Young, as he ran up the stairs, called back to me:
+"You just see that they keep steam up, Professor. We'll attend t' takin'
+off th' brakes."
+
+What went on above us, on top of the wall, we could not see; but the
+work done there was done quickly. There was a little shouting, a sound
+of arms clashing, and then four or five men--as though this were the
+easiest way of getting rid of them--were thrown over the parapet, and
+fell near us in the water. To these short shrift was given. As they came
+to the surface, our fellows instantly finished them with a spear-thrust
+or two. Then we heard the sound of a windlass creaking, and the clanking
+of chains; and as we looked through the opening in the wall we saw the
+grating that closed its farther end rise slowly until the way before us
+was free. Two of our boats already were in the passage, so that no time
+might be lost; and as these passed out into the lake, the others
+followed after them rapidly. One boat remained to bring off the
+attacking party, and we wondered a little because its coming was a good
+while delayed. But we wondered still more when it joined us at last, and
+we found that Tizoc and Young and Rayburn were not in it; indeed, at
+that moment I saw the three of them standing together on top of the
+wall. In answer to the shout that I gave, Rayburn leaned over the wall
+and motioned to me to keep silence; and so I knew that they had not been
+left behind through treachery, but were staying there because they had
+some plan against the enemy that they thus could execute. And for
+knowledge of what their plan was we did not have to wait long.
+
+As we lay on our oars, off the outer end of the water-gate, we could see
+through it into the basin that lay before the city, and in a very few
+minutes the pursuing boats of the enemy came into view. As they neared
+us, we saw standing in the bow of the leading boat the same officer who
+had commanded the guard that had brought us as prisoners before the
+Priest Captain; the man of whom I have spoken, for what his real title
+was I do not know, as the barge-master.
+
+He was calling to his men savagely to row faster; for our boats were so
+scattered that he only could see the one in which we happened to be, and
+he doubtless imagined that the others had gone forward, and that this
+one waited to carry off some of our men who yet remained on the wall. He
+evidently hoped to be able to cut us off from the rest of our party, and
+his eagerness had so communicated itself to his oarsmen that his boat
+led the others by nearly a hundred yards. So far as this one boat was
+concerned, we felt no alarm, for the moment that it came out through the
+wall our whole force was ready to dash upon it; yet we wondered why
+Tizoc permitted even a single boat to come out to the attack, when, by
+dropping the grating, they all could be penned in so effectually as to
+give us the advantage of a long start.
+
+As the boat neared the water-gate the barge-master went back from his
+place in the bow to the middle part of it, and there crouched down; and
+some soldiers who were standing crouched down also; and almost as the
+bow entered the low, narrow passage the oars were unshipped and taken
+aboard. So cleverly was the unshipping of the oars managed, and so good
+was the steering, that the boat shot into the passage under full speed,
+and so came nearly through it before losing head-way. And we who were
+nearest to it got our arms in readiness--for we were convinced that in
+another minute the barge-master would lay us aboard. But this was not
+destined to be, nor were the men in that boat destined ever to do any
+more fighting in this world.
+
+All this while Rayburn had stood close by the parapet, bending over it
+and intently watching the outside of the water-gate; above which the
+heavy metal grating had been hauled up, in the metal grooves that it ran
+in, almost to the top of the wall. At the moment that the bow of the
+boat showed outside the opening he raised his hand, as though signalling
+to Young and Tizoc behind him; and in that same instant we heard the
+shrieking of the windlass and the quick clanking of the unwinding
+chains, and saw the metal grating rushing down the face of the wall.
+With all the force generated by the fall from so great height of so
+ponderous a body, the grating came crashing into the boat just
+amidships, fairly dividing its heavy timbers and forcing the fragments
+of it, together with all the men that it carried, down into the water's
+depths. But the barge-master died by a quicker death than drowning. He
+still was crouched in the middle of the boat, and the sharp angle of the
+lower bar of the grating struck him just on the nape of his neck so
+keenly that his head was cut off and seemed of itself to spring forward
+and away from him; while the broad flat bar, coming down upon his bowed
+shoulders, crushed his body into a mere quivering mass of flesh.
+
+A great yell of delight went up from our boats as this brilliant stroke
+so brilliantly was delivered; and an answering cry of triumph--that was
+one-third a yell and two-thirds a cheer--came back from Tizoc and the
+others on top of the wall. However, they had no time to waste in
+shouting over their success, for the remaining boats of the enemy had
+come by this time to the pier inside the wall, and it seemed highly
+probable that in a minute or two more our three men would be prisoners.
+But for all their danger they coolly finished the work that they had in
+hand. As they explained to me afterwards, Rayburn stood at the head of
+the stair to hold the enemy in check should they come before the work
+was finished--and very strong as well as very brave men must the man
+have been who would have ventured to attack him as he occupied that
+position of overpowering advantage--while the other two cast off from
+the windlass the chains by which the water-gate was operated, and
+dropped them over the wall into the lake; and as the gate itself was
+jammed and wedged fast by the fragments of the boat, this throwing down
+of the chains made the raising of it a serious undertaking that well
+might require a day or more to accomplish.
+
+As the chains fell with a splash, and we comprehended the thoroughness
+of the work that these three were doing, our people burst forth into
+yells again; and a perfect roar went up from them when, the gate being
+closed and the apparatus for raising it being entirely disabled, Rayburn
+sprang from the outer edge of the parapet into the lake, and Tizoc and
+Young instantly followed him. In truth, a more gallant feat of arms had
+not been essayed, nor carried to a more triumphant conclusion, since the
+Roman gate was held by Horatius; and in my admiration of it I shouted
+until the muscles of my throat were strained and aching. Our boat
+already was near the wall--having pulled in that the soldiers aboard of
+it might spear such of the enemy as came up to the surface alive--and we
+had the three out of the water and safe among us in very short order;
+and then we pulled away towards the other boats with all possible
+speed--for the wall now was manned by the enemy, and they were beginning
+to make things unpleasantly hot for us with the heavy stones which they
+heaved over the parapet, that our boat might be sunk by them, and by a
+rapid discharge of darts. Luckily, none of the stones struck us, and
+because of the rapid way that we were making, only two of our men were
+struck with the darts. So, on the whole, we came out of this encounter
+very well; for these two men killed in our boat were all that we lost,
+while of the enemy at least forty were drowned or speared. However, we
+owed our light escape mainly to the fact that the enemy, having armed
+hurriedly, and expecting only to fight with us at close quarters, had
+with them neither bows nor slings--but for which fortunate fact it
+scarcely is possible that a single man in our boat would have come off
+alive.
+
+[Illustration: THE LEAP FROM ABOVE THE WATER-GATE]
+
+Dripping wet though they were, I fairly hugged Rayburn and Young when
+they were safe aboard with us, as did also Fray Antonio, whose daring
+spirit was mightily aroused by witnessing their splendid bravery. And in
+giving them hearty words of praise for what they had done--which yet
+fell far short of their deserts--I naturally likened them to the Roman
+hero. Indeed, I may say that the parallel that I there drew was an apt
+one, and in some of its turns was not devoid of grace.
+
+"I can't say, Professor," Young answered, when I had finished, "that I
+ever heard o' th' party you refer to, but if this Horace--what did you
+say his last name was?--pinched his fingers in th' drawbridge chains as
+damnably as I pinched mine in th' chains of that infernal grating, I'll
+bet a hat he was sorry that he hadn't run away!" And I truly believe
+that Young thought more about his pinched fingers than he did about the
+resolute bravery that he had shown in finishing his work upon the wall
+in the very face of the advancing enemy.
+
+Being once out of range of the darts, we pulled towards the other boats
+leisurely; for now we were entirely safe against pursuit, and were free
+to go upon the lake in whatsoever direction we pleased. That some
+positive line of action had been determined upon was evident, for the
+flotilla already was in motion as we came up in the rear of it--the boat
+containing the members of the Council leading--and the order was passed
+back to us that we should follow with the rest. From the direction in
+which we were heading, Tizoc inferred that we were bound for the only
+other considerable town in the valley, that which had grown up around
+the shafts leading to the great mine whence the Aztlanecas drew their
+supply of gold. There was a very grave look upon his face as he told us
+of our probable destination; and presently added that the population of
+this town--save the few freemen who were in charge of the workings, and
+the large guard of soldiers that always was maintained there--was made
+up wholly of Tlahuicos who had been selected from their fellows to be
+miners because of their exceptional hardiness and strength.
+
+It was among these men, he went on to tell us speaking in a low, guarded
+voice, that the most dangerous of the revolts of the Tlahuicos
+invariably had their origin; for the miners were fierce, half-savage
+creatures, naturally turbulent and rebellious, and were stirred
+constantly to resentful anger because of the life of crushing toil that
+they were condemned to lead. So dangerous were they that the only
+effective means of keeping them in subjection was to hold the major part
+of them continually prisoners underground in the mine, with a guard
+stationed at the mouth of each shaft under orders to kill instantly any
+man who attempted to come forth from the mine without authority. In
+order that their labor, a thing of positive value, might not be lost
+through their dying of being thus imprisoned in the bowels of the earth,
+they were divided into ten great companies, each one of which, in
+regular order, was employed in the surface work under the constant
+supervision of a strong guard. Yet even these stern measures were not
+wholly effective in preventing mutiny. Many times great revolts had
+broken out here that had set all the valley in an uproar, and that had
+been crushed only after pitched battles had been fought between the
+rebels and the entire military force of the state. The town was a
+veritable volcano, Tizoc declared; and because of the dread of it that
+universally obtained, by reason of the frequent outbursts there of
+lawless violence, it had received the name of Huitzilan: the Town of
+War.
+
+And there could be no doubt, he added--while the tones of his voice and
+the look upon his face showed how great he believed to be the risk
+involved in this line of policy--that in now directing our course
+towards the mining town the deliberate purpose of the Council was to
+incite these semi-savage, wholly desperate miners to join forces with us
+in our rising against the Priest Captain's power.
+
+
+
+
+XXV.
+
+THE GOLD-MINERS OF HUITZILAN.
+
+
+As we rounded a mountain spur that extended a long way out into the
+lake, a deep bay opened to us; which bay ran close in to the cliffs
+whereby the valley was surrounded, and was at no great distance from the
+Barred Pass, through which we had made our entry. At the foot of the
+bay, built partly upon the level land near the water-side, and partly
+upon the steep ascent beyond, was the town of Huitzilan--whereof the
+most curious feature that at first was noticeable was a tall chimney,
+whence thick black smoke was pouring forth, that rose above a stone
+building of great solidity and of a very considerable size.
+
+On archæological grounds, the sight of this chimney greatly astonished
+me; and Rayburn, who was a very well-read man in all matters connected
+with his profession, was greatly astonished by it also; for the chimney
+obviously was a part of extensive reduction-works, and we both knew that
+such complete appliances for the smelting of metal, as seemed from this
+sign to exist here, were supposed to be the product of a high state of
+civilization in comparatively modern times. As for Young, he declared
+that the chimney gave him a regular jolt of homesickness; for, excepting
+that it was built of stone instead of brick, it might have been, for the
+look of it, transplanted hither directly from the region of the Back
+Bay. "I s'pose we'll be hearin' th' noon whistle next," he said,
+mournfully; and presently he added: "Do you know, Professor, I b'lieve
+I'm beginnin' t' see daylight in all this tall talk you say th' Colonel
+has been givin' us about th' 'rebellions,' as he calls 'em, that go on
+here. He don't mean t' close our eyes up, th' Colonel don't, for he's a
+first-class gentleman; but, bein' born an' bred a heathen, he don't know
+any better. What he's tryin' t' tell us about, an' can't, because he
+don't know th' English for it, is _strikes_. That's what's th' matter.
+Miners are bound t' go on strikes. It's their nature, an' they can't
+help it. That chimbly gives th' whole thing away. You just tell th'
+Colonel that we've got down t' th' hard-pan an' really know what he's
+been drivin' at. An' t' think of there bein' strikes in Mexico! I didn't
+b'lieve that a Greaser had backbone enough, or ambition enough, t'
+strike at anything!"
+
+However, as I had no great amount of faith in Young's theory, I did not
+attempt to translate to Tizoc what he had said to me; nor was there any
+opportunity for further talk at that time. Already the foremost boats of
+the flotilla had made a landing at a well-built pier that extended from
+the shore into deep water; and a minute or two later our boat also
+pulled in to the pier, and we disembarked. The general view of the town
+that I then had showed me that it was closely built over an area rather
+more than half a mile square; that the houses for the most part were
+mere hovels, of which the largest could not contain more than two small
+rooms; and that the few houses of a better sort were within the strong
+stone wall by which the reduction-works also were enclosed. At the pier
+where we landed a boat was in process of lading with bars of gold for
+transport to the Treasure-house in the city; and I thought that I never
+had seen anywhere more savage-looking fellows than the almost naked
+laborers by whom the work of lading was carried on. Physically these men
+were magnificent creatures--tall and well-shaped and vigorous, and the
+ease with which they handled the great bars of gold showed how enormous
+must be their strength. But so full of venomous hate were the sullen
+looks which they cast upon us, and so savage was the effect of their
+coarse, dishevelled hair falling down over and partly veiling their
+great glittering eyes, whence these angry glances were shot forth at us
+like poisoned darts, that I was thankful to see that, all told, there
+were not more than a dozen of them, and that three times as many heavily
+armed soldiers served as their guard. And looking at these creatures,
+who were truly less like men than dangerous wild beasts, I could not
+wonder at the grave concern which Tizoc had manifested at thought of the
+risk which we ran in taking them for allies. "It's as easy t' start
+'em," Young said, when he came to an understanding of the situation, "as
+'tis t' start a freight-train down a three per cent. grade. But what I
+want to know is, when we want 'em t' stop, how in th' h--ll are we ever
+goin' t' set th' brakes?"
+
+[Illustration: THE TLAHUICOS AND THEIR GUARDS]
+
+Yet, dangerous to ourselves though the use of it must be, our hopes of
+success rested mainly upon our ability to control and to employ
+effectively this savage material. Fortunately, it was not the whole of
+our reliance; and it was our intention to leaven this dangerous lump
+with the very considerable number of trained and trustworthy soldiers
+that we had available as the substantial nucleus of our fighting force,
+and also with the larger body of both slaves and freemen--not regularly
+drilled soldiers, to be sure, yet many of them trained in the ways of
+war--that we counted upon to join us from among the people at large.
+
+This outline of the plan of action that the Council had determined upon
+was exhibited to us by Tizoc during our passage down the lake; and I was
+glad to find that Rayburn--for whose judgment I had much respect in
+such matters--was disposed to think well of it.
+
+"If I expected to stay here, Professor, after the row was over," he
+said, "I mightn't be quite as well satisfied with this plan of theirs
+for running things. The war part of the programme is all right. They
+won't have any difficulty in getting their Tlahuicos to fight anything
+in the way of an army that the Priest Captain shows up with. Fighting is
+just what will please them more than anything else. Where the trouble is
+going to come in is when the fighting is over and they go in for
+reconstruction. It's one thing to make fighters out of this sort of
+stuff, but it's quite another thing to make respectable citizens out of
+it. That's where the hitch will be. But as we don't intend to settle
+down in this valley--unless we find that there's no way out of it--we
+needn't bother about that part of the performance at all. That's their
+funeral, not ours. So, for my part, the sooner they get their army in
+shape, and get the fighting part settled, the better I'll be satisfied."
+
+To do the members of the Council justice, they seemed to be even more
+eager than Rayburn was to forward the work that they had in hand. From
+the pier they went directly to the enclosure in the centre of the town,
+within which was the building ordinarily occupied by the commandant of
+the post and by the officials of the civil government; and in this
+place, Tizoc informed us, they intended immediately to organize the new
+government, and then to proceed with all possible despatch to make
+arrangements for placing an army in the field.
+
+In Tizoc's company, but more leisurely, we also went on to the
+Citadel--as we found the enclosure about the smelting-works was
+called--where comfortable quarters had been provided for us in the same
+building wherein the Council was housed. Here we waited, in somewhat
+strained idleness, while the Council carried on, in a chamber not far
+removed from us, its exciting work of destroying a government that had
+endured for more than a thousand years; and we were mightily surprised,
+knowing how prodigious was the change that then was being wrought in
+ancient institutions, by observing how quietly it all went on. The
+murmur of talk that came to us, unchecked by any intervening doors, had
+no sound of excitement or of anger or of violent emotion of any sort;
+and I could not but hold in admiration the calm, self-contained natures
+of these men who thus equably and rationally could deal with such vastly
+weighty affairs.
+
+While this great matter--which could end only in wild commotion and
+fierce battling--went forward in this quiet way, Tizoc opened to us
+much that was of curious interest touching the near-by gold-mine and
+they who mined the gold. Of the existence of the mine, he said, the
+Aztlanecas had remained ignorant for many generations after their coming
+into the valley; and for many more generations but little gold had been
+taken from it, because the metal was of no value to his people save for
+the making of ornaments. But when the process had been discovered by
+which this metal could be hardened, and so made serviceable for all
+manner of useful purposes--and this the more because, by the
+manufacture that then ensued of tools wherewith the rock could be easily
+worked, mining in a large way became possible--the development of the
+mine upon a great scale had been begun, and had been continued upon a
+constantly increasing scale from that time onward. All the earth beneath
+where we then were, he said, was honey-combed with passages which
+followed the several veins; and of these there seemed to be no end at
+all, for ever as each vein was exhausted another not less rich was
+found--and thus it seemed as though all the substructure of that great
+mountain range were one huge mass of gold.
+
+What the measures of weight were with which he estimated the annual
+output of the mine, I could not clearly understand, but the matter was
+made approximately plain to us by his statement that the daily product
+of the mine never was less than one of the great bars of gold that we
+had seen upon the pier in process of carriage to the Treasure-house; and
+that sometimes, when veins of extraordinary richness were encountered,
+even so much as four of these bars had been smelted from the ore that
+the mine yielded in a single day.
+
+"Those bars don't weigh an ounce less than two hundred pounds apiece,"
+Rayburn said, when I had translated to him what Tizoc had told me. "That
+makes the output of the mine not less than three tons a month, and, in a
+rough way, a ton of gold is worth just about half a million of dollars.
+If the Colonel isn't mixed in his figures, and if you've translated him
+straight, Professor, these fellows are taking out somewheres in the
+neighborhood of twenty millions a year."
+
+Young gave a long whistle. "Great Scott!" he exclaimed, "that just is an
+all-fired big pile of money t' be wasted on a lot of barelegged heathen
+critters like these, who don't know th' Ten Commandments by sight, an'
+who've never even heard of a cocktail! D' you know what I'm goin' t' do,
+Rayburn, when I realize on this investment? I'm goin' t' buy th' Old
+Colony Railroad, just for th' sake of bein' able t' bounce th'
+Superintendent. He bounced me after that freight smash-up--and it wasn't
+my fault that th' operator got mixed an' gave me th' wrong orders--and
+I'll give him a taste o' th' same kind. Won't it just paralyze him when
+he gets his orders t' quit, signed 'Seth Young, President,' an' finds
+out it's th' same old Seth Young who used t' run Thirty-two on th' Fall
+River division?"
+
+"Hadn't you better let him down easy by telegraphing him right now to
+begin to look out for a new place?" Rayburn asked. "We'll wait for you
+here, while you step over to the Western Union office"--which cool
+comment upon Young's enthusiastic discounting of a bright future brought
+the gloomy present so clearly before his mind that his castle-building
+ended suddenly, and he lapsed into silence.
+
+But great though our wonder was at the prodigious quantity of precious
+metal that this mine yielded in each year, and amazed though we were by
+thought of the vast store of treasure that the valley now must hold, I,
+for my part, felt a far deeper interest in what Tizoc went on to tell
+us concerning the men by whose toil the treasure had been accumulated.
+And, truly, so bitter and so dreary was the life of the Tlahuicos who
+were forced to labor here unceasingly, and through so long a period had
+they been thus cruelly dealt with, that it seemed to me there must rest
+upon all the Valley of Aztlan a heavy curse that only some signal act of
+expiation could remove. And the coincidence struck me as most curious
+that here among the Aztecs, wrought by themselves upon the men of their
+own race, should be found identically the same cruelties which the
+Spaniards practised upon the Indians whom they enslaved as miners in New
+Mexico: whereof came that fierce outburst of revolt two hundred years
+ago, when the Pueblos ravaged with sword and flame the whole valley of
+the Rio Grande from Taos to the Pass of the North.
+
+There was small ground for wonder that the Tlahuicos, thus crushed by
+over-heavy labor, and dealt with as though they were not men, but fierce
+and dangerous brutes, should cherish at all times in their breasts a
+sullen fire of mutiny; nor that on every occasion at all favorable to
+their purposes there should spring forth from the glowing embers of
+their hatred a vivid and consuming flame. Only by the strength and the
+vigilance of the guard that constantly was maintained over them was
+their tendency to rebellion held in check; and even the guards could not
+prevent frequent outbreaks--which ended only in the cruel slaughter of
+all concerned in them--so passionately eager was the longing of these
+desperate creatures for revenge.
+
+Only once, a vastly long while past, Tizoc said, had success attended an
+effort on the part of the Tlahuicos to release themselves from their
+cruel slavery, and that they then eluded the vigilance of their masters
+was due to their employment of strategy against force. The whole matter,
+he continued, was now but a half-remembered tradition, yet the main
+details of it were clear. In that far-back time a vein of extraordinary
+richness had been followed for a very long distance in the direction of
+the Barred Pass; and, as the event proved, the gallery was carried
+beyond the bars, passing far beneath them, and so went onward, steadily
+rising, until an outlet was had into the cañon. That the secret of this
+outlet might be kept among the men who had opened it, these slew the
+guard that watched over them and thrust his body out into the cañon,
+thus most effectually placing it beyond the reach of the search that
+would be made for it; and the opening that they had made they closed
+carefully, and continued a little way onward into the rock the gallery
+in which they were working: so that the superintendent of the mine might
+see clearly (what, indeed, was the truth) that the vein of ore had been
+followed to its end.
+
+Tizoc knew not how long a time passed before the Tlahuicos made use of
+the way of escape thus opened to them; but their flight could not have
+been taken hastily, because it included a very great number of them, and
+included also carrying with them large quantities of arms for warfare,
+and of useful household stores. He could say certainly no more than
+that when all their well-laid plan was ready to be executed, they rose
+against the soldiers which guarded them with such suddenness and brave
+violence that they succeeded in seizing and in holding the Citadel;
+which gave no chance for grave uneasiness, for the officers of the force
+thus for a moment driven off thought that because of their retiring
+within so narrow a place they speedily must surrender for dread of being
+starved there; and it was held to be but a sign of their still greater
+simplicity--since thus would there be more hungry mouths to fill--that
+they carried their women and children with them into the stronghold
+where they lay besieged.
+
+But so strange was the desolate silence that hung over the place into
+which so great a multitude had retired, that the besiegers presently
+were moved by it to a wonder wherein was a strong feeling of awe; and
+still greater was the marvel that they had to ponder upon when, at last,
+meeting with no opposition, they broke in the grating that barred the
+entrance to the Citadel, and found within the enclosure not one single
+living soul! And so cleverly had the fugitives closed the way behind
+them that a long while passed before it was known certainly what had
+become of this living host that, as it seemed, in a moment had vanished
+from off the face of the earth. More than half a lifetime went by
+without the shedding of light upon this mystery; and it seemed as though
+a ghost had risen when one day a very aged man came forth from that
+long-abandoned passage in the mine and surrendered himself to the first
+of the guards whom he encountered--and then told that he was a priest
+whom the fleeing rebels had carried captive with them, and whom they had
+held a prisoner through all these many years. And he told also how the
+rebels had made their home in a certain fair valley that was shut in and
+hidden among the mountains; and how that they had built a great
+city--resting fearless in the conviction that they were safe from harm.
+By the heavy toil that had been needful to open anew the way into the
+mine from the cañon, the little remnant of strength in this old man's
+body had been exhausted; and presently, having told his story, he died.
+
+Then it was that the Priest Captain and the Council who ruled in that
+ancient time, having assured themselves by the sending out of spies that
+all which the old man had told them was true, planned to bring upon the
+rebels a very terrible vengeance; which was to drown them all in their
+city by letting loose upon them the waters of a mighty lake. And this
+plan, though its accomplishment was not arrived at until two full cycles
+had passed away, so mighty was the labor that it involved, at last was
+executed: and in one single day every living creature in all that valley
+was overwhelmed by the flood let loose into it; and where so great a
+mass of teeming life had been there remained thereafter only the
+desolate silence and stillness of universal death.
+
+It was with long-drawn breaths that Fray Antonio and I listened to
+Tizoc's telling of this tradition, which in many ways was far more real
+to us than it possibly could be to him; for we but lately had passed
+through that death-stricken valley--and ourselves had been like to die
+there--and every feature of the scene, that he could but vaguely
+describe to us, we had clearly in our minds. And thus we came to know
+the full meaning of the great catastrophe whereof we had seen the
+outworking, both in the destruction wrought by it and the way of its
+accomplishment, but of which we had divined no more concerning its cause
+than that in some way it must have resulted from a slowly worked-out
+vengeance prompted by a most malignant hate.
+
+
+
+
+XXVI.
+
+THE GATHERING FOR WAR.
+
+
+Although the whole of the discussion of their plan of revolt was carried
+on by the Council with so calm a gravity, there was enough of energy and
+of quick movement when their deliberations came to an end; and we
+augured well of the result because they thus had delayed their action
+until their plan for making it effective had been fully matured. The
+whole of that first day in Huitzilan, and much of the following night
+also, was given to arranging clearly what must be done in order to set
+up a temporary government and to get an army together; and how well this
+preliminary work was accomplished was shown by the precision and
+celerity with which the plans then made were executed during the
+immediately ensuing days.
+
+During this period we had ample time to look around us; and, being now
+upon a most friendly footing with the strange people among whom we thus
+strangely found ourselves, we were heartily aided--so far as this was
+possible because of the exigencies of that stirring time--in
+investigating the manner of their lives. The material then was obtained
+for my chapter on the "House Life and Domestic Customs of the Aztecs";
+and the knowledge which Rayburn gathered (also embodied in his own
+paper, that attracted so much attention when read before the American
+Institute of Mining Engineers) he has permitted me to use in my chapter
+on "Mining and Metal-working among the Aztecs"; which two chapters are
+among the most note worthy _Pre-Columbian Conditions on the Continent of
+North America_. Rayburn, indeed, was lost in wonder as he came to
+understand how far scientific investigation had been carried among this
+isolated people, and how well they had learned to apply their scientific
+knowledge to their practical affairs. In many matters, to be sure, they
+fell far behind the remainder of the civilized world; but a large part
+of the useful knowledge that has been gained by study under civilized
+conditions elsewhere we found here also as the fruit of independent
+discovery. In many cases the discovery was identical in every respect
+with our own. Thus, their process (the adding of hydrochloric acid to a
+neutral solution of auric-chloride) for producing from gold a rich
+purple stain, that was employed in the coloring of hard-wood and bone,
+was precisely that which Boyle mentioned in 1663; and, as nearly as I
+could determine the date, it was about that very time that they, also,
+first effected this combination. In the matter of hardening gold, and
+thereafter giving it all the qualities of tempered steel, they had made
+a step that was distinctly in advance of anything which our
+metallurgists had accomplished; and I am strongly inclined to the belief
+that--at least among the priests--knowledge had been gained of a process
+quite unlike that known to us for producing a gold fulminate. I was not
+so fortunate as to gain more knowledge of this matter than could be
+learned from hearsay, but from several sources I heard of the splitting
+asunder of a certain great rock by the Priest Captain--which wonder was
+accompanied by a thunderous noise and a gleam of flame and a bursting
+forth of smoke--whereby he was considered to have proved that the aid of
+the gods was at his command. But to my mind, and also to Rayburn's, the
+proof was, rather, that he had at his command--in some way that as yet
+our chemists have not fathomed--the aid of a gold fulminate that could
+be controlled in use as readily as we control gunpowder. That this
+agent, whatever it might be, was not easily available, was indicated by
+the fact that the Priest Captain never had given more than this single
+exhibition of the wonders which he could accomplish with it; and that it
+then had served his purpose well was shown by the obvious awe with which
+all who told me of it spoke of the dreadful havoc that thus visibly was
+wrought by what they termed the thunder of the gods.
+
+Indeed, a very serious difficulty that the leaders of the revolution had
+to overcome was the unwillingness on the part of the people at large to
+defy the power of their spiritual chief; which feeling among the upper
+classes was mainly because disobedience to the Priest Captain was, in
+effect, heresy; while among the lower classes there was joined to a like
+horror of heresy a very lively dread of the punishment, both temporal
+and spiritual, that the Priest Captain could bring upon them because of
+his intimate relations with the supernatural beings by which the forces
+of the world were controlled.
+
+Yet out of this condition of affairs arose an opportunity that Fray
+Antonio was not slow to make the most of. Our coming into the valley
+with news of the outside world that directly controverted the Priest
+Captain's claim to infallibility gave a great shock to the religious
+faith of the community, and so induced a willingness to listen to the
+preaching of a new and purer creed. And on the part of those of the
+Council who were organizing the revolution--among whom religion seemed
+to be regarded less as a vital fact than as a matter of political
+expediency--there was a strong disposition to encourage the spread of
+doctrines which obviously, by weakening the Priest Captain's hold upon
+the people, would increase their own strength. Therefore, Fray Antonio
+found himself free to preach to this heathen multitude the glorious
+Christian faith; and that he was granted this most rare and signal
+opportunity, the like of which was not given even to the blessed Saint
+Francis himself, so filled and exalted his soul with a radiantly joyful
+thankfulness that he was as one transformed. And his holy enthusiasm,
+that thus made every fibre of his being vibrate with a grateful
+gladness, gave him also so eloquent a command of beseeching language
+that it was a living wonder to perceive how his inspired words
+penetrated into the minds, darkened by superstitious doctrines, of those
+to whom he spoke, and so sunk into their hearts and brought the restful
+happiness of the faith Christian to those who had known only the
+restless terror of idolatry throughout all their lives. Like a pure
+flame, the doctrine that he preached ran through that host of the
+heathen, burning out from among them the impure creed whereby their
+souls had been held in a most cruel and desolate bondage, and giving in
+the place thereof the tender comfort of a saving Christian grace.
+
+Yet the very fervor of Fray Antonio's preaching, and the strong hold
+that the gentle doctrine which he set forth took upon the hearts of the
+multitude, tended also to stir up against him a lively enmity among
+those who, refusing to hearken to him, remained steadfast in the ancient
+faith. Many such there were among us at that time in Huitzilan; but
+because of the firm grasp that Fray Antonio had upon so many hearts, and
+also because of the countenance which the Council gave him, these did
+not venture to assail either him or his doctrine openly; yet, as I noted
+at times the evil glances which they shot forth at him--which surely
+would have killed him could he thus have been slain--I was filled with
+dread that hate so malignant as here was shown must surely find
+expression in a direct attempt upon his life. Fortunately, there no
+longer were any priests among us. Of these there had been a
+considerable number in Huitzilan upon our first coming there, but
+silently, one by one, they had disappeared--going, as we well knew, to
+join themselves to the force which the Priest Captain was gathering
+against the time when the issue between us would be settled by the
+arbitration of arms. And those who went from our camp to his must have
+carried with them news of the peril that menaced the ancient faith
+through the new faith that Fray Antonio preached so zealously in such
+burning words; for of his knowledge of what Fray Antonio was doing, and
+of his dread of what might therefrom result, we presently had proof in a
+way that filled our hearts with a very dismal fear.
+
+All the while that this curious, and to me most interesting, conflict
+between a primitive and a highly developed religion went on, the more
+practical work went on also of establishing a new government and of
+organizing an army whereby it might be maintained. So far as the setting
+up of a government was concerned, the matter was comparatively easy; for
+the majority of the Council had come out with us from Culhuacan, and
+these had but to adapt to the requirements of the new situation the
+governmental machinery that already was established and at their
+command. And they were surprised pleasurably by finding how readily this
+transformation was effected; for among the higher classes--from which
+classes the officials of the government exclusively were drawn--the
+feeling of hatred against the Priest Captain, begotten of his many acts
+of cruelty and oppression, was so strong that the opportunity now
+offered to turn against him was seized upon most gladly. In every town
+throughout the valley the emissaries of the Council were warmly
+welcomed; and presently the new government was established everywhere
+save in the capital city and in certain villages upon the lake border
+lying close beneath its walls.
+
+The work of organizing an army, however, was a more difficult matter;
+for very serious obstacles, both moral and material, had to be overcome
+before we of the revolutionary faction could place an effective fighting
+force in the field. Of what I may term regular troops, that is to say,
+thoroughly drilled and disciplined soldiers, we could count upon but
+few; for, practically, the whole body of the army had remained faithful
+to the Priest Captain and was with him in Culhuacan. For the most part,
+also, the regular troops scattered through the garrisons of the various
+towns had betaken themselves immediately to Culhuacan upon the
+acknowledgment by the civil officers of these towns of the authority of
+the new government; and at the same time had departed with them nearly
+all the priests, and such few persons of the upper classes as desired
+the maintenance of the ancient order of things. The result of which
+general movement at least gave us the advantage of carrying on
+unmolested our own work of concentrating and organizing; and, so far,
+was a positive service to us.
+
+As the nucleus of our army we had the corps that Tizoc commanded, the
+highly organized body of troops charged with the important duty of
+guarding the Barred Pass; and we had also the few hundreds of men who
+had come out with us from Culhuacan. From these sources we were able to
+draw officers to command the irregular force, largely made up of
+Tlahuicos, that the Council rapidly got together; while for the
+organizing of the main body of our troops, the savages who worked in the
+mine, the bold stroke was made of mingling them with the men who, until
+then, had been their most relentless enemies--the soldiers who had
+served as their guards. That it was possible to put in operation this
+daring plan was due, I think, in great part to the fact that both guards
+and miners were led to accept the extraordinary fellowship that it
+created by a genuine shock of surprise; and before they had at all
+recovered from their astonishment their interests became identical,
+through their common need of defending themselves against a common
+enemy. And, further, I am well convinced that the Tlahuicos had been in
+part prepared, before our coming into the valley, to join in the revolt
+that under any circumstances could not have been much longer delayed. In
+regard to this matter, Tizoc persistently evaded my questions; but I
+remembered very distinctly his curious hesitancy when he had told me of
+the effective part that the servile class could be made to take in the
+event of a rebellion; and I perceived many evidences of a secret
+understanding between him and certain of the miners during the time that
+the gathering for war was going on in Huitzilan. Therefore, I inferred
+that the seeds of revolt which germinated so readily had been long since
+sown.
+
+Of all the disabilities under which we then labored, the most serious
+was the lack of an adequate supply of arms. The great arsenal of the
+Aztlanecas was in Culhuacan; and thus nearly the whole of the supply of
+munitions of war in the valley was in the Priest Captain's hands.
+Fortunately, the shipment of hardened gold that we had intercepted--by
+landing at the pier whence in a few hours it would have been despatched
+to the Treasure-house--gave us a good supply of raw material out of
+which spear-heads, and the heads of darts, and swords could be made; and
+night and day the forges blazed in Huitzilan while the manufacture of
+these weapons went on. Of bows and arrows it was not possible to make
+many in that short time, but of slings there was no difficulty in making
+enough to supply our entire force--and among these people, who are
+wonderfully skilful in the use of it, the sling is a most deadly
+implement of war. We lacked time, also, to make any large number of
+shields, and our deficiency in this respect was regarded by Tizoc, and
+by all the military officers who were with us, as a most serious matter;
+for not only would our men without shields be the more easily slain in
+battle, but their fighting value would be lessened by their
+consciousness that they were without this piece of furniture that all
+savage races hold to be so necessary in war.
+
+However, of defensive armor we had a good supply, for it chanced that in
+the Citadel there was a great store of cotton cloth, suitable for making
+long kirtles of many thicknesses of cloth quilted together; which
+kirtles were arrow proof, and well protected a man from his neck
+downward almost to his knees. Young was disposed to think but lightly of
+this curious armor, but when Tizoc, to convince him of its utility,
+demonstrated its power to resist a well-pointed arrow shot at very short
+range he was forced to confess its entire applicability to the purpose
+for which it was designed.
+
+"Tell th' Colonel that I give in, an' think it a first-rate notion,
+Professor," he said. "But if you can get it into his head, an' I'm
+afraid you can't, just tell him that when this barelegged army of ours
+gets fitted out with those little night-shirts they'll look for all th'
+world like a lot o' fellows who've scrambled out of a hotel that's
+caught fire in th' middle o' th' night. All that'll be wanted t' make
+th' thing perfect 'll be a couple o' steam fire-engines, an' a crowd
+with all their clothes on, an' a line of policemen. I guess it's goin'
+t' be one o' th' funniest lookin' armies that was ever seen outside of a
+lunatic asylum. What I'd like to do, Professor, instead o' tryin' t' do
+any fightin' with it, is just t' take th' whole outfit back t' th'
+States an' make a show of it. I'd get Benito Nichols t' go in with
+me--he's a first-class man, Benito is, an' he's a boss hand as a show
+manager--an' we'd call it 'Th' Aztec Warrior Army an' Circus
+Combination,' an' we'd just rake in th' dollars quicker'n we could count
+'em. That makes me think o' that show we were talkin' about makin' with
+Pablo an' his burro." Young's voice changed as he spoke, and there was a
+huskiness in it as he added: "I s'pose by this time there ain't much
+left for show-makin' purposes of either of 'em. No, I guess I'll stay
+around an' take a hand in any fightin' that's goin' on; for I'd pretty
+near be willin' t' be killed right away after it myself for th' chance
+t' square things with that old devil for killin' our boy. He was a good
+boy, Professor, an'--How this devilish dust does get into my eyes an'
+make 'em water." With which highly irrelevant remark--for there was no
+dust blowing just then--Young suddenly ceased speaking and walked away.
+
+This was the only time that we spoke of Pablo while we lay at Huitzilan,
+for talk about the boy only increased the bitter sorrow for him that was
+in all our hearts. As for my own heart, it was wellnigh broken as I
+thought that but for me his gentle life would still be flowing on
+smoothly--as I had found it flowing when, in an evil hour, I joined his
+fortunes with mine, and so had brought him to so untimely and to so
+cruel a death. And I, too, longed for the fighting to begin that I might
+avenge him; for the accomplishment of which vengeance I was not merely
+in part, but altogether ready to yield up my own life.
+
+Indeed, excepting only Fray Antonio, who saw in warfare only the
+wickedness and the cruelty of it, we all were most eager for our
+inaction to end, and for the battling to begin that would give us
+opportunity to let the life out of some of those by whom Pablo had been
+slain. It was with delight, therefore, that we noted the rapidity with
+which the preparations for the impending campaign were carried forward,
+and saw how each day the disorderly host that had been gathered at
+Huitzilan was changing from a confused mass of good fighting material
+into a body fairly well adapted to the needs of war. It was, in truth,
+astonishing to us--for we could not well comprehend how essentially
+warlike were the instincts of this people, and how quick, therefore,
+they must be in military matters--to observe the promptness that was
+shown in getting our army in readiness for the field. And with our
+astonishment came also a comforting conviction that the force that could
+be so quickly, and, as it seemed, so effectively organized, must surely
+hold well together, and fight well together, when the hour for fighting
+came.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII.
+
+AN OFFER OF TERMS.
+
+
+During the time that our various preparations thus went forward we had
+no direct news from the stronghold of the enemy; yet many vague rumors
+reached us of the army that was being set in order there to take the
+field against us. On the other hand, the constant departure from among
+us of those who were loyal to the ancient government kept the Priest
+Captain well informed of all that was in progress in our camp. No effort
+was made by the Council to prevent these departures, for all of our
+plans were working so well, and our forces were increasing so
+prodigiously, that it was to our advantage that the enemy should have
+news of our rapidly augmenting strength; and especially was it hoped
+that the news thus carried to the city might incline many there who
+wavered in their allegiance to take open part with us--or, at the least,
+to refuse to take part against us--and that in this way there might be
+stirred up a very dangerous spirit of mutiny within the enemy's lines.
+
+The plan of campaign that the Council had adopted struck me as being an
+exceedingly prudent one. This was that we should not attempt an attack
+upon the city--for, indeed, to assail such fortifications without
+artillery would have been utterly hopeless--but should wait until the
+enemy came out to assail us, and then meet him on our own chosen ground.
+In every way this plan was in our favor. It most obviously was to our
+advantage to delay as long as possible the battle that was inevitable,
+and that, when it did come, must decide the fate of the rebellion
+finally. Every day that this was deferred was a substantial gain to us,
+in that the organization of our army was thereby rendered the more
+complete, and also in that the effective hold of the new government upon
+the people throughout the valley was thereby strengthened. On the side
+of the enemy, delay would produce no corresponding gain, rather would it
+tend to weaken the hold of the Priest Captain upon those who remained
+faithful to him; and, being shut up with his whole army and a multitude
+of non-combatants within those great stone walls, a very terrible foe,
+against which stone walls are no defence, presently would attack him in
+the shape of hunger. Therefore we had only to wait--maintaining the
+while a vigilant patrol of guard-boats on the lake, so that no fresh
+supplies might reach the garrison in the city--in the sure conviction
+that our foe would of his own accord come forth to give us battle, and
+that we then would have the advantage of standing wholly on the
+defensive until some happy turn of chance should so favor us that we
+would risk nothing in making an assault.
+
+It was a very fortunate thing for us that matters stood in this way; for
+wellnigh the whole of the trained army of the Aztlanecas was with the
+Priest Captain, and against this well-disciplined body of men our own
+hastily assembled and imperfectly organized army would have made but a
+poor showing had we met on equal terms. Even under the existing
+circumstances, so favorable in many ways to our success, Tizoc and the
+other military officers who were with us did not at all disguise their
+anxiety as to what might be the outcome of the battle so soon to be
+fought; and especially did they dread some well-planned stealthy
+movement of the enemy, by which our camp might be suddenly set upon and
+fairly carried before our own untrained forces could be rallied from the
+bewilderment and confusion into which they would be thrown by the shock
+of such surprise.
+
+Rayburn, who had seen a good deal of Indian fighting in his time, fully
+shared in this feeling of anxiety. "Indian fights, you see," he said,
+"are not like any other kind of fights. The side that wins has got to do
+it with a whoop and a hurrah. Indians haven't got any staying power in
+them. They can't hold out against anybody who stands up against them
+squarely, and won't be scared by a howling rush into running away.
+That's the reason why our little bit of an army at home is strong enough
+to police our whole Indian frontier. A single troop of our boys--if the
+fighting's square, and they haven't been corralled in an ambush--can
+stand off a whole tribe; and they can do it because they just get their
+backs together and won't give in. What bothers me about the fight that
+we're going to have is that the regulars are on the other side. Of
+course, being Indians too, regulars like these don't amount to much; but
+they are bound to be a long chalk better than this rowdy crowd of ours.
+We've got a pretty fair chance to win, because we're in a strong
+position, and because our people mean to wait until the other fellows
+come at 'em; but I tell you what it is, if ever they manage to get
+inside here, or if ever we go outside after them--that is, while they're
+fresh and full of fight--it's bound to be all day with us. These miners,
+and the rest of this Tlahuico outfit, will fight like wild-cats as long
+as they're on top, but every bit of fight will go right out of them the
+minute they find that they're beginning to get underneath. That's the
+Indian way. I'm trying hard to believe that our crowd will whip the
+other crowd; but I must say, Professor, that I'm not betting on it."
+
+"Well, I'm bettin' on it, and bettin' on it high," said Young. "I don't
+pretend t' know as much about this sort o' thing as Rayburn does; but I
+do think I know a live devil when I see one--an' these miners are about
+as lively an' about as devilly as anything that ever broke loose from
+hell. They're just as full o' th' wickedest sort o' fight as they can
+stick in their ugly skins, an' they're just sick for a chance t' let it
+get out of 'em. All we've got t' do is t' worry th' other crowd for a
+while by lettin' 'em monkey around tryin' t' bag us; an' then, when
+they've been pretty well shot off, an' are gettin' tired, just make a
+rush for 'em an' scoop 'em in. Regulars or no regulars, these miners 'll
+go through 'em like a limited express; an' the' first thing th' Priest
+Captain knows we'll have walloped him right smack out o' th' baggy
+things he wears on his feet an' thinks are boots. That's th' size of it,
+Rayburn. That's what's goin' t' happen right here--an' don't you forget
+it! An' then, if there's any way out o' this d--n valley, we'll load up
+with dollars an' pull out for home."
+
+For my own part, I was not disposed to be either so doubtful as Rayburn
+or so sanguine as Young. In what each of them said there was much truth,
+and my inference from such of the facts in the case as were within my
+knowledge and my comprehension was that the chances for and against our
+success were very evenly divided. Had I listened only to the promptings
+of my hopes, I should have entertained no doubt whatever touching the
+certainty of our victory; for I was at that time so elated by the
+knowledge that I had acquired, and that each day was increased by the
+acquisition of new and most precious facts, whereby a flood of light was
+let in upon what hitherto had been hopelessly dark places in Aztec
+archæology, that I was disposed to believe as firmly as ever did the
+first Napoleon in the assured ascendency of my lucky star. However, I
+did not wholly permit my wits to be run away with by the joy begotten of
+my truly wonderful discoveries; and I strove even to contemplate calmly
+the possibility that I might myself be slain in the battle that was so
+close upon us; and that thus the exceedingly valuable information which
+I had acquired would be lost to the world, and to myself would be lost
+the honorable fame due me for having gathered it. Yet I regret to
+state--for until that time I had entertained unreservedly the belief
+that I truly was a philosopher--my attempt at calm contemplation of this
+dismal and far from improbable combination of evil circumstances had no
+other effect upon me than to throw me into a most violent rage. It
+seemed to me so stupidly unreasonable that some mere common brute of an
+Indian, by the crude process of splitting my skull open, might deprive
+me, and through me the scientific world, of the priceless knowledge that
+with much effort I had stored within my brain.
+
+But all thought of my own fortunes, and of this possible sudden cutting
+of my life-strings, presently was thrust aside by the inroad of another
+matter that was of far more serious moment to me, inasmuch as there was
+involved in it a menace against the life of one of my companions; and,
+indeed, this matter was one which startled our whole camp, for it was
+nothing less than a formal offer on the part of the Priest Captain to
+condone the rebellion, and to compromise with the rebels, on certain far
+from exacting terms.
+
+The envoy sent to treat with us came in a manner befitting his dignity
+and the importance of his mission, having a considerable retinue with
+him in his barge, and being himself a grave and dignified man well
+advanced in years. Two of our guard-boats accompanied his barge across
+the lake, and he alone was permitted to land in Huitzilan. Being led
+before the Council, he delivered himself briefly of his message, and
+added to it neither argument nor comment of his own. The Priest Captain,
+he said, desiring to avoid the shedding of blood among brethren, was
+willing to forgive the wrong already committed, and was willing even to
+concede in part the demands made by the rebels, in consideration of the
+acceptance by those now in arms against him of certain very easy terms.
+For his part, he would yield in so far as to restore the custom of
+permitting parents to buy back their own children, and so to save them
+from being sacrificed or from becoming slaves; and he would withdraw
+also his claim to the exercise of certain rights (which need not here be
+specified) in civil matters, to which a counter-claim was set up by the
+Council. In return for these concessions, he demanded that the army
+raised by the rebels should be immediately disbanded; that order should
+be restored in Huitzilan by returning the miners to their work, and the
+Tlahuicos generally to their masters throughout the valley; and that the
+arms which had been manufactured should be turned over to the keeper of
+the arsenal in Culhuacan. The final demand made by the Priest Captain
+related to ourselves; and the Council was given to understand that upon
+its punctual and exact fulfilment the whole of the negotiation must
+depend. Young and Rayburn and I, the envoy said, must be thrust out
+through the Barred Pass, whence we came, and there left to shift for
+ourselves; Fray Antonio must be without delay surrendered--that the
+dreadful sin that he had committed by preaching vile doctrines,
+subversive of the true faith, might be punished in so signal a manner
+that the gods whom he had outraged would be appeased.
+
+Both Fray Antonio and I were present in the Council chamber when the
+envoy delivered his message; and when this final demand was
+made--hearing which made me grow sick and faint, so keen was the pang of
+sorrow that it caused me--I turned towards him quickly, expecting that
+he also would feel the hurt of the blow which through him, because of my
+great love for him, had stricken me so grievously. But so far from being
+at all cast down by the knowledge thus rudely conveyed that a very cruel
+death menaced him, there was upon his face a look of such joyful
+elation, of such rejoicing triumph, that it seemed as though the very
+greatest happiness that life could hold for him had been thrust suddenly
+within his grasp.
+
+Within the Council, and outside of it also, when the terms which the
+envoy offered were spread abroad, there was at once aroused a very hot
+antagonism between contending factions in regard to the wisdom of
+placing trust in the Priest Captain's promises, and to the justice of
+yielding to his demands. So far as the Council was concerned, its
+members having no especial regard for our welfare now that we had served
+their purpose, the slaying of Fray Antonio, and the expulsion from the
+valley of the rest of us, were trifling matters which well enough might
+be conceded if thereby peace might be secured. The matter of importance
+that this body had to consider was how far the Priest Captain could be
+trusted to fulfil promises made to rebels in arms, when these same
+rebels voluntarily had submitted to disarmament and were at his mercy;
+and on this essential point the whole debate that followed turned. The
+faction that favored disarmament insisted that such yielding was not
+surrender, inasmuch as the Priest Captain had conceded all that the
+rebels had asked; while those of the faction that favored war rested
+their case on the ground that the promises of concession were made only
+to be broken, and that this sudden willingness on the part of the Priest
+Captain to grant what he had heretofore so persistently refused was
+proof that he recognized the hopelessness of his position, and so was
+seeking to retain by craft the power that he no longer could hold by
+force. These latter, therefore, urged that his false promises should not
+be heeded; and that the matter at issue should be settled surely and
+finally by carrying to a triumphant conclusion the war, for the waging
+of which all needful preparations had been made.
+
+The debate upon this matter continued throughout the whole day without
+any conclusion being arrived at, and we listened to it--Fray Antonio and
+I translating to the others--with a very earnest interest, inasmuch as
+the outcome of it all might be the instant slaying of one of us, and for
+the rest of us an imprisonment in wild fastnesses among bleak mountains
+for what was like to be the whole remainder of our lives. When night
+came, and the Council, being still unresolved, broke off its session
+until the day following, we came back to our quarters and there talked
+over the situation, and not cheerfully, among ourselves.
+
+"Even if these fellows understood algebra," said Rayburn, "I don't see
+how they could get an answer to the problem that they're trying to work.
+All the _x_'s that ever were made are not enough to represent an unknown
+quantity like the Priest Captain; and it simply is not in the conditions
+of the case that they possibly can know what allowance to make for the
+factor of error. For the last three hours, as far as I can make out,
+they've just been talking in a circle, and going over and over the same
+ground. The size of the business is that half of them believe the Priest
+Captain is telling the truth, and the other half believe that he is
+lying. This is a matter of conviction; it is not a thing that they can
+argue about. As far as I can see, there is nothing to prevent them from
+keeping on talking without getting anywhere for the next twenty years."
+
+"Well, all I can say," said Young, "is that if they'll put me in th'
+cab, an' let me run their train for 'em, I'll get it up this grade in no
+time; an' what's more, I'll just take it down th' other side o' th'
+divide a-kitin'! What's th' matter with th' Priest Captain, an' only
+half of 'em have th' sense t' see 't, is that he's just solidly lyin'.
+He's been lyin' to 'em from away back, I reckon; an' he's lyin' to 'em
+now; an' he'll keep on lyin' to 'em right smack along till he gets t'
+th' end of his run. If they're fools enough t' believe him they're bound
+t' get left th' worst kind. They've got him in a hole now, an' he knows
+it--an' that's more'n they do, t' judge from th' way they're goin' on.
+I did have some respect for that Council. So far, they've managed things
+first-rate. They've run in advance o' their schedule right along, an'
+they've kep' up a rattlin' head o' steam with mighty d----n bad coal.
+But if they really mean t' draw their fires, just when they ought t' put
+on th' forced draught an' let her go for all she's worth, I must say I
+haven't any more use for 'em. Seein' 'em shilly-shallyin' around like
+they're doin' now, when they ought t' be takin' their coats off an'
+sailin' in, just makes me sick!"
+
+Fray Antonio--whose habit of quiet was such that he rarely sought to
+take part in the talks that we had in English among ourselves--somewhat
+surprised me by asking me to translate to him what Young and Rayburn had
+been saying; and when he had heard it all he was silent for a while, and
+evidently was engaged in earnest thought. At last, speaking very
+gravely, he asked us if we greatly feared being thrust out from the
+valley in case the Council decided to accept the Priest Captain's terms;
+and without giving us a chance to answer, he bade us remember that we
+had not at all explored the last valley that we had passed through
+before we entered the cañon that ended at the Barred Pass, and that from
+it there well might be some outlet through which we could return to the
+civilized world; and even were we forced to end our days in it, he
+continued, speaking quickly and urgently, a much worse fate might come
+to us; for the valley was a bright and beautiful one, as we had seen,
+and had in it an abundant supply of food. Would living there, he asked,
+be any worse for us than living where we then were--where we were
+equally shut in? And even supposing that the war ended in victory for
+us, and that our allies gave us entire freedom of action, what more
+could we do than end our days in the Valley of Aztlan, or else go back
+to that other valley and search for an outlet thence whereby we could
+get into an open way among the mountains, and so once more to our homes?
+And then, still denying us opportunity to answer, he went on to speak of
+the pain and misery and despairing sorrow that the threatened war would
+bring; and then, more gently, of the duty that pressed upon us of
+averting this calamity, that was also a crime, even though to do so we
+must sacrifice hopes and wishes very dear to our hearts.
+
+"What th' dickens is th' Padre drivin' at, anyway?" Young exclaimed; "I
+don't ketch on at all."
+
+"No more do I," said Rayburn. "It's a first-rate sermon that he's giving
+us, but I don't see where he means the moral of it to fetch up."
+
+For myself, so closely were Fray Antonio and I bound together by bonds
+of sympathy, I saw but too plainly what he meant should be the outcome
+of his discourse; and I was not surprised, therefore--though hearing
+thus plainly expressed in words what I had been dreading, sent a dull,
+cold pain into the very depths of my heart--when he unfolded to us the
+whole of the plan that he had been forming within his mind. What he said
+was said very simply, and with a loving sorrow for the pain that might
+come to us through shaping our actions in accordance with his strong
+desire; and this desire was: that, of our own free-will, we should
+retire from the valley by the way that we came thither, and so leave the
+Council free to accept unhesitatingly the Priest Captain's terms.
+
+"And what of yourself?" I asked; for I felt within me a strong
+conviction that for himself he had in view a very different fate.
+
+He hesitated for a moment before answering me, and his color changed a
+little; and then an unwonted ruddiness gave animation to his face, and a
+light of glad and strong resolve shone in his eyes as he replied, in a
+voice that was very low, and at the same time very clear and firm: "I
+shall go to the Priest Captain, in Culhuacan!"
+
+"And so go to your death," I said, speaking brokenly, for the pain that
+his words caused me went through me like a knife-thrust.
+
+"Say, rather," Fray Antonio answered, "that I go to win the life,
+glorious and eternal, into which neither death nor sin nor sorrow
+evermore can come!"
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII.
+
+THE SURRENDER OF A LIFE.
+
+
+Knowing as I did Fray Antonio's resolute nature, and understanding far
+more clearly than it was possible for the others to understand the
+heroic impulses which stirred within him, I took no part in the attempt
+that they then made to oppose the purpose which he had declared. But
+when they somewhat shifted their position--perceiving how hopeless was
+their effort to shake by argument his firm resolve--and sought to win
+him to their way of thinking by consenting to leave the valley if only
+he would accompany them, then I most earnestly joined my entreaties to
+theirs. But no more by entreaty than by argument was Fray Antonio to be
+moved.
+
+And, in truth, there was a logical consistency in what he urged in
+answer to us that, much though we might resent it, we yet were compelled
+to respect. He had come with us, he said, for the single purpose of
+preaching the saving grace of Christianity to heathen souls which
+otherwise would perish utterly in their idolatry. And this was not a
+matter wherein he had any right of election, but was a solemn duty that
+the vows by which he was bound compelled him to fulfil. He was not free,
+therefore, as we were free, to consider side issues relating to his
+personal well-being or to mere expediency; his sole endeavor must be to
+accomplish by the most efficient means the duty wherewith he was
+charged. It was evident, he urged, that should there be war in the
+valley the chance for the further spread of Christian doctrine would he
+scant; for the seed that he had sown, and that already was well rooted
+in many hearts, would die quickly and be utterly lost in the foul growth
+of evil passions which would spring up rankly amid this bloody strife.
+But if the war could be averted, not only would these people be spared
+the misery that war must bring upon them, and the crime also of slaying
+each other, but their hearts would remain open to the gentle doctrine
+that he had taught; and his willingness--should such sacrifice be
+necessary--to yield his life that peace might be preserved, would force
+upon them strongly the conviction, tending thus to their own
+strengthening, of his faithful trust in the creed which he avowed. And
+it well might happen, he said, that such grace would be given him that
+even within the very stronghold of the heathen faith he might win souls
+to the purer faith which it was his glorious privilege to preach and
+still remain unharmed; in proof of which possibility he cited the case
+of the blessed St. Januarius, whom the lions refused to devour. But
+whatever might be the outcome of thus yielding himself into the Priest
+Captain's hands, his duty was so clear, he declared firmly, that no
+evasion of it was possible. And what he purposed doing, he said,
+finally, was but what countless of his brethren had done in the course
+of the six centuries since the founding in Assisi of the Order to which
+they and he belonged--and precisely was it what was done by the glorious
+proto-martyr of Mexico, San Felipe de Jesus, who boldly carried the
+Christian faith among the heathen, and so died for that faith upon the
+cross in Japan.
+
+Rayburn was far from willing to yield to this line of argument; yet he
+understood it, as I did also, and perceived that it was the only logical
+outcome of the only premises which Fray Antonio would recognize. Young,
+on the other hand, did not in the least understand it, and Fray
+Antonio's reasoning simply threw him into a rage.
+
+"It's all d----n nonsense," he said, "for th' Padre t' talk about his
+duty towards a set o' critters like th' Priest Captain's crowd. What's
+th' life o' that whole outfit worth compared t' one life like his? He
+might just as well sit down an' chop his own head off as go in among
+those fellows; an' he knows it, too. I never heard o' th' man he's
+talkin' about who didn't get eat up by th' lions--somebody in th' show
+business, I s'pose--but if he thinks there'll he anything worth speakin'
+of left of him two hours after he gets back into that city, he's makin'
+a pretty d--n big mistake. Oh, I say, Professor, we've _got_ t' stop
+this. Th' Padre's off his head, that's all there is to it; an' we've got
+t' look after him till he braces up an' gets sensible again. I'll do
+anything reasonable that he wants, but I'll be d----d if I'm goin' t'
+stand by doin' nothin' while he cuts his own throat!"
+
+Young was quite ready, I am sure, to resort to the radical measure of
+clapping Fray Antonio into a strait-jacket; and had the opportunity
+arisen for bringing their difference of opinion to a practical issue I
+am confident that we should have witnessed an exceedingly curious
+conflict, in which heroic self-devotion would have struggled with a
+rough but very honest love. And that Fray Antonio anticipated such a
+conflict was shown by his taking effective measures to render it
+impossible. During the remainder of that day he steadfastly refused to
+discuss the matter further; not harshly, but by shifting away into other
+channels our earnest talk. Only at night, before we lay down to sleep,
+of his own motion he turned once more to the matter; and when he briefly
+had exhibited to us again the motives which urged him forward upon a
+way so perilous, he begged that we would not think ill of his insisting
+upon traversing our wishes, but that once more we would clasp hands with
+him in sign of our forgiveness and continued love.
+
+So tender was the mood that came upon us with his gentle words that none
+of us well could answer him; and this he understood as in turn we took
+his hand and strove to utter that which was in our hearts, and only
+could say huskily a word or two, of which the meaning was conveyed for
+the most part by the sorrow and the longing that were in our tones.
+Young's natural instincts were wholly opposed to any display of the
+softer emotions, and for shame of the weakness that in this case he
+could not help but show, his face and neck flushed red, and he declared
+that he had the toothache. And then, as a vent for his overwrought
+feelings--of all things in the world--he fell to cursing the
+Superintendent of the Old Colony Railroad: on the ground that but for
+this functionary, who most unjustifiably had discharged him, he never
+would have come to Mexico at all!
+
+For my own part, I was well convinced that Fray Antonio meant then to
+say good-bye to us; and for a long while, as I lay awake that night, my
+thoughts went backward over the time that we had been companions
+together, and so dwelt upon the faithfulness of his friendship, and upon
+his gallant bearing in all times of peril, and upon the pure and perfect
+holiness which characterized his every act and word. Into the future I
+dared not let my thoughts wander, for I could foresee no outcome to the
+purpose which he had planned so resolutely but a dreary sorrow that
+would rest heavily upon me through all the remainder of my days. And at
+last, worn out by my own grief, I fell into a troubled sleep.
+
+The faint gray light of early morning shone dimly in the room as Rayburn
+awakened me by shaking my arm; and the first words which he spoke to me
+were, "The Padre is not here!"
+
+As I roused myself fully, and sat up and looked into his face, I saw by
+the look that he gave me how fully he shared the dread that was in my
+heart. Young still was sleeping, and we waited to rouse him until we
+should make sure that what we feared must be the truth really was true.
+Together we went out quietly into the court-yard and so to the main
+entrance of the building, where a guard was stationed. But this man was
+asleep; and when I wakened him, and questioned him as to whether the
+monk had gone forth, he could give me no answer. Therefore we went on to
+the gate of the Citadel--which gate, being a vastly heavy grating,
+raised and lowered by chains, was not usually closed even at night--in
+the hope that there we might gain some certain knowledge. And here also
+we found all of the half-dozen men on guard slumbering, saving only one
+man, who seemed to have been aroused by the sound of our footsteps, and
+who raised himself on one elbow and looked at us with a sleepy
+curiosity.
+
+[Illustration: IN THE GATE-WAY OF THE CITADEL]
+
+Even the urgency of the quest that we were upon did not suffice to
+distract our attention from the peril that we all were in because of the
+slumbering of these sentries. "If this is a specimen of the way all the
+watches are kept," Rayburn said, angrily, "we stand a pretty good chance
+of being murdered in our beds. It all comes of trying to make soldiers
+out of savages. These Tlahuicos will fight well enough, I never doubted
+that, but to put such men on guard is simple idiocy. They have been
+slaves all their lives, and they haven't the least notion in the world
+of personal responsibility. It's a lucky thing that we have found out
+their methods, for I shall give the Colonel a talking to about putting
+on guard some of his own men who can be trusted. It's clear that these
+fellows cannot tell us anything. We'd better keep on down to the
+landing; if the Padre has gone"--there was a sudden break in Rayburn's
+voice as he said these words--"it's pretty certain that he has gone by
+water, and we may come across somebody down there who happened to be
+awake and saw him start."
+
+There were slight signs of wakefulness beginning to show themselves as
+we went down towards the water-side; a few doors already were open; here
+and there thin threads of smoke curled upward through the still air;
+around a fountain a half-dozen women were clustered, drawing water in
+great earthen pots, and chattering together softly in half-drowsy talk.
+At the pier, however, we found some people who really were wide-awake:
+fishermen just returned with a boat-load of fish that they had caught in
+the lake. And these, when I questioned them, in a moment resolved all of
+our troubled doubts into a sad certainty. Only an hour before, as they
+lay out on the lake, a canoe had passed them paddled by a single
+Indian, and in the canoe they had plainly recognized Fray Antonio. It
+was impossible that they should be mistaken, they declared, for the
+habit which the monk wore made him very plainly recognizable; and they
+had observed him with a particular care, for they had been greatly
+surprised by perceiving that the canoe was heading directly for "the
+great city"--by which name all save the priests were accustomed to speak
+of Culhuacan.
+
+Neither Rayburn nor I spoke, as we walked back together through the town
+to the Citadel. Our hearts were altogether too full for words. Even I,
+who had been in part prepared for Fray Antonio's departure by the tenor
+of his speech with us the night before, had not anticipated his going
+from us so suddenly to what surely must be his death; and to Rayburn his
+departure came with the startling force of a heavy and unexpected blow.
+Young was awake when we returned, and was in much anxiety concerning us;
+for our custom at all times was to hold closely together, and he knew
+that something out of the common must have happened to make us break
+through this very necessary rule; and his fears were further aroused
+when he perceived the sad gravity of our faces, and that Fray Antonio
+was not in our company. Yet, though thus prepared to learn that evil of
+some sort had overtaken us, he was not at all prepared to learn how
+great that evil was. When, therefore, we told him of what we had
+discovered, which gave absolute assurance that Fray Antonio had carried
+out his purpose of surrendering himself into the Priest Captain's hands,
+Young stared at us for a moment in a dazed sort of way, as though by no
+means grasping the meaning which our words conveyed. And then the whole
+meaning of them seemed to come to him suddenly, and he burst forth into
+such a raving volley of curses that it seemed as though he were fairly
+maddened by his ungoverned rage.
+
+I envied Young, as I am sure Rayburn did also, the relief that must come
+to him with this rough but frank and natural expression of his bitter
+grief. For ourselves, we stood sad and silent, yet with our hearts
+almost breaking within us, as we thought how small was the chance that
+ever in this world should we see the face of Fray Antonio again.
+
+
+
+
+XXIX.
+
+THE ASSAULT IN THE NIGHT.
+
+
+Neither the Council, in its irresolute parleyings, nor Fray Antonio, in
+his resolute action, had at all considered certain factors which they
+themselves had interjected into the problem that they then were dealing
+with from such widely different stand-points and in such widely
+different ways. The Council, at a stroke, had transformed the Tlahuicos
+into soldiers, and had given the promise that in reward for their
+faithfulness and valor these slaves thenceforward should be freemen.
+Fray Antonio had preached to all those assembled at Huitzilan a creed
+that had taken strong hold upon many hearts, and that especially had
+won the hearts of those of the long-oppressed servile class--to whom its
+doctrine of equality seemed to hold out an absolute assurance that their
+life of slavery was at an end.
+
+When, therefore, the terms which the Priest Captain offered were spread
+abroad through the town, and through the camp close beside the town in
+which the army lay--being there in readiness instantly to occupy the
+Citadel should the enemy appear--a very lively anger was aroused because
+such terms should even be listened to. For what the Priest Captain
+demanded was that the apostle of the new religion should be relinquished
+to him to be slain as a sacrifice to the Aztec gods, and that once more
+the Tlahuicos should be thrust back into slavery; while what he
+conceded--in that it affected only the higher classes--made the lot of
+the Tlahuicos but the more unjustly cruel and hard to bear.
+
+And those who resented the delay on the part of the Council in sending
+back the Priest Captain's envoy with a sharp denial, presently went on
+from hot words to violent deeds; being directly led from mutinous talk
+to mutinous action by the knowledge that the Council had so far accepted
+the offered terms as to send Fray Antonio to the great city to be
+slain--for not one among them could be led for a moment to believe, so
+impossible from their stand-point did such an act appear, that the monk
+truly had gone thither of his own free-will.
+
+Practically, the whole army was involved in the movement that then took
+place; for even its officers, while not of the servile class, dreaded
+the punishment that their revolt might bring upon them, and so
+preferred to take the chances of the war rather than to yield themselves
+to be dealt with as the Priest Captain might dispose. Therefore it was,
+on the day that Fray Antonio departed from us, that all the soldiers
+together marched in from their camp and massed themselves compactly
+about the Council Chamber within the Citadel, and then with loud cries
+demanded that the envoy should be sent back to the great city with an
+absolute refusal of the offered terms. Thus was there created a
+rebellion within a rebellion; and one that the Council was powerless to
+put down, for the reason that practically the whole of the force which
+it had created to serve against the enemy was now risen against its own
+authority with a most masterful strength.
+
+In the case that thus was presented there was no opportunity to
+temporize. The fierce, wild creatures of whom soldiers suddenly had been
+made stood there before the Council Chamber, shouting and waving their
+spears angrily and clashing together their arms. And so they continued,
+without one moment of quiet, until their will was obeyed. Through the
+savage and tumultuous throng the envoy was led forth--his looks showing
+plainly his very natural expectation that his life would be let out of
+him amid that ferocious company--and so down to the water-side; and
+thence was sent back again to Culhuacan with the firm assurance--which
+message of defiance the soldiers themselves dictated--that the terms
+offered by the Priest Captain would be accepted only when all the
+Tlahuicos then risen together in arms against him had been slain!
+
+"Bully for th' Tlahuicos!" cried Young, as I translated to him these
+ringing words. "Just tell 'em, Professor, that I've volunteered for
+three years or th' war, an' that they can count on me t' keep up a full
+head o' steam as long as there's any fightin' t' be done. Accordin' t'
+my notions, now that th' Padre's over there in th' city--t' say nothin'
+o' what we owe 'em on Pablo's account--th' row can't begin one minute
+too soon. These Tlahuicos are th' boys for me! Didn't I tell you that
+nobody could stop 'em when they once got fairly started? They're a tough
+lot; but they're just everlastin' rustlers--an' their style suits me
+right now all th' way down t' th' ground floor!"
+
+The sharp excitement attendant upon this vigorous action gave place, as
+the day wore on, to a dull heavy pain as our thoughts dwelt upon the
+fate that Fray Antonio had gone forth to meet, and upon our present
+powerlessness to defend him in any way against it. Although the envoy
+had been sent back, and war was now resolutely determined upon, the
+situation remained unchanged in so far as concerned the necessity
+of our waiting for the Priest Captain to take the initiative. To
+attack that great walled city was so hopeless a task that even the
+Tlahuicos--flushed though they were by their victory over the
+Council--did not venture to propose it; for they knew, as we all did,
+that our only chance of carrying the enemy's stronghold lay in first
+defeating its garrison in a battle in the open field. Yet this dull
+inaction of waiting was a scarce of grave danger to us, in that it
+tended to wear out the spirits of our men and to make them still more
+careless of their guard. What Rayburn and I had seen that morning had
+shown how little trust could be placed in them, in so far as the
+soldierly attribute of watchfulness was concerned; and Tizoc, with whom
+we conferred in regard to this important matter, had little to say that
+we found comforting. Being himself a thorough soldier, he perceived the
+danger to which the unsoldierly lack of vigilance on the part of the
+Tlahuicos exposed our camp; but the situation was such that he was
+powerless to take effective measures for our protection. The few regular
+troops in our little army were not enough to do sentry duty everywhere,
+and the best that could be done would be to dispose them at the points
+most open to attack--"And then trust to luck," Rayburn put in, rather
+bitterly, "that the enemy will be polite enough to try to surprise only
+the part of the camp where the sentries are awake!"
+
+Partly that we might see for ourselves how our pickets were disposed,
+but more that by action of any sort we might divert our thoughts from
+the sorrow that was gnawing at our hearts, we walked out together in the
+late afternoon to the rocky heights of the promontory that on the
+western side of the town extended far into the lake. From a military
+stand-point this position was of great importance to us, inasmuch as
+bowmen or slingmen gaining access to it could command a considerable
+part of the town, and even could annoy very seriously the garrison of
+the Citadel; and it also was of value to us as a place of lookout whence
+an attacking party coming by way of the lake from the city could be
+perceived while yet it was a long way off.
+
+We were surprised, therefore, when we had come well out upon the
+promontory, that no sentinel challenged us; but our surprise vanished a
+moment or two later as we perceived one of our men curled up comfortably
+against a sunny rock and apparently sound asleep. However, as we got
+close to the man it was clear to us that his sleep was one that he never
+would waken from, for a pool of blood stained the rock beside him, and
+an arrow was shot fairly through his heart. We made but a short stop
+beside this fellow--who plainly had been shot in his sleep, and so
+deserved the fate that had overtaken him--and then went forward
+anxiously that we might see how the other sentinels stationed hereabouts
+had fared. The result of our quest was as bad as it could be; for in one
+place or another among the rocks we found all five of the men who had
+been posted upon the promontory, and all of them were dead. Three more
+of them certainly had been shot while asleep or wholly off their guard,
+as was shown by the easy attitudes in which we found them sitting or
+lying among the rocks. The fifth had not been instantly killed; as we
+inferred from finding a broken arrow sticking in his left arm, and some
+signs of a struggle about where he lay, and a great split in his skull,
+as from a sword stroke, that finally had let the life out of him. It
+struck us as strange that this man had not aroused the camp with his
+shouts; but his post was at the extreme end of the promontory, so that
+he must have called very loudly in order to be heard; and it was
+possible that in the suddenness of his danger he never thought to call
+at all. However, the important matter, so far as we were concerned, was
+that these five sentinels had been slain close beside the town and in
+broad daylight, and that but for the chance of our coming out upon the
+promontory the most important of our outposts would have remained
+unguarded until the night relief should have come on. It was Rayburn's
+theory that the plan of the enemy was to place his own men on the vacant
+posts--trusting to the reasonable certainty that in the dusk of evening
+one naked Indian would look much like another--and so despatch the
+relief, one by one, as the guard was changed.
+
+Of those of the enemy who had accomplished this piece of work so
+skilfully we could see no sign--unless it were a boat that we dimly saw
+a long way off on the lake, and that presently wholly disappeared in a
+bank of haze; and despite the hot sunshine basking upon us a chill went
+through me at thought of the stealthy daring and truly devilish cunning
+of the men who thus could do their evil work in the full light of day,
+and close to the encampment of an army, and yet could get safely away
+without leaving a trace of their presence save the dead bodies of their
+foes.
+
+Having made sure by carefully searching among the rocks throughout the
+length of the promontory that none of the enemy was hidden there, we
+hastened back to the town to tell what we had come upon, and to provide
+for mounting fresh sentinels in the place of those who had been relieved
+by death. We had expected that the news which we brought would stir up a
+great commotion; and we were not a little troubled, therefore, knowing
+how serious the matter was in its exhibition of the carelessness of our
+guards, by finding that only Tizoc and a few other tried soldiers were
+more than lightly discomposed by what we had to tell. The general
+feeling seemed to be--inasmuch as our lucky discovery had dispelled the
+danger--that there was no need to worry about a calamity which had not
+occurred; and what after all was the most essential consideration--the
+constant danger that threatened us by reason of the criminal laxity of
+the watch maintained by our pickets--practically was lost sight of.
+Apparently neither the Council nor the higher officers of the army had
+the power to remedy this dangerous condition of affairs. At no time had
+any very strong authority been exercised over the Tlahuicos--for all the
+orders which until now had been given to them had been directed only
+towards urging them along a way that they were glad enough to follow of
+their own accord--and since their assertion of their will that morning,
+what little control had restrained their waywardness seemed to have been
+wholly lost.
+
+However, as there was a chance in it of fighting, and as fighting was
+what they longed for earnestly, our unruly soldiers were willing enough
+that a strong detachment should be placed in ambush on the promontory,
+to the end that the force which the enemy probably would land there that
+night might be summarily dealt with. And the better to carry out our
+plan of a counter-surprise the dead sentinels were left where we found
+them. Tizoc was given the command of the ambushed force, and he
+willingly granted our request that we might accompany him; which
+request was prompted by the desire that we fully shared with the
+Tlahuicos to get at close quarters with the enemy, and also by the
+conviction that in Tizoc's company--though in his company we were like
+to have hot fighting and plenty of it--we would have better chances of
+safety than anywhere else in all our camp.
+
+For this expedition we put on for the first time our armor of quilted
+cotton cloth; and the look of these garments certainly did justify
+Young's comments upon them. "It's a pity we can't get photographed now,"
+he said, "so's t' send our likenesses in this rig home t' our folks.
+You'd just jolt the Cap Cod folks, Rayburn, with that pair o' telegraph
+poles you call your legs stickin' out from under th' tails o' that thing
+that looks like a cross between a badly made frock-coat and an
+undersized night-shirt. And I guess your college boys 'd be jolted, too,
+Professor, if they could get a squint at you. And I s'pose that if some
+o' th' hands on th' Old Colony happened t' ketch up with me dressed this
+way they'd think I'd gone crazy. But I haven't got anything t' say
+against these little night-shirts except about their looks. When you get
+right down t' th' hard-pan with 'em, they're a first-rate thing."
+
+For three American citizens, belonging to the nineteenth century, we
+certainly presented a strange appearance, and appeared also in very
+strange company, as we marched out from the town late that afternoon
+with Tizoc and his men. Each of us carried half a dozen darts, and
+strapped around our waists, outside our cotton-cloth armor, we each wore
+a maccahuitl--the heavy sword with a jagged double edge that we knew
+from experience was an excellent weapon when wielded by a strong hand.
+Indeed, Young and I carried the darts rather to satisfy Tizoc than
+because we expected to make any very effective use of them, and all of
+our reliance both for assault and defence was upon what we could do with
+our swords at close quarters. Rayburn, however, had been practising
+dart-throwing very diligently, and as he naturally was an
+extraordinarily dextrous man he had made rapid progress in this savage
+art. The soldiers in our company, naked creatures, lithe and sinewy,
+were armed for the most part with spears and slings; and the officers
+wore each a sword and carried each a handful of darts. As we all stepped
+out briskly together I could not but think how amazed would be the
+President of the University of Michigan, and my fellow-members of the
+Faculty of that institution of learning, should they happen to encounter
+me in that barbarous company, and arrayed in that most barbarous garb!
+
+[Illustration: THE LAST RALLY]
+
+It was a little before sunset when we reached the place that Tizoc had
+selected for our ambush upon the promontory; and an hour later, just as
+the shadows of evening were beginning to fall, one of our lookout men
+reported that a large boat--of which the oars must be muffled, for no
+sound came from it--was pulling around a point just beyond where we lay.
+There was a little stir among our men when this news was received, and a
+shifting and arranging of weapons, so that all might be in readiness
+when the moment for opening the ambush came; but we had a picked force
+with us, each man of which fully understood how necessary was silence
+to the success of our plans, and the quick thrill of movement was so
+guarded that it scarcely ruffled the deep stillness of the night.
+
+But the moments lengthened out into minutes, and the minutes slowly
+slipped by until a full hour had passed, and the thick darkness of
+tropical night was upon us, and still there was no sign of a foe. Tizoc
+grew uneasy, for it was evident that we were in error in our conception
+of the enemy's plan. Had he intend-to mount his own men as sentinels in
+place of our men whom he had slain, and then get save possession of the
+promontory by killing the relief as it came on, we should have been long
+since engaged with him; but here the night was wearing on, and,
+excepting only the boat that our scouts had seen, there had been nothing
+to show that the attack which we had expected so confidently was
+anything more than a creation of our own fears. Yet our only course was
+to remain where we were until morning; for some accident might have
+delayed the attack, and the necessity of holding the promontory was so
+urgent that we could not take the risk of withdrawing our force.
+
+It was weary work sitting there in the darkness, after all the weariness
+of so exciting a day, and as the hours dragged on I found myself now and
+then sinking into a doze, for which I reproached myself; yet also
+excused myself by the reflection that I did not at all profess to have
+either the training or the instincts of a soldier, but had been brought
+up, as a man of peace and as a scholar, in accordance with the sound
+principle that night rationally is the time set apart for sleep. It was
+from a most agreeable nap--in which I was dreaming pleasantly of my old
+life in Ann Arbor--that I was roused suddenly by Rayburn's quick grip
+upon my shoulder, and by his sharp whisper, "What's that?"
+
+In an instant I was thoroughly awake, and as I bent forward and listened
+intently I heard very distinctly a faint cry of alarm, that seemed to
+come from a long way off. Tizoc, I perceived--for he had risen to his
+feet--also was most eagerly listening; and I heard a slight sound of
+movement and of arms clinking as our men roused themselves, showing that
+they also had heard that warning cry.
+
+But in a moment there was no need to strain our ears to catch the sounds
+which came to us. The cry that a single throat had uttered was taken up
+by a thousand; and so grew into a dull, distant roar, that pierced the
+black and sullen stillness of the night. And with this came also the
+higher notes of savage yells, and then we heard the clash of arms--which
+evidence that fighting was going on, no less than the direction whence,
+as we now perceived clearly, the sounds came, assured us that while we
+had maintained our watchful guard on the promontory the enemy had
+surprised our camp.
+
+Rayburn sprang up with a growl like that of a savage beast. "By G----d!"
+he cried, "they meant us to do just what we've done, and we've walked
+into their trap like so many d----n fools!"
+
+
+
+
+XXX.
+
+THE FALL OF THE CITADEL.
+
+
+Tizoc, I was glad to see, had his men well under his command, as was
+shown by the orderly manner in which they waited, despite their eager
+impatience to be off, until he gave the command to march. And hard
+marching we found it, as we floundered about that rough, rocky place,
+tripping and stumbling, and now and then hearing a crash in the darkness
+as one of our men went down. But, somehow or other, we certainly managed
+to get over the ground very rapidly; and all the while the sounds of the
+fight that was raging hotly struck with a constantly increasing
+clearness upon our ears.
+
+The whole width of the town lay between our camp and the foot of the
+rugged path that led down from the promontory; but when we were fairly
+in the streets, and no longer had rough rocks to stumble over in the
+darkness, we went forward at a very slashing pace. And we were further
+helped now by the fact that day was breaking, so that we could see
+clearly where we were going; and we had also within us that feeling of
+cheer and encouragement that ever is given to man by the return of the
+sun. In but a few minutes more, in that tropical region, a flood of
+daylight would be about us; and Tizoc's hope was that when the horror of
+darkness, ever appalling to barbarians, should be lifted, and when our
+coming should afford a firm centre to rally around, our army might
+regain the courage and steadiness which it had lost in the terror and
+bewilderment of a night surprise.
+
+But he quickly found that this hope was doomed to disappointment. Only a
+little beyond the gate of the Citadel we came upon a flying body of
+Tlahuicos--though no pursuers were in sight beyond them--and these were
+so completely demoralized that they took our company for a detachment of
+the enemy, and with wild cries fled away from us down a side street and
+so disappeared. "What do you think of your friends now?" Rayburn asked
+Young, grimly. But Young's only answer was to curse the vanished
+Tlahuicos for cowards.
+
+A moment later the whole street in front of us was filled with a howling
+mob of our men, and these came surging towards us with the evident
+intention of seeking safety in the Citadel. Tizoc saw at a glance the
+hopelessness of trying to rally a rout like this until the terrified
+creatures, fleeing like sheep from a pack of wolves, had been given rest
+for a while in some safe place where their courage might return to them.
+Being once within the Citadel they would be for a time wholly out of
+danger; for even should the enemy try to set scaling-ladders in place,
+and so break in upon us there, it would be an easy matter for a few
+determined men to hold the walls until some sort of order had been
+restored among our broken forces. Tizoc therefore promptly wheeled our
+little force aside into an open space, and so made a way for the
+struggling crowd to sweep past us. We noted, as the stream of
+terror-stricken men flowed by, that their officers were not with them;
+from which Tizoc drew the hopeful augury that the officers, being all
+trained soldiers, had drawn together into a rear-guard that sought to
+cover this wild retreat. And presently we found that Tizoc was right in
+his inference, for soon the crowd began very perceptibly to grow
+thinner, and the sound of loud cries and the rattle and clashing of arms
+rang out above the tumult, and then there came around a turn in the
+street, a little beyond where we had halted, a compact body of men who
+were falling back slowly, and who were laying about them most valiantly
+with their swords. Our party gave a yell, by way of putting fresh heart
+into these gallant fellows, and Tizoc quickly disposed our company in
+such a manner that the retreating force fell back through our midst; and
+then we promptly closed in, and so took the fighting to ourselves.
+
+I cannot tell very clearly how our retreat to the Citadel was managed,
+nor even of my own part in it; for fighting is but rough, wild work,
+which defies all attempts at scientific accuracy in describing it--and
+for the reason, I fancy, that it engenders a wholly unscientific frame
+of mind. Reduced to its lowest terms, fighting is mere barbarity; a most
+illogical method of settling some disputed question by brute force
+instead of by the refined reasoning processes of the intelligent human
+mind; and by the anger that it inevitably begets, the habit of accurate
+observation, out of which alone can come accurate description, is
+hopelessly confused. Therefore I can say only that foot by foot we
+yielded the ground to the enemy that pressed upon us; that wild shouts
+rang out--in which I myself joined, though why I should have shouted I
+am sure I do not know--together with the sharp rattle of clashing
+swords; and that through the roar of this outburst of fierce sounds
+there ran an undertone of groans and sobs from the poor wretches who had
+fallen wounded to the ground. The one thing that I remember clearly is a
+set-to with swords that I had with a big fellow, just as we had come
+close to the Citadel, that ended in a way (that would have surprised him
+mightily had he lived long enough to comprehend it) by my finishing him
+by means of a stop-thrust followed by a beautiful draw-cut that was a
+famous stroke with my old sabre-master at Leipsic. And I well remember
+thinking, at the moment that I made this stroke--and so saved my life by
+it, for the fellow was pressing me very closely--how happy it would have
+made the old Rittmeister could he have seen me deliver it.
+
+As we made a rush for the gate of the Citadel, that we might get inside
+this place of safety and drop the grating before the enemy could follow
+us, we were surprised by finding many of our own men lying dead about
+the entrance; and what was far worse for us, we found that unskilled
+hands had been at work with the machinery whereby the gate was lowered
+and by their bungling had managed to start it downward in such a way
+that it had jammed in the grooves. What actually had happened there, as
+we knew afterwards, was that the first of the cowardly wretches who had
+entered the Citadel had tried to drop the gate in the faces of their
+companions and so secure their own safety; whence a fight among
+themselves had sprung up, in course of which many of them very
+deservedly were slain, and, most unhappily for us, their frantic efforts
+to lower the gate had resulted in thus disabling it.
+
+We had a moment of breathing space before the enemy came up with us, and
+in this time Rayburn and Young and I had a grip of each other's hands,
+in which, without any words over it, we said good-bye to each other; for
+we neither of us for one moment doubted that our last hour had come.
+Tizoc stood a little distance from us, as steady and as gallant in his
+bearing as ever I saw a man; but that he also counted surely upon dying
+there was shown by the glance of grave friendliness that he gave us, and
+by his making the gesture that among his people is significant of
+farewell. Then we ranged ourselves across the gate-way, holding our
+swords in hand firmly, and Rayburn, who had caught up a javelin, stood
+with it poised above his shoulder in readiness to discharge it as the
+enemy came on. The sight of his splendid figure towering defiantly in
+that heroic attitude set my mind to running upon the Homeric legend of
+the glorious battling of the Greeks before the gates of Troy, and of
+Hector uplifting the rock; and I was very angry with Young, whose
+disposition to seize upon the whimsical side of everything was the most
+irrepressible that ever I came across, when he exclaimed: "I'll bet you
+five dollars, Rayburn, that when you throw that clothes-prop you don't
+hit th' man you fire at!"
+
+But Rayburn did hit his man, straight in the heart too, a moment later,
+as the enemy with a wild yell charged us; and then, with his back set
+well against the wall, he fell to work most gallantly with his sword.
+
+From the very beginning of it we knew that our fighting was utterly
+hopeless; for all of our company together did not number fifty men, and
+we were confronting there a whole army. Up the street, as far as we
+could see, the troops of the enemy were solidly massed; and for every
+man whom we struck down twenty were ready to spring forward, fresh and
+vigorous, to exhaust still further the strength that rapidly was leaving
+us. That we fought on was due not to our valor but to our desperation;
+and also--at least such was my own feeling--to a swelling rage that made
+us long to kill as many as possible of these savages before we ourselves
+died beneath their blows. Death, we knew, was the best thing that could
+happen to us; for it would save us from the worse fate, that surely
+would come to us should we be captured, of being turned over to the
+priests, that they might torture us before their heathen altars, and in
+the end tear our still quivering hearts out. And that the wish of our
+enemies--according to the Aztec custom--was rather to capture us than to
+kill us was shown by the way in which they fought; for all their effort
+was to disable us, and so to take us alive; nor did they seem to have
+any great care, if only this purpose could be accomplished, how many of
+themselves were slain.
+
+Sometimes in my dreams the wild commotion of that most desperate combat
+comes back to me. I see again before me the crowd of half-naked men,
+curving in a semicircle measured by the length of my sword, their faces
+distorted by the passionate anger that stirred their souls; and I see
+one fierce face after another lose out of it the look of life, yet not
+the look of hate, as my sword crunches into the vitals of the body to
+which it belongs; and I hear the wild din around me, and the yells of
+rage and of pain, and my feet tread in slippery pools of blood, and my
+body aches with weariness, and sharp thrills of agony dart through the
+strained muscles of my right arm--yet still I fight on, and on. And,
+truly, all this seems more real to me now in my sleep than it did to me
+then in its reality; for a dull weight of most desolate hopelessness
+settled down upon me as I fought out to the end that most hopeless
+battle--so that my spirit shared in the numbness of my body, and I cut
+and parried and gave men their death-blows with the stolid energy of a
+mere death-dealing machine.
+
+It had been from the first no more than a question of minutes how long
+this unequal fight would last; and when I heard a great yell from the
+enemy, and perceived a flood of soldiers swirling inward through the
+gate-way just beyond the fellows whom I was dealing with, I knew that
+Tizoc's men had been beaten down or slain, and that the end was very
+near at hand. As I glanced across the shoulders of the man whom I just
+then put forever on the list of the non-combatants, I saw what seemed to
+be an eddy in the midst of the crowd that was rushing into the Citadel;
+and in the thick of the tightly knotted group that thus choked the
+narrow way I saw Tizoc still laying about him with his sword. He was a
+very ghastly object, for a cut on his head had loosened a piece of his
+scalp, that hung down over his forehead and waved and trembled there
+like a draggled plume; his face was bathed in blood from this horrid
+wound, and his armor of cotton cloth was soaked with the blood that had
+run down upon it from the cut in his head, and also from a wound in his
+neck. In the moment that I had free sight of him he made as fine a
+sword-stroke as ever I saw, wherewith he fairly severed from its body
+the head of one of his assailants; and at the very same instant, while
+that head still was spinning in the air, a man directly behind him
+forced back the pressing crowd by main strength and so gained a free
+space in which to swing his sword. I shouted to Tizoc to warn him of the
+danger, and he half turned to ward against it; but before he could turn
+wholly around the blow had fallen, splitting his whole head open from
+the crown to the very chin. And in the midst of the fierce yell of
+triumph that went up as this cowardly stroke was delivered there passed
+from earth the soul of as brave and as true a man as earth has ever
+known.
+
+A dizziness came over me as I saw Tizoc fall, and saw in the same moment
+the wild rush forward of the enemy over his dead body into the Citadel;
+and so I suppose that what with this dizziness and my great weariness I
+must have dropped my guard. I faintly remember hearing a shout of
+warning from Young, who was close beside me, which shout mingled with
+the shrieks of those inside the Citadel whom the enemy everywhere were
+cutting down, and the great roar of victory that went up from all the
+army, both within and without the Citadel, rising tempestuously in
+mighty waves of sound: and then a crash like that of a thunder-bolt
+burst directly upon my head, and a sickening pain shot through me, and I
+seemed to be falling through untold depths into vast gloomy chasms (so
+that I thought I was dropping once more into the hollow darkness of the
+cañon), and there was a very dreadful surging and roaring and ringing in
+my ears; and then all this horror of evil sounds grew fainter, and I
+felt myself slipping quickly into the awful stillness and blackness that
+I surely thought must be the entrance-way to death. And with this
+thought a numb sort of gladness came over me, for in death there was
+promise of restfulness and peace.
+
+
+
+
+XXXI.
+
+DEFEAT.
+
+
+After all, the life that I thought was lost, and had but little sorrow
+for the losing of it, slowly came back to me again. For a good while
+before I recovered consciousness fully, I understood a little of what
+was going on around me by sounds which, no doubt, were loud and ringing,
+yet which seemed to me to come faintly from a long way off. They plainly
+were the sounds of fighting--of weapons rattling together, of shouts and
+yells and death-cries--but I did not associate them with our present
+battling, but thought that we still were in the cañon, and were still
+fighting those wild Indians by whom poor Dennis was slain. And I knew
+that I had been hurt badly; for in my head was a throbbing pain so keen
+that it seemed like to split my skull open, and my stomach was stirred
+by most distressing qualms, and my weakness was such that I could not
+ease the sore muscles of my body by moving by so much as a
+hair's-breadth from the cramped position in which I lay.
+
+It seemed to me a vastly long while that I remained in this dreary
+condition of half-consciousness, with no certain knowledge of anything
+save the pain that I suffered; and then I felt some one touch me, and a
+hand laid upon my heart; and this touch so far roused me that I heaved a
+long sigh and slowly opened my eyes. For a moment I did not know the
+face that I saw bending over me; nor was this wonderful, for in place of
+its usual ruddiness was a death-like pallor, that was the more marked by
+contrast with the blood that trickled down over it from a great gash
+across the brow whereby the bone was laid bare. But there was no
+mistaking the voice that called out: "He's alive, Rayburn!" and added,
+"I don't see what right he's got t' be alive, either, after a crack like
+that. I guess studyin' antiquities must everlastin'ly harden an' thicken
+a man's skull!"
+
+"Studying engineering doesn't harden a man's leg, anyway," I heard
+Rayburn answer. "That cut pretty near took mine off. But now that we've
+stopped the bleeding I guess I'm all right. I think I can work over to
+you on my hands and knees and help you with the Professor. Now that I
+know he's alive I seem to be a lot more alive myself."
+
+"Just you stay where you are," Young called back, sharply. "If you move
+you'll start that bandage an' I'll have t' tie you up all over again.
+I'll attend t' th' Professor." And then Young bent over me, and, with a
+tenderness that I never would have thought his rough hands capable of,
+set himself to bandaging my wounded head. But the best thing that he did
+for me was to give me a draught of water from a gourd that had been
+slung about the neck of one of the soldiers lying dead there; which
+draught, with the comfort that the cool wet bandage about my head gave
+me, brought back to me so much of my strength that I was able presently
+to sit up and look around.
+
+Truly, a more ghastly sight than that which my eyes then rested upon I
+never saw. The gate-way of the Citadel was a very shambles. Piles of
+dead men lay all around me; and the prodigious number of the enemy lying
+slain there testified with a mute eloquence to the desperate fashion in
+which our handful of men had fought. Over the rough pavement, down the
+slope towards the lake, there flowed a stream of bright red blood that
+in places shone a brilliant vermilion where it was touched by the
+glintings of the sun. Among the dead I did not see Tizoc's body, and for
+this I was glad. Half a dozen of the enemy stood by us as a guard; but
+these suffered us to minister to each other, evidently feeling that no
+great amount of caution was necessary in dealing with three badly
+wounded men. Indeed, these guards, in their way, manifested a kindly
+feeling for us; for when they perceived that our gourd of water was
+empty one of them picked up another full gourd from amid the dead and
+handed it to us. From inside the Citadel there still came a tumult of
+fierce sounds which gave proof that though the battle--if it could be
+called a battle--was ended the work of killing still was going on; but
+these sounds sensibly diminished while we lay there waiting to know what
+fate would come to us, and we concluded, therefore, that there remained
+no more rebels to be slain.
+
+Rayburn was seated upon the ground at no great distance from me, his
+back propped against the wall. As he saw that I was looking towards him,
+and had again my wits about me, he greeted me with a very melancholy
+smile. "It's been a pretty cold day for us, Professor," he said, "and
+there's no great comfort in knowing that it's partly our own fault that
+these fellows have laid us out. I didn't give them credit for such good
+tactics; and even with the bad watch that we kept I don't see how they
+managed to get their men round on the other side of our camp. Well, it
+must please them to know how straight we walked into the trap that they
+set for us, like the pack of fools that we were."
+
+"You won't ketch me joinin' in any more Indian revolutions, anyway,"
+Young put in. "I did think I could bet on those Tlahuicos, an' they've
+just gone back on us th' worst kind. Do you feel strong enough,
+Professor, to tie th' ends o' this rag?" He had been binding up the cut
+in his forehead, and now he got down on his hands and knees in front of
+me, and bent his head down within easy reach of my hands; and my
+strength had so far returned to me that without being very tired after
+it I was able to make the ends of the bandage fast. The blow on his head
+had glanced from the skull, luckily; but it had been heavy enough to
+stun him for some minutes after he received it--and his falling as
+though dead had been the means, no doubt, of saving his life, even as in
+the same manner my life had been saved. Rayburn's wound was a worse one
+than either Young's or mine, for a great gash in his thigh had wellnigh
+cut his leg off, and until, with Young's help, he had improvised a
+tourniquet, from a bowstring and a broken fragment of a javelin, he had
+been in great danger of bleeding to death.
+
+For more than an hour we were suffered to lie in the gate-way; while the
+work went on of slaying the wretched Tlahuicos, and then of marshalling
+the more important personages who had been reserved alive as prisoners,
+and, finally, of restoring order in the victorious ranks. At the end of
+this time an officer with a squad of men came to where we were lying,
+and roughly ordered us to rise, to the end that we also might be placed
+among the prisoners. Young and I had so far recovered our strength that
+we managed to scramble on our feet with no great difficulty; though in
+my case this exertion, which made the blood flow more briskly in my
+veins, suddenly increased so greatly the pain in my head as to bring
+upon me for a little while a dizziness that compelled me to lean against
+the wall for support. In Rayburn's case standing was quite out of the
+question; and I shortly told the officer in what manner he was wounded,
+and that to make him rise and walk assuredly would start the bandage on
+his leg, and so lead to his quickly bleeding to death. Thereupon the
+officer gave an order to some of his men to fetch a stretcher such as
+their own wounded were carried in; yet at the same time he said to me:
+"This companion of yours is a brave man; and but for my orders, I would
+loosen the bandage with my own hands, and so let him die without further
+pain;" which speech, notwithstanding the obviously kind intention of it,
+I did not translate to Rayburn at that time.
+
+While we waited for the stretcher to be brought, the soldiers fastened
+about Young's neck and about mine heavy wooden collars, which set well
+out over our shoulders and were not unlike great ruffs. I confess that
+for my own part my professional interest in this curious piece of gear
+entirely overcame my repugnance to wearing it, for I instantly
+recognized it as the cuauh-cozatl, with which, as the ancient records
+tell us, the Aztecs were accustomed to secure their prisoners of war.
+But Young, who could not be expected to share in my delight at seeing
+actually alive, and ourselves made party to it, a custom that was
+supposed to have been extinguished to more than three centuries, grew
+exceedingly indignant at having thus placed about his neck what he
+coarsely described as "an overgrown d----n goose-yoke." Nor was I at all
+successful in my attempt to soothe him by telling him that the
+discomfort to which we were subjected was a very trifling matter in
+comparison with the gain to the science of archeology that flowed from
+this positive identification of an exceedingly interesting historical
+fact.
+
+"Oh, come off, Professor," he growled. "What th' d----l do I care for
+historical facts, or for historical lies either?--an' they're all about
+th' same thing. What I want t' do is t' punch th' head o' th' fellow who
+put this thing on me, an' I can't. They'll be hangin' me up by my heels
+an' stickin' a corn-cob in my mouth next, I s'pose, an' makin' a regular
+stuck-pig out o' me; an' then likely enough you'll try t' make me
+believe that _that_ proves something or other that nobody but you thinks
+ever happened, an' so want me t' feel pleased about it. Antiquities be
+d----d! I've had as much of' em as I want, an' more too!"
+
+While the collars were being placed about our necks, and while Rayburn
+was being lifted upon the stretcher which the soldiers had brought, we
+heard from within the Citadel the sound of drums tapping, and then the
+measured tread of soldiers marching; and as we looked through the
+gate-way we saw that the troops had been formed in regular order and
+were moving towards us. At the head of the column were the
+prisoners--numbering three or four hundred, and all wearing wooden
+collars about their necks--covered on both flanks by a strong line of
+guards. They were ranged in order of their dignity, the unlucky members
+of the Council coming first, and after them the other officers of that
+short-lived government; then the military officers, and in the rear a
+few private soldiers. The fact that no Tlahuicos were among the
+prisoners led me to conclude that such of these as had not been slain
+had been held under guard until they might be returned to their owners
+or set again to toiling hopelessly in the mine.
+
+The importance that in the estimation of our captors attached to
+ourselves was shown by their placing us at the very head of the column,
+in advance even of the members of the Council; and this was a compliment
+that we willingly enough would have declined, for such honorable
+consideration, according to the customs of this people, meant surely
+that we were reserved for a very exemplary fate. But we were in no
+position to raise objections of any sort just then, and we therefore
+fell into the place assigned to us and tried as well as we could to show
+a bold front as we went downward towards the lake.
+
+Only a few terrified women and children, who fled away as we advanced,
+were in sight as we passed through the streets of the town; and from
+many of the hovels came the moans of poor wounded wretches who had
+crawled to their miserable homes to die in them; and from others came
+the lamentations of women over their dead; and in nooks and corners,
+whither with their last strength they had dragged themselves, we saw men
+lying dead in pools of their own blood. But down by the water-side there
+were live men in plenty, soldiers and oarsmen, and the pier was crowded
+with them; while out beyond the pier the whole bay was swarming with
+the boats in which the enemy's forces had stolen down upon us in the
+darkness from Culhuacan; making their landing, as we now learned, just
+beyond the town in a bay that ran up close to where our army was
+encamped. And this scene of bustling activity in the bright sunshine
+made a joyous and brilliant picture; that was all the brighter because
+of its setting in that sunlit bay, opening out between beaches of
+golden-yellow sand upon the broad expanse of restful water which fell
+away in gleaming splendor into a bank of soft gray haze.
+
+But the picture was still more stirring that we saw as we looked
+landward, when the barge that we were put aboard of pulled out from the
+pier and our rowers lay on their oars, and so waited while the work of
+embarkation went on. Right in front of us was the broad central street
+of the town; and the whole length of this, from the pier to the Citadel,
+was filled with a solidly massed body of soldiers that came down the
+steep descent slowly, and halting often, to the boats which were in
+waiting to bear them away. Barbarians though they were, these soldiers
+made a gallant showing. In front of each regiment was borne its feather
+standard, and in the midst of each company was its rallying flag of
+brightly painted cotton cloth. The higher officers wore wooden casques,
+carved and painted in the semblance of the heads of ferocious beasts;
+the cotton-cloth armor of all the officers was decked with a great
+variety of strange devices, wrought in very lively hues, and similarly
+strong hues were used in the decoration of the universally-carried light
+round shields. And all this brilliant color, the more vivid because of
+its background of bare brown skins, was flecked with a thousand
+glittering points of light where the sunshine sparkled on swords and on
+spear-heads of hardened gold.
+
+"Its not much wonder that those fellows got away with us," Rayburn said,
+as he watched the orderly manner in which the disciplined ranks moved
+out upon the pier and stepped briskly into the boats at the word of
+command. "They're as fine a lot of fighters as I ever saw anywhere. Just
+look how steadily they stand at a halt, and how sharply they obey
+orders, and how well set up they are! I must say I don't see what the
+Colonel could have been thinking about when he said that we had a
+fighting chance against an army like that. Well, he's paid for his
+mistake about as much as a man can pay for anything. It breaks me all up
+to think that the Colonel is dead. He was good all the way through. And
+I wonder what will become of that little lame boy of his now? They'll
+make a Tlahuico of him, I suppose. By Jove! what a mess we've made of
+this whole business from first to last!"
+
+My heart was too heavy for me to answer Rayburn save by a nod; for while
+he spoke the thought came home to me very bitterly that upon me rested
+the responsibility of the black misfortune in which he and Young were
+involved; and with this came also a great burst of sorrow as I thought
+how still more closely at my door lay Pablo's death--for Rayburn and
+Young at least had come into my plans with a reasonable understanding of
+the danger to which they exposed themselves; but Pablo, having no such
+knowledge, had followed me unquestioningly because of his loving trust
+that I would hold him safe from harm. My sorrow concerning Fray Antonio
+was keen enough, Heaven knows; but in his case I had the solace of
+knowing surely that he had come to his death not because of my urging,
+but in pursuance of his own strong desire. There was a little comfort in
+the thought that even one of these four lost lives could not be charged
+to my account; and yet this reflection seemed only to make my sorrow
+heavier as I thought of the woful weight of my responsibility for the
+other three.
+
+For nearly two hours we lay there in the bay while the embarkation of
+the prisoners and the troops went on--our boat moving farther out from
+the pier from time to time as the double line of boats behind it
+lengthened. In that sheltered place there was little wind blowing, and
+the blazing heat of the sun beating down upon my wounded head gave me so
+sharp a pain that I gladly would have died to be rid of it; and I could
+see, from the drawn look of their faces, that Young and Rayburn were
+suffering not less keenly. We were thankful enough, therefore, when at
+last the embarkation was completed--more than half of the army remaining
+in Huitzilan to restore order there--and we pulled out from the bay into
+the open waters of the lake and were comforted by the light breeze,
+which yet brought with it a delicious refreshment, that was blowing
+there.
+
+All the bright beauty of that lovely lake was around us, having for its
+background the green meadows and the darker green of the forests
+hanging above them on the upward slopes, and beyond all the towering
+height of the cliffs, which shaded in their colorings from delicate gray
+to dark brown, and were touched here and there by patches of black
+shadow where some great cleft opened; and yet all that we then thought
+of was that across those blue waters, which gleamed golden in the
+sunlight, we were going swiftly to a cruel death, and that the cliffs,
+whereof the beauty was hateful to us, irrevocably shut us in. Which
+gloomy feelings pressed upon us throughout that dismal passage, while
+all our oarsmen pulled stoutly together, and we went gliding onward over
+the sunlit waters towards the evil fate that we knew was waiting for us
+within the dark walls whereby was encircled the city of Culhuacan.
+
+
+
+
+XXXII.
+
+EL SABIO'S DEFIANCE.
+
+
+While yet we were a long way off from the city, we heard faintly the
+yells of triumph with which the watchers above the water-gate gave
+notice to those within the walls of the return of the victorious army;
+and from all the boats of our flotilla there went up a shrill chorus of
+answering yells. Our barge was the first to pass through the water-gate,
+out from which we had come so gallantly so short a time before, and
+thence went onward across the basin to the very pier that we had
+started from with such high hopes to gather the forces for the rebellion
+that had come to so sorry an end.
+
+All the water-side was black with the crowd that had gathered to watch
+our landing; but, considering that these people were there to welcome a
+victorious army, it seemed to me that they were strangely still and
+dull. There was, to be sure, no lack of yelling, but it came for the
+most part from a company of priests clustered on the pier where we
+landed, and from the soldiers and oarsmen in the boats--not from the
+townsfolk at large. And when we were marched upward through the
+city--following the same street that we had fought our way along when
+last we traversed it--I saw in the crowd so many sullen and dejected
+faces that it seemed to me there still was in that city a good deal of
+material for the making of another mutiny.
+
+This time we were not taken to the house in which we had met the Priest
+Captain, and whence we had been delivered from imprisonment by Tizoc's
+gallant rescue of us; but, passing a little beyond this house, we were
+led up a broad stair-way to the plateau which crowned the city, and on
+which stood the great Treasure-house that also was the temple in which
+the Aztlanecas housed their most venerated gods. And I confess that my
+delight at seeing closely this building, that until then I had beheld
+only from afar off, for a time completely overcame the dread and sorrow
+that had oppressed me; and the very strongest desire that stirred within
+me just then was for a tape-measure and a pair of compasses and a steel
+square, together with the opportunity to fall to work with these several
+instruments upon those mighty walls. Indeed, I almost had forgotten that
+I was a prisoner, and was like to die soon a very dreadful death, when a
+groan that poor Rayburn gave--wrung from him by the pain that he
+suffered in being carried up the stairs--recalled me suddenly to a
+realizing sense of our situation, and so pressed home upon me the sad
+conviction that the science of archæology would gain nothing of all that
+I might see or learn during the little while that I should remain alive.
+
+The outer facing of the plateau, like that of the terraces below it, was
+a prodigiously heavy wall of squared stones set in cement; and for a
+coping this wall had great stones carved in the similitude of serpents'
+heads, with mouths wide open, that instantly recalled to my mind the
+like enclosure that the Spaniards found surrounding the principal temple
+in the city of Tenochtitlan--and I had a sudden strong longing that my
+friend Bandelier might be with me at that moment to see how precisely
+his very ingenious speculations concerning the snake-wall about the
+great Teocalli were here confirmed.
+
+Through a portal formed of two huge blocks of stone carved to represent
+two serpents coiled upon themselves, the heads meeting above in a sort
+of arch (not a true arch, for each of these serpents was a monolith, and
+was supported wholly on its own base), we entered the large enclosure
+before the temple. I was surprised to find--for of such a thing among
+the ancient Aztecs there is no record--that in the centre of the
+enclosure the rock had been hewn away in such a fashion as to create a
+vast amphitheatre; and that this was the place where sacrifice was
+offered by the priests was shown by the blood-stained altar in the
+centre of it, to which fragments of flesh also adhered, whence was
+wafted up to us a dreadful stench that instantly racked us with queasy
+qualms. Save directly in front of the entrance to the temple, where was
+a great stone balcony with a smaller balcony below it, all the sides of
+the amphitheatre were cut in steps, which made, also, benches where the
+multitude could sit at their ease and behold the bloody work going on in
+the pit below them; and so enormous was this rock-hewn cavity that fully
+forty thousand people could at once be seated there. Under the balcony
+there was visible the entrance to a dark tunnel-like passage, that
+evidently communicated with the temple, and a smaller passage, not large
+enough for a man to pass through, slanted downward to where it opened on
+the terrace below; which last was to drain the blood away, and also to
+free the amphitheatre from water in the season of rains.
+
+We held our noses as we skirted this shocking place, and we were glad
+enough when we got beyond it and came to the entrance to the temple--a
+very noble portal, severely simple, and because of its simplicity the
+more majestic, in which, as in the whole of the façade, was manifest the
+grave and sombre Egyptian feeling that I had before observed. Through
+this we passed into the shadowy interior, lighted by only a few narrow
+slits cut in the enormously thick walls, where the lofty roof was
+upheld by a wilderness of columns which opened before us seemingly
+endless vistas where an eternal twilight reigned. Of interior decoration
+there was nothing save a broad and simple panelling upon the walls, and
+the great pillars were mere round monoliths without either bases or
+capitals.
+
+As we entered this, to them, most sacred place a hush fell upon our
+escort, and even I felt something of that reverent awe that is inspired
+by any building which has been sanctified by the worship of multitudes
+within it through countless years. But that Young did not at all share
+this feeling with me was made manifest by his observing, after taking a
+long look around him: "Well, this wouldn't answer for a Congregational
+church, anyway. There ain't a pew in th' whole place, an' here in broad
+daylight you couldn't see a hymn-book if you tried. I wonder what they'd
+say, Professor, to a bid for puttin' in a dynamo for 'em an' lightin'
+this dark old hole with electricity? An' it 'u'd take off a lot o' this
+chill an' dampness if they'd have a steam-heater put in at th' same
+time. It's enough t' give all hands rheumatism th' way cold creeps
+strike up your legs." But at this point Young's observations were cut
+short peremptorily by the hand that one of the guards laid across his
+mouth; which hint that it was desirable for him to keep silence was
+quite unmistakable.
+
+This decided repression of Young's chattering, no doubt, was the more
+vigorous because we now were approaching the farther end of the temple,
+where loomed before us amid the shadows a great idol, set upon an
+altar-like throne. This figure, fully ten feet high, was a strange
+medley of grotesque and hideous carvings that yet in its entirety was
+like a man; and so cruel and so ferocious was the general air of it that
+it well might inspire a very lively terror in simple souls. The most
+striking feature of the figure was a dismal skull, that was outheld from
+the region of the waist by two great hands placed there arbitrarily and
+without any relation to the figure's arms; and for a crest--repeating
+the motive of the gate-way--it had two serpents' heads, the bodies
+pertaining to which were twisted and involved about the whole mass. For
+eyes this evil thing had large and gleaming green stones--being, in
+truth, emeralds, though I did not at that time recognize them as
+such--and golden serpents, very beautifully wrought, were twisted about
+it, and a collar of golden hearts was hung around its neck over a sort
+of apron of shining green feathers; and feathers of a like sort rose
+above the heads of the serpents in a thick plume; and over every part of
+the figure were scattered glittering objects--emeralds, and disks of
+gold, and scraps of mother-o'-pearl, and fragments of obsidian--whence
+shone through the heavy shadows faint, shimmering points of light. In
+one of its out-stretched hands the figure held a bow, and in the other a
+bunch of arrows; but even without these unmistakable attributes I should
+have known from the skull and from the serpents' heads that this fierce
+and hideous idol represented the god Huitzilopochtli: the first
+divinity, and throughout the whole time that their bloody religion
+endured, the principal divinity, that the ancient Mexicans adored.
+Young did not venture to speak aloud again, but he turned to me with a
+long sigh and whispered, earnestly, "That certainly is, Professor, the
+very d----dest thing I ever saw!"
+
+As I knew, it was in keeping with the Aztec customs that prisoners taken
+in war thus should be brought first of all before the god
+Huitzilopochtli, that they and their captors together might do him
+reverence; therefore, I was not surprised when a priest came forth from
+behind the altar and bade us prostrate ourselves in adoration of the
+idol. As this order was given, all the Aztlanecas with us bowed
+themselves to the floor; but Young, who did not understand the order,
+and I, who felt my gorge rising at the thought of thus humbling myself,
+remained erect. However, we did not continue through many seconds in
+that position; for a couple of soldiers instantly laid hands upon each
+of us, and by shoving our shoulders sharply forward, and at the same
+moment kicking our legs from under us, they summarily laid us face
+downward at full length upon the floor. As for Rayburn, they seemed to
+be satisfied with his recumbent position upon the stretcher; at any
+rate, they suffered him to remain as he was.
+
+While I lay prone, quivering with rage at the double indignity of being
+thus roughly handled, and of being compelled even in form to worship a
+disgusting idol, I heard an odd little pattering upon the stone floor,
+and then something cold and clammy was thrust against my hand, and at
+the same instant I heard close beside me a curious snuffling noise; and
+while a glad doubt, that I scarce ventured to give way to, was rising
+within me, the clammy thing was taken away from my hand, and there
+straightway rang out through the gloomy silence of the temple a
+thunderous braying that seemed fairly to shake the walls. There was no
+mistaking the voice of the friend who with this triumphant blast
+welcomed me; and as I heard it there came into my heart a sudden glow of
+hope that Pablo, and that even Fray Antonio also, might still be alive.
+And this hope was destined to be immediately and most joyfully realized,
+for as we rose to our feet again I saw the lad standing, with El Sabio
+beside him, not a dozen feet away from me; and a little beyond them was
+the monk, his face all lighted up with a bright look of happiness and
+love. And seeing these three once more standing alive and well before me
+was the most amazing and also the very gladdest sight that ever met my
+eyes.
+
+It was a sore trial to me that I could not immediately hold converse
+with Pablo and with Fray Antonio, and so come to know through what
+adventures they had passed, and by what miracles their lives had been
+saved; but the ceremony in which our captors were engaged was but half
+completed, and the better to assure our orderly conduct during its
+continuance we were kept asunder in the procession that then was
+formed--the object of which procession, as my knowledge of the Aztec
+customs led me rightly to infer, was that the ceremonial of triumph
+might be ended by leading us thrice around the sacrificial stone. And in
+truth I dreaded less the fate which this leading us about the altar of
+sacrifice implied was in store for us than I did the close association,
+made necessary by the ceremony, with the direful stench which that vile
+altar exhaled.
+
+At the edge of the amphitheatre, where already the evil odor was almost
+overpowering, the soldiers who had charge of us relinquished us--as it
+seemed to me, most thankfully--to a company of the temple priests;
+whereof the chief was a round, fat little man, whose shortness of legs
+very obviously was accompanied by a corresponding shortness of wind. He
+was, in truth, a most hopelessly undignified little personage; yet he
+did his best to assume a look of dignity as he waddled down the steps in
+advance of us, and he manfully endeavored to conceal the difficulties
+encountered by his short fat legs in the course of this descent. And I
+was glad enough that we had his absurd performances to distract our
+minds a little from the dismalness of our surroundings, and especially
+from the queasiness that again beset our stomachs as our noses were
+assailed more and more violently by that most evil smell. The priests, I
+observed, had cotton stuffed in their nostrils; but for us there was
+nothing for it but to hold our noses tightly with our hands.
+
+El Sabio, who had a most generous and broadly open nose, and who was not
+blest with hands to hold it fast with, grew restive as the first whiff
+struck him; which resulted less, I suppose, from the intrinsic vileness
+of the smell than from the fact that he, in common with all peace-loving
+animals, had aroused in him an instinctive terror by the odor of blood.
+Pablo's voice, and Pablo's touch, possibly might have soothed and
+quieted him; but the efforts which the priests who were leading him made
+to restrain him only served the more to terrify him, and so to increase
+his violence. And the priests, who now for a considerable time had seen
+him daily, and had known him only as the most gentle and biddable of
+creatures, were mightily astonished, and evidently were terrified, by
+this sudden outbreak of a fierce temper that most reasonably took them
+entirely by surprise. Partly by pulling at the rope that they had about
+his neck, and partly by such pushes as they dared to give him while he
+was momentarily at rest, they succeeded in forcing him down the steps;
+and so at last into the large circular space at the bottom of the
+amphitheatre, in the midst of which stood the stone of sacrifice and
+where the smell of blood was overpoweringly strong. But by the time that
+this victory was won El Sabio had ceased to be a quiet orderly donkey,
+accustomed to conform to the usages of human society, and had become a
+veritable crazy creature, inflamed by the madness of fear and rage.
+
+[Illustration: EL SABIO'S DEFIANCE]
+
+By some miracle--a very happy miracle for those whom the poor ass most
+naturally regarded as his tormentors--El Sabio's nimble heels had until
+this moment lashed the air harmlessly; but just as the last step
+downward was accomplished he let out both of his hind-legs together, and
+with such precision that both of his hoofs struck a remarkably tall
+priest who had taken a very active part in persecuting him. The blow was
+landed fairly on the tall priest's stomach, and instantly the two long
+halves of that priest shut together like a jack-knife, and he fell to
+the ground with a gasp that told how thoroughly the wind was knocked out
+of him. Doubtless this outburst of violence served but to increase El
+Sabio's terror, for he straightway gave so strong a plunge that he
+fairly broke away from the men who were holding him; and then he bent
+all his energies to working such destruction as never was worked by one
+single ass since the very beginning of the world!
+
+Fortunately for our own safety--for El Sabio was in no condition to
+discriminate between friends and foes--we still were at some distance
+from the bottom of the amphitheatre when this outbreak occurred; the
+greater part of the priests having preceded us, and El Sabio having been
+led in the van of the prisoners. It was wholly upon the priests,
+therefore, that his mad rage was expended, and the way that he "got in
+his work," as Young expressed it, on these enemies of his and ours was a
+joyful wonder to behold. Being closely penned in--for the way whence
+they had entered the amphitheatre was barred by the crowd of which we
+were a part, and the entrance to the subterranean passage leading to the
+temple was closed--the priests had no chance to escape from the furious
+creature save by clambering up the smooth wall, fully eight feet high,
+by which was enclosed the circular space that immediately surrounded the
+altar. Even an agile man, going at it quietly, would have found a little
+difficulty in executing this gymnastic feat, that required for its
+accomplishment sheer lifting of the body until a leg could be thrown
+over the top of the wall; and as these priests, for the most part, had
+grown fat and sluggish in their sacred calling, they were wellnigh
+incapacitated from performing it. Furthermore, El Sabio manifested what
+had the appearance of being a most diabolical ingenuity--yet that, no
+doubt, was no more than chance--in delivering flying kicks against the
+legs of these dangling creatures; wherefrom such keen pain resulted that
+they instantly let loose their hold, and came tumbling to the ground.
+
+So far as we were concerned--our sympathies being wholly on the side of
+the ass--this astonishing spectacle remained a broad farce until the
+very end; but it presently became to the men engaged in it a very
+serious tragedy. As he made his wild charges, El Sabio galloped backward
+and forward again and again over the bodies of his prostrate enemies; in
+the course of which gallopings his sharp little hoofs cut their naked
+flesh savagely, and now and then, when he happened to land a kick fairly
+against a man's body, we could see, from the sinking in of the fellow's
+ribs and the gush of blood that burst from his nostrils, that the ass
+had delivered a death-blow.
+
+As for the noise that attended this most extraordinary performance,
+words can but faintly describe it. From the men directly engaged with El
+Sabio came yells of fear and shouts for assistance and cries of anger,
+beneath all of which was a dull undertone of groans; the crowd around us
+and higher up behind us gave vent to a shrill roar of shouts and yells
+that seemed to be partly in the nature of advice, and partly the result
+of that instinct which prompts all barbarians to yell whenever anybody
+else yells, on general principles. Pablo interpolated a most despairing
+note in the way of beseeching cries of "B-u-r-r-r-o! B-u-r-r-r-o!"
+whereby he sought to allay El Sabio's frenzy, and so to save him from
+the direful fate that well might be expected to overtake him in
+recompense of his direful deeds; and Young fairly tossed his battered
+Derby hat up into the air as he shouted: "Go it, El Sabio! Give it to
+'em, my boy! Ten t' one against th' fat priest! Three cheers for th'
+jackass! Hip-hip-hurrah!" In short, it seemed as though Bedlam had
+broken loose among us, and as though all of us together were going mad.
+
+What with dodging behind his fellows, and keeping clear of El Sabio's
+frantic charges by the display of an agility that I would not have given
+him credit for, the little fat priest managed to preserve his small
+round body unharmed until all of his companions had either escaped over
+the wall or had been, as Young put it, knocked out by El Sabio's heels.
+Once or twice he had made a dash for the passage-way in which we were
+standing, but the lower end of this was choked with the dozen or more
+badly wounded wretches who had crawled thither in their efforts to
+escape; and these the priests in front of us, being but cowardly
+creatures, had made no effort to succor or to lift away, for the reason
+that so long as this barrier remained they themselves were safe from El
+Sabio's fury.
+
+Having, therefore, no longer any one to hide behind, the fat little
+priest evidently realized that his only hope of salvation lay in making
+an effort, truly heroic in one of his height and girth and woful
+shortness of wind, to clamber up the face of the wall; and to this
+wellnigh impossible task he most resolutely set himself. It was only by
+jumping that he was able to get a grip over the top of the wall; yet
+when this grip was gained he could get no farther on his way to
+deliverance, and so he hung dangling there, his face to the wall,
+jerking his short fat legs about spasmodically, and wasting in most
+piercing yells what little there was in him of wind.
+
+It did really seem as though El Sabio's action in these premises was
+dictated by reason, for when he saw the priest in this wholly
+unprotected position he deliberately took his stand at precisely the
+point behind the little man where all of his kicking power could be most
+effectively used. There was a momentary hush as El Sabio thus placed
+himself, for every one perceived how very open was the priest to
+assault; and at the same time it was apparent that while El Sabio's
+kicks assuredly would be exceedingly painful, they were not likely to
+inflict upon the priest, while he remained in that attitude, a deadly
+wound. In an instant the two small heels flashed through the air, and
+there was heard a dull, soft sound--such as might come from the striking
+of an over-ripe melon with a heavy club--and with this burst forth a
+most piercing shriek of pain. Yet the little priest, knowing that his
+life depended upon it, most gallantly retained his hold. Again El Sabio
+kicked, and again a piercing shriek sounded; and one hand loosened for a
+moment and then clutched fast again. But when El Sabio kicked for the
+third time human nature was too weak to resist further against brute
+violence. With a yell that fairly cracked our ears the priest let go
+his hold and fell downward and backward; and at that same instant El
+Sabio delivered a final kick that struck fairly on the head of the
+falling man and battered in his skull.
+
+As for El Sabio, it seemed as though he himself were like to die in the
+very moment of his victory; for with a sort of groan that, coming from a
+brute beast, was most pitiful to listen to, the poor terrified creature,
+utterly exhausted by his fright and his outlay of energy in furious
+violence, sank down panting by the side of the man whom he had slain.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII.
+
+IN THE AZTEC TREASURE-HOUSE.
+
+
+Even with El Sabio reduced to this condition of complete quiescence, the
+Aztlanecas, soldiers as well as priests, still were terribly afraid of
+him; being firmly convinced, as was not at all unnatural, that for the
+time being there was embodied in him a devil of a most dangerous sort.
+Therefore they were but too glad to yield to Pablo's burning eagerness
+to get to the poor ass; and when he called for aid to carry the
+exhausted creature out from the amphitheatre, and so away from among the
+dead and wounded and from the dreadful smell of blood, Young and I
+promptly were pushed forward and ordered to perform this piece of work
+that even the bravest of them shrunk from undertaking.
+
+However, there was no real peril in it, for El Sabio was so weak that he
+could not even stand, and still less was he strong enough to kick
+anybody. Lifting him in this dull, limp state, and carrying him up the
+steep steps, was heavy work for us, wounded and weary as we were; but
+with Pablo's help we managed it, and so got him up from the depths of
+the amphitheatre to its windward side--where a fresh sweet breeze that
+was blowing, and some water that a soldier brought when Pablo called for
+it, in a little while put new life into him. Why the ass was not made to
+pay the penalty of his sins, by being there and then killed, at first
+was a good deal of a puzzle to me; but presently, from the talk that
+went on about us while Pablo ministered to him, and while the wounded
+lying around the altar were being cared for, and the dead borne away, I
+gathered that no one dared to kill him for fear of being himself
+possessed by the devil that needs must enter another body upon being
+thus set free. And as this seemed to be a view of the case that was
+worth encouraging, I very gravely told one of the priests that I myself
+had seen a man all in an instant go raving mad upon slaying one of these
+creatures and so letting the devil loose from him. As this story was
+circulated among the crowd I was glad to perceive that the dread of El
+Sabio obviously greatly increased.
+
+As a result of the untoward outbreak that had occurred, no attempt was
+made to complete the ceremonial of triumph. Indeed, the victory now lay
+so decidedly with El Sabio that there was but little to triumph over.
+Therefore we presently were herded together by a party of soldiers--who
+took good care that Pablo should lead the ass, and that Young and I
+should walk directly behind him as a protection against any further
+uplifting of his heels--and so we all were marched once more into the
+temple. This time we did not stop in front of the great idol, but went
+on beyond it towards a portal in the rear of the building that opened on
+an inner court; on the farther side of which court, as we knew from the
+description of the place that Tizoc had given us, was the
+Treasure-house, in which was stored not only the treasure placed there
+in long past ages by King Chaltzantzin, but also the treasure belonging
+to the State and to the temple that had been accumulated in later times.
+
+At the entrance to the court-yard, where the way was closed by a metal
+grating over which a heavy curtain hung, the soldiers formally
+relinquished us into the charge of a company of priests; and then the
+curtain was drawn aside and the grating was raised, and we passed out
+into the bright sunlight--and saw close before us the place which for so
+long a time had so largely filled our thoughts. It was a building of no
+great size, being but a single story high, and was dwarfed by the vastly
+stupendous cliffs which so far overtopped it that they seemed to extend
+upward to the very sky; but it was most massively constructed, and the
+actual available space within it was far greater than was indicated by
+the relatively small dimensions of its exterior walls. When we entered
+the building, through a narrow opening protected by a metal grating, the
+chamber into which we came was of so considerable a size that a part of
+it, we perceived, must extend actually into the cliff; and that the work
+of quarrying out the living rock had been carried still farther was
+shown by an opening at its rear end that evidently gave access to some
+hollow depth beyond.
+
+It was towards this inner recess that our guards led us. Here another
+grating was raised that we might pass, and we went onward through a
+narrow passage cut in the rock, along the sides of which were many
+openings giving access to small cell-like rooms. Nor was this place, as
+we had expected to find it, wholly dark; for narrow slits had been cut
+through the rock out to the face of the cliff, through which came so
+much light that we could see about us very well. And but for that
+blessed light, faint though it was, I doubt not that we should have gone
+mad there; and even with the light to cheer and to comfort us I felt a
+black despair settling down upon me at the thought of being thus
+imprisoned within the very bowels of the mountain, with no possibility
+of other release than being taken thence to die.
+
+At the extreme end of the passage the rock had been hollowed away
+smoothly and carefully so as to form a chamber nearly thirty feet square
+and at least twenty feet high, whereof all the walls were covered with
+plates of gold which overlapped each other in the manner of fishes'
+scales; and advantage had been taken of some wide crevice or deep
+depression in the cliff above to open in the roof of this chamber a
+small aperture, whence a pale light entered in long fine rays which
+gleamed through the shadows, and gleamed again more faintly in
+reflections from the golden walls. In this oratory--for such it
+evidently was--stood a statue, smaller than that in the temple yet still
+more magnificently arrayed, of the god Huitzilopochtli; before which
+odious image we were thrown upon our faces by our guards. When this
+ceremony was ended we were led forth once more into the passage, and so
+into two of the little cells which had been meagrely prepared for us by
+tossing into each of them a bundle of mats; and there our guards left us
+to shift for ourselves--shutting the grating behind them with a sharp
+ringing of metal on stone that echoed dismally through the rock-hewn
+chambers wherein we were held fast.
+
+For a while we stood in melancholy silence about the stretcher on which
+poor Rayburn lay; and very pale and worn he looked after his great loss
+of blood and heavy fatigue and the pain and excitement of the last few
+hours. Pablo had taken up his quarters with El Sabio in a cell on the
+opposite side of the passage--for within the limits of our prison we
+were left to arrange ourselves as we pleased--and we could hear him
+talking to the ass in a fashion that at any other time we should have
+laughed at; for by turns he upbraided him for his rash acts, and
+complimented him upon his bravery, and expressed dread of the punishment
+that might be visited upon him, and told him of his very tender
+love--all of which, so far as we could judge, El Sabio took in equally
+good part.
+
+"There ain't no good in standin' 'round here doin' nothin'," Young said,
+at last. "This don't look like much of a place t' break out of, but we
+may as well see how things are, anyway. Th' Padre'd better take a
+squint at Rayburn's busted leg an' set th' bandages straight; an' while
+he's attendin' t' that, me an' you, Professor, can do a little
+prospectin'. This is th' Treasure-house, for sure, an' it'll be some
+satisfaction t' see what it amounts to. I'll bet a hat there ain't
+anything worth havin' in th' whole place, after all."
+
+I was glad enough to have any occupation that would change even a little
+the sad current of my thoughts, and I therefore very willingly acted on
+Young's suggestion--after first making sure that Fray Antonio had no
+need of help in his work of dressing Rayburn's wound--and together we
+set about this curious exploration; that had in it a strong charm for
+me, notwithstanding my heavy sorrow, because of the possibility that it
+opened of finding curious traces of a new community so far advanced in
+civilization as was that which the King Chaltzantzin had brought with
+him into this valley a thousand years ago. Here, unquestionably, was the
+oldest deposit of the belongings of any of the primitive dwellers upon
+the American continent; and I trembled a little with excitement at the
+thought of what archæological treasures I here might find--and then I
+heaved suddenly a long sigh as I remembered how useless in my present
+case would be even the most brilliant of discoveries.
+
+As for Young's bet of a hat that there was no treasure here worth
+having, he would have lost it, had it been accepted, at the very first
+of the rooms which we examined; for the whole of this room, a cube of
+about ten feet, was packed full of bars of hardened gold from the mine
+at Huitzilan. And so was the next room, and the next, until we had found
+five rooms thus filled. But all the remaining rooms were entirely empty,
+and of the treasure set aside in long past ages by King Chaltzantzin
+there was no sign. Yet here, truly, was stored wealth the like of which
+the richest monarch in the world could not match for greatness; and as
+Young beheld before him such enormous riches his face grew ruddy, an
+eager light came into his eyes, the muscles of his throat worked
+convulsively, and his breathing was labored and short--until I
+demolished all his fine fancies at a blow by saying: "Much good this
+treasure is to us, when there isn't a ghost of a chance that either of
+us ever will get out of this valley alive!" As I uttered these bitter
+words his look of animation left him, and for some moments he was
+silent; and when at last he spoke, it was in a tone of calm though
+melancholy conviction, and with a most dispassionate air.
+
+"I shall be obliged t' you, Professor, really obliged t' you," he said,
+"if you'll just kick me for a blasted fool. Ever since that night in
+Morelia when you told me an' Rayburn about this treasure I've regularly
+had it on my brain. Through all these months I've been thinkin' about it
+when I was awake an' dreamin' about it when I was asleep. An' it's true
+for a fact, Professor, that never until this blessed minute, when we've
+really struck it, has th' notion come into my fool head that when we did
+ketch up with it the folks it rightly b'longed to might want t' keep it
+for theirselves! Yes, just kick me, please. Just kick me for a forlorn,
+mis'rable, blasted fool!"
+
+I was not disposed to laugh at Young's words; rather was I disposed to
+weep over them. For they brought freshly and strongly to my mind the
+fact that I was responsible for alluring him, by the hope of acquiring
+great riches quickly, into this accursed valley, where in a little while
+he would be most barbarously done to death. And I knew too that I was
+responsible for the like fate that must overtake Rayburn, and that in
+regard to Pablo my guilt was greatest of all. It was a comfort to me,
+truly, that not one of these ever by look or word reproached me for thus
+so wofully misleading them; and yet, in a certain way, their very
+forbearance but added to my pain.
+
+Therefore was I a little gladdened, when we returned again to the
+others, to find that Fray Antonio was speaking to Rayburn, with a grave,
+calm hopefulness, of those spiritual realities which are higher and
+better than material realities, and without steadfast trust in which,
+most of us, in the course of this sorrowful thing that we call life,
+assuredly would go mad in sheer despair. And listening to this
+comforting discourse, which was not checked by our return, did much to
+strengthen me to bear my heavy load of vain regret. Presently Fray
+Antonio shifted his ground--for he had the wisdom to speak but shortly
+on these grave topics, yet using always pregnant words which sank down
+into men's hearts and germinated there--and told us of what had befallen
+him since he had stolen away from us that night in Huitzilan.
+
+In truth, he had but little to tell, for his adventures had been of a
+very simple kind. Upon his arrival in the canoe at the water-gate he
+had been at once recognized and admitted, and had been carried directly
+to the building in which, on our first coming into the city, we all had
+been confined. And there he had been imprisoned until he was led up to
+the temple to take part in the triumph that El Sabio's violence so
+seriously had marred, and so once more was in our company. Of the Priest
+Captain he had seen nothing at all; nor had any answer come back to him
+from that dignitary to his urgent plea that, inasmuch as he had thus
+surrendered himself, his companions--that is, ourselves--should be
+suffered to leave the valley in peace; which silence on the part of the
+Priest Captain was not surprising, however, in view of the brave
+defiance in words sent by the Tlahuicos, who afterwards were such
+cowards in deeds.
+
+In fact, during the brief time of his imprisonment Fray Antonio had not
+spoken to a soul save the man who brought him drink and food. Yet his
+talk with this man, scant though it had been, had filled him with the
+hope that, could he only hold free converse with the people at large,
+even as he had done at Huitzilan, the purpose that he had in mind in
+coming into the valley would be fulfilled. Although a priest of the
+temple, his jailer had listened with a most earnest and hearty attention
+to the expounding of Christian doctrine that was opened to him, and had
+shown a very cheering willingness to recognize the shortcomings of his
+own idolatrous belief as compared with the principles of this purer and
+nobler faith. And he had told Fray Antonio that many of his companions
+in the service of the temple, having heard somewhat of the new creed
+from those who had tome up from Huitzilan, were eager to know more
+concerning it; so that it would seem, Fray Antonio declared, as though
+there were a harvest there ready to be reaped to Christianity by his
+hand. The case was such, he thought, that could he but speak publicly to
+the multitude, and especially could there but be vouchsafed from Heaven
+some sign by which the verity of his words might be established, he yet
+would win to the glorious Christian faith this whole community, that,
+through no fault of its own, until that time had remained lost in
+heathen sin.
+
+Rayburn and I exchanged glances as Fray Antonio spoke of aid being given
+him in his work by a sign from Heaven, for to our notions the time of
+miracles was a long while past. But Fray Antonio, as we knew (for once
+or twice we three had spoken together of this matter), did not at all
+hold with us in believing that miracle-working had come to an end; and
+indeed his faith was entirely logical; for, as he himself put it, those
+who believed that miracles ever had been wrought for the advancement of
+Christianity could not reasonably draw a line at any year since the
+Christian Church was founded, and say that in that year miracles ceased
+to be. In this matter, as in many others, the resemblance between Fray
+Antonio and the founder of his Order, Saint Francis of Assisi, was very
+strong.
+
+Pablo's experience as a prisoner had been of a far more trying sort; for
+the priests had sought earnestly, he said, by most stringent means, to
+pervert him from Christianity to their own faith. When we had been so
+rudely separated that day, after our interview with the Priest Captain,
+he, and El Sabio with him, had been hurried up the stairs to the temple,
+and thence to the Treasure-house; and there, though not in the part of
+it in which we then were, he had been ever since confined. Strong
+measures certainly had been taken to make a heathen of him. He had been
+starved for a while, and he had been deprived of water, and he had been
+cruelly scourged, and very harrowing presentments had been made to him
+of the death that he must die should he much longer refuse to yield.
+That the lad had remained firm in his faith, he told us, sobbing a
+little at memory of his hardships, was because of the sorrow that he
+knew his yielding would bring upon Fray Antonio and upon me; which
+certainly was not the reason that Fray Antonio most would have approved,
+but it did not in the least detract from the steady courage that he had
+shown in holding out firmly under pressure that would have made many a
+man succumb. In all the time that so many cruelties had been practised
+upon him, only one man had shown him kindness--an old man, who seemed to
+be in charge of the archives that the Treasure-house contained, who
+twice had risked his own life by secretly giving him water and food. But
+he never had been separated from El Sabio, Pablo said joyfully, in
+conclusion, nor had his mouth-organ been taken away from him; and these
+blessings had done much to lessen the misery that he was compelled to
+bear.
+
+When, in our turn, Rayburn and Young and I had told of the far more
+stirring adventures that we had passed through, and of our high hopes
+seemingly so well founded that had suffered so dismal a downfall, we all
+of us wisely refrained from speculating at all upon the future; instead
+of which profitless and painful topic we strove to speak cheerfully of
+indifferent matters; and this we did not only that we might the better
+keep our hearts up, but that we might not excite Rayburn, who already
+was in a dangerously feverish condition by reason of his wound. But,
+though we spoke not of it, we none of us doubted what our fate would be;
+nor did we imagine that the death that surely awaited us would be long
+delayed.
+
+It was a source of wonder to us, therefore, that day after day went by
+without bringing the end that we so confidently expected. From the man
+who brought us our food we could learn nothing; but this was not from
+ill-will on his part, but because he himself knew nothing of the Priest
+Captain's plans. This man, though a priest, was not unkindly disposed
+towards us, and he even listened to the words which Fray Antonio
+addressed to him touching Christian doctrine; but while he
+listened--being made of a sterner stuff than the priest who previously
+had been Fray Antonio's jailer--he gave no sign of assent. The only
+other person whom we had a chance to speak with, and this but rarely,
+was the old man who had shown kindness to Pablo, the guardian of the
+archives--who, by right of his official position, had free access to
+that portion of the Treasure-house from which the second grating cut us
+off. At the grating he and I had some very interesting conversations
+together upon archæological matters; but Fray Antonio took but little
+interest in him when he found how slight was the impression made upon
+him by the most serious of doctrinal talk. In truth, this old
+fellow--wherefore my own heart warmed to him--was wholly given to the
+study of antiquities; and so full was his mind of this delightful
+subject that there was no room left in it for thoughts about religions
+of any sort. He was entirely catholic in this matter, for his unconcern
+respecting Christianity was neither more marked nor less marked than was
+his unconcern toward his own avowed faith.
+
+Many curious things this old man told me touching the history of his
+people; and he showed me, also, the manner in which their annals were
+kept--an obvious evolution from the picture-writing of the Aztecs that
+had advanced to a stage closely resembling the cross between ideaographs
+and an alphabet that the Coreans use--all of which I have dealt with
+exhaustively in my larger work. And he told me also, with a wonder that
+did not seem uncalled for, that several times in each year the Priest
+Captain retired to the very place in which we then were imprisoned, and
+remained there sometimes for as much as a whole month cut off from his
+people, without food or drink, while he communed with the gods.
+
+But what seemed strange to me, and also bitterly disheartening, was that
+this old man, notwithstanding the office that he held and his hungry
+love for ancient things, could tell me nothing of the treasure that King
+Chaltzantzin had stored away. He knew of this treasure, he said, only
+as a vague tradition; and although, at one time or another, he had
+explored every chamber in the Treasure-house, he never had found of this
+ancient deposit the smallest trace; for which excellent reason he had
+concluded that if ever there had been such a treasure it long since had
+been dispersed. No doubt--considering how useless to me, beyond the mere
+gratification of my own curiosity, would have been its discovery--my
+regret at this abrupt ending of my hopes was most unreasonable; but I
+confess that, so far as I myself was concerned, the very keenest pang of
+sorrow that I suffered through all that sorrowful time was when I thus
+learned that the archæological search that I had entered upon so
+hopefully, and that I had so laboriously prosecuted, had been but a
+fool's errand from first to last.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV.
+
+A MARTYRDOM.
+
+
+Heavily and wearily the days dragged on as we lay in that dismal prison
+hewn from the mountain's heart; and as they slowly vanished there stole
+upon us a new sorrow, that was deeper and more searching than the
+doubting dread by which we were beset touching the cruel ending of our
+lives.
+
+Rayburn's wound--a very savage cut in the thigh, made by the jagged edge
+of a maccahuitl--from the first had been a dangerous one; and the danger
+had been aggravated by inflammation that had followed that long, hot
+journey across the lake, and by the rough handling that his bearers had
+given him, and by the excitement that had attended El Sabio's fiery
+outburst beside the sacrificial stone. Even Fray Antonio's skill in
+surgery, without which he assuredly would have quickly died, only barely
+sufficed to keep him alive while the fever was upon him; and when at
+last the fever left him, the little strength remaining to him grew less
+with every passing day. It was pathetic to see this man, who until then
+had been the very embodiment of rugged vigor, so worn with suffering
+that without Fray Antonio's tender assistance he scarce could move; and
+still more pathetic was it to hear him moaning in his pain, and uttering
+heart-sick longings for sunlight and fresh air, for need of which, Fray
+Antonio affirmed, he was dying there quite as much as because of his
+wound. Indeed, the chill chamber in the rock where he was lying was no
+fit place even for a well man at that time to dwell in; for the season
+of rains had come, and all the nights were cold and damp, while through
+the afternoons and in the night-time, during which portions of the day
+the rain fell in torrents, the whole mountain was shaken by the
+tremendous peals of thunder which roared and crashed about its crest.
+
+It was after one of poor Rayburn's pitiable outbreaks of weak moaning
+that Young led me away into the oratory, with the evident intention of
+delivering himself of some matter that pressed heavily upon his mind.
+
+"See here, Professor, I just _can't_ stand this any longer," he said,
+when we were alone. "I'm goin' t' send word t' th' Priest Captain t'
+ask him if finishin' me off in short order won't make him willin' t' let
+Rayburn out o' this damp hole into some place where he can be
+comfortable, an' where in th' mornin's he can get some sun an' air.
+Rayburn won't mind bein' squarely killed after he's healthy again. He
+ain't th' kind t' be afraid of anything when he's feelin' all right. But
+it's just infernal cruelty t' kill him this way--it wouldn't be fair to
+a dog. So I'm goin' t' try what I can do. It's nothin' much t' do, any
+way--only runnin' a little ahead o' th' schedule, that's all."
+
+Oddly enough, something of a like purpose had been for some time past
+slowly forming in my own mind--though what I intended to do would have,
+I hoped, still better consequences; for my notion was to urge that for
+the pleasure that could be had from killing me, my companions should be
+given such freedom as was to be found in that rock-bound region beyond
+the Barred Pass. Therefore, when Young thus brought up the matter openly
+between us, I told him of my own intention; and with some emphasis I
+advised him that inasmuch as I first had thought of it, to me belonged
+the right to carry this project into execution; and especially was this
+right mine, I urged, because but for me neither he nor any of the rest
+of us--saving only, possibly, Fray Antonio--ever would have come into
+that valley at all. Thereupon we fell to wrangling somewhat hotly; for
+Young was a most pig-headed man when his mind was set upon anything, and
+his notions of argument even at the best of times were of the loosest
+kind.
+
+How our talk might have ended I cannot tell, for each of us most
+resolutely was determined to have his own way; but it actually did end
+because of an interruption by which we presently learned that a will
+finer and stronger than either of ours had been acting, while we had
+been only thinking, in a fashion that cut the ground completely from
+under us both. And all that followed within the next hour or two came
+upon us with so startling a suddenness that it seemed less like reality
+than like a terrible dream.
+
+The first intimation that we had that anything was upon us out of the
+common run of our drearily dull prison life was hearing a creaking noise
+that we knew must be caused by the raising of the grating that shut us
+in; and as we hurried out from the oratory into the long passage-way we
+saw a company of soldiers coming towards us, at the head of which was a
+priest. Fray Antonio and Pablo, startled as we had been by the sound
+caused by the opening of the grating and the tramp of feet, also had
+come out into the passage; but while Pablo evidently was wondering, even
+as we were wondering, what might be the purpose that these men had come
+to execute, the look upon the monk's face was of expectation rather than
+of surprise. And without waiting for the others to speak, he asked,
+eagerly: "Is it to be?"
+
+"It is to be," the priest answered; and it seemed to me that there was
+sorrow in the look that went with his words, and sorrow also in the tone
+of his voice; and that this man truly was sorrowful because of the
+message that he brought I doubt not, for he was the priest who had been
+jailer to Fray Antonio, and whose mind had seemed so open to receive the
+doctrine that Fray Antonio taught.
+
+But there was only joy in the bearing of the monk as his question thus
+was answered; and there was a ringing gladness in his voice as he
+replied--being most careful first to draw us away from the room in which
+Rayburn was lying--to our looks of wondering inquiry. "The Priest
+Captain has granted my request," he said, and added quickly: "Do not
+sorrow for me, my friends. Dying for the Faith is the most glorious
+ending that life can have; and happier still is he to whom, with this
+rare privilege, is given also that of dying that those whom he loves may
+yet be saved alive. The Priest Captain has promised that when I have
+paid this little debt of life you whom I love so greatly shall go
+free--"
+
+"Don't you believe him! He's a blasted liar from the word go!" Young
+struck in, clean forgetting, in the passionate sorrow that was rising in
+his breast, that what Fray Antonio so plainly had in mind to do he
+himself had been most strongly bent upon doing but a moment before. But
+Young spoke in English, and without heeding him Fray Antonio went on:
+"You two, and the boy, surely will live; and perhaps life may be given
+also to our friend. He is in God's hands. And then, until----"
+
+But further speech was not permitted to him. Two soldiers stepped
+forward and grasped his arms, yet first suffering him for a moment to
+clasp hands with us, and so led him towards the open grating; and behind
+him Young and I and Pablo were conducted in a like fashion by the
+guards. As we passed the room in which Rayburn lay we heard him moaning
+faintly; and so weak was he that it seemed to me a very likely thing for
+us to find him dead there upon our return--if, indeed, we ever returned
+at all.
+
+As we passed out into the inner court of the temple, where the sum shone
+joyously--for the day still was young, and the rain-clouds had but begun
+to gather about the mountain peaks--we heard a murmur in the air like
+the distant sound of bees buzzing; and as we entered the rear portal of
+the temple this sound grew louder, yet still was soft and blurred. In
+the temple, Fray Antonio was separated from us, being led towards the
+inner entrance of that subterranean passage which opened into the pit of
+the amphitheatre; and as we went onward to the great portal in the
+temple's front we cast towards him sorrowful looks, in which all the
+bitter pain that was in our hearts was concentrated, but had in answer
+from him, as he walked with elate bearing between his guards, only looks
+of most joyful hope in which was also a very tender love.
+
+The noise that at first had seemed to us like bees buzzing grew louder
+as we advanced, until, when we came out upon the open space before the
+temple, it swelled into a mighty roar. And there the cause of it was
+plain to us; for before us lay the great amphitheatre crowded with a
+seething multitude, and all the thousands gathered there were uttering
+savage cries of delight at thought of the savage spectacle that now in a
+few moments would gladden their fierce hearts. In the midst of this
+tumult we were hurried into a sort of balcony, heavily built of stone,
+that hung upon the slope of the amphitheatre; just behind and above
+which was a much larger balcony of richly wrought stone-work that was
+covered by a canopy of colored stuffs, and that had in its midst a sort
+of throne. And at sight of us a great shout went up, that in a moment
+died away into a hush of silence as the Priest Captain, with a company
+of priests about him, entered the balcony behind us and took his seat
+upon the throne.
+
+But in another instant the shouting burst forth again as Fray Antonio
+came out from the passage that opened beneath us, and in a moment was
+lifted bodily by his guards and placed upon the Stone of Sacrifice in
+plain view of all. I wondered as I saw that only soldiers accompanied
+him, and that there was no sign of the coming of the priests by whom the
+sacrifice would be made. But my wonder ceased, and the burning pain that
+then consumed me was a little lessened, as there came forth from the
+underground passage, guarded by four soldiers, a very tall, strong
+Indian, whose muscles stood out in great knots upon his lithe body and
+legs and arms, and immediately following him six others no less
+powerful--for then I knew that Fray Antonio was not to die the cruel and
+bloody death of a sacrificial victim, but was to have, in accordance
+with the Aztec custom, such chance of life as was to be found in
+fighting these seven men in turn and receiving his freedom when he had
+slain them all. Yet as I looked at the slim figure of the monk, and then
+at these burly giants ready to be pitted against him, I knew that but
+one result could issue from that unequal combat; and a sudden dizziness
+came upon me, and for a moment all around me was dark. Nor was this
+momentary darkness wholly imaginary; for just then--with a low growl of
+distant thunder--a fragment broke away from the great mass of black
+cloud that hung upon the crest of the cliff above us and drifted
+sluggishly across the face of the sun.
+
+When my dizziness had passed, and I could again see clearly, the warrior
+was standing upon the Stone of Sacrifice--naked save for his
+breech-clout, and armed with a round shield and a maccahuitl of hardened
+gold. The monk still wore his flowing habit, whence the hood had fallen
+back, so that his head was bare; in one hand he held his crucifix, and
+with the other he was motioning away the sword and shield that a soldier
+held out to him: at sight of which refusal on his part to be armed there
+was a shrill outcry among the multitude that the fight would not be
+fair; and to this sharp noise of strident voices there was added a
+solemn undertone that came in a low roll of thunder from the overhanging
+cloud.
+
+[Illustration: FRAY ANTONIO'S APPEAL]
+
+As though to still the clamor, the monk waved his hand; and when at this
+sign the outcries ceased, he asked--yet addressing not the Priest
+Captain but the whole mass of people gathered there--if certain words
+which he desired to utter would be heard. And in answer to him there
+went up a shout of assent, in which was drowned completely (save that
+we, being close beneath him, heard it) the Priest Captain's order that
+the fight should begin. And it struck me that the Priest Captain showed
+his appreciation of the critical situation with which he then was
+dealing, and his dread of the forces which an ill-timed word in
+opposition to the will of the multitude might let loose against him, by
+refraining from repeating his order when silence came again, and all the
+thousands gathered there leaned forward eagerly to hearken to what Fray
+Antonio would say.
+
+And what he did say was the most moving and the most exalted deliverance
+that ever came forth from mortal man. To that great multitude he
+preached there shortly, but with an eloquence that I doubt not was born
+directly of heavenly inspiration, a sermon so searching, so full of
+God's great love and tenderness, and so full also of the majesty of His
+law and of the long-suffering of His mercy and loving-kindness, that
+every word of it falling from his lips seemed to burn into the depths of
+all those heathen hearts. My own heart was thrilled and shaken as it
+never had been stirred before, and the boy Pablo wept as he listened;
+and even Young, to whom the spoken words had no meaning, grew pale, and
+sweat gathered upon his forehead as his soul was moved within him by the
+infinitely beseeching tenderness of Fray Antonio's voice: for most
+wonderfully did his voice rise and fall in its cadenced sweetness and
+entreaty, and there was a strangely vibrant quality in his tones that
+matched the tenor of his words, and so held all that vast multitude
+spellbound.
+
+As he spoke on, a hush fell upon them who listened; and then through the
+throng a tremor seemed to run, but less a sound of actual speech than a
+subtle manifestation that in a moment a great outburst of assent would
+come, and I felt within me that the work which Fray Antonio had dared
+death to accomplish already was triumphantly concluded; and so waited,
+breathless, to hear this heathen host proclaim its glad allegiance to
+the Christian God.
+
+But the Priest Captain also perceived how imminent was the danger that
+menaced the ancient faith, and dared to take the one chance left for
+saving it, and that a desperate one, by breaking in upon Fray Antonio's
+discourse with a ringing order that the fight should be no longer
+delayed; whereat a deep growl of dissent ran through the crowd, that was
+echoed in a still deeper roar of thunder in the dark sky. In truth, the
+gathering of the storm in the heavens above seemed to be wholly in
+keeping with the storm that with an equal celerity was gathering on the
+earth below. There was a heavy languor, a dense stillness in the air,
+and the cloud above us had drifted out from the face of the cliff so far
+that it now hung over all the city like a vast black canopy. From this
+sombre mass, that buried all beneath it in gloomy shadows, flashes of
+lightning shot forth that each moment increased in fiery intensity, and
+the rolling roar of thunder each moment grew louder and sharper in its
+dark depths. Even as the Priest Captain spoke there came a yet more
+vivid flash, and almost with it a crashing peal.
+
+At the word of command, so vehemently given, the warrior faced about
+upon Fray Antonio, and held high aloft his sword; but the monk, firmly
+standing there, while in his eyes shone so glorious a light that it
+seemed as though the wrath of outraged Heaven blazed forth from them,
+opposed to this earthly weapon only his out-stretched crucifix, and thus
+confronted the death that menaced him with so splendid a bravery that
+for an instant his huge antagonist was held still by a wonder that was
+born half of admiration and half of awe; and in the breathless hush of
+that supreme moment Fray Antonio cried out, in tones so clear and so
+ringing that his words were heard by all the thousands gathered there:
+
+"I call for help upon the living and the only God!"
+
+And even as these words still sounded in our ears there shot forth from
+the cloud above us a swift red flash of blinding light, and with this
+came a crash of thunder so mighty that the cliffs above strained and
+quivered, and great fragments of rock came hurtling down from them, and
+a shivering trembling surged through the whole mountain, so that we felt
+it swaying beneath our feet.
+
+And as we gazed in awe, through the gloom that from all parts of the
+heavens was gathering towards the height whereon we were, we saw before
+us God's wrath made manifest; for the warrior, still holding raised the
+metal sword that had tempted death to him, trembled, reeled a little,
+swayed gently forward, and then, with, a sudden jerk, swayed backward
+again, and so fell lifeless--his bare right arm, and all the length of
+his naked body to his very heel marked by a livid streak of bloody
+purple that showed where the thunder-bolt had passed. For a moment the
+monk also seemed stunned; and then, kneeling beside that
+lightning-blasted corpse, and holding his hands out-stretched towards
+heaven, whence his deliverance had come, he cried in a clear strong
+voice, of which the solemn tones rang vibrant through that awful
+silence: "The Christian God liveth and reigneth! Believe on Him whose
+love and whose mercy are not less tender than is terrible His
+transcendent power!"
+
+There was no mistaking the thrill of movement that ran through the
+multitude as these words were spoken. I drew a long breath of
+thankfulness, for I felt that Fray Antonio was saved, and that in
+another instant my ears would be nigh burst by the thunderous roar of
+all those thousands--won to him by his own most moving eloquence, and by
+sight of the miracle whereby his deliverance had been wrought--that he
+should be set free.
+
+And in this instant--in the very moment that this sigh escaped me, while
+yet the pause lasted before that great shout came--the Priest Captain
+sprang from, his seat above us into the balcony where we prisoners stood
+guarded, on downward into the arena below, and thence upon the Stone of
+Sacrifice--all with a demoniac agility most horrible to look upon in one
+of his withered age--and there, with a fierce thrust of a spear that he
+had caught from a soldier's hand in passing, he pierced Fray Antonio
+between the shoulders straight through the heart; and the monk, still
+grasping in his hands his crucifix, fell face downward upon the Stone of
+Sacrifice, and lay there dead!
+
+Then Itzacoatl, standing with one foot upon the monk's dead body, and
+grasping still the spear that he had planted in that noble heart, cried
+out, triumphantly, "Behold the victory and the vengeance of our Aztec
+gods!"
+
+And the multitude, swayed backward from the very threshold of the
+Christian faith, shouted together in one mighty voice, "Victory and
+vengeance for our gods!"
+
+
+
+
+XXXV.
+
+THE TREASURE-CHAMBER.
+
+
+Close in the wake of that great thunder-crash there burst upon us so
+mighty a flood of rain that it seemed as though the lightning had riven
+solid walls asunder within the thick black mass of overhanging vapour,
+and so had let loose upon us the waters of a lake. In a moment the whole
+pit of the amphitheatre was awash, knee-deep, and before those who were
+standing there could flounder to the steps leading upward they were
+buried to their waists--and this although the water was pouring out
+through the vent provided for it with such violence that we could hear
+the rush and gurgle of it above the dashing and roaring of the falling
+rain. And all the dark mass of cloud above us was aflame continuously
+with blinding flashes of red lightning, while a continuous crash of
+splitting peals of thunder rang through the shattered air.
+
+Doubtless this storm was our salvation. That the Priest Captain's
+intention, even from the first, had been to kill us also, and so make
+his victory complete, I do not for a moment doubt; but he was too shrewd
+to waste upon a few terrified spectators an exhibition that would carry
+with it a salutary demonstration of his power; and with the bursting of
+the flood upon us, the crowd that filled the amphitheatre had begun a
+tumultuous flight to the temple; going thither partly for shelter, and
+partly being awe-struck by what had passed before them and by the
+tremendous fury of the storm, that they might find safety in the
+abiding-place of their gods.
+
+Therefore, the order was given hurriedly that we should be taken back to
+our prison; in obedience to which command our guards led us through the
+temple--where they had difficulty in forcing a way for us through the
+dense throng that had gathered within its walls--and thence to the
+Treasure-house beyond; and they were in such haste to be quit of us,
+that they also might seek safety in the temple, that they scarce waited
+to close the grating behind us before they sped away.
+
+So overwhelming was the grief that had fallen upon us that for some
+moments we stood as though stunned where the guards had left us; and,
+for myself, my one regret was that the chance of the storm, by saving me
+yet a little while longer alive, had lost to me the happiness of dying
+in the same hour with the friend whom I had so strongly loved. I think
+that this thought was in Young's heart also, as he stood there silent
+beside me, the blood so drawn away from his face that a dull yellow
+pallor overspread his bronzed skin, while his breath came short and
+hard. As for the boy Pablo, his whole being was shattered. He sank down
+on the rock at our feet, and seemed to be moaning his very life out in
+long quivering sobs.
+
+But presently, as our minds grew steadier, the thought of Rayburn came
+to us; and the strain upon our heart-strings was relaxed a little by
+remembering that our lives still were worth holding fast to in order
+that we might minister to his needs. Yet when we came again into the
+room where he lay, it seemed at first as though he also was lost to us;
+for even in that faint light we saw that his face was a deadly white,
+and when we spoke to him he neither spoke nor moved. But, happily, our
+dread that he had died in that gloomy solitude was not realized; for as
+I laid my hand upon his bare breast I felt his heart feebly beating, and
+at the touch of my hand he sighed a little, and then slowly opened his
+eyes.
+
+"He's only swounded," Young cried, joyfully. "It's th' smotherin'
+shut-upness o' this forlorn hole he's lyin' in. There's a little more
+air out in th' big room. Just grab t'other end o' th' stretcher,
+Professor, an' we'll yank him out there--nobody's likely t' come in t'
+stop us while this storm lasts. An'--an' we must be careful how we talk,
+Professor, y' know," he added, in a lower tone, as we raised the
+stretcher. "It won't do for him t' know about--about _it_ now." There
+was a break in Young's voice as he spoke, and I could feel by the
+momentary quiver of the stretcher that a shiver went through him as he
+thought of that "it," about which we must for a time hold our peace.
+
+Young bore the forward end of the stretcher, and as we came into the
+oratory I felt him start as he exclaimed, "What th' devil's broke loose
+here?"
+
+The darkness of the storm outside shrouded the oratory in a dusky
+twilight; but even through the shadows which lay thick about us we could
+see that there had been within this chamber some outbreak of
+extraordinary and tremendous violence; for the image of the god
+Huitzilopochtli had been cast down and broken into fragments, and just
+behind where it had stood there was a dark rift in the gold-plating of
+the walls, where several plates had been wrenched bodily away.
+
+A strong odor of sulphur hung heavily in the air, and, as I perceived
+it, the whole matter was plain to me. But Young sniffed at this odor
+suspiciously when we had brought the stretcher gently to rest upon the
+floor, and in a startled voice exclaimed, "Th' devil has been bustin'
+around in here for sure, an' he's left his regular home-made stink for a
+give-away!" and as he spoke there was manifest a decided bristling of
+his fringe of hair.
+
+I could not help smiling at this quaint proof of the shattered condition
+of Young's nerves--for, under ordinary circumstances, he was the very
+last man in the world to place faith in things supernatural--but I
+answered him promptly: "Then the devil did a stroke of honest business
+at the same time, for all this is the work of the same thunder-bolt, or
+of a part of it, that killed that Indian. Didn't you hear the rocks
+flying from the cliff where it struck?"
+
+"That's just what I was goin' t' say myself," Young replied, a little
+awkwardly. "An' that's what's the matter with Rayburn, an' made him
+swound away. How d' you find yourself now, old man?" he went on--rather
+glad to change the subject, I fancied--as Rayburn, at sound of his own
+name, moved a little.
+
+"I feel queer," Rayburn answered. "Sort of numb and dizzy. Where's the
+Padre?"
+
+"An' it's not much blame to you that you do feel queer," Young replied,
+hurriedly. "This last thing you've taken it into your fool head t' do is
+bein' busted all t' bits by a stroke o' lightnin'. Most folks would 'a'
+been satisfied with havin' their legs pretty much sliced off by
+Injuns--but reasonableness ain't your strongest hold, Rayburn; an' I
+guess it never was."
+
+Rayburn smile faintly as Young spoke, but instead of attempting to
+answer him--being still numbed by the heavy shock that he had
+received--he settled his head back upon the rolled-up coat that served
+him for a pillow, and languidly closed his eyes. Whereupon Young, seeing
+that there was nothing further that we could do for his comfort, betook
+himself--as his bent at all times was when any strange matter presented
+itself, and in this case with the half-crazed eagerness with which those
+upon whom a great sorrow has fallen seek instinctively to engage their
+minds with any trifling matter that will change the current of their
+thoughts--to investigating carefully the work of destruction that the
+thunder-bolt had wrought: examining the fragments of the idol, and the
+loosened plates of gold and the place on the wall whence these last had
+been wrenched away; which examination was the easier because the
+storm-cloud was leaving us--though the almost continuous loud rolling of
+the thunder still stunned our ears--and a stronger light came in through
+the opening in the roof.
+
+I seated myself beside Rayburn and paid no attention to what Young was
+doing; for my brooding sorrow was like a slow fire consuming me--as the
+tragedy that I had but just witnessed, and the infinite pathos that
+there was in seeing Rayburn thus miserably dying, overwhelmed me with a
+desolate despair. Even when Young called to me, in a tone so eager and
+so penetrating that at any other time I should have been startled into
+quick action by his words, I did not rouse myself to answer him; though,
+in a dull way, I knew that he would not thus have spoken unless some
+matter of great moment had aroused the full energy of his mind.
+
+"Professor! I say, Professor!" he repeated: "Get right up and come here.
+Don't sit there like a chuckle-headed chump. Get up, I tell you. Here's
+some sort of a show for us. Here's what looks like a way out o' this
+God-forsaken hole!"
+
+As I heard these words I did get up, and in a hurry, and so joined Young
+where he was kneeling on the floor close beside the rear wall of the
+oratory, directly behind where the idol had stood until the thunder-bolt
+had dashed it down. It was at this point, apparently, that the lightning
+had entered the chamber; for here several of the plates of gold with
+which the walls were covered--overlapping each other like
+fish-scales--had been loosened, while three of them had been wrenched
+entirely from their fastenings and had fallen down. As I joined him,
+Young excitedly pointed to the opening thus made, through which was
+visible not a solid wall of rock but a dark cavity, and from which was
+blowing a soft current of cool air.
+
+"It's a way out! It's a way out! I tell you," he cried. "This suck o'
+wind proves it. If we only can get some more o' these blasted plates
+loose we'll light out o' this and euchre the Priest Captain an' his
+whole d--n outfit yet! Ketch hold here, Professor, an' put your muscle
+into it for all you're worth. Grab right here; now!" And Young and I
+together pulled at the same plate with all our might and main. But for
+all the impression that we made upon it we might as well have tried to
+pull down the mountain; the plate did not stir. Young gave a hearty
+curse (and I confess that hearing him swearing in that natural way again
+was a real comfort to me), and then we took another pull; and all this
+while, so much does the thought of saving his life put cheer into a man,
+my heart was bounding within me and the hot coursing of my blood seemed
+like to burst my veins. Young's fervor was not less than mine, and we
+wrenched and tugged together, and never stopped to mark our cut and
+bleeding hands.
+
+"We've _got_ t' do it!" Young exclaimed, as we paused at last, without
+having loosened the plate in the least degree. "There's some way o'
+workin' this thing, I know. It must be some sort of a door, an' if we
+only can get th' hang of it we'll be all right. Have you got your wind
+again, Professor? Let's try 'f we can't sort o' prize this plate out;
+it's a little loose. Just get your fingers under it an' we'll sort o'
+pull it up an' out at th' same time. So! Now sling your muscle into it.
+Heft!"
+
+We were stooping a little, and so had a strong purchase, and with all
+our united strength we heaved away together. There was a rattling of
+metal, a yielding of the plate so easy that our tremendous effort was
+out of all proportion to it; my fingers seemed suddenly to be nipped in
+a red-hot vice; Young uttered a yell of pain, and then we both were
+sprawling on our backs on the floor, while in front of us was a broad
+opening in the wall where a wide section of the panelling had risen
+upward (the plates sliding up under each other), and so had made an open
+way.
+
+"H--ll! how that did hurt!" Young mumbled, with his nipped fingers in
+his mouth; and I must say that the vigor of his language was not
+uncalled for, as I well understood by the pain that I myself was
+suffering. I never remember pinching my fingers so badly as I did then
+in the whole course of my life.
+
+However, we did not suffer our hurts, which were not really serious, to
+delay us in exploring this hidden place that so suddenly and with such
+unnecessary violence had opened to us. Pushing upward the ingeniously
+contrived door from the bottom, we easily raised it until an opening was
+discovered the full height of a man; and through this we went into a
+narrow passage in the rock that in a moment turned and so brought us
+into a room that was nearly as large as the oratory that we had just
+left, and that, as we presently found, actually communicated with the
+oratory by means of two narrow slits high up in the wall; which
+apertures here were plainly visible, but on the other side were so
+cleverly disguised by an ingenious arrangement of the overlapping plates
+as to be entirely concealed. Like the oratory, too, this room had an
+opening in its roof through which air entered, and so much light that we
+could see about us plainly. And the very first glance that I cast around
+me in this strange place assured me that, by sheer accident, we had
+found our way at last to the secret chamber wherein King Chaltzantzin's
+treasure had lain hidden for a thousand years.
+
+Rude shelves had been cut in the rock on all four sides of the room, and
+on these were ranged earthen pots of curious shapes, ornamented with
+strange devices that my newly acquired knowledge enabled me to
+recognize--to express the matter in the terms of our system of
+heraldry--as the arms of a king quartered with the arms of certain
+princely houses or tribes. On these shelves, also, were many quaintly
+wrought vessels and some small square boxes, all of which were of
+gold--together with a score or so of small idols moulded in clay or
+roughly carved in stone, in which last the workmanship was so far
+inferior to that of the earthen-ware pots and golden vessels as to show
+at a glance that they were the product of a much earlier and ruder age;
+but belonging to the same age as the gold-work, or to a period even
+later, was a very beautiful Calendar Stone most delicately carved in
+obsidian, that was identical, save in the matter of size, with the great
+Calendar Stone that now is preserved in Mexico in the National Museum.
+This was placed at one end of the room upon a carved pedestal; and at
+the opposite end of the room, the end farthest removed from the
+entrance, was a great stone image of the god Chac Mool. Lying upon the
+Calendar Stone was what at first I took to be a cross-bow made of gold;
+but more careful examination convinced me, especially in view of the
+place where I had found it, that this certainly was an arbalest--called
+also a Jacob's staff and a cross-staff--such as in no very ancient
+times, until the invention of the quadrant, was used by Europeans in
+taking the meridional altitude of the sun and stars.
+
+At the moment that I made this last most curious and exceedingly
+interesting discovery, Young, who had been investigating on his own
+account, gave a yell of delight, and bounded towards me flourishing his
+own brace of revolvers in his hands. "They're all here!" he cried. "All
+our guns are here, an' th 'ca'tridges too! Now we _have_ got the bulge
+on these devils for sure!"
+
+As he spoke I also was thrilled with joy at the thought of the vengeance
+which this recovery of our arms might enable us to take upon Fray
+Antonio's murderers; but my joy was only momentary, for I could not but
+reflect that, after all, these Aztlanecas had but acted in accordance
+with their lights--excepting only the Priest Captain, for whom the most
+cruel death would be all too merciful--and that our slaying them would
+not be vengeance, but mere brutal revenge. Having which thoughts in
+mind, I answered, "At least we can shoot ourselves with them, and so be
+safe from death by sacrifice."
+
+"Not much we won't shoot ourselves," Young replied, with great energy;
+"an' nobody's goin' t' come monkeyin' 'round us with sacrifices, either.
+Why, man alive, we ain't goin' t' stay here--not by a jugful! We're
+goin' t' light right out o' this an' be smack off for home."
+
+"How?" I asked, blankly, and with real alarm; for the hot hope that had
+filled me at the thought of our having found a way of escape had
+vanished as I perceived that from this chamber there was no outlet save
+the hole in the roof; which hole also accounted for the current of air
+whereby my hope had been inspired. Therefore, when Young spoke in this
+extravagant fashion, the dread came over me that he was going mad.
+
+"How?" he answered, "why, through that Jack Mullins, of course. He _is_
+th' tippin' kind. I was just tryin' him, while you was pokin' 'round in
+that old rubbish, when I happened t' ketch sight of our guns; an' seein'
+them, you bet, made me bounce. Here goes for another shot at him! Stick
+somethin' under him t' keep him up when I heave."
+
+I was so dazed by the stunning wonder and by the joy that Young's words
+carried with them, that I obeyed his order mechanically. With a grave
+seriousness he seated himself upon the head of the idol; and as the
+figure and the stone base upon which it rested settled down at the end
+upon which he sat, and its other end correspondingly swung upward,
+showing beneath it a dark opening, I wedged up the mass with a heavy
+plate of gold that served as the lid of one of the boxes ranged upon the
+shelves.
+
+"It won't do for us both together t' go down there," Young said, as he
+rose from his seat and we peered into the dark cavity. "Mullins might
+take 't into his fool head t' shut himself up while we was down there,
+an' that ud mean cold weather for Rayburn an' Pablo. I'll just jump down
+them steps an' prospect a little, while you look after him t' see that
+he keeps steady;" and with these words down he went into the hole.
+
+In five minutes or so he joined me again. "It don't look like th' nicest
+place I ever got into," he said, "but I guess we'll have t' take th'
+chances on it. There's a little room down there, an' out o' that a kind
+of a back entry leads into an everlastin' big cave. But there seems t'
+be a sort of a path runnin' along in the cave--it's all as dark as th'
+devil--an' as paths mostly have two ends to 'em, I guess if we keep on
+long enough we'll get somewhere. We can't stay here, that's sure, so
+we've just got t' risk it, an' th' sooner we get Rayburn down there th'
+better. When he's solidly safe, then we can do some prospectin'--by
+good-luck we've got lots o' matches--an' see where that path goes to.
+Just sling on your guns, Professor, an' let's mosey back an' get th'
+percession started. It's hard lines on Rayburn t' tumble him into a hole
+like that when he's feelin' so bad; but I guess it's better t' take th'
+chances o' killin' him that way ourselves than it is t' let these devils
+do it for sure. Come on!"
+
+While he was speaking, Young had buckled his revolvers about his waist
+and had slung his rifle over his shoulder, and I also in like manner had
+armed myself--whereby was restored to me a most comforting feeling of
+strength. As for Young, the recovery of his weapons seemed to make him
+grow two inches taller, and he swaggered in his walk.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVI.
+
+THE VENGEANCE OF THE GODS.
+
+
+Almost in the moment that we thus found ourselves in condition to show
+fight again, the need for fighting seemed like to be forced upon us; for
+as we turned to leave the treasure-chamber we were startled by hearing a
+creaking sound that we knew came from the sliding upward of the grating
+in its metal grooves wherewith the entrance to our prison was made fast.
+
+We paused for a moment, and then Young motioned to me to follow him,
+stepping lightly; and as we came out into the oratory we heard a fresh
+creaking, by which we knew that the grating had been closed.
+
+"I guess it's only th' fellow puttin' in th' grub," Young whispered.
+"But go easy, Professor, an' have your guns all handy, so's you can
+shoot. If anybody _has_ come in it won't do t' let 'em get out again.
+Only mind you don't shoot unless you really have to. If there's only two
+or three of 'em we'd better try t' club 'em with our Winchesters, so's
+not t' bring all hands down on us with a rush before we can get Rayburn
+away."
+
+As he spoke, we were assured that some one had entered when the grating
+was raised and had remained on our side of the grating when it was
+closed again, for we heard footsteps in the room where we ordinarily
+lay; and then the footsteps drew nearer, as though the unseen person
+were examining the other rooms in search of us, and we knew that in
+another moment or two this person would enter the chamber wherein we
+were. Rayburn was lying so quietly that it seemed as though he had
+fallen into a swoon again; and Pablo, as we could tell by hearing his
+sobs, had betaken himself to the room in which El Sabio was tethered in
+search of solacing companionship. Young motioned me to stand on one side
+of the entrance to the oratory, and himself stood on the other; and thus
+we waited, while the footsteps rapidly drew nearer, in readiness most
+effectually to cut off the retreat of whoever might enter the room.
+
+The man who did enter, passing between us, was the Priest Captain. As he
+saw the wreck of the idol, and the opening in the wall behind where the
+idol had stood, he uttered an exclamation of alarm and rage; and in the
+same moment some instinctive dread of the danger that menaced him caused
+him to turn suddenly around. So, for an instant, he confronted us--and
+never shall I forget the look of malignant hatred that was in his face
+as in that instant he regarded us, nor his quick despairing gesture at
+sight of Young standing there with his rifle raised. Even as he opened
+his mouth to cry out, before any sound came from his lips, the heavy
+barrel of Young's rifle swept downward, and with a groan he fell.
+
+Had the blow struck fairly it could not but have split the man's skull
+open; but he swerved aside a little as the rifle came down, and the
+weight of the stroke, glancing from his head, fell upon his shoulder. In
+an instant, dropping the rifle, Young was kneeling on his breast with a
+hand buried in the flabby flesh of his old throat, holding tight-gripped
+his windpipe. Excepting only Rayburn, Young was the strongest man I ever
+knew (though, to be sure, at that time he was weakened by his then
+recent wound and by the privations of his imprisonment), yet it was all
+that he could do to hold that old man down and to maintain his choking
+grasp. With a most desperate energy and a fierce strength that seemed
+out of all nature in a creature so lean and old and shrivelled, the
+Priest Captain writhed and struggled in his efforts to throw Young off,
+and sought also to grasp Young's throat with his long bony hands--while
+foam gathered on his thin lips, and his withered brown face grew black
+with congested blood, and his black eyes protruded until the half of the
+eyeballs, bloody with bursting reins, showed around the black, dilated
+pupils. And then him struggles slowly grew less and less violent, his
+knotted muscles gradually relaxed, his mouth fell open so that his
+tongue lolled out hideously, his legs and arms twitched a little
+spasmodically--and then he lay quite still.
+
+[Illustration: YOUNG'S STRUGGLE WITH THE PRIEST CAPTAIN]
+
+For a minute or two longer Young maintained his grasp. Then rising to
+his feet, breathing heavily, he wiped the sweat from his face as he
+exclaimed, at the same moment giving the dead body a vicious kick: "You
+black devil, take that! Now I've squared accounts with you for killin'
+th' Padre--and it's the best day's work I've ever done!"
+
+Though the struggle between the two had been a very desperate one, there
+had been no noise about it. Through the whole fight Rayburn had remained
+buried in his death-like stupor; and Pablo, though so near to us, had
+heard no sound of it at all.
+
+"Now, then, Professor," Young said, when he had got his wind back,
+"we've got t' bounce. Th' first thing t' do is t' fasten that gratin' on
+our side, so's nobody can get in here t' bother us while we're doin' our
+skippin'. I guess we can sort o' wedge it fast so's t' stand 'em off for
+an hour or two, anyway, an' that's time enough to give us a fair start."
+
+"We can do something better than that, I think," I said, as we went
+together towards the grating. "Unless I am much mistaken, only the
+Priest Captain knew about this sliding door and the treasure-chamber
+beyond it. If we can restore to their places those three plates, and can
+close the door behind us, I am persuaded that so far as pursuit of us is
+concerned we shall be absolutely safe."
+
+"Gosh!" Young exclaimed. "D' you know, Professor, I wouldn't 'a' given
+you credit for havin' that much common-sense. It's a big idea, that is,
+an' we'll try it on. But, all th' same, we've got t' make things as
+sure as we can, an' this little job must be attended to first."
+
+As we approached the grating we saw two of the temple guard standing
+outside of it, apparently waiting for the Priest Captain's return; and
+these men looked at us with such evident suspicion that I feared for the
+success of our plans. "Just talk to 'em," Young said, hurriedly. "Talk
+to 'em about th' last election, or chicken-coops, or anything you
+please, while I take a look 'round an' sec how we're goin' t' get this
+job done."
+
+Young dropped behind me, and then aside and so out of sight, as I
+advanced to the grating and spoke to the men, whose faces somewhat
+cleared as I told them that the Priest Captain desired that they should
+wait there a little longer. And then I managed to hold their interest
+for some minutes while I spoke about the devil that was in El Sabio, and
+about other devils of a like sort whom I had known in my time. While I
+thus spoke I heard a little tinkling sound, as of metal striking against
+stone--but if the soldiers also heard it they paid no attention to
+it--and then Young whispered, "We're solid now; come on!" Whereupon I
+quickly ended my imaginative discourse upon demoniac donkeys, and with
+no appearance of haste we walked away.
+
+"It was just as easy as rollin' off a log," Young said, jubilantly.
+"There was a big gold peg stickin' there all ready t' slide into a slot,
+so's t' hold th' gratin' down, an' all I had t' do was t' slide it. I
+guess, with a plug like that holdin' that gratin' fast, they'll need
+jacks t' open it. Th' only other way t' start it 'll be rammin' it with
+a bit o' timber; but bustin' it in that way 'll take a lot o' time, an'
+half an hour's plenty for all we've got t' do. If you're straight in
+thinkin' nobody knows about that slidin' door we're solid."
+
+I felt very sure in my own mind that I was right in believing that only
+the Priest Captain had known of this secret opening; for, after him, the
+most likely person to have knowledge of it was the keeper of the
+archives, and that he was altogether ignorant of it I was well assured.
+Therefore I most cheerfully helped Young, so far as my unskilful hands
+could be useful, in the work of restoring the gold plates to the places
+whence the lightning had wrenched them loose; and when this work was
+done, so cleverly did Young manage it, there was no possibility of
+distinguishing the door from any other portion of the wall; nor was
+there then a sign of any sort remaining to show that by the passage of a
+thunder-bolt the idol had been destroyed.
+
+As we were finishing this piece of work we heard the soldiers at the
+grating calling to the Priest Captain--at first in low tones, and then
+more loudly; and then we heard them give a yell together, which
+convinced us that they had tried to raise the grating and had found that
+it was fastened down.
+
+The ten minutes that followed was the most exciting time that I ever
+passed through. Notwithstanding the secure fashion in which the grating
+was fastened, we could not but dread that those outside had knowledge of
+some means whereby it could be loosened; and in any event there was no
+doubt but that they could force a way in upon us by beating it down.
+Therefore we knew that there was no safety for us until we were fairly
+out of the oratory, and had closed behind us the sliding door--and with
+such difficult material to deal with as Rayburn, who still lay in a
+heavy stupor, and Pablo, whom sorrow had wellnigh crazed, we found it
+hard to make such haste as the sharp exigency of our situation required.
+Pablo, indeed, was so lost in wonder at finding the broken idol, and the
+dead body of the Priest Captain, and a door open in the solid wall, that
+what little remained of his wits disappeared entirely; so that we had
+almost to carry him--while El Sabio most intelligently followed
+him--into the treasure-chamber, and there we left the two together while
+we returned for Rayburn. And as we lifted the stretcher our hearts
+bounded, for at that instant there was a tremendous crash at the
+grating; whereby we knew that those without had brought to bear against
+it some sort of a battering-ram that they might beat it in.
+
+"It's a close call," Young said between his teeth; and added, as we
+rested the stretcher inside the passage while we closed behind us the
+sliding door: "If you're off your base, Professor, an' they do know th'
+trick o' this thing, it may be all day with us yet--but it's a comfort
+t' know that even if they do finish us we'll everlastin'ly salt 'em
+first with our guns."
+
+We heard another great crash behind us, but faintly now that the sliding
+door was closed, as we went onward into the treasure-chamber; and here
+we heard the like sound again, more clearly, through the slits cut in
+the wall. As gently as our haste, and the awkwardness of that narrow
+way would permit, we lifted Rayburn from the stretcher, and so carried
+him down the short flight of stairs beneath the upraised statue to the
+little chamber that there was hollowed in the rock. Here we laid him
+upon the stretcher again; and then, without any ceremony whatever, we
+bundled Pablo and El Sabio down the hole. It was a smaller aperture,
+even, than that through which we had come forth from the Cave of the
+Dead, and how El Sabio was able to condense himself sufficiently to get
+through it will remain a puzzle to me to my dying day.
+
+All this while we could hear plainly, through the slits in the wall, the
+crashing blows which every minute or so were delivered against the
+grating, together with a shrill roar of shouts and yells; and we knew
+that before this vigorous assault the grating must give way within a
+very brief period, and so let in the whole yelping pack. If I were right
+in my belief that the Priest Captain alone knew of the secret outlet to
+the oratory, we still would be safe enough, and could make some
+preliminary examination of the cave before we closed the way behind us
+irrevocably by letting the statue fall back into its place; but if I
+were mistaken, then there was nothing for us but to take the chance of
+life and death by going on blindly into that black cavern, after wedging
+fast the under side of the statue in such a way that it no longer could
+be swung open from above.
+
+It was most necessary, therefore, that we should see what course our
+enemies would take when they came into the oratory and found it empty
+of us, and the idol broken, and the Priest Captain lying dead there;
+and, that we might compass this end, Young and I returned into the
+treasure-chamber and mounted upon a ledge that seemed to have been
+provided for a standing-place--whence we had a clear view into the
+oratory through the slits in the wall. And at the very moment that we
+thus stationed ourselves there reverberated through those rock-hewn
+chambers a deafening crash and a jingling clang of metal and a rattle of
+falling stone; and with this came a yell of triumph and a rush of
+footsteps--and then, in an instant, the oratory was full of soldiers and
+priests, all yelling together like so many fiends.
+
+But upon this violent hubbub there fell a hush of awe and wonder as
+those who had thus tumultuously entered the oratory saw the Priest
+Captain lying dead amid the fragments of the shattered idol, and
+perceived that the prisoners who had been shut within these seemingly
+solid walls had vanished utterly away; and then a sobbing murmur, that
+presently swelled into moans and cries of terror, arose from the throng;
+and in a moment more, seized by a common impulse, the whole company
+bowed downward, in suppliant dread of the gods by whom such direful
+wonders had been wrought.
+
+Young gave a long sigh of relief, and with a most mouth-filling oath
+whispered in my ear, "They haven't tumbled to it, an' we're all right!"
+
+As we gazed at these terror-stricken creatures, a thought occurred to me
+on which I promptly acted. "Get both of your revolvers pointed through
+that hole," I whispered to Young. "Point high, so that the balls will
+not hit anybody; and when I begin to shoot do you shoot also, and as
+quickly as you can. Mind, you are not to hit anybody," I added; for I
+saw by the look on Young's face that he longed to fire into the crowd
+point-blank. For answer he gave me a rather sulky nod of assent; but I
+saw by the way that he held his pistols that my order was obeyed. "Now,"
+I said, "Fire!"--and as rapidly as self-acting revolvers would do it, we
+poured twenty-four shots through the slits in the wall. No doubt several
+people were hurt by balls bounding back from the rock, but I am
+confident that nobody was killed.
+
+When we ceased firing it was impossible to see anything in the oratory,
+because of the dense cloud of sulphurous smoke wherewith it was filled;
+but such shrieks and yells of soul-racking terror as came from beneath
+that black canopy I hope I may never hear again. I waited a little,
+until this wild outburst had somewhat quieted, and then--placing my
+mouth close to one of the openings and speaking in a voice that I tried
+to make like that of Fray Antonio--I said, in deep and solemn tones,
+"Behold the vengeance of the strangers' God!"
+
+What effect my words produced I cannot tell. Our firing must have
+loosened a fragment of rock between the gold plating that lined the
+oratory and the outer surface of the wall, and even as I spoke this
+fragment fell. With its fall the opening was irrevocably closed.
+
+"That was a boss dodge," said Young, as he recharged his revolver.
+"Those fellows 'll just think hell's broke loose in here, for sure; and
+I guess after they've onct fairly got outside they'll rather be skinned
+alive than come back again. But what did you say to 'em? Hearin' you
+talkin' like th' Padre, that way, gave me a regular jolt. Don't you
+think, though, maybe it was a little bit risky t' give ourselves away?"
+
+But when I had repeated in English the words which I had spoken, Young
+very seriously shook hands with me. "Shake!" he said. "I've done you
+injustice, Professor. Sometimes I've thought that you was too much
+asleep for your own good--but if anybody ever did anything more wide
+awake than that, I'd like t' know _what_ he did and who he was. Why,
+when those fellows tell about all that's been goin' on in here--about
+their busted idol, an' their dead Priest Captain, an' our skippin,' an'
+this row our shootin' has made, an' then about th' Padre's ghost talkin'
+to 'em that way--it's bound t' give 'em such a jolt that th' whole
+outfit 'll slew smack round an' be Christians right off!"
+
+Some such notion as this had been in my own mind as I executed the plan
+that on the spur of the moment I had formed. When, later, I thought
+about it more calmly, I could not but regret, for Fray Antonio's sake,
+my hasty action; for he would have been the very last man to approve of
+such stringent methods of advancing the Christian faith. If any result
+came from my demonstration, it certainly came through terror; and the
+essence of Fray Antonio's doctrine, as it was also of his own nature,
+was gentleness and love.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVII.
+
+THROUGH DARKNESS TO LIGHT.
+
+
+"I guess we're solid now, as far as bein' bothered by those sacred
+devils goes," Young said, as we stepped down from the ledge of rock on
+which we had been standing; "but this ain't no time t' take no chances,
+an' th' sooner we see what show we've got for gettin' anywhere through
+that cave, th' better it'll be. An' we've got t' look after Rayburn.
+He's closter t' handin' in his checks t'-day than he's been at all. Just
+think o' him keepin' still through all that row, an lettin' himself be
+yanked around like a bag o' meal without takin' any notice of it! But
+there's just a squeal of a chance for him if we do get clear away.
+Knowin' that he's safe 'll do him more good, even, than fresh air an'
+sunshine--an' oh Lord! how good fresh air an' sunshine 'll be, if ever
+we do strike 'em again!"
+
+When we descended the stair-way again to the little hollow in the rock
+where Rayburn was lying, we found that he still remained in his dull
+stupor and took no notice of our coming. Close beside were Pablo and El
+Sabio, huddled together for mutual support in this very trying passage
+of their lives. El Sabio, indeed, was a most melancholy and dejected
+creature, for his short commons and his long confinement had taken the
+spirit out of him pretty thoroughly; but for our purposes just then,
+when his tractability was very necessary to us, it was a piece of
+good-fortune that he had fallen into so low a way. As for Pablo, the boy
+was in so dazed a condition that I feared greatly he would wholly lose
+his wits.
+
+There was only a faint suggestion of light in that deeply hidden place,
+and Young struck a match that he might see to begin his explorations.
+"Well, I'll be shot," he exclaimed, as the wax-taper shed its clear
+light around us, "if here ain't a conductor's lantern hangin' up all
+ready for us, an' a can o' kerosene oil!" As he lighted the lantern, and
+the letters F. C. C. showed clearly on the glass, he added, in a tone of
+still greater amazement: "Ferro-Carril Central! Why, it b'longs t' one
+o' th' boys on th' Central!--but how th' dickens did it ever get _here_?
+An' here's a lot of old clothes--th' sort o' rags th' low-down Greasers
+wear. An' I'm blest," he went on, as he picked up a scrap of paper from
+the floor, "if this ain't a Mexican Central ticket from Leon to Silao!
+It's dated last June, an' it's only punched once, so 't couldn't 'a'
+been used all the way. I say, Professor, am I asleep or awake?"
+
+As I examined the several articles which we had come upon so strangely
+in this incongruous plate, a flood of light was let in upon my mind, and
+with this came also the glad certainty that the way before us to freedom
+was open and assured. My belief that the Priest Captain had been in
+communication with the outside world no longer admitted of a doubt, for
+here was absolute proof of it: the clothes which he wore when making his
+expeditions into the nineteenth century; the lantern that he had stolen
+in order the more easily to find his way through the cave; the railway
+ticket that he had but lately used. In an instant I had connected all
+this with what the guardian of the archives had told me concerning the
+Priest Captain's habit of retiring for long periods of time to one of
+the chambers in which we had been imprisoned, and the whole matter was
+as plain to me as day; and I knew now, that in order to guard against
+discovery, he, or one of his predecessors, to whom this secret way must
+also have been known, had caused to be set in place the fastening by
+which the grating could be secured upon its inner side; which fastening,
+within that very hour, had been the means of saving our lives.
+
+"Well," said Young, dryly, when I had briefly explained these several
+matters, "I guess he won't pull th' wool over nobody's eyes any more!
+An' now you an' me 'll do some prospectin'. We must go back upstairs,
+before we pull out for good, an' bag what there is there that's worth
+carryin' off; but th' first thing t' do is t' get Rayburn where he'll be
+comfortable an' safe. Until that's attended to we've got t' be careful
+an' go slow; so we'll rouse up this fool of a Pablo, an' get it into his
+head that if he hears anybody comin' he's t' knock th' plug from under
+Mullins an' let him down, an' then chock him fast with a rock
+underneath. It's not likely that anybody _will_ come, an' even if they
+do, I don't think that they'll know th' trick about Mullins' tippin',
+for that's a point that I'll bet a whole kag o' beer th' Priest Captain
+didn't give away t' nobody. I tell you, Professor, there wasn't any
+flies on that old man, now was there? He was a wicked old devil, an'
+I'm glad I did for him; but he was just an everlastin' keen one, an' a
+rustler from th' word go!"
+
+In the dazed condition in which he then was, we scarcely should have
+ventured to place Pablo in a position of such grave responsibility had
+there been any likelihood of his being called upon to perform the duty
+with which we charged him; but we were well satisfied that to the Priest
+Captain alone had been known the secret of the sliding door, and that,
+consequently, the need for closing the passage leading upward into the
+treasure-chamber would not arise. Without any fear for Rayburn's safety;
+therefore, we left him lying in the little room at the foot of the
+stair-way, and thence went forth through a cleft in the rock--that
+seemed to be a natural crevice, where the mountain was split apart--and
+so came into a natural cave of such great size that the light of the
+lantern was not sufficient to enable us to see its roof nor its farther
+wall. Save that the well-defined path that we followed was continuously
+steep, we did not find walking difficult, for the fragments of rock with
+which the floor of the cave everywhere was strewn had been lifted aside
+carefully, so as to make a smooth and easy way. And only in one
+place--where for a short distance the path skirted the edge of a black
+gulf, in the depths of which we could hear the rush of water--was any
+part of it dangerous.
+
+For near an hour we went onward, all the while steadily ascending; and
+then, as we turned a corner, we saw a long way before us a faintly
+luminous haze. It was so very faint that only by holding the lantern
+behind us, and then closing our eyes for a moment, could we assure
+ourselves that what we saw really was light at all; but when we turned
+another corner, presently, the light, though still faint, was
+unmistakable; whereat Young gave a whoop of joy, and we quickened our
+steps in our eager longing to behold the sunshine that we knew could not
+be far away. Suddenly the path dipped downward, and then another turn
+brought us into light so strong that the lantern no longer was needed to
+show us where to tread; and by a common impulse we gave a great glad
+shout together and went onward at a run; and so, running and shouting
+like the crazy creatures that truly for the time being we were, we made
+one turn more, and then beheld before us, reaching away broadly and
+openly in a fashion to give one a sense of most glorious freedom, a
+vastly wide plain, over which everywhere the blessed sunshine blazed
+full and strong. As we stood together in the mouth of the cave for a
+moment in silence--for no words seemed strong enough to express the
+bursting gladness that was in our hearts--two short blasts of a whistle,
+wafted upward on the light breeze that was blowing towards us from the
+plain, sounded very faintly but clearly in our ears. Young started as he
+heard this sound, and as he turned towards me he held out his hand and
+said, in a voice that was husky and tremulous, "Professor, that's a
+locomotive whistle, an' th' d----n fool is--is whistlin' 'down brakes'!"
+And in these curiously chosen, yet not unmeaning words, did we celebrate
+our deliverance.
+
+When we returned to Rayburn--and as we now knew the way, and as almost
+the whole of it was downhill, our return was accomplished rapidly--some
+of the joyous strength that we had gained seemed to be imparted to him.
+He opened his eyes as we stooped over him, and there seemed to be more
+life in them than there had been through all that day.
+
+"Rouse up, old man!" Young cried cheerily. "We've struck th' trail out
+o' this cussed hole at last, an' we're goin' t' hike you right along to
+where you'll get some of God's sunshine again, an' some air that's fit
+for a white man t' breathe;" which words brought still more light into
+Rayburn's eyes, and a little color came into his pale cheeks as we told
+him of the open way that we had found to light and life.
+
+"Where's the Padre?" he asked, as we together raised the stretcher,
+while Pablo, holding the lantern and leading El Sabio, went on ahead of
+us. Fortunately Rayburn could not see Young's face as he answered: "Th'
+Padre's--well, th' Padre's just gone on up th' line. You've got t' hold
+your jaw, Rayburn. You ain't fit t' talk; an' while we're packin' you
+along we can't talk either. Come on, Professor; and you, Pablo," he
+added, in his jerky Spanish. "Be careful with that lamp or I'll break
+the head of you!"
+
+Although a good third of his flesh had wasted away, Rayburn would have
+been a heavy load for us to carry over level ground, even had we been
+hale and strong. Worn as we then were by our prison-life, we found
+carrying him up that long steep path in the heart of the mountain a
+weary work that only the hope and joy that strengthened us enabled us
+to accomplish. As it was, we went so slowly, and made so many halts for
+rest, that the sun had sunk almost to the level of the distant
+mountains, wherewith that great plain was bordered to the westward, when
+at last our toilsome journey was at an end. But we thought nothing of
+the heaviness of our labor as we saw the glad look that came into his
+face when he gazed out over that broad expanse of sunlit landscape, and
+snuffed eagerly the sweet fresh air, and so felt his soul grow light
+within him as he realized that he once more was safe and free.
+
+In the mouth of the cave--within its shelter, yet where he could see out
+freely, and so have constantly in his mind the comforting thought of his
+deliverance--we made a bed for him of soft pine-branches, which some
+near-by trees gave us; and we took care that this couch should be so
+thick and so evenly laid that he would lie easily upon it; for we knew
+that many days, perhaps even weeks, must pass before we could venture to
+put so heavy a strain upon his strength as would come when we carried
+him down that rough mountain-side, and so began our journey towards home.
+
+Fortunately, a little spring came out from the rock, clear and cool,
+just inside the cave; and game was so abundant on that mountain-side
+that Young came back presently from a foraging expedition with half a
+dozen codornices, that he had come so close to as to shoot with his
+revolver, and a jack-rabbit that he actually had caught with his hands
+as it jumped up almost beneath his feet; which excellent fare made a
+most satisfying supper for all of us; and eating it so added to
+Rayburn's strength--as we could tell by the fuller tones of his voice,
+and by his being able to move a little on his bed without our helping
+him--as to rouse in us a warm hope that the death that seemed so near to
+him might yet be thrust away. Our chief concern, lest the shock that
+would come to him of knowing it should fairly kill him, was to hide from
+him for the present the knowledge that Fray Antonio was dead; and to
+compass this end we plumply told him the flat-footed lie that the monk
+had gone on in search of some town whence he might bring back horses and
+supplies; and so, for a time, we laid at rest his doubts.
+
+In his own original way, also, Young tried to put heart into him. "You
+see, old man," he said, "you've just _got_ t' pull through. Think how
+d----d ashamed o' yourself you'd feel after you was dead when you had t'
+tell all th' folks in heaven that you was killed by nothin' better'n a
+mis'rable chump of an Injun! That was what bothered poor old Steve
+Hollis when he was handin' in _his_ checks--'t least it was th' same
+general sort of idea. I guess you never knew Steve, did you, Rayburn? He
+was an old railroader--had been a-workin' on th' Old Colony one way and
+another for more'n twenty years. When I knowed him he used t' run th'
+steamboat express from Boston t' Fall River--their boss train on that
+blasted old road. Steve owned a house clost t' th' line just a little
+way out o' Braintree; an' when 't was his day off he'd mostly slide down
+from Fall River on No. 2, an' walk out home from Braintree along th'
+track. Nobody ever know'd just how 't happened--Steve was th' soberest
+man I ever knowed; never drunk a drop o' nothin'--but one day, as he was
+walkin' out home, No. 15, that was th' slow freight from Boston t'
+Newport, ketched him an' got in its work on him--an' that was th' end o'
+Steve. It didn't kill him right smack off, an' I went down t' see him;
+for I did think th' world of old Steve. He was a-layin' in his bed, an'
+I could see that he was a-most gone when I got there; but he chippered
+up a little for a minute as I shook hands with him and ast him how he
+was. He said he was poorly; an' then he kep' quiet for a while. Then he
+kind o' ketched his breath an' seemed t' want t' say somethin'. So I
+bent over him, an' he said, in a kind of a whisperin' groan: 'Jus' think
+of it, Seth, what did it was th' slow freight! That's what cuts me;
+that's what cuts me the worst kind. I wouldn't a-minded if 't had been
+th' express--them things will happen, an' they've got t' come. But here
+I've been a-railroadin' for more'n twenty year, an' t' think o' _me_
+bein' busted by that d----n slow freight!' An' then he turned over, an'
+give a sort of a grunt, an' died."
+
+I am not sure that I myself should have selected this particular story
+to tell to Rayburn just then; but the moral that it contained
+unquestionably was a sound one, and, in a way, was calculated to impress
+upon him strongly the conviction that his duty was to get well.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVIII.
+
+KING CHALTZANTZIN'S TREASURE.
+
+
+Whether or not Young's story had this good effect upon Rayburn, I am not
+prepared to say; but it is certain that he slept well that night--his
+first good night's sleep for many weeks--and that when morning came he
+was so much stronger and brighter as to fill us with a still more
+earnest hope that he was well started on the way to recovery.
+
+Young quickly brought in some birds for our breakfast, and when the meal
+was finished he took me aside and said: "Now, Professor, lets me an' you
+go back t' that hole an' bring away all there is there that's worth
+carryin'. It's not much, I guess, but it's better'n nothin'. It just
+makes me sick t' think of all that gold, that ud 'a' made our
+everlastin' fortunes if we'd only been able t' pack it along with us.
+There was millions an' millions there, I s'pose--an' it 'll never do us
+any more good than if we'd never seen it at all!" and as Young spoke he
+heaved a very melancholy sigh. "But we may as well grab all we can get,"
+he went on, more cheerfully. "There was a lot o' gold boxes an' jugs in
+th' room where Mullins is; an' maybe there's somethin' that's worth
+havin' in all them little pots. Let's go back an' see, anyway. Rayburn's
+lookin' almost all right this mornin'; and Pablo's got his wits back
+now, an' can give him anything he wants."
+
+For my own part I did not desire, because of their money value, any of
+the articles which I had seen in the treasure-chamber; but I did very
+earnestly long to possess myself of that most curious arbalest, and I
+desired also to examine carefully--because of the discoveries of great
+archæological value which I hoped to make--the contents of the gold
+boxes and vases and earthen jars. Therefore, Rayburn having expressed
+his entire willingness that we should leave him, I assented readily to
+Young's proposition; whereupon Young lighted the lantern and we set off.
+
+As we entered again the treasure-chamber there was within me a strong
+feeling of awe. During our hurried passage through it, the imminent
+danger in which we were, and then the excitement of the scene in the
+oratory, and then the joyfulness of our finding a way of escape, had
+prevented me from realizing how wonderful was the deposit that this room
+contained; a deposit that certainly had lain there for not less than a
+thousand years, and that unquestionably was the most perfect surviving
+trace of the most intelligent and most interesting people that in
+prehistoric times dwelt upon this continent. Which strange reflections,
+now that my mind was free to entertain them and to dwell upon them,
+aroused within me a feeling of such reverent wonder that I hesitated for
+some moments before I could bring myself to disturb what thus through so
+long a sweep of ages had remained sacredly inviolate.
+
+But reverence, as he himself would have said, was not Young's strongest
+hold; in truth, I am persuaded that there was not an atom of it in his
+entire composition; and as I stood hesitating beside the statue of
+Chac-Mool he briskly called to me: "Come right along, Professor; there
+ain't nobody t' stop us now. We've got th' drop, you might say, on th'
+whole outfit, an' we can do just as we blame please. This looks like a
+badly kept drug store, don't it?" he went on, "with all these pots an'
+boxes an' little jars stuck round on th' shelves. Well, here goes t' see
+what's in 'em: not much o' nothin', I guess; but then it _might_ be
+di'monds, an' that just would be gay!"
+
+As Young spoke he thrust his hand into one of the earthen jars, and
+thereby set flying such a cloud of dust that for some seconds his
+violent sneezing prevented him from examining the small object that he
+had brought forth from the jar and held in his hand; and when he did
+examine this object an expression of intense disgust appeared upon his
+face, and he exclaimed, indignantly, "Why, it's nothin' but a fool
+arrow-head!"
+
+I could not but laugh at Young as I took the arrow-head from him. For my
+purposes, this beautifully carved piece of obsidian was far more
+precious than a diamond would have been; and I tried--quite
+unsuccessfully, however--to arouse his interest in this proof of the
+high degree of skill to which the prehistoric races of America had
+attained in the manipulation of an exceedingly hard yet delicate variety
+of stone; and I added that not less interesting was the proof thus
+afforded us of the great value which these same races attached to
+implements of war.
+
+"Oh, come off with your prehistoric races, Professor!" he growled. "A
+whole car-load o' rubbish like this wouldn't be worth a nickel t'
+anybody but a scientific crank like you. If this is th' sort o' stuff
+that that old king o' yours thought was worth hidin', I guess he must
+'a' been off his head. But that pot may 'a' got in by mistake. Before I
+get too much down on him I'll give him another show." With which words,
+but cautiously, that the dust might not be disturbed, he thrust his hand
+into another jar, and was mightily resentful upon finding that what he
+brought forth from it was only the head of a lance. However, the
+determination to give King Chaltzantzin a chance to prove his sanity,
+together with the hope that something of real value might be found, led
+him to continue his investigations, and he presently had examined all
+the jars ranged on two sides of the room; and his grumbling curses
+increased constantly in vigor as jar after jar yielded only arrow-heads,
+and lance-heads, and chisel-shaped pieces of obsidian, that I perceived
+must have been intended for the making of the cutting edges of the
+maccahuitl, or Aztec sword; but, for my part, all of these things filled
+me with the liveliest pleasure as I took them from Young and attentively
+examined them; for the delicate and perfect workmanship that they
+exhibited showed them to have been made by a people that had reached the
+highest development of the Stone Age.
+
+"This business is gettin' worse, instead o' better," Young said,
+gloomily, as he began his search on the third side of the room by
+opening one of the small gold boxes. "The stuff in here is nothin' but a
+mean sort o' wrappin'-paper with pictures on it--like that old map o'
+yours that got us started on this tomfoolin' treasure-hunt. I s'pose
+_you'll_ just have a fit over it!" And as I uttered an eager cry of
+delight, and bent over this casket that contained such inestimable
+riches, he gave a sniff of contempt, and added: "There, I thought so.
+You think more o' that rotten old stuff than you would o' gold dollars.
+Well, there's no accountin' for tastes, and it takes all sorts o' people
+t' make th' world." But I paid no attention to him as I rapidly glanced
+over these priceless manuscripts; and then had my cup of happiness
+filled absolutely to overflowing by the glad discovery that in every one
+of the gold boxes, of which there were nine in all, treasures of a like
+sort were stored. In the supplemental volume (in elephant folio) to my
+_Pre-Columbian Conditions on the Continent of North America_ these
+wonderful manuscripts are reproduced in fac-simile; and when that great
+work is published the surpassing value of my discovery will be at once
+recognized. It is sufficient to say here that these several codices
+together constituted a complete hieratic chronicle of the Aztec tribes;
+and that (herein lying the extraordinary value of the collection) the
+uncertain picture-writing was accompanied by a translation into the
+ideographic characters of later times, the meaning of which I was
+enabled, thanks to the instruction that my friend the guardian of the
+archives had given me, fully to understand. In short, my discovery
+precisely paralleled that of Boussard; for even as the Rosetta Stone
+gave the key to Egyptian hieroglyphics, so did this transliteration into
+intelligible characters make all Aztec picture-writing plain. As the
+full significance of my discovery burst upon me, my joy and the
+excitement of my splendid triumph so moved me that my hands trembled as
+I held these precious manuscripts, and I no longer could see clearly the
+painted characters because of the tears of happiness which filled my
+eyes.
+
+Young, however, whose longing was only for material treasure, continued
+his investigations in anything but a thankful mood. "There ain't no
+doubt of it _now_," he said presently in a most melancholy tone. "That
+old king o' yours must 'a' been just as crazy as a loon. Look here: this
+thing ain't even a fool arrow-head; it's nothin' but a bit o' green
+glass! I reckon it's part o' th' bottom of a porter-bottle. Nice sort o'
+stuff this is t' call treasure, an' t' take such an all-fired lot o'
+trouble t' hide away! Why, I should jedge that that king must 'a' spent
+most of his time settin' up nights a-puzzlin' over plans for makin' sure
+that he was th' very d----dest biggest fool that ever lived!--an' that's
+just what he was, for sure! It's tough, gettin' left this way; but it
+wouldn't begin t' be as tough as 't is if 't wasn't for all them
+car-loads an' car-loads o' gold right clost by us here that we might 'a'
+got away with as easy as rollin' off a log if we'd only ketched on to
+this back-door racket in time. An' see here, Professor," he went on in a
+very earnest tone, "I don't believe there's anybody in there now; why
+shouldn't we just chance things a little an' go back an' get some of it?
+We've got our guns; an' even if we do strike a crowd too big for us t'
+tackle, an' have t' run for it, we won't be no worse off 'an we are now.
+Come, let's try it on!"
+
+While Young spoke I had been looking closely at the object that so
+violently had excited his indignation, and instead of replying to him I
+asked, "Are there any more pieces of that porter-bottle in the jar?"
+
+"It's full of 'em," he answered with a contemptuous brevity.
+
+"And the next?"
+
+"That's full of 'em too. All th' jars on this side o' th' room are full
+of 'em," he added, as he rapidly thrust his hand into one after
+another--and so set the dust to flying that we both fell to sneezing as
+though we would sneeze our heads off. "Oh come along, Professor: what's
+th' use o' foolin' over this rubbish; let's go for th' stuff that's good
+for its weight in spot cash every time!"
+
+"Wait till we see what is in these gold vases over here," I answered,
+turning as I spoke to the side of the room that as yet we had not
+examined.
+
+"What's th' good?" he asked, sulkily. But he lifted down one of the
+vases, and with his thumb and finger brought forth from it a little
+round black ball. "Worse an' worse," he said, as he handed the ball to
+me. "We've got down t' what looks like lumps o' shoemaker's wax now.
+That's about th' sickest lookin' thing t' call itself treasure I ever
+did see!"
+
+It did not seem to me probable that the little ball was shoemaker's wax;
+but in order to settle this point experimentally I cut into it with my
+penknife. Under the gummy exterior I found a layer of cotton-wool, and
+enclosed in this a hard substance about the size of a hazel-nut. While I
+was making this examination, Young investigated into the contents of
+the remaining vases--which themselves were exceedingly interesting,
+being made of hammered gold and most curiously engraved.
+
+"They're no good," he said, "except I s'pose th' mugs must be worth
+somethin'. Shoemaker's wax in 'em all! It's worse 'an th'
+porter-bottles--for what's th' use o' shoemaker's wax t' folks who don't
+rightly know what a shoe is? Come along, I say, Professor, an' let's
+have a whack at them piles o' gold. If we don't tackle 'em we might just
+as well never have come on this treasure-hunt at all. Some o' the stuff
+in here's worth havin'--th' gold mugs an' boxes, an' that old gold
+bow-gun that you're so busted about--but what does th' whole of it
+amount to, anyway, when you come t' divide it up among four men an' a
+jackass? I guess even th' jackass ud turn up his nose at it if he knowed
+what a lot more there was that was t' be had just for grabbin' it an'
+packin' it along. It's somethin', I s'pose, that we've pulled through
+without losin' our hair; but we _have_ pulled through all right, an' now
+we want t' make this business pay; an' unless we go for that gold this
+business won't 'a' paid worth a cuss--an' instead o' comin' out on top
+we'll be left th' very worst kind!"
+
+As Young was delivered of this dismal remonstrance I handed him the
+small object that I had extracted from the pitch-coated ball. "Before
+you make up your mind that we are likely to be 'left,' as you term it,
+suppose you look at this," I said.
+
+He held out his hand carelessly; but as he saw what I had placed in it
+his expression suddenly changed, and he burst forth excitedly: "Great
+Scott! where did this come from? Why--why, Professor, it _looks_ like it
+was a pearl; but if 't truly is one it's about th' bustin'est biggest
+one that Godamighty ever made! Do you truly size it up for a pearl
+yourself?"
+
+"Most assuredly," I answered. "And it is a fair assumption, I think,
+that there is a pearl in each one of all these little pitch-covered
+balls. As to what you called bits of green glass, they are neither more
+nor less than extraordinarily fine emeralds; I should say that the
+smallest of them must be worth more dollars than you could carry at a
+single load. Of course, all the emeralds and pearls together are not
+worth a single one of these manuscripts"--here Young gave a sceptical
+grunt--"but in the way of vulgar material riches I am confident that the
+value of what is in these jars is greater than that of all the gold
+together that we saw in the Valley of Aztlan. Without a shadow of doubt,
+you and I at this moment are standing in the midst of the most enormous
+treasure that ever has been brought together since the world was made!"
+
+"Honest Injun, Professor?"
+
+"Certainly," I answered; "and if this is your notion of getting 'left'
+on a treasure-hunt," I continued, "it assuredly is not mine."
+
+"Left?" Young repeated after me, while his eyes ranged exultantly over
+the rows of jars in which this vast wealth was contained. "Well, I
+should smile! I take it all back about that old king bein' crazy. He was
+just as level-headed as George Washington an' Dan'l Webster rolled into
+one. These pots full of arrow-heads an' such stuff was only one of his
+little jokes, showin' that he must 'a' been a good-natured, comical old
+cuss, th' kind I always did like, anyway. Left? Not much we ain't left!
+We've just everlastin'ly got there with all four feet to onct!
+Professor, shake!"
+
+
+
+
+EPILOGUE.
+
+
+Throughout my whole life I have been saddened, as each well-defined
+section of it has come to an end, by the thought that during the period
+that has then slipped away from me forever I have wasted more
+opportunities than I have improved. As I write these final lines,
+therefore, I feel a sorrowful regret, which, in a way, is akin to the
+regret that weighed upon me when Young and I, having carried into the
+cave the contents of the treasure-chamber, removed the prop wherewith
+was upheld the swinging statue, and so suffered to fall into place again
+that ponderous mass of stone. From below, where we were, lifting it was
+impossible; and by heaping fragments of rock under the forward end of it
+we presently made it equally immovable from above. Thus for outlet or
+for inlet that way was irrevocable barred; and as I write now I know
+that I am not less irrevocable severing myself from one portion of my
+past. For, says the Persian poet, "A finished book is a sealed casket.
+To it nothing can be added. From it nothing can be taken away.
+Therefore should we pray to Allah that its contents may be good."
+
+The record that I am now ending was begun partly that I might find in
+the writing of it relief from the more serious work in which I have been
+engaged, and partly because I perceived that I could properly include in
+a personal narrative many matters which were too trivial or too entirely
+personal to be incorporated into my extended scientific treatise, but
+which, I was persuaded, were of a sufficient interest to be preserved.
+But I certainly should not have finished this history of our adventures
+nearly so expeditiously had not Rayburn and Young taken a very lively
+interest in it, and pressed me constantly to bring it to an end.
+
+"You see, Professor," said Young, "I don't want t' say anything against
+that big book you're writin'. I don't doubt that in its way it'll be a
+daisy; but you know yourself there won't be more'n about three cranks in
+th' whole o' God's universe who'll ever read more'n about ten lines of
+it; an' that's why I want you t' rush ahead with th' little book--that
+stands some chance o' bein' read outside o' lunatic asylums--so's
+folks'll know what a powerful queer time we've had. Don't be too cussed
+particular t' say just where that valley is--for, while it's not likely,
+we might want t' take a fightin' crowd along an' dynamite our way back
+there some day after more cash; but, exceptin' that, just give 'em th'
+cold facts. I reckon they'll make some folks open their eyes."
+
+From times to time, as my narrative has grown beneath my hand, I have
+read aloud to my fellow-adventurers what I have written, and have
+received from them suggestions in accordance with which it has been
+corrected or amended in its several parts; and it is but just to add, in
+this connection, that in every case where I have referred (as it seems
+to me now in words not nearly strong enough) to the loyalty to our
+common interests, and to the splendid bravery which Rayburn and Young
+constantly exhibited throughout that trying time, I have been compelled
+to exert the whole of my authority over them in order to win their
+grumbling permission that my words might stand. Even Pablo--for the love
+that there was between this boy and me was far too strong to permit me
+to leave him behind in Mexico, and we are like to live together as long
+as we live at all--has taken issue with me concerning what I have
+written of his steadfast faithfulness and courage; and this on the
+ground that he could not possibly be anything but faithful to those whom
+he loved, and that it is only natural for a man to fight for his own
+life, and for the lives of his friends. In thus applying the word
+_hombre_ to himself Pablo spoke a little doubtfully, as though he feared
+that I might question his right to it; yet did he roll it so relishingly
+under his tongue, and so well had he proved his manliness, that I
+suffered it to pass.
+
+In point of fact, the only member of our party who has accepted my just
+tribute of praise with entire equanimity has been El Sabio. It was
+Pablo's notion, of course, that El Sabio should hear what I had written
+about him. "Not the whole of it, you know, señor," the boy said,
+earnestly; "for some of what you have written--while I know that it is
+true, and therefore must be told--would hurt his tender heart. It was
+not his fault--the angel!--that he gave us so much trouble when we swung
+him across the cañon; and to tell him that there was even a thought of
+eating him, while we were in that dreadful valley where every one was
+dead, assuredly would turn him gray before his time. No; we will hide
+all such unpleasant parts of the book from him; but we will read to him
+what you have said concerning his beauty and his wisdom--and, surely,
+you might have said of those a great deal more; and also about his
+gallant fight with the priests, when, all alone, he slew so many of them
+with his heels. And it would have been fairer to El Sabio, señor," Pablo
+added, a little reproachfully, as we walked out together to the paddock
+in which the ass, grown to be very fat, was living a life of most royal
+ease, "had you told in the book how well he served us in bringing all
+the treasure, in many weary journeys, out through that dismal cave; and
+also how carefully he carried the Señor Rayburn down that steep
+mountain-side, and so to the little town beside the railway, and never
+hurt his wound."
+
+However, El Sabio did not seem to notice these omissions from my
+narrative, though he certainly did exhibit a most curious air of
+interest and understanding as I read to him those laudatory portions of
+it which Pablo desired that he should hear. According to Pablo's
+understanding of his language, he even thanked me for speaking well of
+him; for when the reading was ended he thrust his nose far forward, laid
+his long ears back upon his neck, planted his little legs firmly, and
+as he erected in triumph his scrag of a tail, he uttered a most
+thunderous bray. "And now, Wise One," Pablo said, tenderly, as he
+infolded the head of the ass in his arms and hugged it to his breast,
+"thou knowest that we not only love thee for thy goodness and thy
+wisdom, but that we also honor thee for thy noble deeds."
+
+Rayburn's fancy was mightily tickled by this performance in which El
+Sabio and Pablo and I had engaged--though Young evidently thought it but
+another proof of the addled state of my brains--when I told about it
+that evening as we all sat smoking comfortably in my library before the
+open fire. This was to be our last meeting for some time to come; for
+Rayburn was to start the next day for Idaho to look after some mining
+matters, and Young suddenly had decided that he would accompany him. In
+truth, Young was rather at a loss to know what to do with himself; for
+his plan for buying the Old Colony Railroad, in order to be in a
+position to discharge its superintendent, had been abandoned. "I'd like
+t' do it, of course," he said. "Bouncin' that chump th' same way that he
+bounced me would do me a lot o' good; but I've made up my mind it
+wouldn't be th' square thing t' do, considerin' that if he hadn't
+bounced me I'd still be foolin' round on top o' freight-cars, in all
+sorts o' weather, handlin' brakes. So I've let up on him, an' he can
+stay. What I want now is t' do some good with this all-fired big pile o'
+money that I've got. That's one reason why I'm goin' out with Rayburn t'
+Idaho. Right straight along from here t' Boisé City I mean t' set up
+drinks for every railroader I meet. That'll be doin' good, for sure."
+
+[Illustration: IN THE LIBRARY BEFORE THE OPEN FIRE]
+
+Rayburn and I laughed a little at this odd method for benefiting
+humanity that Young had got hold of; and then Rayburn's face grew grave
+as he said: "Well, we're doing a little good, I suppose, in putting that
+old church in Morelia in good shape. I'm glad you thought of that,
+Professor. I don't suppose that anything we could have done would have
+pleased the Padre more than to have that church, that he loved so much,
+made as handsome as money can make it all the way through."
+
+"Yes," Young added, "an' I guess th' Professor's head was level in
+havin' all th' new stuff that we've put in it made t' look like 't was
+about two hundred years old. I did kick at that at first, I'll allow.
+What I wanted t' do was t' build a first-class new church, with a
+rattlin' tall steeple, an' steam heat, an' electric lights, an' an organ
+big enough t' bust the roof off every time she was played. But th' Padre
+was as keen as th' Professor, a'most, for old-fashioned things; an' so I
+guess we've done that job just about as he'd 'a' done it himself. It
+makes me feel queer, though, puttin' up money on a Catholic church that
+way; an' when I was tellin' an old aunt o' mine, down t' Milton, about
+it, she just riz up an' rared. An' she didn't feel a bit better when I
+told her that if I thought it ud please th' Padre t' have me do it, I'd
+go smack off t' Rome an' shake hands with th' Pope. And I truly would do
+that very same thing," Young continued, earnestly, while his voice
+trembled a little, "for this side o' heaven I never expect t' meet
+anybody that's so near t' bein' a first-class angel as th' Padre was.
+An' when I think how he saved our mis'rable lives for us, as he surely
+did, by givin' away his own--that was worth more'n all of ours put
+together, an' ten times over--I don't care a continental what his
+religious politics was; an' I'll punch th' head of anybody who don't say
+that he was th' pluckiest an' th' best man that ever lived!"
+
+Pablo had caught the word Padre in Young's talk, and as the lad looked
+up from the corner in which he was sitting, I saw that his eyes were
+full of tears; Rayburn's eyes also had an odd glistening look about them
+as he turned away suddenly, and emptied the ashes from his pipe into the
+fire; and I know that I could not see very clearly just then, as very
+tender, yet very poignant memories surged suddenly into my heart.
+
+And when the others left me--as they did presently, for we could not
+fall again into commonplace talk--I bade Pablo be off to bed, and so sat
+there for a while alone. What I had planned to do that night was to
+revise an address that I was shortly to deliver before the Archæological
+Institute; but the pen that I had taken into my hand lay idle there,
+while my thoughts went backward through the channels of the past.
+
+In that still season of darkness I seemed to live again through all the
+time that Fray Antonio and I had been together--from the moment when I
+first caught sight of him, as he knelt before the crucifix in the
+sacristy, to my last sad look at the dead body whence his soul had sped
+back again to God.
+
+As my thoughts dwelt upon this most loving and most tender
+companionship, the like of which for perfectness I am confident was
+never known, and then upon the cruel violence that brought it to an end,
+so searching a pain went through my soul that I knew that either it must
+cease or I must die of it in a very little while. And then was borne in
+upon me the strong conviction--and so has it since been always, when
+thus my thoughts have been engaged--that because of my very love for
+Fray Antonio must I rejoice that he had died so savage a death;
+believing confidently that what he prayed for when first I found him in
+the Christian church of San Francisco was, in truth, that very crown of
+martyrdom that God granted to him when at last I lost him in the heathen
+city of Colhuacan. And with the pressing in upon me thus strangely of
+this strange thought, it seemed as though he himself said again to me,
+"I go to win the life, glorious and eternal, into which neither death
+nor sin nor sorrow evermore can come."
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Aztec Treasure-House, by
+Thomas Allibone Janvier
+
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+Project Gutenberg's The Aztec Treasure-House, by Thomas Allibone Janvier
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+Title: The Aztec Treasure-House
+
+Author: Thomas Allibone Janvier
+
+Release Date: May 26, 2007 [EBook #21618]
+Last Updated: September 16, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
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+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AZTEC TREASURE-HOUSE ***
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+
+
+
+
+
+<h1>THE AZTEC TREASURE-HOUSE</h1>
+
+<h2>By Thomas Allibone Janvier</h2>
+
+<h4>Copyright, 1890, by <span class="smcap">Harper &amp; Brothers</span>.</h4>
+
+<h4><i>All rights reserved.</i></h4>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h4>TO<br />
+C. A. J.</h4>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Departimiento y ha entre los enga&ntilde;os. Catales y ha que son buenos,
+e tales que malos, e buenos son aquellos que los omnes fazen a
+buena fe e a buena intencion.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Alonzo el Sabio</span>, Setena
+Partida, Titulo xvi., Ley ii.</p></div>
+
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="illus1" id="illus1"></a>
+<img src="images/illus1.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+
+<h3>The Dying Cacique.</h3>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+
+
+<h2>CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+
+
+<!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. -->
+<p>
+<a href="#PROLOGUE">PROLOGUE.</a><br />
+<a href="#I">I. FRAY ANTONIO</a><br />
+<a href="#II">II. THE CACIQUE'S SECRET</a><br />
+<a href="#III">III. THE MONK'S MANUSCRIPT</a><br />
+<a href="#IV">IV. MONTEZUMA'S MESSENGER</a><br />
+<a href="#V">V. THE ENGINEER AND THE LOST-FREIGHT MAN</a><br />
+<a href="#VI">VI. THE KING'S SYMBOL</a><br />
+<a href="#VII">VII. THE FIGHT IN THE CA&Ntilde;ON</a><br />
+<a href="#VIII">VIII. AFTER THE FIGHT</a><br />
+<a href="#IX">IX. THE CAVE OF THE DEAD</a><br />
+<a href="#X">X. THE SWINGING STATUE</a><br />
+<a href="#XI">XI. THE SUBMERGED CITY</a><br />
+<a href="#XII">XII. IN THE VALLEY OF DEATH</a><br />
+<a href="#XIII">XIII. UP THE CHAC-MOOL STAIR</a><br />
+<a href="#XIV">XIV. THE HANGING CHAIN</a><br />
+<a href="#XV">XV. THE TEMPLE IN THE CLOUDS</a><br />
+<a href="#XVI">XVI. AT THE BARRED PASS</a><br />
+<a href="#XVII">XVII. OF OUR COMING INTO THE VALLY OF AZTLAN</a><br />
+<a href="#XVIII">XVIII. THE STRIKING OF A MATCH</a><br />
+<a href="#XIX">XIX. THE SEEDS OF REVOLT</a><br />
+<a href="#XX">XX. THE PRIEST CAPTAIN'S SUMMONS</a><br />
+<a href="#XXI">XXI. THE WALLED CITY OF CULHUACON</a><br />
+<a href="#XXII">XXII. THE OUTBREAK OF REVOLUTION</a><br />
+<a href="#XXIII">XXIII. A RESCUE</a><br />
+<a href="#XXIV">XXIV. THE AFFAIR AT THE WATER-GATE</a><br />
+<a href="#XXV">XXV. THE GOLD-MINERS OF HUITZILAN</a><br />
+<a href="#XXVI">XXVI. THE GATHERING FOR WAR</a><br />
+<a href="#XXVII">XXVII. AN OFFER OF TERMS</a><br />
+<a href="#XXVIII">XXVIII. THE SURRENDER OF A LIFE</a><br />
+<a href="#XXIX">XXIX. THE ASSAULT IN THE NIGHT</a><br />
+<a href="#XXX">XXX. THE FALL OF THE CITADEL</a><br />
+<a href="#XXXI">XXXI. DEFEAT</a><br />
+<a href="#XXXII">XXXII. EL SABIO'S DEFIANCE</a><br />
+<a href="#XXXIII">XXXIII. IN THE AZTEC TREASURE-HOUSE</a><br />
+<a href="#XXXIV">XXXIV. A MARTYRDOM</a><br />
+<a href="#XXXV">XXXV. THE TREASURE-CHAMBER</a><br />
+<a href="#XXXVI">XXXVI. THE VENGEANCE OF THE GODS</a><br />
+<a href="#XXXVII">XXXVII. THROUGH DARKNESS TO LIGHT</a><br />
+<a href="#XXXVIII">XXXVIII. KING CHALTZANTZIN'S TREASURE</a><br />
+<a href="#EPILOGUE">EPILOGUE.</a><br />
+</p>
+<!-- End Autogenerated TOC. -->
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.</h2>
+
+
+<p><a href="#illus1">THE DYING CACIQUE</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#illus2">THE LETTER FROM THE DEAD</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#illus3">PACKING IN THE CORRAL</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#illus4">THE FIGHT IN THE CA&Ntilde;ON</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#illus5">THE CAVE OF THE DEAD</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#illus6">AFLOAT ON THE LAKE</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#illus7">EL SABIO'S PREDICAMENT</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#illus8">MAKING THE PEACE-SIGN</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#illus9">THE FULFILMENT OF THE PROPHECY</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#illus10">THE STRIKING OF A MATCH</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#illus11">CHECKING YOUNG'S OUTBREAK</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#illus12">THE LEAP FROM ABOVE THE WATER-GATE</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#illus13">THE TLAHUICOS AND THEIR GUARDS</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#illus14">IN THE GATE-WAY OF THE CITADEL</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#illus15">THE LAST RALLY</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#illus16">EL SABIO'S DEFIANCE</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#illus17">FRAY ANTONIO'S APPEAL</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#illus18">YOUNG'S STRUGGLE WITH THE PRIEST CAPTAIN</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#illus19">IN THE LIBRARY BEFORE THE OPEN FIRE</a></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>Who'd hear great marvels told&mdash;</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i6"><i>Come listen now!</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Who longs for hidden gold&mdash;</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i6"><i>Come listen now!</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Who joys in well-fought fights,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Who yearns for wondrous sights,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Who pants for strange delights&mdash;</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i6"><i>Come listen now!</i><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>For here are marvels told</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i6"><i>To listen to!</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Here tales of hidden gold</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i6"><i>To listen to!</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Here gallant men wage fights,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Here pass most wondrous sights,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Here's that which ear delights</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i6"><i>To listen to!</i><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE AZTEC TREASURE-HOUSE</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="PROLOGUE" id="PROLOGUE"></a>PROLOGUE.</h2>
+
+
+<p>"God sends nuts to them who have no teeth:" which ancient Spanish
+proverb of contrariety comes strongly to mind as I set myself to this
+writing.</p>
+
+<p>By nature am I a studious, book-loving man, having a strong liking for
+quiet and orderliness. Yet in me also is a strain that urges me, even
+along ways which are both rough and dangerous, to get beyond
+book-knowledge, and to examine for myself the abstractions of thought
+and the concretions of men and things out of the consideration whereof
+books are made. And I hold that it is because I have thus sought for
+truth in its original sources, instead of resting content with what
+passes for truth, being detached fragments of fact which other men have
+found and have cut and polished to suit themselves, that I have gathered
+to myself more of it, and in its rude yet perfect native crystals, than
+has come into the possession of any other modern investigator. In making
+which strong assertion I am not moved by idle vanity, but by a just and
+reasonable conception of the intrinsic merit of my own achievement: as
+will be universally admitted when I publish the great work, now almost
+ready for the press, upon which, in preparatory study and in convincing
+discovery, I have been for the past ten years engaged. For I speak well
+within bounds when I declare that a complete revolution in all existing
+conceptions of American arch&aelig;ology and ethnology will be wrought when
+<i>Pre-Columbian Conditions on the Continent of North America</i>, by
+Professor Thomas Palgrave, Ph.D. (Leipsic), is given to the world.</p>
+
+<p>Upon this work I say that I have been engaged for ten years. Rather
+should I say that I have been engaged upon it for forty years; for its
+germs were implanted in me when I was a child of but six years old.
+Before my intelligence at all could grasp the meaning of what I read, my
+imagination was fired by reading in the pages of Stephens of the wonders
+which that eminent explorer discovered in Yucatan; and my mind then was
+made up that I would follow in his footsteps, and in the end go far
+beyond him, until I should reveal the whole history of the marvellous
+race whose mighty works he found, but of whose genesis he could only
+feebly surmise. And this resolve of the child became the dominant
+purpose of the man. In my college life at Harvard, and in my university
+life at Leipsic, my studies were directed chiefly to this end.
+Especially did I devote myself to the acquisition of languages, and to
+gaining a sound knowledge of the principles of those departments of
+arch&aelig;ology and ethnology which related to the great work that I had in
+view. Later, during the ten years that I occupied (as I believe usefully
+and acceptably) the Chair of Topical Linguistics in the University of
+Michigan, all the time that I properly could take from my professorial
+duties was given exclusively to the study of the languages of the
+indigenous races of Mexico, and to what little was to be found in books
+concerning their social organization and mode of life, and to the broad
+subject of Mexican antiquities. By correspondence I became acquainted
+with the most eminent Mexican arch&aelig;ologists&mdash;the lamented Orozco y
+Berra, Icazbalceta, Chavero, and the philologists Pimentel and Pe&ntilde;afiel;
+and I had the honor to know personally the American arch&aelig;ologist
+Bandelier, the surpassing scientific value of whose researches among the
+primitive peoples of Mexico places his work above all praise. And by the
+study of the writings of these great scholars, and of all writings
+thereto cognate, my own knowledge steadily grew; until at last I felt
+myself strong enough to begin the investigations on my own account for
+which I had sought by all these years of patient preparation fittingly
+to pave the way.</p>
+
+<p>But inasmuch as my life until a short time since has been wholly that of
+a scholar, and wholly has been passed in quiet ways, I truly have had no
+teeth at all for the proper cracking of the nuts which have come to me
+in the course of the surprising adventures that I have now set myself to
+narrate. For in the course of these adventures (necessarily, yet sorely
+against my will) I have been thrust by force of circumstances into many
+imminent and prodigious perils; much time that I gladly would have
+devoted to peaceful, fruitful study I have been compelled to employ in
+rude and profitless (except that my life was saved by it) battling with
+savages; and&mdash;what most of all has pained me&mdash;many curious and
+interesting skulls that I gladly would have added entire to my
+collection of crania, I have been driven in self-defence to ruin
+irreparably with my own hands.</p>
+
+<p>All of which diversities of my likings and my happenings will appear in
+due order, as I tell in the following pages of the strange and wonderful
+things which befell me&mdash;in company with Rayburn and Young and Fray
+Antonio and the boy Pablo&mdash;in our search after and finding of the great
+treasure that was hidden, in a curiously secret place among the Mexican
+mountains more than a thousand years ago, by Chaltzantzin, the third of
+the Aztec kings.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="I" id="I"></a>I.</h2>
+
+<h3>FRAY ANTONIO.</h3>
+
+
+<p>My heart was light within me as I stood on the steamer's deck in the
+cool gray of an October morning and saw out across the dark green sea
+and the dusky, brownish stretch of coast country the snow-crowned peak
+of Orizaba glinting in the first rays of the rising sun. And presently,
+as the sun rose higher, all the tropic region of the coast and the brown
+walls of Vera Cruz and of its outpost fort of San Juan de Ulua were
+flooded with brilliant light&mdash;which sudden and glorious outburst of
+radiant splendor seemed to me to be charged with a bright promise of my
+own success.</p>
+
+<p>And still lighter was my heart, a week later, when I found myself
+established in the beautiful city of Morelia, and ready to begin
+actively the work for which I had been preparing myself&mdash;at first
+unconsciously, but for ten years past consciously and carefully&mdash;almost
+all my life long.</p>
+
+<p>Morelia, I had decided, was the best base for the operations that I was
+about to undertake. My main purpose was to search for the remnants of
+primitive civilization among the more isolated of the native Indian
+tribes; and out of the fragments thus found, pieced together with what
+more I could glean from the early ecclesiastical and civil records, to
+recreate, so far as this was possible, the fabric that was destroyed by
+the Spanish conquerors. Nowhere could my investigations be conducted to
+better advantage than in the State of Michoacan (of which State the city
+of Morelia is the capital) and in the adjacent State of Jalisco; for in
+this region tribes still exist which never have been reduced to more
+than nominal subjection, and which maintain to a great extent their
+primitive customs and their primitive faith, though curiously mingling
+with this latter many Christian observances. Indeed, the independence of
+the Indians of these parts is so notable that the proverb "Free as
+Jalisco" is current throughout Mexico. Moreover, Morelia is a city rich
+in ancient records. The archives of the Franciscan province, that has
+its centre here extend back to the year 1531; those of the Bishopric of
+Michoacan to the year 1538; and those of the Colegio de San Nicol&aacute;s to
+the year 1540; while in the recently founded Museo Michoacano already
+has been collected a rich store of arch&aelig;ological material. In a word,
+there was no place in all Mexico where my studies and my investigations
+could be pursued to such advantage as they could be pursued here.</p>
+
+<p>From a fellow-arch&aelig;ologist in the City of Mexico I brought a letter of
+introduction to the director of the Museo, the learned Dr. Nicol&aacute;s Leon;
+and so cordially was this letter worded, and so cordially was it
+received, that within the day of my coming into that strange city I
+found myself in the midst of friends. At once their hearts and their
+houses were opened to me, and they gave me with a warm enthusiasm the
+benefit of their knowledge and of their active assistance forwarding the
+work that I had in hand.</p>
+
+<p>In the quiet retirement of the Museo I opened to that one of its members
+to whom the director especially had commended me, Don Rafael Moreno, the
+purposes which I had in view, and the means by which I hoped to
+accomplish them. "Surely," I said, "among the free Indians in the
+mountains hereabouts much may be found&mdash;in customs, in tone of thought,
+in religion&mdash;that has remained unchanged since the time of the
+conquest."</p>
+
+<p>Don Rafael nodded. "Fray Antonio has said as much," he observed,
+thoughtfully.</p>
+
+<p>"And as your own distinguished countryman, Se&ntilde;or Orozco y Berra, has
+pointed out," I continued, "many dark places in primitive history may be
+made clear, many illusions may be dispelled, and many deeply
+interesting truths may be gathered by one who will go among these
+Indians, lending himself to their mode of life, and will note accurately
+what he thus learns from sources wholly original."</p>
+
+<p>"Fray Antonio has professed the same belief," Don Rafael answered. "But
+that his love is greater for the saving of heathen souls than for the
+advancement of antiquarian knowledge, he long ago would have done what
+you now propose to do. He has done much towards gathering a portion of
+the information that you seek, even as it is."</p>
+
+<p>"And who is this Fray Antonio, se&ntilde;or?"</p>
+
+<p>"He is the man who of all men can give you the wisest help in your
+present need. We see but little of him here at the Museo, though he is
+one of our most honored members, for his time is devoted so wholly to
+the godly work to which he has given himself that but little remains to
+him to use in other ways. He is a monk, vowed to the Rule of St.
+Francis. As you know, since the promulgation of the Laws of the Reform,
+monks are not permitted in our country to live in communities; but, with
+only a few exceptions, the conventual churches which have not been
+secularized still are administered by members of the religious orders to
+which they formerly belonged. Fray Antonio has the charge of the church
+of San Francisco&mdash;over by the market-place, you know&mdash;and virtually is a
+parish priest. He is a religious enthusiast. In God's service he gives
+himself no rest. The common people here, since his loving labors are
+among them while the pestilence of small-pox raged, reverently believe
+him to be a saint; and those of a higher class, who know what heroic
+work he did in that dreadful time, and who see how perfectly his life
+conforms to the principles which he professes, and how like is the
+spirit of holiness that animates him to that of the sainted men who
+founded the order to which he belongs, are disposed to hold a like
+opinion. Truly, it is by the especial grace of God that men like Fray
+Antonio are permitted at times to dwell upon this sinful earth."</p>
+
+<p>Don Rafael spoke with a depth of feeling and a reverence of tone that
+gave his strong words still greater strength and deeper meaning. After
+that moment's pause he resumed: "But that which is of most interest to
+you, se&ntilde;or, is the knowledge that Fray Antonio has gained of our native
+Indians during his ministrations among them. It is the dearest wish of
+his heart to carry to these heathen souls the saving grace of
+Christianity, and for the accomplishment of this good purpose he makes
+many journeys into the mountains; ministering in the chapels which his
+zeal has founded in the Indian towns, and striving earnestly by his
+preaching of God's word to bring these far-wandered sheep into the
+Christian fold. Very often his life has been in most imminent peril, for
+the idolatrous priests of the mountain tribes hate him with a most
+bitter hatred because of the inroads which his mild creed is making upon
+the cruel creed which they uphold. Yet is he careless of the danger to
+which he exposes himself; and there be those who believe, such is the
+temerity with which he manifests his zeal, that he rather seeks than
+shuns a martyr's crown."</p>
+
+<p>Again Don Rafael paused, and again was it evident that deep feelings
+moved him as he spoke of the holy life of this most holy man. "You will
+thus understand, se&ntilde;or," he went on, "that Fray Antonio of all men is
+best fitted by his knowledge of the ways of these mountain Indians to
+advise you touching your going among them and studying them. You cannot
+do better than confer with him at once. It is but a step to the church
+of San Francisco. Let us go."</p>
+
+<p>What Don Rafael had said had opened new horizons to me, and I was
+stirred by strange feelings as we passed out together from the shady
+silence of the Museo into the bright silence of the streets: for Morelia
+is a quiet city, wherein at all times is gentleness and rest. For
+priests in general, and for Mexican priests in particular, I had
+entertained always a profound contempt; but now, from an impartial
+source, I had heard of a Mexican priest whose life-springs seemed to be
+the soul-stirring impulses of the thirteenth century; who was devoted in
+soul and in body to the service of God and of his fellow-men; in whom,
+in a word, the seraphic spirit of St. Francis of Assisi seemed to live
+again. But by this way coming to such tangible evidence of the survival
+in the present time of forces which were born into the world six hundred
+years ago, my thoughts took a natural turn to my own especial interests;
+and, by perhaps not over-strong analogy, I reasoned that if this monk
+still lived so closely to the letter and to the spirit of the Rule that
+St. Francis, six centuries back, gave to his order, most reasonably
+might I hope to find still quick something of the life that was in full
+vigor in Mexico only a little more than half that many centuries ago.</p>
+
+<p>We turned off from the Calle Principal by the little old church of La
+Cruz, and passed onward across the market-place, where buying and
+selling went on languidly, and where a drowsy hum of talk made a
+rhythmic setting to a scene that seemed to my unaccustomed eyes less a
+bit of real life than a bit lifted bodily from an opera. Facing the
+market-place was the ancient church; and the change was a pleasant one,
+from the vivid sunlight and warmth of the streets to its cool, shadowy
+interior: where the only sign of life was a single old woman, her head
+muffled in her <i>rebozo</i>, praying her way along the Stations of the
+Cross. For more than two hundred and fifty years had prayer been made
+and praise been offered here; and as I thought of the many generations
+who here had ministered and worshipped&mdash;though evil hearts in plenty, no
+doubt, both within and without the chancel there had been&mdash;it seemed to
+me that some portion of the subtle essence of all the soul-longings for
+heavenly help and guidance that here had been breathed forth, by men and
+women truly struggling against the sinful forces at work in the world,
+had entered into the very fabric of that ancient church, and so had
+sanctified it.</p>
+
+<p>We crossed to the eastern end of the church, where was a low door-way,
+closed by a heavy wooden door that was studded with rough iron nails and
+ornamented with rudely finished iron-work; pushing which door open
+briskly, as one having the assured right of entry there, Don Rafael
+courteously stood aside and motioned to me to enter the sacristy.</p>
+
+<p>From the shadowy church I passed at a step into a small vaulted room
+brilliant with the sunlight that poured into it through a broad window
+that faced the south. Just where this flood of sunshine fell upon the
+flagged floor, rising from a base of stone steps built up in a pyramidal
+form, was a large cross of some dark wood, on which was the life-size
+figure of the crucified Christ; and there, on the bare stone pavement
+before this emblem of his faith, his face, on which the sunlight fell
+full, turned upward towards the holy image, and his arms raised in
+supplication, clad in his Franciscan habit, of which the hood had fallen
+back, knelt Fray Antonio; and upon his pale, holy face, that the rich
+sunlight glorified, was an expression so seraphic, so entranced, that it
+seemed as though to his fervent gaze the very gates of heaven must be
+open, and all the splendors and glories and majesties of paradise
+revealed.</p>
+
+<p>It is as I thus first saw Fray Antonio&mdash;verily a saint kneeling before
+the cross&mdash;that I strive to think of him always. Yet even when that
+other and darker, but surely more glorious, picture of him rises before
+my mind I am not disconsolate; for at such times the thought possesses
+me&mdash;coming to me clearly and vehemently, as though from a strongly
+impelled force without myself&mdash;that what he prayed for at the moment
+when I beheld him was that which God granted to him in the end.</p>
+
+<p>Some men being thus broken in upon while in the very act of communing
+with Heaven would have been distressed and ill at ease&mdash;as I assuredly
+was because I had so interrupted him. But to Fray Antonio, as I truly
+believe, communion with Heaven was so entirely a part of his daily life
+that our sudden entry in nowise ruffled him. After a moment, that he
+might recall his thoughts within himself and so to earth again, he arose
+from his knees, and with a grave, simple grace came forward to greet us.
+He was not more than eight-and-twenty years old, and he was slightly
+built and thin&mdash;not emaciated, but lean with the wholesome leanness of
+one who strove to keep his body in the careful order of a machine of
+which much work was required. His face still had in it the soft
+roundness and tenderness of youth, that accorded well with its
+expression of gracious sweetness; but there was a firmness about the
+fine, strong chin, and in the set of the delicate lips, that showed a
+reserve of masterful strength. And most of all did this strength shine
+forth from his eyes; which, truly, though at this first sight of him I
+did not perceive it fully, were the most wonderful eyes that ever I have
+seen. As I then beheld them I thought them black; but they really were a
+dark blue, and so were in keeping with his fair skin and hair. Yet that
+which gave them so strong an individuality was less their changing color
+than the marvellous way in which their expression changed with every
+change of feeling of the soul that animated them. When I first saw them,
+turned up towards heaven, they seemed to speak a heavenly language full
+of love; and when I saw them last, stern, but shining with the exultant
+light of joy triumphant, they fairly hurled the wrath of outraged Heaven
+against the conquered powers of hell. And I can give no adequate
+conception of the love that shone forth from them when pitying sympathy
+for human sorrow, or even for the pain which brute beasts suffered,
+touched that most tender heart for which they spoke in tones richer and
+fuller than the tones of words.</p>
+
+<p>Don Rafael, standing without the door that he had opened in order that I
+might precede him, did not perceive that we had interrupted Fray Antonio
+in his prayers; and began, therefore, in the lively manner natural to
+him, when I had been in due form presented as an American arch&aelig;ologist
+come to Mexico to pursue my studies of its primitive inhabitants, to
+commend the undertaking that I had in hand, and to ask of Fray Antonio
+the aid in prosecuting it that he so well could give.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps it was that Fray Antonio understood how wholly my heart already
+had gone out to him&mdash;assuredly, later, there was such close sympathy
+between us that our thoughts would go and come to each other without
+need for words&mdash;and so was disposed in some instinctive way to join his
+purposes with mine; but, be this as it may, before Don Rafael well could
+finish the explanation of my wishes, Fray Antonio had comprehended what
+I desired, and had promised to give me his aid.</p>
+
+<p>"The se&ntilde;or already has a book-knowledge of our native tongues. That is
+well. The speaking knowledge will come easily. He shall have the boy
+Pablo for his servant. A good boy is Pablo. With him he can talk in the
+Nahua dialect&mdash;which is the most important, for it is sprung most
+directly from the ancient stock. And I will arrange that the se&ntilde;or shall
+live for a time in the mountains&mdash;it will be a hard life, I fear&mdash;at
+Santa Mar&iacute;a and at San Andr&eacute;s, in which villages he can gain a
+mouth-mastery of both Otom&iacute; and Tarascan. A little time must be given to
+all this&mdash;some months, no doubt. But the se&ntilde;or, who already has studied
+through ten years, will understand the needfulness of this short
+discipline. To a true student study in itself is a delight&mdash;still more
+that study which makes the realization of a long-cherished purpose
+possible. The se&ntilde;or, I know, reads Spanish, since so perfectly he speaks
+it"&mdash;this with a gracious movement of the hands and a courteous
+inclination of the body that enhanced the value of the compliment&mdash;"but
+does the se&ntilde;or read with ease our ancient Spanish script?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have never attempted it," I answered. "But as I can read easily the
+old printed Spanish, I suppose," I added, a little airily, "that I shall
+have no great difficulty in reading the old script also."</p>
+
+<p>Fray Antonio smiled a little as he glanced at Don Rafael, who smiled
+also, and as he turned out his hands, answered: "Perhaps. But it is not
+quite the same as print, as the se&ntilde;or will know when he tries. But it
+makes no difference; for what is most interesting in our archives I
+shall be glad&mdash;and so also will be Don Rafael&mdash;to aid him in reading.</p>
+
+<p>"You must know, se&ntilde;or," he went on, dropping his formal mode of address
+as his interest in the subject augmented, and as his feeling towards me
+grew warmer, "that many precious documents are here preserved. So early
+as the year 1536 this western region was erected into a Custodia,
+distinct from the Province of the Santo Evangelio of Mexico; and from
+that time onward letters and reports relating to the work done by the
+missionaries of our order among the heathen have been here received. In
+truth, I doubt not that many historic treasures are hidden here. In
+modern times, during the last hundred years or more, but little thought
+has been given to the care of these old papers&mdash;which are so precious to
+such as Don Rafael and yourself because of their antiquarian value, and
+which are still more precious to me because they tell of the sowing
+among the heathen of the seed of God's own Word. It is probable that
+they have not been at all examined into since our learned brothers Pablo
+de Beaumont and Alonzo de la Rea were busy with the writing of their
+chronicles of this Province&mdash;and the labors of these brothers ended more
+than two hundred and fifty years ago. In the little time that I myself
+can give to such matters I already have found many manuscripts which
+cast new and curious light upon the strange people who dwelt here in
+Mexico before the Spaniards came. Some of these I will send for your
+examination, for they will prepare you for the work you have in
+contemplation by giving you useful knowledge of primitive modes of life
+and tones of faith and phases of thought. And while you are in the
+mountains, at Santa Mar&iacute;a and San Andr&eacute;s, I will make further searches
+in our archives, and what I find you shall see upon your return.</p>
+
+<p>"With your permission, se&ntilde;ores, I must now go about my work. Don Rafael
+knows that I am much too ready to forget my work in talk of ancient
+matters. It is a weakness with me&mdash;this love for the study of
+antiquity&mdash;that I struggle against, but that seems rather to increase
+upon me than to be overcome. This afternoon, se&ntilde;or, I will send a few of
+the ancient manuscripts to you. And so&mdash;until we meet again."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="II" id="II"></a>II.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE CACIQUE'S SECRET.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Fray Antonio punctually fulfilled his promise in regard to the
+manuscripts, and I had but to glance at them in order to understand the
+smile that he had interchanged with Don Rafael when I so airily had
+expressed my confidence in my ability to read them. To say that I more
+easily could read Hebrew is not to the purpose, for I can read Hebrew
+very well; but it is precisely to the purpose to say that I could not
+read them at all! What with the curious, involved formation of the
+several letters, the extraordinary abbreviations, the antique spelling,
+the strange forms of expression, and the use of obsolete words I could
+not make sense of so much as a single line. Yet when, being forced into
+inglorious surrender, I carried the manuscripts to the Museo, and
+appealed to Don Rafael for assistance, he read to me in fluent Spanish
+all that I had found so utterly incomprehensible. "It is only a knack,"
+he explained. "A little time and patience are required at first, but
+then all comes easily." But Don Rafael did here injustice to his own
+scholarship. More than a little time and patience have I since given to
+the study of ancient Spanish script, and I am even yet very far from
+being an expert in the reading of it.</p>
+
+<p>In regard to the other promise that Fray Antonio made me&mdash;that he would
+send me a servant who also would serve as a practical instructor in the
+Nahua, or Aztec, dialect&mdash;he was equally punctual. While I was taking,
+in my bedroom, my first breakfast of bread and coffee the morning
+following my visit to the church of San Francisco, I heard a faint sound
+of music; but whether it was loud music at a distance or very soft music
+near at hand I could not tell. Presently I perceived that the musician
+was feeling about among the notes for the sabre song from <i>La Grande
+Duchesse</i>&mdash;selections from which semi-obsolete opera, as I then
+remembered, had been played by the military band on the plaza the
+evening before. Gradually the playing grew more assured; until it ended
+in an accurate and spirited rendering of the air. With this triumph, the
+volume of the sound increased greatly; and from its tones I inferred
+that the instrument was a concertina, and that whoever played it was in
+the inner court-yard of the hotel. Suddenly, in the midst of the music,
+there sounded&mdash;and this sound unmistakably came from the hotel
+court-yard&mdash;the prodigious braying of an ass; and accompanying this came
+the soft sound of bare feet hurrying away down the passage from near my
+door.</p>
+
+<p>I opened the door and looked out, but the passage was empty. The gallery
+overlooked the court-yard, and stepping to the edge of the low stone
+railing, I beheld a sight that I never recall without a feeling of warm
+tenderness. Almost directly beneath me stood a small gray ass, a very
+delicately shaped and perfect little animal, with a coat of most
+extraordinary length and fuzziness, and with ears of a truly prodigious
+size. His head was raised, and his great ears were pricked forward in a
+fashion which indicated that he was most intently listening; and upon
+his face was an expression of such benevolent sweetness, joined to such
+thoughtfulness and meditative wisdom, that in my heart (which is very
+open to affection for his gentle kind) there sprung up in a moment a
+real love for him. Suddenly he lowered his head, and turned eagerly his
+regard towards the corner of the court-yard where descended the
+stair-way from the gallery on which I stood; and from this quarter came
+towards him a smiling, pleasant-faced Indian lad of eighteen or twenty
+years old, whose dress was a cotton shirt and cotton trousers, whose
+feet were bare, and on whose head was a battered hat of straw. And as
+the ass saw the boy, he strained at the cord that tethered him and gave
+another mighty bray.</p>
+
+<p>"Dost thou call me, Wise One?" said the boy, speaking in Spanish. "Truly
+this Se&ntilde;or Americano is a lazy se&ntilde;or, that he rises so late, and keeps
+us waiting for his coming so long. But patience, Wise One. The Padre
+says that he is a good gentleman, in whose service we shall be treated
+as though we were kings. No doubt I now can buy my rain-coat. And thou,
+Wise One&mdash;thou shalt have beans!"</p>
+
+<p>And being by this time come to the ass, the boy enfolded in his arms the
+creature's fuzzy head and gently stroked its preternaturally long ears.
+And the ass, for its part, responded to the caress by rubbing its head
+against the boy's breast and by most energetically twitching its scrag
+of a tail. Thus for a little time these friends manifested for each
+other their affection; and then the boy seated himself on the pavement
+beside the ass and drew forth from his pocket a large mouth-organ&mdash;on
+which he went to work with such a will that all the court-yard rang with
+the strains of Offenbach's music.</p>
+
+<p>It was plain from what he had said that this was the boy whom Fray
+Antonio had promised to send to me; and notwithstanding his
+uncomplimentary comments upon my laziness, I had taken already a strong
+liking to him. I waited until he had played through the sabre song
+again&mdash;to which, as it seemed to me, the ass listened with a slightly
+critical yet pleased attention&mdash;and then I hailed him.</p>
+
+<p>"The lazy Se&ntilde;or Americano is awake at last, Pablo," I called. "Come up
+hither, and we will talk about the buying of thy rain-coat, and about
+the buying of the Wise One's beans."</p>
+
+<p>The boy jumped up as though a spring had been let loose beneath him, and
+his shame and confusion were so great that I was sorry enough that I had
+made my little joke upon him.</p>
+
+<p>"It is all right, my child," I said, quickly, and with all the kindness
+that I could put into my tones. "Thou wert talking to the Wise One, not
+to me&mdash;and I have forgotten all that I heard. Thou art come from Fray
+Antonio?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, se&ntilde;or," he answered; and as he saw by my smiling that no harm had
+been done, he also smiled; and so honest and kindly was the lad's face
+that I liked him more and more.</p>
+
+<p>"Patience for yet a little longer, Wise One," he said, turning to the
+ass, who gravely wagged his ears in answer. And then the boy came up the
+stair to the gallery, and so we went to my room that I might have talk
+with him.</p>
+
+<p>It was not much that Pablo had to tell about himself. He was a
+Guadalajara lad, born in the Indian suburb of Mexicalcingo&mdash;as his
+musical taste might have told me had I known more of Mexico&mdash;who had
+drifted out into the world to seek his fortune. His capital was the
+ass&mdash;so wise an ass that he had named him El Sabio. "He knows each word
+that I speak to him, se&ntilde;or," said Pablo, earnestly. "And when he hears,
+even a long way off, the music that I make upon the little instrument,
+he knows that it is from me that the music comes, and calls to me. And he
+loves me, se&ntilde;or, as though he were my brother; and he knows that with
+the same tenderness I also love him. It was the good Padre who gave him
+to me. God rest and bless him always!" This pious wish, I inferred,
+related not to the ass but to Fray Antonio.</p>
+
+<p>"And how dost thou live, Pablo?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"By bringing water from the Spring of the Holy Children, se&ntilde;or. It is
+two leagues away, the Ojo de los Santos Ni&ntilde;os, and El Sabio and I make
+thither two journeys daily. We bring back each time four jars of water,
+which we sell here in the city&mdash;for it is very good, sweet water&mdash;at
+three <i>tlacos</i> the jar. You see, I make a great deal of money,
+se&ntilde;or&mdash;three <i>reales</i> a day! If it were not for one single thing, I
+should soon be rich."</p>
+
+<p>That riches could be acquired rapidly on a basis of about twenty-seven
+cents, in our currency, a day struck me as a novel notion. But I
+inquired, gravely: "And this one thing that hinders thee from getting
+rich, Pablo, what is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is that I eat so much, se&ntilde;or," Pablo answered, ruefully. "Truly it
+seems as though this belly of mine never could be filled. I try
+valiantly to eat little and so to save my money; but my belly cries out
+for more and yet more food&mdash;and so my money goes. Although I make so
+much, I can scarcely save a <i>medio</i> in a whole week, when what El Sabio
+must have and what I must have is paid for. And I am trying so hard to
+save just now, for before the next rainy season comes I want to own a
+rain-coat. But for a good one I must pay seven <i>reales</i>. The price is
+vast."</p>
+
+<p>"What is a rain-coat, Pablo?"</p>
+
+<p>"The se&ntilde;or does not know? That is strange. It is a coat woven of palm
+leaves, so that all over one it is as a thatch that the rain cannot come
+through. What I was saying just now to El Sabio&mdash;" Pablo stopped
+suddenly, and turned aside from me in a shamefaced way, as he
+remembered what he also had said to El Sabio about my laziness.</p>
+
+<p>"&mdash;Was that out of the wages I am to pay thee thou canst save enough
+money to buy thy coat with," I said, quickly, wishing to rid him of his
+confusion. And then we fell to talking of what these wages should be,
+and of how he was to help me to gain a speaking knowledge of his native
+tongue&mdash;for so far we had spoken Spanish together&mdash;and of what in
+general would be his duties as my servant. That El Sabio could be
+anything but a part of the contract seemed never to cross Pablo's mind;
+and so presently our terms were concluded, and I found myself occupying
+the responsible relation of master to a mouth-organ playing boy and an
+extraordinarily wise ass. It was arranged that both of these dependants
+of mine should accompany me in my expedition to the Indian villages; and
+to clinch our bargain I gave Pablo the seven <i>reales</i> wherewith to buy
+his rain-coat on the spot.</p>
+
+<p>I was a little surprised, two days later, when we started from Morelia
+on our journey into the mountains to the westward, to find that Pablo
+had not bought his much-desired garment; though, to be sure, as the
+rainy season still was a long way off, there was no need for it. He
+hesitated a little when I questioned him about it, and then, in a very
+apologetic tone, said: "Perhaps the se&ntilde;or will forgive me for doing so
+ill with his money. But indeed I could not help it. There is an old man,
+his name is Juan, se&ntilde;or, who has been very good to me many times. He has
+given me things to put into this wretchedly big belly of mine; and when
+I broke one of my jars he lent me the money to buy another with, and
+would take from me again only what the jar cost and no more. Just now
+this old man is sick&mdash;it is rheumatism, se&ntilde;or&mdash;and he has no money at
+all, and he and his wife have not much to eat, and I know what pain that
+is. And so&mdash;and so&mdash;Will the se&ntilde;or forgive me? I do not need the
+rain-coat now, the se&ntilde;or understands. And so I gave Juan the seven
+<i>reales</i>, which he will pay me when he gets well and works again; and
+should he die and not pay me&mdash;Does the se&ntilde;or know what I have been
+thinking? It is that rain-coats really are not very needful things,
+after all. Without them one gets wet, it is true; but then one soon gets
+dry again. But truly"&mdash;and there was a sudden catching in Pablo's throat
+that was very like a sob&mdash;"truly I did want one."</p>
+
+<p>When Pablo had told this little story I did not wonder at the esteem in
+which Fray Antonio held him, and from that time onward he had a very
+warm place in my heart. And I may say that but for his too great
+devotion to his mouth-organ&mdash;for that boy never could hear a new tune
+but that he needs must go at once to practising it upon his beloved
+"instrumentito" until he had mastered it&mdash;he was the best servant that
+man ever had. And within his gentle nature was a core of very gallant
+fearlessness. In the times of danger which we shared together later,
+excepting only Rayburn, not one of us stood face to face and foot to
+foot with death with a steadier or a calmer bravery; for in all his
+composition there did not seem to be one single fibre that could be made
+to thrill in unison with fear. Of his qualities as a servant I had a
+good trial during the two months that we were together in the
+mountains&mdash;in which time I got enough working knowledge of the Indian
+dialects to make effective the knowledge that I had gained from
+books&mdash;and I was amazed by the quickness that he manifested in
+apprehending and in supplying my wants and in understanding my ways.</p>
+
+<p>As to making any serious study of Indian customs&mdash;save only those of the
+most open and well-known sort&mdash;in this short time, I soon perceived that
+the case was quite hopeless. Coming from Fray Antonio, whose benevolent
+ministrations among them had won their friendship, the Indians treated
+me with a great respect and showed me every kindness. But I presently
+began to suspect, and this later grew to be conviction, that because my
+credentials came from a Christian priest I was thrust away all the more
+resolutely from knowledge of their inner life. What I then began to
+learn, and what I learned more fully later, convinced me that these
+Indians curiously veneered with Christian practices their native heathen
+faith; manifesting a certain superstitious reverence for the Christian
+rites and ceremonies, yet giving sincere worship only to their heathen
+gods. It was something to have arrived at this odd discovery, but it
+tended only to show me how difficult was the task that I had set myself
+of prying into the secrets of the Indians' inner life.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, but for an accident, I should have returned to Morelia no wiser,
+practically, than when I left it; but by that turn of chance fortune
+most wonderfully favored me, and with far-reaching consequences. It was
+on the last afternoon of my stay in the village of Santa Mar&iacute;a; and the
+beginning of my good-luck was that I succeeded in walking out upon the
+mountain-side alone. My walk had a decided purpose in it, for each time
+that I had tried to go in this direction one or another of the Indians
+had been quickly upon my heels with some civil excuse about the danger
+of falling among the rocks for leading me another way. How I thus
+succeeded at last in escaping from so many watchful eyes I cannot say,
+but luck was with me, and I went on undisturbed. The sharply sloping
+mountain-side, very wild and rugged, was strewn with great fragments of
+rock which had fallen from the heights above, and which, lying there for
+ages beneath the trees, had come to be moss-grown and half hidden by
+bushes and fallen leaves. In the dim light that filtered through the
+branches, walking in so uncertain a place was attended with a good deal
+of danger; for not only was there a likelihood of falls leading to
+broken legs, but broken necks also were an easy possibility by the
+chance of a slip upon the mossy edge of one or another of the many
+ledges, followed by a spin through the air ending suddenly upon the
+jagged rocks below. Indeed, so ticklish did I find my way that I began
+to think that the Indians had spoken no more than the simple truth in
+warning me against such dangers, and that I had better turn again while
+light remained to bring me back in safety; and just as I had reached
+this wise conclusion my feet slid suddenly from under me on the very
+edge of one of the ledges, and over I went into the depth below.</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately I fell not more than a dozen feet or so, and my fall was
+broken by a friendly bed of leaves and moss. When I got to my feet
+again, in a moment, I found myself in a narrow cleft in the rocks, and I
+was surprised to see that through this cleft ran a well-worn path. All
+thought of the danger that I had just escaped from so narrowly was
+banished form my mind instantly as I made this discovery; and full of
+the exciting hope that I was about to find something which the Indians
+most earnestly desired to conceal, I went rapidly and easily onward in
+the direction that I had been pressing towards with so much difficulty
+along the rocky mountain-side. The course of this sunken path, I soon
+perceived, was partly natural and partly artificial. It went on through
+clefts such as the one that I had fallen into, and through devious ways
+where the fragments of fallen rock, some of them great masses weighing
+many tons, had been piled upon each other in most natural confusion, so
+as to leave a narrow passage in their depths. And all this had been done
+in a long-past time, for the rocks were thickly coated with moss; and in
+one place, where a watercourse crossed the path, were smoothed by water
+in a way that only centuries could have accomplished. So cleverly was
+the concealment effected, the way so narrow and so irregular, that I
+verily believe an army might have scoured that mountain-side and never
+found the path at all, save by such accident as had brought me into it.</p>
+
+<p>For half a mile or more I went on in the waning light, my heart
+throbbing with the excitement of it all, and so came out at last upon a
+vast jutting promontory of rock that was thrust forth from the
+mountain's face eastwardly. Here was an open space of an acre or more,
+in the centre of which was a low, altar-like structure of stone. At the
+end of the narrow path, being still within its shelter, I stopped to
+make a careful survey of the ground before me; for I realized that in
+what I was doing Death stood close at my elbow, and that, unless I acted
+warily, he surely would have me in his grasp. Coming out of the shadows
+of the woods and the deeper shadows of the sunken path to this wide open
+space, where the light of the brilliant sunset was reflected strongly
+from masses of rosy clouds over all the eastern sky, I could see
+clearly. In the midst of the opening, not far from the edge of the
+stupendous precipice, where the bare rock dropped sheer down a thousand
+feet or more, was a huge bowlder that had been cut and squared with
+ineffective tools into the rude semblance of a mighty altar. The
+well-worn path along which I had come told the rest of the story. Here
+was the temple, having for its roof the great arch of heaven, in which
+the Indians, whom the gentle Fray Antonio believed to be such good
+Christians, truly worshipped their true gods; even as here their fathers
+had worshipped before them in the very dawning of the ancient past.</p>
+
+<p>A tremor of joy went through me as I realized what I had found. Here was
+positive proof of what I had strongly but not surely hoped for. The
+Aztec faith truly was still a living faith; and it followed almost
+certainly that, could I but penetrate the mystery with which it was
+hedged about so carefully by them still faithful to it, I would find
+all that I sought&mdash;of living customs, of coherent traditions&mdash;wherewith
+to exhibit clearly to the world of the nineteenth century the wonderful
+social and religious structure that the Spaniards of the sixteenth
+century had blotted out, but had not destroyed. What my
+fellow-arch&aelig;ologists had accomplished in Syria, in Egypt, in Greece, was
+nothing to what I could thus accomplish in Mexico. At the best, Smith,
+Rawlinson, Schliemann, had done no more than stir the dust above the
+surface of dead antiquity; but I was about to bring the past freshly and
+brightly into the very midst of the present, and to make antiquity once
+more alive!</p>
+
+<p>As I stood there in the dusk of the narrow pathway, while the joy that
+was in my heart swelled it almost to bursting, there came to my ears the
+low moaning of one in pain. The faint, uncertain sound seemed to come
+from the direction of the great stone altar. To discover myself in that
+place to any of the Indians, I knew would end my arch&aelig;ological ambition
+very summarily; yet was I moved by a natural desire to aid whoever thus
+was hurting and suffering. I stood irresolute a moment, and then, as the
+moaning came to me again, I went out boldly into the open space, and
+crossed it to where the altar was. As I rounded the great stone I saw a
+very grievous sight: an old man lying upon the bare rock, a great gash
+in his forehead from which the blood had flowed down over his face and
+breast, making him a most ghastly object to look upon; and there was
+about him a certain limpness that told of many broken bones. He turned
+his head at the sound of my footsteps, but it was plain that the blood
+flowing into his eyes had blinded him, and that he could not see me. He
+made a feeble motion to clear his eyes, but dropped his partly raised
+arm suddenly and with a moan of pain. I recognized him at a glance. He
+was the Cacique, the chief, and also, as I had shrewdly guessed, the
+priest of the village&mdash;the very last person whom I would have desired to
+meet in that place.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, thou art come to me at last, Benito!" he said, speaking in a low
+and broken voice. "I have been praying to our gods that they would send
+thee to me&mdash;for my death has come, and it is needful that the one secret
+still hidden from thee, my successor, should be told. I was on the
+altar's top, and thence I fell."</p>
+
+<p>I perceived in what the Cacique said that there was hope for me. He
+could not see me, and he evidently believed that I was the second chief
+of the village, Benito&mdash;an Indian who had talked much with me, and the
+tones of whose voice I knew well. Doubtless my clumsy attempt to
+simulate the Indian's speech would have been detected quickly under
+other circumstances, but the Cacique believed that no other man could
+have come to him in that place; and his whole body was wrung with
+torturing pains, and he was in the very article of death. And so it was,
+my prudence leading me to speak few and simple words, and my good-luck
+still standing by me, he never guessed whose hands in his last moments
+ministered to him.</p>
+
+<p>As I raised his head a little and rested it upon my knee, he spoke
+again, very feebly and brokenly: "On my breast is the bag of skin. In
+it is the Priest-Captain's token, and the paper that shows the way to
+where the stronghold of our race remains. Only with me abides this
+secret, for I am of the ancient house, as thou art also, whence sprung
+of old our priests and kings. Only when the sign that I have told thee
+of&mdash;but telling thee not its meaning&mdash;comes from heaven, is the token to
+be sent, and with it the call for aid. Once, as thou knowest, that sign
+came, and the messenger, our own ancestor, departed. But there was anger
+then against us among the gods, and they suffered not his message to be
+delivered, and he himself was slain. Yet was the token preserved to
+us, and yet again the sign from heaven will come. And then&mdash;thou
+knowest&mdash;" But here a shiver of pain went through him, and his speech
+gave place to agonizing moans. When he spoke again his words were but a
+whisper. "Lay me&mdash;in front of&mdash;the altar," he said. "Now is the end."</p>
+
+<p>"But the sign? What is it? And where is the stronghold?" I cried
+eagerly; forgetting in the intense excitement of this strange disclosure
+my need for reticence, and forgetting even to disguise my voice. But my
+imprudence cost me nothing. Even as I spoke another shiver went through
+the Cacique's body; and as there came from his lips, thereafter forever
+to be silent, a sound, half moan, half gasp, his soul went out from him,
+and he was at rest.</p>
+
+<p>When a little calmness had returned to me, I took from his breast the
+bag of skin&mdash;stained darkly where his blood had flowed upon it&mdash;and then
+tenderly and reverently lifted his poor mangled body and laid it before
+the altar. And so I came back along the hidden path, safely and
+unperceived, to the village: leaving the dead Cacique there in the
+solemn solitude of that great mountain-top, whereon the dusk of night
+was gathering, alone in death before the altar of his gods.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="III" id="III"></a>III.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE MONK'S MANUSCRIPT.</h3>
+
+
+<p>When Pablo and I started, the day following, upon our return to Morelia,
+the village of Santa Mar&iacute;a was overcast with mourning. The Cacique was
+dead, they told us; had fallen among the rocks on the mountain-side,
+being an old man and feeble, and so was killed. And I was expressly
+charged with a message to the good Padre, begging him to hasten to Santa
+Mar&iacute;a that the dead man might have Christian burial. I confess that I
+found this request, though I promised faithfully to comply with it,
+highly amusing; for I knew beyond the possibility of a doubt that if
+ever a man died a most earnest and devout heathen it was this same
+Cacique for whom Christian burial was sought; and I felt an assured
+conviction that when the services of the Church over him were ended&mdash;and
+whatever good was to be had for him from them secured&mdash;he would be
+buried fittingly with all the fulness of his own heathen rites. But this
+matter, lying in what I already perceived to be the very wide region
+between the avowed faith and the hidden faith of the Indians, was no
+concern of mine; yet I longed, as only a thoroughly earnest
+arch&aelig;ologist could long, to be a witness of the funeral ceremony in
+which Fray Antonio most conspicuously would not take part. As this was
+hopelessly impossible&mdash;for only by very slow advances, if ever, could I
+reach again by considerate investigation the point that in a moment I
+had reached by chance&mdash;I came away from Santa Mar&iacute;a reluctantly, yet
+greatly elated by the discovery that I had made.</p>
+
+<p>So jealous was I in guarding the strange legacy that the Cacique had
+bequeathed to me that not until I was safe back in Morelia, in my room
+at the hotel, with the door locked behind me, did I venture to examine
+it. The bag, about six inches square, tightly sewed on all four of its
+sides, was made of snake-skin, and was provided with a loop of
+snake-skin so that it might be hung from the neck upon the breast like a
+scapulary. My hands trembled as I cut the delicate stitching of maguey
+fibre, and then drew forth a mass of several thicknesses of coarse
+gray-brown paper, also made of the maguey, such as the ancient Aztecs
+used. Being unfolded, I had before me a sheet nearly two feet square, on
+which was painted in dull colors a curious winding procession of figures
+and symbols. My knowledge of such matters being then but scant, I could
+tell only that this was a record, at once historical and geographical,
+of a tribal migration; and I saw at a glance that it was unlike either
+of the famous picture-writings which record the migration of the Aztecs
+from Culhuacan to the Valley of Mexico, and then about that valley until
+their final settlement in Tenochtitlan. I was reasonably confident,
+indeed, that this record differed from all existing codices; and I was
+filled with what I hope will be looked upon as a pardonable pride at
+having discovered, within three months of my coming to Mexico, this
+unique and inestimable treasure.</p>
+
+<p>My natural desire was to carry my precious codex at once to Don Rafael,
+that I might have the benefit of his superior knowledge in studying it
+(for he had continued very intelligently the investigation of Aztec
+picture-writing that was so well begun by the late Se&ntilde;or Ramirez), and
+also that I might enjoy his sympathetic enjoyment of my discovery. As I
+raised the bag, that I might replace in it the refolded paper&mdash;which I
+already saw heralded to the world as the Codex Palgravius, and
+reproduced in fac-simile in <i>Pre-Columbian Conditions on the Continent
+of North America</i>&mdash;some glittering object dropped out of it and fell
+with a jingling sound upon the stone floor. When I examined eagerly this
+fresh treasure I found that it was a disk of gold, about the size and
+thickness of a Mexican silver dollar, on which a curious figure was
+rudely engraved. The engraving obviously represented an Aztec
+name-device, the like of which, in the ancient picture-writings,
+distinguish one from another the several generations of a line of kings.
+This name-device was strange to me; but, as I have said, I had not at
+that time studied carefully the Aztec picture-writings, and there were
+many names of kings which I would not then have recognized. But that the
+gold disk was the token concerning the meaning of which the dying
+Cacique had given so strange a hint, I felt assured.</p>
+
+<p>Being still further gladdened by this fresh discovery, I carried my
+treasures at once to the Museo; and Don Rafael's enthusiasm over them
+was as hearty as I could desire. Being so deeply learned in such
+matters, he was able in the course of a single afternoon to arrive at
+much of the meaning of my codex; and his rendering of it showed that it
+possessed a very extraordinary historical value. In the Codex Boturini,
+as is well known, are several important lapses that neither that eminent
+scholar, nor any other arch&aelig;ologist whose conclusions can be considered
+trustworthy, has been able to supply. All that reasonably can be
+imagined concerning these breaks is that the historian of the Aztec
+migration deliberately omitted certain facts from his pictured history.
+The astonishing discovery that Don Rafael made in regard to my codex was
+that it unquestionably supplied the facts concealed in one of the
+longest of these unaccountable blanks. This was not a mere guess on his
+part, but a demonstrable certainty. On a fac-simile of the Codex
+Boturini he bade me observe attentively the pictures which preceded and
+which followed the break in question; and then he showed me that these
+same pictures were the beginning and the ending of my own
+codex&mdash;obviously put there so that this secret record might be inserted
+accurately into the public record of the wanderings of the Aztec tribe.</p>
+
+<p>Further, the geographical facts set forth in the Codex Boturini having
+been very solidly established, it was easy to determine approximately
+the part of Mexico to which the beginning and the end of my codex
+referred. But the migration here recorded was a very long one, and all
+that Don Rafael could say with certainty concerning it was that it told
+of far journeyings into the west and north. He was much puzzled,
+moreover, by a picture that occurred about the middle of the codex, and
+that seemed to be intended to represent a walled city among mountains.
+To my mind this picture tallied well with what the dying Cacique had
+told me touching the hidden stronghold of his race. But Don Rafael
+attached very little importance to the Cacique's words; and on
+arch&aelig;ological grounds maintained that a walled city was an impossibility
+in primitive Mexico&mdash;for while walls were built in plenty by the
+primitive Mexicans, and still are to be found in many places, no mention
+of a walled city is made by the early chroniclers, and of such a city
+there never has been found the slightest trace.</p>
+
+<p>In regard to the engraved disk of gold, Don Rafael said at once and
+positively that it represented a name-device which never had been
+figured in any known Aztec writing; and he was of the opinion&mdash;being led
+thereto by consideration of certain delicate peculiarities of the figure
+which were too subtle for my uninstructed apprehension to grasp&mdash;that
+the name here symbolized was that of a ruler who was both priest and
+king. That the piece of gold was found associated with picture-writing
+unquestionably belonging to the theocratic period lent additional color
+to this assumption. The sum of our conclusions, therefore, was that we
+had here the name-device of a priest-king who had ruled the Aztec tribe
+during some portion of the first migration. And, assuming that he had
+lived during the period to which my codex referred, and accepting the
+system of dates tentatively adopted by Se&ntilde;or Ramirez, we even fixed the
+ninth century of our era as the period in which he had lived and ruled.</p>
+
+<p>During two whole days Don Rafael and I worked together over these
+matters in the Museo; and it was not until our investigations were
+ended&mdash;so far, at least, as investigations could be said to be ended
+while yet no definite conclusions were reached&mdash;that my thoughts
+reverted to Fray Antonio, and to the requirement of courtesy that I
+should report to him the result of my course of study in the Indian
+tongues. It is but justice to myself to add that, knowing him to be gone
+to Santa Mar&iacute;a to attend to the Cacique's burial, I had temporarily
+dismissed this matter from my mind.</p>
+
+<p>But when I was come to the Church of San Francisco&mdash;carrying with me the
+Codex Palgravius and the engraved disk of gold, in both of which I knew
+that he would take a keen interest&mdash;I had no immediate opportunity of
+exhibiting to him my treasures.</p>
+
+<p>As I pushed open the sacristy door, when I had knocked upon it and he
+had called me to enter, he came towards me at once in excitement so
+eager that his face was all lit up by it; and almost before I could
+greet him he exclaimed: "You are most happily come, my friend. At this
+very moment I was about to send for you; for I have found that which
+will stir your heart even as it has stirred mine. Yet perhaps," and he
+spoke more gravely, "it will not stir your heart in the same way that
+mine is stirred by it&mdash;for if I can but find the key that will unlock
+the whole of the mystery that here partly is revealed, I see before me
+such opportunity to garner the Lord's vintage as comes but seldom to His
+servants in these later ages of the world."</p>
+
+<p>So strange was Fray Antonio's manner, and so wayward seemed his speech,
+that I was half inclined to think his religious enthusiasm fairly had
+landed him in religious madness; which thought must have found utterance
+in my look of doubtfulness, for he smiled kindly at me, and in a quieter
+tone went on:</p>
+
+<p>"My wits still are with me, Don Tomas; though I do not wonder at your
+thinking that I have lost them. Sit down here and listen to the story of
+my discovery; and when it is ended you will perceive that I very well
+may be excited by it and still be sane."</p>
+
+<p>Being assured by this calmer speech that Fray Antonio had not taken
+leave of his senses, I made a weak disclaimer, that he smilingly
+accepted, of my too clearly expressed doubts in that direction; and so
+seated myself to listen.</p>
+
+<p>"You know, se&ntilde;or," he began, "that common report has declared that
+beneath this Church of San Francisco is a secret passage that extends
+under the city and has its exit in the outlying meadow-lands. I may
+confide in you frankly that this passage does exist, and that I, in
+common with all members of my Order who have dwelt here, know precisely
+where its entrance is and where its outlet. These matters need not be
+exposed, for they are not essential to my purpose. But you must know
+that in the midst of this passage I found on the day preceding your
+return from the mountains a little room of which the door was so well
+concealed that my finding it was the merest accident. And in the room,
+with other things which need not here be named, I found a chest in which
+are certain ancient papers of which I have been long in search. In the
+archives are frequent references to these papers&mdash;they are of much
+importance to our Order&mdash;but as with all my search I never could
+discover them, I had decided in my mind that in one or another of the
+troublous periods that our Church has passed through they had been
+destroyed. It is plain to me now that in one of these periods of danger
+they were hidden in this safe place.</p>
+
+<p>"Some of these papers, dealing with mere matters of history, you will
+have pleasure in examining in due time. But that which I shall show you
+now, and which has so excited me that you not unnaturally thought that I
+had gone mad over it, has got among the rest, as I verily believe, by
+simple accident. Among the books and papers in the chest was a parchment
+case on which was written 'Mission of Santa Marta,' and the date '1531.'
+Within it were some loose sheets of paper on which were records of
+Indian baptisms, as is evident by the strange mixing of Christian and of
+heathen names. Plainly, this was the register of some mission station of
+our Order in that far-back time. But as I pried into the case more
+closely, I found, within a double fold of the parchment&mdash;yet not as
+though intentionally hidden, but rather as though there placed for
+temporary safety&mdash;a sealed letter directed to the blessed Fray Juan de
+Zum&aacute;rraga, who was of our Order, and who, as you know, was the first
+bishop of our holy Church in this New Spain. As I drew forth the
+letter, the seal, that time had loosened, fell away and left it open in
+my hand. That this letter never until now has been read I am altogether
+confident, for the prodigy of which it tells would have made so great a
+stir that ample record of it would have been preserved. Nor is it
+difficult to account for the way in which it missed coming to the eye
+for which it was intended. In that early time many and many of our
+Order, going out to preach God's Word among the barbarians, came happily
+to that end which is the happiest end attainable in God's service: a
+blessed martyrdom." Fray Antonio's voice trembled with deep feeling as
+he spoke, and I remembered that Don Rafael had told me that this good
+brother, it was believed, himself longed for a death so glorious. "And
+being thus slain," Fray Antonio in a moment continued, "the mission
+stations which they had established were left desolate, with what they
+held&mdash;save such few things as might be cared for by the savage
+murderers&mdash;remaining there within them. In later times, as the
+conquering Spaniards overspread the land, many of these stations were
+found, with nothing to tell save nameless bones of those who had died
+there that God's will might be done.</p>
+
+<p>"It is my conjecture, therefore, that this parchment case was found&mdash;how
+many years after the death of him who owned it, who can tell?&mdash;in one of
+the many stations that the savages thus ravaged; that the soldiers, or
+whoever may have found it, brought it hither, the nearest important
+abiding-place of our Order; and that, being carelessly examined, it was
+carelessly thrown aside when found to contain, apparently, only the
+little record of the work which our dead brother accomplished before God
+granted him his crown of earthly martyrdom and so made quick his way to
+heaven. Had the letter ever reached that 'first hand' for which the
+writer says he waits to send it by, it assuredly would have come to the
+knowledge of the gold-loving Spanish conquerors, and armies would have
+gone forth to answer it. But our dead brother, having written it and
+placed it in this fold of the parchment for safety until the chance to
+send it southward should come, was cut off from life suddenly; and so,
+of the prodigious marvel of which knowledge had so strangely come to
+him, only this mute and hidden record remained."</p>
+
+<p>"But the letter itself?" I asked, with more energy than politeness.
+"What <i>is</i> the story that it contains? What is this mystery? Tell me of
+it first, and then explain as much as you please afterwards."</p>
+
+<p>Fray Antonio smiled at me kindly. "Ah, you too are becoming excited," he
+said. "But, truly, it is not fair that I should thus have kept you
+waiting. Indeed, I am so full of it all that I forgot that as yet you
+know nothing. Come out with me into the court-yard, where the light is
+stronger&mdash;for the writing is very faint and pale&mdash;and I will read you
+this letter in which so wonderful a story is set forth."</p>
+
+<p>Together we passed out through a little door in the rear of the sacristy
+into what had been the inner and smaller cloister court-yard of the old
+convent&mdash;a lovely place in which a fountain set in a quaint stone basin
+sparkled, and where warm sunshine fell upon the rippling water and upon
+beds of sweet-smelling flowers. And here it was, standing among the
+flowers in the sunshine, beside the quaint fountain, that Fray Antonio
+read to me the letter&mdash;that in this strange fashion had come to us from
+a hand dead for much more than three centuries, and that yet brought to
+us two a vital message that wholly was to shape our destinies.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV.</h2>
+
+<h3>MONTEZUMA'S MESSENGER.</h3>
+
+
+<p>The letter was without date, but, being addressed to the Bishop
+Zum&aacute;rraga, the phrase that occurred in it&mdash;"this New Spain, wherein,
+Very Reverend Father, you have labored in God's service this year and
+more past"&mdash;showed that 1530 was the year in which it was written. As to
+place, there practically was no clew at all. The writer referred
+repeatedly to "this mission of Santa Marta, in the Chichimeca
+country"&mdash;but the mission had perished utterly but a little while after
+it was founded; and at that period the term Chichimeca country was used
+by the Spaniards in speaking of any part of Mexico where wild Indians
+were.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="illus2" id="illus2"></a>
+<img src="images/illus2.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>THE LETTER FROM THE DEAD.</h3>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Being shorn of a portion of its pious verbiage, and somewhat modernized
+in style, the ancient Spanish of this letter contained in effect these
+English words:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">"Very Reverend Father</span>,&mdash;This present letter will be sent
+forward to you by the first hand by which it may be hence
+transmitted; and in your wisdom, with God's grace also guiding you,
+I doubt not that you will take measures for sending missionaries of
+our Order to the great company of the heathen whose whereabouts I am
+to disclose to you. And also, no doubt&mdash;keeping the matter secret
+from the pestilent Oidores of the Audiencia&mdash;you will communicate
+this strange matter through safe channels to our lord the King: that
+with our missionaries an army may go forth, and that so the great
+treasure of which I give tidings may be wrested from the heathen to
+be used for God's glory and the enriching of our lord the King.</p>
+
+<p>"Know, Very Reverend Father, that a month since, I being then
+abroad from this mission of Santa Marta, preaching God's word in a
+certain village of the Chichimecas that is five leagues to the
+northward, was so strengthened by God's grace that many of the
+heathen professed our holy faith and were baptized. And of these
+was one who among that tribe was held a captive. Which captive, as
+I found, was of the nation that dwelt in Tenochtitlan before our
+great captain, Don Fernando Cort&eacute;s, reduced that city to
+submission. But little of earthly life remained to this poor
+captive when I, unworthily but happily, opened to him the way to
+life glorious and eternal; for in the fight that happened when he
+was captured&mdash;of which fight he alone of all his companions had
+survived&mdash;he was sorely wounded; and though in time his wounds had
+healed he remained but a weakly man, and the service to which his
+captors forced him was hard. So it was that I had but little more
+than time to put him in the way leading to heaven before his spirit
+gladly forsook its weary body and went thence from earth.</p>
+
+<p>"That he truly was a convert to our holy faith I am well assured,
+by the signs of a spirit meet for repentance which he showed in his
+own person; and still more by his strong longing, most earnestly
+expressed, that this same glorious faith of freedom should be
+preached to a certain great company of his people, whereof he most
+secretly told me, who still remain bound in the bondage of
+idolatry. And it is what he told me of these, Very Reverend Father,
+and of the marvellous hidden city wherein they dwell, and of the
+mighty treasure which there they guard, that I desire now to bring
+to your private knowledge, before it shall be known of by the
+Oidores, and through you to our lord the King. Here now is the
+whole of the mystery that he recited:</p>
+
+<p>"In very ancient times, he said, his people came forth from seven
+caves which are in the western region of this continent, and
+wandered long in search of an abiding-place. And in the course of
+ages it came to pass that a certain wise king ruled over them to
+whom was given the gift of prophecy. Which king, by name
+Chaltzantzin, foretold that in the later ages there should come an
+army of fair and bearded men from the eastward, who would prevail
+over the people of his race: slaying many, and making of the
+remainder slaves. Being sorely troubled by thought of what he thus
+foresaw, he set himself to provide a source of strength whereon his
+descendants in that later time might draw in the hour of their
+peril&mdash;and so save themselves from cruel death and from yet crueler
+slavery. To which end, in a certain great valley that lies securely
+hidden among the mountains of this continent, he caused to be built
+a walled city; and this city he then peopled with the very bravest
+and strongest of his race. And he made for those dwelling there a
+perpetual law that commanded that all such as showed themselves
+when come to maturity to be weak or malformed in body, or coward of
+heart, then should be put to death; to the end that their natural
+increase ever should be of the same stout stuff as themselves, and
+also that there might be no lack of victims for the sacrifices
+which are acceptable to their barbarous gods. And thus he provided
+that in the time of need there should be here a strong army of
+valiant warriors, ready to come forth to fight against the
+fair-faced bearded men, and by conquering them to save safe the
+land.</p>
+
+<p>"And yet more provision did King Chaltzantzin make for the
+strengthening and the saving of his race in the later ages. Within
+this walled city of Culhuacan he caused to be builded a great
+treasure-house, wherein he garnered such store of riches as never
+was gathered together in one place since the beginning of the
+world. And his order was that if even the power of the army which
+should go forth from that city sufficed not to conquer the foreign
+foemen, then should this vast treasure be used to buy his people's
+ransom, that they might not perish nor be enslaved.</p>
+
+<p>"Having set all which great matters in order, King Chaltzantzin
+came forth from the Valley of Aztlan, leaving behind him the noble
+colony that he had there founded; and so with his people wandered
+vagrant&mdash;even as their gods had commanded that they should go until
+by a sign from heaven they should be shown where was to be their
+lasting home. And that the fulfilling of his purpose might be made
+the more sure, he brought his people forth from that valley by most
+perilous passes and through strait ways so that they might not
+return thither; and that they who remained might not follow, he
+closed the way behind him with mighty bars.</p>
+
+<p>"In the fulness of time this wise king died, and others reigned in
+his stead; and at last the ages of wandering of the Aztec tribe
+were ended by the sign coming from heaven whereby they knew that
+the Valley of Anahuac was to be their abiding home. There built
+they the city of Tenochtitlan: which city the valiant captain, Don
+Fernando Cort&eacute;s, conquered this short time since&mdash;and by conquest
+of it verified precisely the prophecy that King Chaltzantzin
+uttered in very ancient times.</p>
+
+<p>"But the captive Indian told me, further, that before the coming of
+the Spaniards there was seen the sign of warning that King
+Chaltzantzin had promised should tell when the danger that he had
+so well prepared for should be near; which sign was the going out
+of the sacred fire that the priests guarded on a certain high hill.
+Meantime, all knowledge of their brethren hidden in the Valley of
+Aztlan for their help in time of peril was lost to the Aztec tribe
+in dim tradition; for the King had commanded, in order that his
+people might not fall into weakness through trusting in the
+strength of others for protection, that no open record of the
+colony that he had founded should be preserved. Therefore was this
+matter a secret known only to a few priests whose blood was of the
+royal line; in whose keeping, also, was the token that King
+Chaltzantzin had commanded should be sent to the walled city of
+Culhuacan when its warriors were to be called forth, and a map
+whereby the way thither was made plain. And so it was that,
+when the sacred fire ceased burning, the priests were alert
+for the threatened danger; and when the landing of the
+Spaniards&mdash;'fair-faced and bearded men, coming from the
+eastward'&mdash;was known to them, they warned their king, Montezuma,
+that the prophecy was fulfilled, and that the time for sending for
+the army and the treasure had come.</p>
+
+<p>"For the bearer of this message was chosen a priest of the blood
+royal, with whom went also a younger priest, his son. And with
+these went a guard, whereof the captive Indian was one, that they
+might be carried in safety through the region where the wild
+Indians were. But the valor of the guard was useless, for the wild
+Indians set upon them in such prodigious numbers&mdash;in a place not
+far from where is this present mission of Santa Marta&mdash;that all of
+the company, save only this single Indian who was wounded and made
+captive, was overpowered and slain. Yet among the slain, the Indian
+said, was not found the body of the priest's son; nor was there
+found on the priest's body the token that he had been the bearer
+of, nor the map that showed the way. For a time the Indian had
+hoped that the younger priest had escaped out of the fight alive,
+and had carried to them who dwelt in the walled city of Culhuacan
+the message of summons; but as the years went onward and nothing
+came of it, this hope had died within his heart.</p>
+
+<p>"This, Very Reverend Father, is the strange story told me by this
+Indian; who spoke with the urgent sincerity of one devout in the
+Christian faith who knew by sensible perception that his death was
+near at hand. Eagerly he begged that to these Gentiles, his
+brethren by blood, might be sent in their secret fastnesses the
+blessed Word whereby they would be delivered from the chains of
+their idolatry into the freedom of Christian grace. And, surely,
+the treasure that they ward very well may be wrested from these
+heathen that it may be used in part in this land in God's service,
+and that in part it may go to the just enriching of our lord the
+King.</p>
+
+<p>"Nor is the matter one that is difficult of accomplishment. For a
+token which shall give us the right of entry into this walled city
+of Culhuacan we need only the Word of God and a sufficient force of
+men well armed with swords and matchlocks. Nor is it any bar to our
+quest that the map showing the way thither has been lost. The
+Indian told me that this way is so plainly marked that one who had
+found it could not lose it again. For at spaces of not more than a
+league or two apart, upon flat places of the rock convenient for
+such purpose, was cut the same figure that the token of summons had
+engraved upon it; and, with this, an arrow pointing towards where
+the next carving would be found: and so these signs went onward,
+the heathen priest had told him, even to the very entrance of the
+Valley of Aztlan. And that this matter might be made sure to me, he
+led me to a spot but a league to the westward of this mission of
+Santa Marta and there showed me one of these signs, with the
+pointing arrow carved also on the rock beside it&mdash;of all of which
+the drawing here made is an indifferent good copy. And by that
+guiding arrow we went onward to another like carving at a little
+less than two leagues away to the northward. Therefore, Very
+Reverend Father, I, of my own knowledge, am a witness to a part, at
+least, of the truth of what that Indian told. And with all my heart
+do I add mine own entreaty to his simple pleadings for the
+salvation of the souls of his brethren; and also do I venture to
+entreat that among those who go to carry the Word of God to this
+hidden heathen host I may be one; so that I, though all unworthy of
+such honor, shall have a part in rendering to God so glorious a
+service.</p>
+
+<p>"The more urgently do I ask this favor because here, in this
+mission of Santa Marta, it is but too clear to me that I am
+laboring in a barren field. Some hundreds of the heathen I have
+indeed baptized; but among all these who have professed our
+Christian faith scarce a score show outward and visible signs of a
+true regeneration. Many, I am sadly sure, still practise in secret
+their old idolatry&mdash;and find little more than mere amusement in the
+rites of our most holy Church. When they tire of this novelty,
+which, in the case of folk of such light natures no doubt will be
+in a little while, they will return openly to their idolatry; and
+it probably may happen that they then will sacrifice me to their
+heathen gods. That, in one way or another, they do intend to kill
+me, and that soon, I feel quite sure. I am but twenty-three years
+old, Very Reverend Father; and that is an early time in life to end
+it. No doubt, also, in killing me they will use torture. And I long
+fervently to live, not only for the pleasure of it, but also that I
+may do good service to God, and to our Father Saint Francis, by
+saving many heathen souls. Therefore I beg that when the army
+marches to the reduction of this hidden city that I may be one of
+our brethren who will go with it, to hold by tender preaching of
+God's goodness and mercy such heathen as may remain alive after our
+soldiers shall have conquered that city with the sword.</p>
+
+<p>"I commend you, Very Reverend Father, to the care of Our Lord in
+all things, and pray that he may guard your most illustrious and
+very reverend person, and protect you in all matters of your
+temporal and spiritual estate. And I am the least worthy of your
+servants,</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Francisco de los Angeles</span>."</p></div>
+
+<p>"Of a truth," said Fray Antonio, as he ceased reading, "this brother of
+mine adhered closely to the truth when he subscribed himself the least
+worthy of the bishop's servants. Were it not here in his own hand, I
+should refuse to believe that one of our Order at that time in New Spain
+had any thought of saving his own life when God's work was to be done."</p>
+
+<p>For myself, I must own that my heart was deeply touched by the very
+humanity of this poor Brother Francisco's cry for help that came up out
+of the dead depths of the past; and that was the more keen and pitiful
+because the cruel death at the hands of the barbarous Indians that he so
+dreaded assuredly had overtaken him. His could not have been a strong
+nature, and it was the weaker because of his youth; but, after all, it
+was the nature that God had given him, and there must have been a strain
+of strength in it, else he never would have braved the dangers which
+overcame him in the end. And he was "but twenty-three years old"!</p>
+
+<p>Yet when I sought to lead Fray Antonio's mind to such consideration of
+the matter he replied, sternly: "This weak brother failed in his duty.
+To him God gave an opportunity to die gloriously for the Faith; but,
+instead of accepting that noble reward joyfully, his strongest wish was
+that he might find a way by which he might escape alive. Had all
+professors of the Christian creed so conducted themselves, that creed
+long since would have perished from off the earth. <i>Semen est sanguis
+Christianorum</i> is well said of Tertullian the Carthaginian, and, later,
+of the blessed Saint Jerome."</p>
+
+<p>As Fray Antonio thus spoke he so drew up his slight figure, and in his
+sweet voice was a ring of such commanding sternness, that he was for the
+moment transformed. Here was a man wholly different from the gentle
+scholar whom I had already learned to love. In the glimpse that I thus
+had of his underlying character I saw vivified again the spirit of the
+early Christian Church; and I understood, as I never had understood
+before, of what stuff they were made who heard pronounced upon them the
+sentence, "To the lions!" and joyfully accepted their cruel fate,
+defiant of what man might do to them because of the perfection of their
+faith in the merciful forgiveness and upholding steadfastness of their
+Christian God.</p>
+
+<p>But in a moment a look of sadness and regret came into Fray Antonio's
+face, and he added, sorrowfully: "God forgive me for thus judging my
+brother, who long since was judged! Who can say that when the hour of
+trial came he did not meet his death as bravely as any martyr of them
+all? And who can say," he went on, but speaking softly, as one communing
+with his own soul, "how I myself&mdash;But God gives strength." And then he
+ceased to speak aloud, but his lips moved silently as though in prayer.
+As I close my eyes I see him again as clearly as I saw him
+then&mdash;standing beside the old stone fountain, amid the flowers, in the
+gladness of the bright sunshine; in his eyes a strange, far-away look,
+as though the future for a moment had been opened to him; and on his
+strong, fine face a sternly resolute expression, which yet was softened
+by the traits which were so strong within him of holiness and gentleness
+and love. I cannot know what Fray Antonio prayed for, there in the old
+convent garden; but I can guess, and I am well persuaded that his prayer
+was heard. Truly, I think that it was something more than chance that
+led us thus at first to talk, not of the wonder that was in Brother
+Francisco's letter, but of Brother Francisco himself and of his end.</p>
+
+<p>And then the subject-matter in chief of the letter claimed our
+attention. In itself this was sufficiently marvellous; but what
+increased the marvel of it was the conviction, strong within us both,
+that if the hidden city of Culhuacan ever had existed at all it existed
+still. Our belief was so entirely logical that, assuming the truth of
+the story told by the Indian captive, it admitted nowhere of a doubt.
+That the city had been hidden for a long period, through at least
+several hundreds of years, from the Aztecs themselves, and that no
+knowledge of it had been conveyed to them by wild Indians who had come
+by chance upon the valley wherein it was, was evidence enough of the
+security of its concealment. There was nothing surprising, consequently,
+in the fact that the Spaniards had not discovered it when they first
+overran Mexico, nor that it had remained unknown to the Mexicans of
+modern times. As is well known, there are to this day prodigious areas
+in Mexico which remain utterly unexplored. In the region west of
+Tampico; in the north-western States of Sinaloa, Durango, and Sonora; or
+in the far southern States of Oajaca and Chiapas, a valley as great as
+that in which the City of Mexico now stands might lie utterly hidden and
+unknown. And if, as the Indian's narrative implied, this particular
+valley had been selected deliberately because it was so hidden and so
+inaccessible, and if the described precautions had been taken to isolate
+its inhabitants, it very well might have continued to be lost in its
+deep concealment through an almost infinite range of years. That it
+never had been found since the Spaniards came into Mexico we were
+absolutely certain, for the outcry over so great a wonder would have
+echoed throughout the whole of the civilized world. Finally, in the name
+of the city, Culhuacan, we had a substantial fact which connected the
+extraordinary story that had come to us so strangely with matters within
+our own knowledge. For this name not only is given in the Aztec
+traditions as that of the sacred spot in which their god Huitzilopochtli
+spoke to them, but survives until this present day in the name of the
+village that lies at the foot of the sacred mountain, in the Valley of
+Mexico, called by the Aztecs the Hill of Huitzachtla, and by the
+Spaniards the Hill of the Star&mdash;on which, at the end of each cycle of
+fifty-two years, the sacred fire was renewed. Surely it was no accident
+that had caused the name Culhuacan to be given to this village on this
+sacred spot; rather must it have been so named by the elect few to whom
+the secret was known as a perpetual reminder to them of the reserve of
+men and treasure upon which they could draw should danger threaten their
+country and their gods.</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt," said Fray Antonio, "what is here told of a secret record,
+known only to the priests, supplies one of the lapses in the pictured
+history of the Aztec migration; but as we know not which break in the
+history is thus filled in, we have no clew whatever as to the
+whereabouts of this hidden place. Nor have we any clew as to the
+whereabouts of the mission of Santa Marta, whence we might go onward,
+guided by the carvings upon the rocks, until we found at last the place
+we sought. The mission of Santa Marta, where my brother Francisco long
+ago ministered, might have been anywhere in all Mexico; and being so
+small a mission, and enduring for so short a period, it is not likely
+that any record of it anywhere has been preserved. Had we but the map
+and the token of which my brother writes, our way would be clear;
+without these guides it well may be a toilsome way and long. Yet do I
+know," Fray Antonio continued, earnestly, "that I shall find this hidden
+city. In my soul is a strong and glad conviction that God has called me
+to the most glorious work of carrying to the heathen dwelling there the
+message of His saving love. He has worked one miracle already to call me
+to this duty; in His own good time and way I doubt not that He will work
+another miracle by which I may be set in the way of its accomplishment."</p>
+
+<p>As Fray Antonio spoke of the map of the Aztec migration, a hope came
+into my heart that, as I considered it, seemed surely to be a certainty.
+In the excitement of listening to this strange letter&mdash;concerning which
+not the least strange matter was, that between the writing and the
+reading of it had passed three hundred and fifty years&mdash;I had forgotten
+my own discoveries, and that my purpose was to show him the pictured
+paper and the curious piece of gold. But as he spoke of the migration
+this matter was called to my mind suddenly; and then in an instant the
+conviction thrilled through me that the clew which would lead us to the
+hidden city was in my possession.</p>
+
+<p>"God already has worked that other miracle," I cried, joyfully. "Here is
+the token, and here is the map that shows the way!" and, so speaking, I
+opened the snake-skin bag that I had taken from the breast of the dead
+Cacique and drew forth its precious contents.</p>
+
+<p>For myself, I needed no additional proof that here was all that was
+needful to guide us to the hidden city. Yet was I glad that in so grave
+a matter we should have added to absolute conviction the weight of
+absolute proof. And this we had most clearly; for Fray Antonio, cooler
+than I, compared the drawing in the letter with the engraving upon the
+piece of gold, and found the two to be essentially identical, save that
+the engraving lacked the sign of the arrow pointing the way.</p>
+
+<p>"And now," I cried, enthusiastically, "for such discoveries in
+arch&aelig;ology as the world has never known!"</p>
+
+<p>"And now," said Fray Antonio, speaking slowly and reverently, "for such
+glorious work in God's service as has been granted but rarely to man to
+do!"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="V" id="V"></a>V.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE ENGINEER AND THE LOST-FREIGHT MAN.</h3>
+
+
+<p>That the weight of a strange destiny was pressing upon us, neither Fray
+Antonio nor I for a moment doubted. It was something more than chance,
+we believed, that had brought us together, and that thereafter, by such
+extraordinary means, had put into our hands, in places far asunder, yet
+at almost precisely the same moment, these two ancient papers; either of
+which, alone, would have been meaningless; but the two of which,
+together, pointed clearly the way to a discovery so wonderful that the
+like of it was not to be found in all the history of the world.</p>
+
+<p>At the moment that I comprehended how great an adventure was before me,
+and what honorable fame I was like to get out of it, I determined that I
+would keep the whole matter secret from my fellow-arch&aelig;ologists until I
+could tell them, not what I intended doing, but what I actually had
+done&mdash;for I had no desire to divide with any one the honors that fairly
+would be mine when I published to the world the result of my
+investigation of this hidden community that had survived,
+uncontaminated, from prehistoric times. Having this strong desire within
+me, it was with great pleasure that I acceded to Fray Antonio's request
+that our project of discovery should not be published abroad. His motive
+for secrecy, as I presently perceived, was bred of the one single strain
+of human weakness that ever I found in him. Even as I was determined
+that no other arch&aelig;ologist should share with me the honor of discovering
+this primitive community, so was Fray Antonio determined that to him
+alone should belong the glory of carrying into that region of dense
+heathen darkness the radiant splendor of the Christian faith. If this
+were sin on his part, it certainly was a sin that he shared with many
+saints long since in Paradise. Even the blessed Saint Francis himself,
+when, at the Council of Mats, he portioned out among his followers the
+heathen world that they might preach everywhere Christianity, reserved
+for himself Syria and Egypt; in the hope that in one or the other of
+those countries he might crown his labors by suffering a glorious
+martyrdom. And perhaps in this matter Fray Antonio was not unmindful of
+the example set him by the great founder of the Order to which he
+belonged.</p>
+
+<p>But while we were thus firmly decided to keep to ourselves the honors
+that so great an arch&aelig;ological discovery and so great a Christian
+conquest must bring to us severally, we perceived that it would not be
+the part of prudence to essay our adventure without any companions at
+all. Some portion of the country through which we were to pass we knew
+to be frequented by very dangerous tribes of Indians, against the
+assaults of which two lonely men&mdash;neither of whom had any knowledge
+whatever of the art of war&mdash;could make but a poor stand. And even should
+we escape the wild Indians, we knew that we might get into many evil
+straits in which our lives might be ended, yet through which a larger
+company might pass in safety. And for my own part, I must confess that I
+had a strong desire to have with me some of my own countrymen. For the
+gallantry of the Mexicans, which gallantry has been proved a thousand
+times, I have the highest respect; yet is it a natural feeling among
+Anglo-Saxons that when it comes to facing dangers in which death looms
+largely, and especially when it comes to a few men against a company of
+savages, and standing back to back and fighting to the very last,
+Anglo-Saxon hearts are found to be the stanchest, and Anglo-Saxon backs
+to be the stoutest which can be thus ranged together. But in our own
+case I did not at all see whence such an Anglo-Saxon contingent was to
+be obtained.</p>
+
+<p>We had been talking over this matter of a fighting force one afternoon
+in Fray Antonio's sacristy&mdash;where our many colloquies were held, for we
+moved with a thoughtful deliberation in setting agoing our
+adventure&mdash;and we had come almost to the determination of organizing a
+little force of Otom&iacute; Indians, and calling upon two brave young
+gentlemen of Fray Antonio's acquaintance to join us as lieutenants.
+Although I was willing to adopt this plan, since no other was open to
+us, I was far from fancying it; both for the reason which I have already
+named, and also for the reason&mdash;and this Fray Antonio admitted was not
+without foundation in probability&mdash;that our young allies would be more
+than likely, by their indiscreet disclosures, to make our purpose fully
+known. Therefore, it was in no very pleasant frame of mind, our
+conference being ended, that I returned to my hotel.</p>
+
+<p>As I entered the hotel court-yard I heard the sound of Pablo's
+mouth-organ, and with this much laughter and some talk in English; and
+as I fairly caught sight of the merrymakers, I heard said, in most
+execrable Spanish, "Here's a <i>medio</i> for another tune, my boy; and if
+you'll make the donkey dance again to it, I'll give you a <i>real</i>."</p>
+
+<p>That I might see what was going forward without interrupting it, I
+stepped behind one of the stone pillars that upheld the gallery; and for
+all that my mind was in no mood for laughter just then, I could not but
+fall to laughing at what I saw.</p>
+
+<p>Over on the far side of the court-yard, with Pablo and El Sabio, were
+two men whose type was so unmistakable that I should have known them for
+Americans had I met them in the moon. One was a tall, wiry fellow, with
+a vast reach of arm, and a depth of chest and width of shoulders which
+allowed what powerful engines those long arms of his were when he set
+them in motion. His face was nearly covered by a heavy black beard, and
+his projecting forehead and his resolute black eyes under it gave him a
+look of great energy and force. The other was short and thick-set, with
+a big round head stockily upheld on a thick neck, and with a
+good-humored face, which, being clean-shaven, was chiefly notable for
+the breadth and the squareness of the jaws. He had merry blue eyes, and
+his crown&mdash;he was holding his battered Derby hat in his hand&mdash;was as
+bare as a billiard ball. Below timber-line, as he himself expressed it,
+he had a brush of close-cut sandy-red hair. I had encountered both of
+these men when I first came to Morelia, and during two or three weeks I
+had seen a good deal of them, for we had met daily at our meals; and the
+more that I had seen of them the better was I disposed to like them. The
+tall man was Rayburn, a civil engineer in charge of construction on the
+advanced line of the new railway; the other was Young, the lost-freight
+agent of the railroad company&mdash;whose duty, for which his keen quickness
+peculiarly well fitted him, was that of looking up freight which had
+gone astray in transit. Both of those men had lived long in rough and
+dangerous regions, and both&mdash;as I then instinctively believed, and as I
+came later to know fully&mdash;were as true and as stanch and as brave as
+ever men could be.</p>
+
+<p>What they were laughing at, there in the court-yard, was an
+extraordinary performance in which the performers were Pablo and El
+Sabio. With a grin all over the parts of his face not engaged in the
+operation of his mouth-organ, Pablo was rendering on that instrument a
+highly Mexicanized version of one of the airs from <i>Pinafore</i> that he
+had just acquired from hearing Young whistle it. To this music, with a
+most pained yet determined expression, the Wise One was lifting his feet
+and swaying his body and nodding his head in a sort of accompaniment,
+his movements being directed by the waving of Pablo's disengaged hand.
+The long ears of this unfortunate little donkey wagged in remonstrance
+against the unreasonable motions demanded of his unlucky legs, and every
+now and then he would twitch viciously his fuzzy scrap of a tail; but
+his master was inexorable, and it was not until Pablo's own desire to
+laugh became so strong that he no longer could play the mouth-organ that
+El Sabio was given rest. As he ended his dancing I must say that there
+was on El Sabio's face as fine an expression of contempt as the face of
+a donkey ever wore.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello, Professor!" Young called out, as he caught sight of me, "have
+you given up antiquities an' gone into th' circus business? This outfit
+that you've got here will make your fortune when you get it back into
+th' States. If you don't want to run it yourself, I'll run it for you
+on th' shares; an' I guess Rayburn'll be glad t' go along as clown. He'd
+make a good clown, Rayburn would. You see, we're both of us out of work,
+an' both lookin' for a job."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean by being out of work?" I asked, when I had shaken
+hands with them. "What's become of the railroad?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, th' railroad's got into one of its periodical bust-ups," Young
+answered. "A row among the bondholders, an' construction stopped, an'
+working expenses reduced, an' pretty much all hands bounced, from th'
+president down. I guess Rayburn an' I can stand th' racket, though, if
+th' company can. I've been wantin' t' get out of this d&mdash;&mdash;d Greaser
+country for a good while, an' I guess now I've got my chance. I must
+say, though, I wish it had come a little less sudden, for I haven't
+anything in particular in sight over in God's country, an' Rayburn
+hasn't either. So if you want to start your circus we're ready for you
+right away. Where did you get that boy-an'-donkey outfit from, anyway?
+They're just daisies, both of 'em an' no mistake!"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know that you can count on me for a clown, Professor," Rayburn
+said, "but I might go along as door-keeper, or something of that sort.
+But I don't believe that Young and I will need to go into the circus
+business. We are out of work, that's a fact; but the company has done
+the square thing by us&mdash;paid us up in full to the end of next month and
+fitted us out with passes to St. Louis. We're all right. Young is
+heading straight for home, but I rather think that I'll take a turn
+around the country and see what the civilized parts of it look like.
+Ever since I came down here, nearly, I've been at work in the wilds. I
+want to see some of the old temples and things too. You can put me up to
+that, Professor. Where's a good ruin to begin on?"</p>
+
+<p>From the moment that I laid eyes on these two men, as I came into the
+court-yard, my mind was made up that I would do my best to induce them
+to join with Fray Antonio and me in our search for the hidden city; and
+I had listened very gladly to what they told me, for it showed me that I
+should not have to ask them to abandon profitable work in order to join
+in our doubtful enterprise. So we talked lightly about the circus and
+other indifferent matters for a while; and then we had a lively supper
+together at La Soledad (which always seemed to me a very original name
+for a restaurant), and then I brought them to my room to smoke their
+cigars.</p>
+
+<p>It was while they were in the comfortable frame of mind that is begotten
+of a good meal and subsequent good tobacco&mdash;over there in Morelia we
+smoked the Tepic cigars, which are excellent&mdash;that I opened to them the
+great project that I had in hand. I told them frankly the whole story:
+of my strange adventure in the Indian village, of the paper and the gold
+token which the Cacique unwittingly had given me, of the letter that
+Fray Antonio had found, and of how our joint discoveries set us clearly
+in the way of finding an Aztec community that certainly had existed
+unchanged, save for such changes as had been developed within itself,
+since a time long anterior to the Spanish conquest of Mexico. I dwelt
+with enthusiasm, and I think forcibly, upon the inestimable gain to the
+science of arch&aelig;ology that would result from the investigations that we
+intended to make; and I touched also upon the scientific value that
+would attach to a careful and accurate description of the effect
+produced upon this primitive community by Fray Antonio's preaching; for
+this would be, as I pointed out, the first occasion in the history of
+the world when a record would be made, from the stand-point of the
+unprejudiced ethnologist, of the reception accorded by a heathen people
+to the doctrine of Christianity. In a word, I presented the case most
+glowingly&mdash;so glowingly, in fact, that my own heart was quite fired by
+it&mdash;and ended by urging them earnestly to join us in a work that
+promised so greatly to increase the sum of human knowledge touching the
+most interesting subjects that can be presented to the consideration of
+the human mind. And I am pained to state that I discovered, when I
+finished my appeal, that Young was sound asleep!</p>
+
+<p>Rayburn did not go to sleep, and he did take a certain amount of
+interest in what I said, but I was discouraged by his very obvious
+failure to respond to my enthusiasm.</p>
+
+<p>"You see, Professor," he said, "the fact of the matter is that I can't
+spare the time. I might take a month or two, but you seem to think that
+a year is the least time in which any substantial results can he
+accomplished. I can't give a year, or anything like a year, to what, so
+far as I am concerned, will be sheer idleness. I've got a mother and
+sister at home on Cape Cod who depend on me for a living, and I must get
+to work again. You see, there is glory enough in all this, and glory
+that I should like to have a share in; but glory is a luxury that I
+can't afford. I've got to go to work at something that has money in it."</p>
+
+<p>The sound of Rayburn's voice had the effect on Young of waking him up.
+He listened, in a sleepily approving way, to Rayburn's practical
+comment, and then, giving a prodigious yawn, added, on his own account:
+"Yes, that's about the size of it. We're neither of us here for our
+health, Professor; what we're after is spot cash. If there was any money
+in your scheme I'd take a hand in it quick enough; but as there
+isn't&mdash;Well, not this evening, Professor; some other evening."</p>
+
+<p>"No money in it!" I answered. "Why, haven't I told you that there is
+stored in this hidden city the greatest treasure that ever was brought
+into one place since the world began?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I'll be d&mdash;&mdash;d if you have!" Young replied, with great energy and
+promptness. "Not a word, unless it was while I was asleep. What's he
+said about a treasure, Rayburn? I'm awake now, an' I'll keep awake if
+there's anything like that to be talked about."</p>
+
+<p>"You certainly haven't said anything about a treasure so far,
+Professor," Rayburn said. "I'd like to hear about it myself. If there is
+a treasure-hunting expedition mixed up with this scientific expedition
+of yours, that puts a new face on the whole matter. I can't afford the
+luxury of scientific investigation pure and simple, but if there is
+money in it too, that is quite another thing. So tell us about your
+prospect, Professor, and if the surface indications are good you can
+count on me to go in."</p>
+
+<p>I confess that I was a trifle disappointed upon finding how eagerly
+these young men sought information in regard to a matter that I
+considered so unimportant that I had forgotten even to mention it. But I
+reflected that, after all, the motive by which they were induced to join
+in our adventure was immaterial, while our need for the strength that
+their joining in it would give us was so pressing that upon gaining them
+for allies very likely depended our eventual success. Being moved by
+which considerations, I dilated upon the magnitude of the hidden
+treasure with such vehemence that presently their eyes were flashing,
+and the blood had so mounted into their brains that their very foreheads
+were ruddy and their breath came short. And I must confess that my own
+pulses beat quicker and harder as I talked on. Of this treasure I had
+not before thought at all, being so thoroughly taken up with the
+scientific side of the discovery that I hoped to accomplish; but now I
+was moved profoundly by thoughts of what I could do for the advancement
+of science had I practically limitless wealth at my command. And
+especially was I thrilled by the thought of the magnificent form in
+which my own magnificent discoveries could be given to the world.
+Compared with my <i>Pre-Columbian Conditions on the Continent of North
+America</i>, Lord Kingsborough's great work, both in form and in substance,
+would sink into hopeless insignificance. And in all that I said of the
+vastness of the hidden treasure I felt certain that I was keeping well
+within the bounds of truth, for I had the positive assurance that in the
+Aztec treasure-house in that hidden valley the ransom of a nation was
+stored.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you go with us?" I asked, when I had brought my glowing
+description to an end.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I should smile, Professor," was Young's characteristic answer.</p>
+
+<p>"You can count me in now, and no mistake!" said Rayburn, and added, "By
+Jove, Palgrave, I mean to take a part of my share and buy the whole of
+Cape Cod!"</p>
+
+<p>And so the make-up of our party was decided upon. Fray Antonio joined it
+for the love of God; I joined it for the love of science; and Young and
+Rayburn joined it for the love of gold. In regard to the boy Pablo, he
+could not strictly be said to have joined it at all. He simply went
+along.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VI" id="VI"></a>VI.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE KING'S SYMBOL.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Fray Antonio was well pleased when I told him of the stout contingent
+that I had secured; and when he had seen Rayburn and Young, and had
+talked with them&mdash;though his talk with Young did not amount to much, for
+Young's Spanish was abominable&mdash;he was as thoroughly satisfied as I was
+that for our purposes we could not possibly have found two better men.</p>
+
+<p>In the course of this conference we made short work of our preparations
+for departure. Rayburn's experience in fitting out engineering parties
+had given him precisely the knowledge required for putting our own
+little party promptly and effectively in the field; and in this matter,
+and in all practical matters connected with the expedition, he took the
+lead. He and Young already possessed the regulation frontier outfit of
+arms&mdash;a Winchester rifle and a big revolver&mdash;which they increased by
+another big revolver apiece; and I armed myself similarly with a pair of
+revolvers and a Winchester: concerning the use that I should make of
+which, in case need for using them arose, I had very grave doubts
+indeed. Fray Antonio declined to carry any arms at all; and after he had
+accidentally discharged one of my pistols, which he had picked up to
+examine, so that the ball went singing by my ear and actually cut
+through the brim of Young's hat, there was a general disposition to
+admit that the less this godly man had to do with carnal weapons the
+safer would it be for all the rest of us. Young's hat was a battered
+Derby, and about as unsuitable a hat for wear in Mexico as possibly
+could be found; but for some unknown reason he was very much attached to
+that hat, and he was so wroth over having a hole shot through it in that
+unprovoked sort of way that he manifested a decided coolness towards
+Fray Antonio for several days.</p>
+
+<p>In the matter of armament, the happiest member of our party was Pablo.
+He was a handy boy, and when he had demonstrated his ability to manage a
+revolver by doing some very creditable shooting with mine (at mark that
+I had stuck up in the corral, in order that I might gain ease in the use
+of this unknown weapon), I delighted him inexpressibly by buying him a
+pistol for his very own. I think that Pablo, upon becoming the possessor
+of that revolver, at once grew two inches taller. The way that he
+strutted as he wore it, and his eager thrusting forward of his left hip,
+so that this gallant piece of warlike furniture might be the most
+conspicuous part of him, were a joy to witness. For a time his
+mouth-organ was entirely neglected; and coming quietly into the corral
+one day, I found him engaged in exhibiting the revolver to El Sabio; who
+regarded it with a slightly bored expression that I do not think Pablo
+took in good part.</p>
+
+<p>Rayburn decided that our expedition could be made more effectively with
+a small force than with a large one. He argued that unless we took into
+the Indian country a really powerful body of men, we would be safer with
+a very few: for a few of us would feel keenly the necessity of keeping
+constantly on guard; could be more easily managed and held together in
+running away; and in case a fight was forced upon us we would fight more
+steadily because each of us would know surely that he could rely upon
+the support of all the rest. Which reasoning we perceived to be so sound
+that we promptly accepted it.</p>
+
+<p>Rayburn added to our company, therefore, only three men: two Otom&iacute;
+Indians of whom Fray Antonio gave a good account, and Dennis Kearney,
+who had served as axeman on the recently disbanded engineering corps.
+He was a merry soul, this Dennis, with a stock of Irish melodies in his
+head that would have made the fortune of an old-time minstrel. He and
+Pablo took to each other at once&mdash;though, since neither of them spoke a
+word of the other's language, music was their only channel of
+communication&mdash;and Pablo presently presented us with a rendering on his
+mouth-organ, from a strictly Mexican stand-point, of "Rory O'More" that
+quite took our breaths away. While Pablo played, Dennis would stand by
+with his head cocked on one side, and with an air of attention as
+closely critical as that which El Sabio himself exhibited; and when
+Pablo went wrong, as he invariably did in his attempted <i>bravura</i>
+passages, Dennis would stop him with a wave of his hand, and an "Aisy
+now, me darlint! That's good enough Mexican, but it ain't good Irish at
+all, at all," and then would show him what good Irish was by singing
+"Rory O'More" in a fashion which made the old stone arches ring with a
+volume of music that could have given odds to an entire brass band. Poor
+Dennis! Only the other day I heard an organ-grinder grinding forth "Rory
+O'More," and the memory of the last time I heard Dennis sing that song,
+and of what heroic stuff that merry-hearted rough fellow then showed
+himself to be made, came suddenly over me, and there was a choking in my
+throat, and my eyes were full of tears.</p>
+
+<p>Well, it was a good thing&mdash;or a bad thing, as you please to put it&mdash;that
+we could not see far into the future that morning when we packed our
+mules in the corral of the hotel, and set out upon the march that was
+to lead us through such perilous passages before we reached its end.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="illus3" id="illus3"></a>
+<img src="images/illus3.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>PACKING IN THE CORRAL</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+
+<p>That I might fill to the brim the cup of Pablo's happiness&mdash;for my
+conscience pricked me a little that I suffered him to go with us&mdash;I had
+bought him the rain-coat of palm leaves for which his heart so long had
+pined. What with this and his revolver, and the delight of going upon a
+journey (for he had very fully developed that love of travel which is so
+strong in his race), his wits seemed to be completely addled with joy.
+He insisted upon putting on his absurd rain-coat at once; and he did so
+many foolish things that even El Sabio looked at him reproachfully&mdash;this
+was when he tried to place on that small donkey's back some of the heavy
+pack-stuff destined for the back of one of the big mules&mdash;and we got
+along much better with his room, as he presently enabled us to do, than
+we did with his company. When the time for starting came, we had quite a
+hunt for him; and we might not have found him at all had we not been
+guided by the sound of music to the sequestered spot to which he had
+retired in order to give vent to his pent-up feelings by playing on his
+mouth-organ "Pop goes the weasel"&mdash;an air that Young had been whistling
+that morning and that had mightily taken Pablo's fancy.</p>
+
+<p>We made rather an imposing cavalcade as we filed forth from the great
+gate of the hotel, and took our way along the Calle Nacional, the
+principal street of the city, towards the Garita del Poniente. Fray
+Antonio and I rode first; then came Rayburn and Young, followed by
+Dennis Kearney; then the two pack-mules, beside which walked the two
+Otom&iacute; Indians; and closing the procession came Pablo, wearing his
+rain-coat, with his revolver strapped outside of it, and riding El Sabio
+with a dignity that would have done honor to the Viceroy himself. Pablo
+certainly was in the nature of an anti-climax; but I would not have told
+him so for the world. Fray Antonio wore the habit of his Order, this
+privilege having been specially granted to him by the Governor of the
+State as a safeguard for all his expeditions among the Indians. It was
+understood, indeed, that he now was going forth on one of his missionary
+visits among the mountain tribes, and simply rode with us, so far as our
+ways should lie together, for greater security. I had announced that I
+was going among the Indians again in order to increase my knowledge of
+their manners and customs; and Rayburn&mdash;to whom the rest of the party
+was supposed to belong&mdash;had stated that he was taking the field in order
+to make a new reconnaissance along the line of the projected railway. It
+was in order to maintain these several fictions that we went out by the
+western gate, and that we continued for two days our march westward
+before turning to our true course.</p>
+
+<p>Of our progress during the ensuing fortnight it is not necessary that I
+should speak, for beyond the ordinary incidents of travel no adventures
+befell us. During this period we went forward steadily and rapidly; and
+at the end of it we had covered more than three hundred miles, and had
+come close to where&mdash;supposing our rendering of the Aztec map to be
+correct, and that we had rightly collated it with the dead monk's
+letter&mdash;the mission of Santa Marta had stood three centuries and a half
+before. There was no possibility that any trace of this mission would be
+found; but every rock that we came to was most eagerly scrutinized, for
+on any one of them might we find the King's symbol engraved.</p>
+
+<p>For two or three days we had been travelling through a region very wild
+and desolate. Far away along the western horizon rose a range of
+mountains whose bare peaks cut a jagged line along the sky. The country
+between us and these far-away mountains was made up of many parallel
+ranges of rocky hills; which ranges were separated by broad, shallow
+valleys, where cactus and sage-brush covered the dry ground thickly; and
+the only trees that broke this dreary monotony were pita-palms, the most
+dismal thing in all created nature to which the name of a tree ever has
+been given by man. There was no trail, and travelling through this
+tangle of briers was very difficult. All of Rayburn's skill, which long
+practice had developed to a high degree, was required to enable us to
+pick a way through so thorny a wilderness. At times the Indians with
+their <i>machetes</i>, and Dennis with his axe, had to cut a path for us; and
+despite all our care, our own hands were cut and torn, and the legs of
+our poor beasts were red with blood.</p>
+
+<p>The deadly dryness of this arid waste added to our discomfort. A strong
+dry wind blew steadily from the north, building up out of fine dust
+which was over all the surface of the baked ground little
+whirl-winds&mdash;<i>remolinos</i>, as the Mexicans call them&mdash;which went dancing
+down the valleys as though they were ghostly things; and occasionally,
+when one of these struck us, we were covered with a prickly dust that
+fairly burned our skins. What water we got was to be had only by digging
+in the <i>arroyos</i> which traversed the centre of each valley
+longitudinally; and although this water always was muddy, and had a
+strongly alkaline taste, it is the only thing that I remember with
+pleasure in all that weary land. Of animal life there was nothing to be
+seen, save a-plenty of rattlesnakes; and a few great buzzards which
+wheeled above us from time to time as though with the intention of
+keeping track of us until we should fall down and die of thirst and
+weariness, and they should be able to feast upon us at their ease.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of the third day of this dreary travelling we had come close
+to the great western range of mountains, and our camp that night was
+made in the mouth of a little valley that opened from among the
+foot-hills. The night before we had made a dry camp, and for the whole
+of the twenty-four hours we had had but a pint of water apiece. Pablo, I
+am sure, had given half of his own scant allowance to El Sabio. The
+other animals&mdash;it was all that we could do for them&mdash;had only their
+dusty mouths and nostrils wiped out with a wet sponge. They were
+pitiable objects, with their bleeding legs, their haggard eyes, their
+out-hanging tongues, and their quivering flanks. As Fray Antonio
+unsaddled his horse I saw that there were tears in his eyes; but the
+rest of us, I fear, were too thoughtful of our own misery to feel much
+sorrow for the misery of our beasts.</p>
+
+<p>I suppose that a man must suffer the lack of it, as we then did, in
+order to know how precious a thing water is. And to give some notion of
+its preciousness to those who not only are free at any time to drink
+their fill of it, but even can fill bath-tubs with it, and feel the joy
+of it on their bare bodies whenever they are so minded, I will say that
+when a little digging gave us that night as much water as we wanted, our
+joy was far greater than it would have been had we there found the
+hidden city of which we were in search.</p>
+
+<p>Our well was sunk in the broad sandy bottom of the <i>arroyo</i>, in the
+midst of a narrow and delectably grassy valley between two foot-hills.
+And the abundance and the sweetness of the water, as well as the
+presence of grass, showed us that but a little way up this valley there
+must be an open stream. We drank, and our beasts drank, until all of our
+skins were nigh to bursting; and the abundance of water was so great
+that we even could wash the dust at last from our parched faces and
+necks and arms; and much like raw beef our skins looked when our washing
+was ended, and the stinging of them was as though we had been whipped
+with nettles. It was our intention now to leave the plains and to march
+along the edge of the foot-hills parallel with the main range, otherwise
+we should not have ventured thus to wash ourselves. In a region where
+alkali dust is in the air, washing is to be shunned; for each time that
+the skin is cleaned the new deposit of dust takes a deeper biting hold.</p>
+
+<p>It was rather that we might escape the misery of further travel on the
+arid plains than because we had any strong hopes of thus finding the way
+of which we were in search that we had decided to change our line of
+march. Young had begun openly to express his contempt for the Aztec map,
+and in the hearts of all of us had sprung up some doubts as to its
+trustworthiness as a guide. After all, it was not in the least a map in
+the true meaning of the word; and that it should show us rightly our way
+depended not only upon our having interpreted correctly its curious
+symbolism, but also upon the correctness of the interpretation that
+Mexican arch&aelig;ologists had given to the map of the first Aztec
+migration&mdash;of which map, as we believed, our map was a reserved and
+secret part. If either interpretation were wrong, then we might be
+hundreds of miles distant from the region in which the way marked by
+gravings of the King's symbol should be sought.</p>
+
+<p>Four or five hours of daylight still remained to us after we had dug our
+well, and with the delicious water flowing into it had satisfied our
+thirst; but we had no intention of going farther that day. We had no
+need to hobble the animals, for they could be trusted to stay near the
+water-hole while they feasted on the grass, and we needed food and rest
+quite as much as they did. Young and Dennis together got us up a famous
+meal, and when it was ended we lighted our pipes and held a sort of
+council of war. That we might talk the more freely, in both English and
+Spanish, we drew away a little from where the two Otom&iacute; Indians and
+Pablo were stretched out upon the grass together; and we bade Dennis
+take a look around the shoulder of the first hill, so that we might know
+something of what our way would be like when we started in the morning;
+for we were not as yet ready that the minor members of the expedition
+should know the purpose that we had in mind. We had decided that when,
+by the finding of the course indicated by the gravings of the King's
+symbol, our quest fairly had a beginning, being no longer a matter of
+mere hope and conjecture, we then would give Dennis and Pablo and the
+two Indians some notion of what we intended doing; with the option of
+deciding for themselves whether or not they would have a part in it. And
+the thought never once occurred to our minds that circumstances might
+arise of such a nature that neither they nor we would have any choice in
+the matter at all.</p>
+
+<p>As we consulted together we had spread out before us a map of Mexico,
+and with this the map that the Cacique had given me, and a copy of the
+map showing the great Aztec march. Yet the more that we councilled the
+less could we come to any reasonable conclusion as to what was best for
+us to do. As nearly as we could tell from the strange guides that we
+needs must be led by, we had beaten thoroughly the region where once the
+mission of Santa Marta was; and not a trace of the gravings on the rocks
+had we found. To go over this region again, searching still more
+minutely, was too great an undertaking even to be thought of; and yet
+the only alternative to this painful course seemed to be that we should
+abandon our search altogether; in short, we were completely at sea.</p>
+
+<p>"What <i>I</i> think," said Young, "is that that old dead monk, an' that old
+dead Cacique, have set up a job on us. They're both of 'em lyin' like
+fiddlers; that's what's th' matter with <i>them</i>. There ain't any hidden
+city, or hidden treasure, or hidden d&mdash;&mdash;n anything; it's all a fraud
+from beginnin' t' end. I vote t' pull up stakes an' go home."</p>
+
+<p>A cool refreshing wind was beginning to sweep down to us from the
+mountains; but it was blowing only in puffs as yet, for the night would
+not be upon us for several hours. Borne faintly and fitfully upon this
+uncertain wind came to us the strains of "Rory O'More"; with which
+melody, as we inferred, Dennis was beguiling his solitude while he
+explored the route that we were to take the next day. Pablo, sitting
+comfortably on the grass, his back propped against the back of El Sabio,
+also caught the sound; and straightway began to play an accompaniment on
+his mouth-organ to Dennis's distant singing. The strains gradually grew
+louder, showing that Dennis was returning; but when they stopped
+suddenly we thought that he had only tired of the sound of his own
+voice, or, perhaps, did not think anything about the matter at all.</p>
+
+<p>But when a sound of hurried, irregular steps came down the wind to us,
+we all were on our feet in a moment and had our arms ready, for it was
+evident that Dennis was running from something; and the danger was
+likely to be a serious one, for running was not at all in Dennis's line.
+We wondered why he did not call out; but the explanation of his silence
+was plain enough, ten seconds later, as he came around the shoulder of
+the hill, staggered in among us, and fell on the grass at our feet&mdash;with
+the blood streaming from his mouth and nostrils, and with an arrow clear
+through his breast.</p>
+
+<p>"Indians!" he gasped, with an effort that brought a torrent of blood
+spurting from his mouth; and he added, faintly, "But I've bate 'em, th'
+divvils, in their hopes of a soorprise!"</p>
+
+<p>These triumphant words were the last that Dennis Kearney uttered on
+earth. As he spoke, a fresh outburst of blood came from his nostrils and
+mouth, a quiver went over him&mdash;and then he was dead. I do not believe
+that many men would have done what Dennis did: run a good quarter of a
+mile with an arrow through his lungs, and then die exulting because he
+had succeeded in warning the camp.</p>
+
+<p>Rayburn had the situation instantly in hand. "Get the packs and saddles
+on quick!" he cried. "The Indians 'll come around that hill and try to
+scoop us here in the open. They won't close in; they'll keep off, and
+just lie around for a week till we're played out, and then they'll step
+in and finish us; they'll do that, likely enough, anyway. But our one
+chance is to get to a place up the valley here, where they can tackle us
+only from in front. There's water up there, so we'll be all right, and
+we may be able to shoot enough of them to make the rest give it up, or
+they'll close in, and we'll have the comfort of getting the whole thing
+ended without any useless fooling over it."</p>
+
+<p>All the while that he spoke he was working away, and so were we all, at
+saddling and packing; and, luckily, the animals, although the water and
+the food and the rest had put new strength into them, still were too
+tired to give us the trouble that animals give at such times when they
+are fresh. In a surprisingly short time we were ready to start; and yet
+not a sign had we had, save the warning that Dennis had brought us, that
+there was an Indian within a hundred miles of us. Indeed, but for his
+dead body on the ground beside our camp-fire, we might have imagined
+that our scare was only a bad dream. That it was a very bad reality was
+shown just as the last pack went on, when one of our Otom&iacute; Indians gave
+a howl as an arrow went through his leg, and I felt a sharp little nip
+on my forehead where an arrow just grazed it, and there was that queer,
+faint whirring sound in the air that only a flight of a good many arrows
+together will produce.</p>
+
+<p>Rayburn took the body of poor Dennis before him on his own horse; he'd
+be d&mdash;&mdash;d if the Indians should get Dennis yet, he said; and away we
+went up the sandy bed of the <i>arroyo</i>, driving the mules before us, and
+the Otom&iacute; Indians pelting along on a dead-run. The Indian who had been
+hit coolly broke the arrow off short, and then pulled it out through the
+wound.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly we saw Young, who was riding a little ahead of the rest of us,
+half pull up his horse and look earnestly at a great shoulder of rock
+that jutted out from the mountain-side. "There's your King's symbol,
+and be d&mdash;&mdash;d to it!" he shouted; and added, "What's the good of a
+King's symbol when we're all goin' to lose our hair?"</p>
+
+<p>He was under full head-way again in a moment. As we shot past the rock we
+all turned to look; and there, sure enough, was the long-sought-for
+sign.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VII" id="VII"></a>VII.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE FIGHT IN THE CA&Ntilde;ON.</h3>
+
+
+<p>As we fled along the valley, and in a few moments heard the sound of the
+Indians pursuing us, my mind was chiefly occupied with considerations of
+the quality which we denominate fear. I perceived that this purely
+occasional passion had a very direct bearing upon my own especial
+science of arch&aelig;ology. I reflected that had I been engaged in building a
+city at the moment when that irritating flight of arrows fell among
+us&mdash;&mdash;the sting of one of which I still felt smarting upon my
+forehead&mdash;&mdash;I should assuredly have ceased at once the building of that
+city, and should have moved rapidly away. And thus an excellently
+well-built city, that would have delighted arch&aelig;ologists of the future,
+would have been lost to the world. Putting the matter yet more closely:
+here I had just found the sign for which I and my companions had been
+toilsomely searching for a considerable time; the sign which
+unquestionably would lead us to the most interesting arch&aelig;ological
+discovery that ever had been made. And yet, instead of stopping to
+study this sign earnestly, that I might understand all the meaning of
+it, I was hastening away from it with all possible speed; and for no
+better reason than that certain barbarians, whose knowledge of
+arch&aelig;ology was not even rudimentary, were pursuing me that they might
+take my life&mdash;an imperfectly expressed concept, by-the-way; for life can
+be taken only in the limited sense of depriving another of it; it cannot
+be taken in the full sense of deprivation and acquisition combined.
+These several reflections so stirred my bile against the Indians in
+pursuit of us that I began to have a curiously blood-thirsty longing for
+our actual battling with them to begin; for I was possessed by a most
+unscientific desire to balance our account by killing several of them.
+And I confess that this desire was increased as I looked at the dead
+body of poor Dennis, lying limply across the fore-shoulders of Rayburn's
+horse.</p>
+
+<p>It was with real satisfaction, therefore, that I obeyed Rayburn's order
+to halt, that we might make ready for the fight to begin. The valley up
+which we had been riding had narrowed by this time into a strait way
+shut in between high and nearly perpendicular walls; and the place that
+Rayburn had chosen for us to make our stand in was the mouth of a ca&ntilde;on
+setting off from the valley nearly at right angles. The walls of this
+ca&ntilde;on came almost together above, far overhanging their bases, so that
+assault from overhead was impossible; some fragments of fallen rock made
+a natural breastwork for us to fight behind; and a little stream of
+pure, sweet water flowed at our feet. Had this place been made for us
+expressly it could not better have suited our purposes; and finding it
+so opportunely put fresh heart into us. There was not, of course, a
+shadow of resemblance between the two, but, somehow, I fancied that the
+place where we stood resembled my old class-room at Ann Arbor; and I
+actually found myself repeating the opening sentence of the address that
+I delivered when I was formally inducted into the Chair of Topical
+Linguistics. I mention this fact not because it is of the slightest
+importance in this present narrative, but because I think that it well
+illustrates the tendency towards illogical association that is so
+curious a characteristic of the human mind.</p>
+
+<p>I was not able to observe this phenomenon attentively, for Rayburn
+hustled us all about so sharply that I had no available time just then
+for abstract thought. The mules and the horses and El Sabio were driven
+into the ca&ntilde;on, and we were ranged behind the fragments of rock almost
+in a moment. Each man had his Winchester and revolvers in readiness, and
+a couple of cases of cartridges had been broken out from the packs and
+put where we all had easy access to them. While this work was going
+forward we could hear the Indians coming hotly up the valley, and we
+were barely ready for them when the foremost of their party came in
+sight.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait a little," said Rayburn, quietly. "They don't know which turn
+we've taken, and they'll probably get into a bunch to do some talking,
+and then we can whack away right into the flock."</p>
+
+<p>While we were thus making ready I could see that Fray Antonio was in
+great distress of mind. He was a very brave man, and I know that his
+strong desire was to fight with the rest of us. And yet, just as the
+Indians showed themselves, he deliberately turned his back upon them and
+walked away into the ca&ntilde;on's depths. His very lips were white, and there
+were beads of sweat upon his brow, and I saw that his fingers twitched
+convulsively. I know what he wanted to do, and I saw what he did. If
+ever a man showed the high bravery of moral courage, Fray Antonio showed
+it then. Even Young, in whom I did not look for appreciation of bravery
+of that sort, said afterwards that it was the pluckiest thing he ever
+saw.</p>
+
+<p>As Rayburn had expected, the Indians halted&mdash;but keeping more under
+cover than he had counted upon&mdash;and held some sort of a council. But it
+did not seem, from what we could see of their gestures, to relate to the
+way that we might have taken so much as to the ca&ntilde;on in which we
+actually were concealed. They pointed towards the mouth of the ca&ntilde;on
+repeatedly, and it struck me that in their motions there was a curious
+indication of dread or awe. One old man was especially vehement in
+gestures of this unaccountable nature; and when at last the younger men
+in the council seemed to revolt against his orders, this man, and all
+the older men with him, retired down the valley whence they had come.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="illus4" id="illus4"></a>
+<img src="images/illus4.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>THE FIGHT IN THE CAÑON</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+
+<p>The young men, left to themselves, hesitated for a moment, and then with
+a cry&mdash;as though for their own encouragement&mdash;came charging towards us
+in a body. As we got a full view of them we perceived with much
+satisfaction that their only arms were bows and arrows and long spears,
+and that there were not more than twenty men in the lot. And then
+Rayburn gave the order to fire. I confess that my hand so trembled as I
+pulled the trigger of my rifle that I was not at all surprised to find
+that the man whom I had fired at&mdash;a very tall, powerful young fellow,
+who seemed to be in command&mdash;was not hit; but a man just behind him
+dropped, and I had a queer feeling in my throat, and certain odd
+sensations in my stomach, as I realized that I had shot him. Indeed, I
+was so engrossed with meditations upon the curious ease with which a
+man's life is let out of him, that I quite forgot for some seconds to
+continue firing. The others, luckily, conducted themselves in a more
+practical manner; and the little whirlwind of balls which sped from the
+Winchesters made it wonderful, not that so many of the Indians fell dead
+or wounded, as that any of them remained alive and unhurt. But eight of
+them did survive their charge in the face of the storm of bullets that
+we pelted at them; and these&mdash;headed by the tall fellow, who seemed
+bullet-proof&mdash;came rushing at us over our breastwork of rocks, shouting
+and flourishing their long spears.</p>
+
+<p>I cannot say very accurately what happened during the next five minutes
+or so, for one of the Indians came directly at me, and before I could at
+all stop him&mdash;for I found that shooting at him with my revolver did him
+no harm at all; and this struck me as odd, for I had repeatedly hit the
+mark while practising in the corral&mdash;he had prodded his spear through
+the fleshy part of my left arm. It hurt severely. He had aimed his
+thrust, doubtless, at my heart, and he certainly would have penetrated
+that vital organ had I not at that moment slipped, and so disarranged
+his aim. He pulled the spear out of my arm, which action also gave me
+great pain, and his manner indicated that he was about to thrust it into
+some other part of me; which he surely could have done, for I was wholly
+at a loss as to what measures should be taken to assure my own safety.
+Indeed, I was very well convinced that my life was as good as ended, and
+a curious flash of thought went through me that I cannot coherently
+remember, but that was in the nature of a query as to whether or not in
+a future state the many scientific truths which as yet are but
+imperfectly understood will be wholly revealed to us.</p>
+
+<p>However, the opportunity that I confidently expected would be given to
+me in a moment to obtain an answer to this interesting question did not
+then occur. Just as the Indian was lunging at me&mdash;I can see his ugly
+face now, as I close my eyes and let my thoughts turn backward to that
+critical moment&mdash;there was a flash of some bright object before me, and
+then the Indian's entire head seemed to shut up suddenly, something like
+an opera-glass, and he went down to the ground like a stone. As I
+turned, I saw that my deliverance had come from Pablo, and even in that
+very exciting moment I observed with astonishment that the weapon with
+which he had slain the Indian was a great jagged sword&mdash;if the
+<i>maccuahuitl</i> can be called a sword&mdash;such as the Aztecs used in ancient
+times. I could not then conveniently stop to question him whence he had
+obtained that very interesting weapon, for there was another Indian
+already close upon me; and I am pleased to say&mdash;for I do not wish the
+belief to go abroad that scientific men are worse than useless in
+practical emergencies&mdash;that, without assistance from Pablo or from
+anybody else, I managed to pick up my rifle, and with the heavy iron
+barrel of that weapon, used clubwise, I mashed the head of that Indian
+into a perfect pulp. I know positively that I mashed it into a pulp, for
+I tried afterwards to measure it, and found that for craniological
+purposes it was utterly valueless.</p>
+
+<p>Even had I required Pablo's aid in this encounter he could not possibly
+have given it to me, for he was himself just then very hotly engaged.
+Indeed, but for assistance that come to him from an unexpected quarter
+his life assuredly would have been lost. He was in the act of hauling
+back to strike at the fellow facing him, and he did not at all know that
+he was in imminent danger of a thrust in the back from a wounded wretch
+who, having struggled upon his knees, was using what little life was
+left in him to deliver yet another blow. Just at this critical instant
+it was that Fray Antonio dashed into the thick of the fighting, and
+covered Pablo's body with his own against this assault in the rear; so
+that, as the Indian struck, the knife only cut through the monk's habit
+and slightly scratched his arm, instead of making a hole between Pablo's
+shoulder-blades that would have let the life out of him. Young, who was
+close beside Pablo, saw what was going on, and checked it before further
+harm was done by turning quickly and shooting off the top of the wounded
+Indian's head; and then Fray Antonio retired out of the fighting in
+which, without himself striking a blow, he had taken so gallant a part.</p>
+
+<p>So far as I was concerned, the fight was at an end when I had so
+cleverly mashed the head of my second assailant. No more Indians came at
+me, and as I looked around I perceived that this was for the excellent
+reason that there were no more to come. Two were just advancing on
+Young; who had them covered with his revolver, and dropped them, one
+after the other, in less time than is required to tell about it. The
+only other survivor among the enemy&mdash;at least the only one able to keep
+his feet&mdash;was the tall young chief, and he and Rayburn were just
+finishing the last round of what probably was as fine a fight as ever
+was fought. They were well matched in size and in weight; and if the
+Indian was any stronger than Rayburn, I can only say that he must have
+been a most wonderfully strong man. They were fighting on even terms;
+for the Indian was armed only with a short club, that he held in his
+left hand&mdash;and this left-handed method made him all the more awkward to
+deal with&mdash;while Rayburn, having emptied his revolver, was using as a
+club its heavy barrel.</p>
+
+<p>As I caught sight of them, the Indian was in the act of springing
+forward and delivering a tremendous blow; but Rayburn most skilfully
+parried this blow by throwing out his rifle, still retained in his left
+hand, in such a manner and with such force that the Indian's arm&mdash;at
+the same time striking and being struck with the iron barrel&mdash;was broken
+just above the wrist. He gave a yell of pain, as he well might; but he
+was a plucky fellow, and instead of dropping his club he only shifted it
+to his right hand. He never had a chance to strike again with it; for in
+that same instant Rayburn swung his revolver at arm's-length through the
+air and brought it down on his head with a sound so muffled and so
+hollow that I can liken it only to the staving-in of the head of a full
+cask. For a moment, while Rayburn drew back to strike again, the
+Indian's body swayed heavily; and then all his muscles relaxed, and he
+fell heavily and limply to the ground&mdash;while his brains spurted out from
+the ghastly trench made by that mighty blow from back to front across
+the entire top of his skull.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VIII" id="VIII"></a>VIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>AFTER THE FIGHT.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Rayburn stood panting for a moment over the Indian's body; and then,
+having satisfied himself by a look around among our fallen enemies that
+every one of them was either dead or dying, he stooped down beside the
+stream to drink from it, and then to bathe an ugly gash in his forehead
+made by a spear thrust that luckily had glanced aside.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, we all had wounds or bruises by which we were likely to
+remember our fight for a good many days to come. In addition to the cut
+on his forehead, Rayburn had an arm badly bruised by a crack from a
+club; Young had a cut in the calf of his leg that must have been made by
+one of the Indians after he had fallen wounded; Fray Antonio had the
+slight cut in his arm that he received in rescuing Pablo; a blow from a
+club on my shoulder had completely disabled my left arm, and my head was
+beginning to ache from the wound in my forehead where the arrow had
+nipped me; and Pablo, by a square knock-down blow on the head that
+tumbled him among the rocks, had a bad gash in his cheek and was bruised
+all over. And yet the very first thing that boy did when the fight was
+ended&mdash;being still dazed, no doubt, by the blow on his head&mdash;was to play
+a bit of "Rory O'More" on his mouth-organ in order to make sure that his
+beloved "instrumentito" had not been injured by his fall. The sound of
+this air gave my heart a wrench, as I thought of poor Dennis; whose
+gallant race with death assuredly had saved all of us from dying without
+a chance to strike a blow. And both of our Otom&iacute; Indians were dead too.</p>
+
+<p>But while we had suffered thus severely we had the satisfaction of
+knowing that we had inflicted a most signal punishment upon our enemies.
+Of the whole company that had attacked us&mdash;eighteen in number, as we
+found by counting their bodies&mdash;only two remained alive when the fight
+ended; and these two speedily relieved us of all responsibility
+concerning them by dying of their wounds. As Young tersely expressed
+it, we had "given the whole outfit a through bill of lading to Kingdom
+Come!"</p>
+
+<p>Notwithstanding the pain that I was in, the first thought that came to
+me after we had achieved peace (by the effective yet somewhat radical
+process of killing all of our enemies) was concerning the strange weapon
+with which Pablo had been fighting; and by his prompt use of which in my
+defence my life had been saved. He had laid it upon a rock&mdash;while
+testing the integrity of his mouth-organ&mdash;and as I now carefully
+examined it I found that my glimpse of it as Pablo had mashed the
+Indian's head had not deceived me. It truly was a maccuahuitl, the
+primitive Aztec sword, but very unlike any description of that weapon
+that I had ever seen. The maccuahuitl, as described by the Spaniards at
+the time of the conquest and as shown by the Aztec pictures of it
+preserved in various museums, was a wooden blade from three and a half
+to four feet long and from four to five inches wide. Along its two
+edges, like great saw teeth, fragments of obsidian, about three inches
+long and two inches wide, were inserted; and as these were keenly sharp
+the weapon was a most ferocious one. The sword that I held in my hand
+was identical in its essential features with this primitive design; but
+it was shorter, narrower, and thinner. What was still more extraordinary
+about it was that, while it seemed to be made of brass, it had the
+bright glitter of gold and the temper and the elasticity of steel. Being
+tested by bending, it instantly sprung straight again; and
+notwithstanding the vigorous use that Pablo had been making of it on the
+bones of several Indians, the thin edges of the projecting teeth were
+only nicked a little&mdash;as the edge of a steel sword would have been
+nicked under like circumstances&mdash;and not one of these teeth was bent out
+of place, as assuredly would have been the case had the metal been
+ordinary brass.</p>
+
+<p>Fray Antonio, by this time, had returned to us again&mdash;looking rather
+shamefaced because of the part that he had taken in the fight&mdash;and I
+eagerly showed him this strange weapon that had been so strangely found;
+for Pablo's account of it was simply that, just as his revolver was
+emptied upon the Indians charging towards us, when there was no time to
+reload, his eyes were caught by the glitter of the sword as it stuck in
+a cleft in a rock; whereupon he most gladly seized it&mdash;and instantly
+used it to good purpose upon the Indian who was so close to ending me with
+his spear, and subsequently contrived with it to send two more Indians
+to their account.</p>
+
+<p>Fray Antonio's knowledge of the matter having a wider practical range
+than mine, for he knew well the contents of the several Mexican museums
+in which specimens of the primitive weapons are preserved, I thought it
+possible that he might be able to match this curious maccuahuitl with an
+account of another like it which he somewhere had seen. That there was
+no record in the books of this weapon made of metal I knew very well.
+But Fray Antonio's surprise over it was greater than my own; and he
+certainly found more in it to please him than I did; for this metal
+maccuahuitl, supposing it to belong to ancient times, settled in his
+favor a controversy that for some time past we had been amicably but
+earnestly carrying on. I had adopted the ingenious theory of my friend
+Bandelier that the serrated edge of the Aztec sword was accidental;
+resulting from the breaking away in use of portions of what at first was
+a continuous edge of obsidian. Fray Antonio, on the other hand, had held
+firmly to the ordinarily accepted opinion that the sword was such as I
+have described above (I must confess regretfully) the primitive weapon
+to have been.</p>
+
+<p>My contention therefore was that the sword that Pablo had found was not
+an antique; and I fortified my position, as I considered impregnably, by
+the fact that while Aztecs, before the Spanish conquest, did make some
+slight use of copper and gold, they assuredly had no knowledge whatever
+of either brass or steel. And my natural irritation very well may be
+imagined, by any one familiar with controversies of this nature, when I
+add that Fray Antonio endeavored to cut the ground from under me by
+asserting that, inasmuch as the weapon obviously was not made of brass
+or steel, my argument was based upon false premises and consequently led
+to illogical conclusions. I am afraid that I showed a little temper on
+this occasion; for Fray Antonio manifested a persistence in his defence
+of what I regarded as his wholly untenable position that amounted to
+what I held to be downright pig-headedness. And so, for a considerable
+length of time, we stood there, among the bodies of the dead Indians,
+and first one of us and then the other handled the sword, and expressed
+with increasing warmth our views respecting it and each other; and we
+might have stood there much longer had not Young&mdash;with the best of
+intentions, no doubt, but in a way the certainly was not
+agreeable&mdash;taken upon himself to bring our controversy for the time
+being to an end.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't exactly know what you and the Padre are jawing about at such a
+rate, Professor," he struck in; "but as well as I can catch on, it's
+about things which happened three or four hundred years ago. I don't
+want to interrupt you, of course; but I do want the Padre&mdash;he knows
+something about surgery, as I saw the other day when he took that cactus
+thorn out of Pablo&mdash;to do something to plug up this hole in my leg. It's
+bleeding a good deal, and it hurts like the very devil. And I guess
+Rayburn'd be glad to have that slit in his forehead tied up too."</p>
+
+<p>To do Fray Antonio justice, he took this interruption in better part
+than I did; for I was deeply interested in the argument in which we were
+engaged, and wished to continue it. But when I explained what Young
+wanted, he turned to him at once, and very tenderly as well as very
+skilfully dressed his wound; and then bandaged the gash in Rayburn's
+forehead, and the cut in Pablo's cheek. Pablo decidedly objected to this
+bandaging, for it put a peremptory stop for a while to his playing on
+his mouth-organ. For me no surgery was required. Fray Antonio carefully
+felt my shoulder while he moved my arm&mdash;thereby hurting me most
+horribly&mdash;and as the result of his investigations he assured me that the
+bones were neither broken nor out of place.</p>
+
+<p>Rayburn also examined the maccuahuitl with much interest. "Of course it
+is not brass," he said, "and of course it cannot possibly be
+phosphor-bronze. But, if such a thing were a metallurgical possibility,
+I should say that it was gold&mdash;treated in some manner that gives it as
+great a hardness as bronze receives when treated with phosphorus, but
+with some chemical change wrought in its constitution that gives it also
+the tempered quality of steel. Nothing but gold, you see," he added,
+"could lie around out-of-doors this way and not get tarnished by
+oxidization."</p>
+
+<p>"What's the reason that it's not some queer thing belonging to the folks
+we're looking for?" Young asked; and his question expressed a thought
+that already had found a lodging in my own mind. For such good-luck as
+this would be I was quite willing to concede that Fray Antonio was right
+in his unpleasantly positive views in regard to the shape of the Aztec
+swords. And what Young said also put me sharply in mind of the graving
+on the rock of the King's symbol, that we had found only in the same
+moment to lose it again. To this matter I now adverted; and I said some
+very unpleasant things about the Indians who had prevented us from
+following the trail, that we had sought for so laboriously, when we did
+find it at last&mdash;and who still, for we doubted not that the main body
+was in wait for us lower down the valley, prevented us from returning to
+the spot where we had seen the sign and thence systematically continuing
+our search.</p>
+
+<p>"If I was you, Professor," said Young as I ceased speaking, "I wouldn't
+be so everlastin'ly down on these poor devils of Indians for what
+they've done. They killed Dennis, an' that's a pretty bad business; an'
+they got away with our two <i>mozos</i>, too; an' they've pretty well
+battered th' rest of us. But I take it that we've about evened things up
+by killin' eighteen of 'em&mdash;or six of their crowd dead for each one dead
+in ours. I guess we can call that part of th' business about square. But
+what I'm gettin' at is, if it hadn't been for the Indians we'd never
+have come up this valley; an' so we'd never have struck th' King's
+symbol trail at all."</p>
+
+<p>"But what good did it do us to find it, when we could not follow it?" I
+asked. "We cannot go back to examine the sign without risking our lives;
+and unless we do examine it we cannot know where the next one is, and so
+the trail is lost."</p>
+
+<p>"I've just been waitin'," said Young, "t' see if I was th' only man in
+this party that God-a-mighty'd given a pair of eyes to. I guess I am.
+Suppose you just get up, Professor, an' turn around, an' take a look at
+that place where there's a brown mark on th' side of th' rock; an'
+suppose th' rest of you look there too. If that isn't th' King's symbol,
+just as plain as th' noses in all your faces, I'll eat every dead Indian
+in this ca&ntilde;on."</p>
+
+<p>And Young spoke the truth. Just above the cleft whence Pablo had taken
+the sword, graven so deeply in the rock that after all the weathering of
+centuries it still remained distinct and clear, was identically the same
+figure that Fray Francisco in the far past time had represented in his
+letter, and that was repeated also on the far more ancient piece of
+gold. Above it was cut an arrow that pointed directly up the ca&ntilde;on.</p>
+
+<p>It was a good thing that something came to cheer us just then; for what
+with the death of Dennis and of our two poor Indians, and our own hurts,
+and the melancholy feeling that must oppress men always&mdash;save those of
+cruel and hardened natures&mdash;when a fight is ended in which they have
+spilled freely human blood, we all were oppressed sensibly by a
+consuming sadness.</p>
+
+<p>But here was cheer indeed. Not only had we surely found the trail at
+last, but we found it leading in precisely the direction that at that
+moment we desired to go. For us to return down the valley to the open
+country, we knew was full of most signal danger; for the Indians who so
+unaccountably had declined to take part in attacking us assuredly were
+lying in wait for us by the way. Our only chance to escape them was to
+strike into the mountains; and the sign that we now had gave promise
+that we should find some sort of a path along which we might go.
+Therefore it was with good heart that we set about getting as far into
+the depths of the ca&ntilde;on as possible before night should be wholly upon
+us; trusting, in regard to possible pursuit, somewhat to the
+superstition of the Indians which so unaccountably yet so obviously had
+been aroused, and also to the wholesome dread that they must have of us
+upon finding that every one of their companions had been slain. The
+bodies of our poor Otom&iacute;s we placed in a deep fissure in the rock, and
+there heaped stones upon them, while Fray Antonio said over them the
+briefer office; but the body of Dennis we carried with us, that we might
+give him a more tender and reverent burial in gratitude for his brave
+struggle to save our lives when he knew that his own life was lost. As
+for the eighteen dead Indians&mdash;who had invited the death that so
+promptly had come to them&mdash;we did not bother ourselves about them at
+all. We left them to the coyotes.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IX" id="IX"></a>IX.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE CAVE OF THE DEAD.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Very dismal was our procession of faintly seen figures moving cautiously
+through that wild solitude. At its head went Rayburn, leading his horse,
+on which was Dennis's dead body; all of us, being bruised and cut and
+bleeding, walked slowly and painfully; and behind us, ghastly forms torn
+by bullets and crushed by blows, lay the slain Indians in all manner of
+unnatural attitudes, made yet more hideous and fantastical by the
+gathering gloom of night. Indeed, night now was so close upon us that
+had not the ca&ntilde;on in which we were run east and west, we would have been
+for some time past in darkness. As it was, though shut off from the west
+by the great range of mountains, a faint light came down into its depths
+from the still bright eastern sky, where lingered ruddy reflections of
+the sunset: and so we could see to pick our way, along the edge of the
+little stream, among the rough masses of rock and trunks of trees which
+had fallen from above.</p>
+
+<p>Our march ended sooner than we had counted on. Before we had
+accomplished more than half a mile of this rough travelling, there
+loomed before us a wall of rock which shut in the end of the ca&ntilde;on, and
+which rose as high and as sheer as did the ca&ntilde;on's sides. Our hearts
+sank within us, for we perceived that we were in a cul-de-sac; whence
+escape was possible only along the way by which we had come&mdash;and so to
+return, with the Indians still in wait for us, was to walk straight into
+the jaws of death. And, further, if our course in this direction was cut
+off, it was evident that the King's symbol graved upon the rock at the
+entrance of the ca&ntilde;on was a useless and misleading sign.</p>
+
+<p>In the hope that we might find a sharp turn, not to be perceived until
+we were close upon it, we pressed on through the dusk until we came to
+the very end of the ca&ntilde;on, and the dark wall of rock that barred our way
+rose directly above our heads. And then we found, not a turn in the
+ca&ntilde;on, but a narrow opening (through which came forth the little stream)
+into the body of the mountain itself. Yet we hesitated about entering
+this black gap&mdash;for who could tell what depths, unseen in that dense
+darkness, we might not plunge into headlong?</p>
+
+<p>Much dry pine wood, branches and whole trees, lay about us in the ca&ntilde;on;
+and of this apt material Rayburn presently constructed a great torch.
+Lighting this in the open ca&ntilde;on was not to be thought of, for while we
+felt tolerably certain that the main body of our enemies had not
+followed us, we could not be wholly certain that they were not close
+upon our heels and ready to open upon us with a volley of arrows and
+spears. Rayburn therefore struck a wax-match&mdash;with which excellent
+article of Mexican manufacture we were supplied plentifully&mdash;and with
+this to light his way, entered the narrow pass; and in his wake the rest
+of us followed. Almost in a moment the walls on each side of us spread
+out beyond the reach of the narrow circle of light, and we perceived
+that we were come into a cave. But before we could at all discern our
+surroundings the match was blown out by a sudden suck of wind setting in
+from the entrance, and we were in thick darkness. The air around us was
+so sweet and so fresh that we knew that the cave must be large, and with
+more than one opening&mdash;as, indeed, the suck of wind inward through the
+passage by which we entered clearly showed. While Rayburn struck another
+match, wherewith to light the torch, we all stood still in our places;
+and certain tremors went through our breasts because of the eeriness of
+our surroundings.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="illus5" id="illus5"></a>
+<img src="images/illus5.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>THE CAVE OF THE DEAD</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+
+<p>When the great torch blazed up, and threw everywhere save towards the
+high roof a flood of light, a real and rational fear took possession of
+us. The cave was nearly circular, and at its back, directly facing the
+entrance, was a roughly hewn mass of stone on which rested a huge stone
+figure&mdash;identical with the figures in the Mexican National Museum to
+which Le Plongeon, the discoverer of one of them, at Chichen-Itza, has
+given the name of Chac-Mool. But what filled us with dread was not this
+impassive stone image. Our alarm came from a much more natural cause,
+as we beheld, squatted on their haunches in long semicircular rows,
+facing the great stone idol, more than a hundred Indians. Truly,
+considering that our rifles were outside the cave and that we had with
+us only our revolvers, our momentary thrill of terror was highly
+natural.</p>
+
+<p>Yet it was only momentary. The Indians, undisturbed by our presence and
+by the sudden blaze of light, remained unmoved in silent worship of
+their god; and Rayburn, the first of us to recover equanimity, set all
+our fears to flight as he exclaimed: "These are not the fighting kind.
+Every man Jack of 'em is as dead as Julius C&aelig;sar. We've struck an Indian
+bone-yard."</p>
+
+<p>Here, then, was the reason why a part of the force that had attacked us
+had drawn off when we made our stand at the mouth of the ca&ntilde;on that led
+to this home of the dead. Yet when, by the light of the torch, we
+examined our silent fellow-tenants of the cave, it did not seem that
+they had been placed there in recent times. Indeed, the more that Fray
+Antonio and I looked closely at their wrappings and noted the way in
+which their mummied forms had been ranged before this idol&mdash;that
+certainly belonged to a primitive time&mdash;the more were we inclined to
+believe that this weird sepulchre belonged to the very far back past.
+But for the moment it mattered not to us whence these dead forms came:
+the essential matter was that while we remained in the cave with them we
+were in absolute safety.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Young, when we had reached this comforting conclusion,
+"since it's a sure thing that we're all right here, I move that we make
+ourselves comfortable. Let's bring in th' stock, an' get th' packs off;
+an' then we'll build a fire an' eat another supper. Fightin' Indians is
+hungry work, an' I feel as if I hadn't had anything to eat for a
+week"&mdash;which suggestions were so reasonable that we at once proceeded to
+act upon them.</p>
+
+<p>It was hard work for us, wounded and sore and tired as we were, to
+unfasten the pack-cords; and still harder work to collect the wood for
+our fire. But we managed to accomplish it all at last; and most
+comforting and refreshing was our supper amid those extraordinary
+surroundings. There was even cheerfulness about our meal&mdash;and yet over
+in the shadows at the back of the cave, touched now and then by a
+brighter flash of firelight, lay before the heathen altar of old the
+body of our poor Dennis; and close beside us were the long rows of dead
+Indians. I sometimes have thought that it was strange that we then had
+any heart to eat at all, surrounded by so desolate a company. But there
+is that about killing one's fellow-creatures, and being in imminent
+peril of being killed one's self, I have found, that blunts for a while
+the souls of those who survive and makes them careless of death's awful
+mystery. As the fire crackled and blazed, giving out a plentiful warmth
+that in that chill place was most grateful to our aching bodies, our
+spirits seemed to brighten with its brightness; and when the rich smell
+of strong coffee mingled with the smell of stewing meats told that
+Young's cooking was nearly ended, we sniffed hungrily and eagerly; and
+when we actually fell to upon our meal I remember that we even laughed
+over it.</p>
+
+<p>Yet it is but just to Fray Antonio to say that his fine spirit did not
+fall to the level of grossness that ours were brought to by what, as it
+seems to me, was an instinctive gladness on the part of our fleshly
+bodies that, for a while longer, they would not return to the dust
+whereof they were made. Through our meal he sat gravely silent, yet with
+so sweet and so tender an expression upon his gentle face that in his
+silence there was no suggestion of reproof. And when our meal was ended,
+and we were for stretching out upon our blankets before the fire and
+smoking our pipes comfortably, he reminded us, with no touch of
+harshness in his voice, that a last duty was claimed of us by our dead
+companion.</p>
+
+<p>And, truly, the funeral ceremonies over Dennis in that strange place of
+burial made the most curious ending of a man that ever I saw. In the
+fine dry sand wherewith the cave was bedded, directly in front of the
+altar on which was the heathen idol, we dug his grave&mdash;toilsomely and
+with pain, for all of our bodies were hurt and sore. While we labored,
+two great torches flared upon the altar, propped against the idol; and
+long, flickering rays of light shot out to us across the mummied bodies
+of the dead Indians&mdash;striking across their gleaming teeth, so that they
+seemed to smile at us&mdash;from the huge blaze of the fire.</p>
+
+<p>From our stores Fray Antonio took out a little salt, and from the clear
+spring that bubbled up within the cave a cup of water, which elements
+he blessed and mingled as the rites of his Church prescribed; and with
+the water thus consecrated he sprinkled the body lying before the
+heathen altar, while his strong, sweet voice chanted the <i>De Profundis</i>
+so that all the cave rang with the rich melody of the holy strain, and
+our own breasts were thrilled by it. Gently we bore the body of poor
+Dennis from its resting-place before the altar to its last resting-place
+in the grave that we had dug there, while Fray Antonio said the
+<i>Miserere</i>; and as with our pack-ropes we lowered the body into the
+earth, the priest sang the <i>Benedictus</i>, with its promise of a better
+life to come; and then a prayer ended all, and we filled in the grave.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm Congregational, myself," Young said, when our work was finished;
+"at least I was brought up that way; an' I'm down on th' Scarlet Woman
+from first t' last. But I go in for lettin' folks believe what they've
+got a mind to; an' when it comes t' buryin' 'em it's only square t'
+give 'em th' sort of send-off that they'd really like. For a Catholic, I
+guess Dennis was a pretty good one; an' I must say I think it would 'a'
+done him good to see th' way we've given him a first-class funeral, just
+in th' shape he'd 'a' fixed things up for himself. But I guess what
+we've been at would have everlastin'ly shook up these dead fellows here,
+if they could have come t' life for about five minutes while it was
+goin' on!"</p>
+
+<p>There was an element of grim humor in this suggestion of Young's that
+tickled my fancy; and it was, indeed, allowing for the quaintness of his
+phrasing of it, but an expression of my own thoughts. But my reflection
+was upon the curious incongruity of it all, and upon the way in which
+religious faiths supplant each other; even as the different races of men
+who formulate them and believe in them supplant each other upon the face
+of the earth. Together in this same cave were now the dead of two faiths
+and two races. Who could tell what dead of other faiths and races yet
+unborn would lie here also before the end of time should come?</p>
+
+<p>When all was ended we were glad enough to lie down to give our battered
+bodies rest in sleep. We felt sure that no attack would be made upon us;
+yet we rolled some fragments of rock into the narrow entrance to the
+cave, arranging them in such a way that they would fall with a crash
+should any attempt be made to move them from outside. And, this
+precaution having been taken, we lay down upon our blankets thankfully,
+and never troubled ourselves to keep any watch at all.</p>
+
+<p>It was brilliantly light when we awoke, for the rays of the just-risen
+sun were striking strongly into the cave through its entrance-way; and
+much light came also through a crevice higher up, and through a great
+hole in the vastly high roof. Viewed in this clearer light, there was a
+horrible ghastliness about the mummies ranged in their orderly rows, and
+presided over by the coarsely carved, coarsely conceived stone figure
+that in life they had worshipped as their god. On this image the
+sunshine fell full, and we perceived that its position evidently had
+been chosen carefully, so that the very first ray of light from the
+rising sun would strike upon it. No doubt, in ancient times, this cave
+had been a temple as well as a place of sepulchre.</p>
+
+<p>We were well rested by our long and sound sleep; but the pain which was
+everywhere in our bodies, from our many bruises, and from our wounds,
+and from the aching stiffness of our muscles, made life for a time
+almost intolerable. Moreover, the languorous reaction following the
+undue exaltation that came of our battling and escape was upon us; so
+that our pain of body was accompanied by a most sombre and melancholy
+cast of mind. Yet, again, did the more balanced and delicate temperament
+of Fray Antonio shine out by contrast with our coarser make; for while
+he also suffered pains of the body, his mind was filled with a serene
+cheerfulness that found expression in kindly, comforting words, by which
+our flagging spirits were strengthened and upheld. There was in Fray
+Antonio's nature, surely, a fund of gentle lovingness the like of which
+I never knew in any other man.</p>
+
+<p>And, in truth, our plight was such that we stood in much need of
+comforting. Not only were we sick with our many hurts, but we were also
+prisoners. By the full light of day we examined carefully the cave, and
+found no outlet to it; and we examined carefully, also, the walls of the
+ca&ntilde;on throughout its full length, and made sure that there was no path
+leading upward whereby a man could go. And escape down the valley was
+cut off, for the Indians&mdash;who knew, no doubt, the manner of place we
+were caught in&mdash;were on guard and watching for us; which fact came
+sharply to our knowledge with a half-dozen arrows that dropped among us
+as we went out a little way beyond the mouth of the ca&ntilde;on to see if the
+way was open to us. Had we been whole, we might have made a dash and
+fought our way through; but even this poor plan was not possible when
+our bodies were stiff and sore. Our one comforting thought was that, as
+we had an abundance of provisions and an ample supply of water, we could
+hold out for so long a time that the Indians at last would get tired of
+waiting for us. If they ventured to attack us in the cave, we knew that
+we could defend ourselves against any number of them successfully. If
+they simply abandoned the siege, then we would be free without fighting
+at all. But it was dismal work waiting in that dismal place for one or
+the other of these two ends to come.</p>
+
+<p>And the fact that the King's symbol had proved a false guide also was a
+source of deep concern to us. By the full strength of daylight we again
+examined the graving at the entrance to the ca&ntilde;on, and there was no
+mistaking the way in which the arrow pointed. And, what was even more
+perplexing and disheartening, we found the graving repeated at the
+entrance to the cave, and the arrow pointing directly towards the statue
+of Chac-Mool. It was impossible that this cave, with mummies only for
+inhabitants, could be the walled city wherein the reserve force of men
+and treasure had been hid; and yet here, obviously, was the end of the
+trail. Of this we convinced ourselves by searching the cave exhaustively
+for another outlet&mdash;even sounding the walls in the hope that we might
+find a passage that had been artificially concealed. As Rayburn tersely
+put it, we were no better than so many rats in a trap with terriers
+waiting for us outside.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="X" id="X"></a>X.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE SWINGING STATUE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Four more days went by very wearily. Our wounds were healing&mdash;for we all
+were in good condition as the result of our vigorous life in the open
+air&mdash;but they still kept us in constant pain, and so tended to increase
+our melancholy. Out in the valley, beyond the mouth of the ca&ntilde;on, the
+Indians maintained their watchful guard. Rayburn tried the experiment of
+holding a hat and coat out on a pole, standing himself under cover of
+the rock, and in an instant a pair of arrows went through the dummy; and
+as one of these came from the right and the other from the left, it was
+evident that in both directions the valley was picketed.</p>
+
+<p>We were safe enough for the time being, of course. Even should the
+Indians overcome their superstitious dread and enter the ca&ntilde;on&mdash;which
+was not probable, for they had not even ventured to remove their
+dead&mdash;they could not possibly make a successful attack upon us in the
+cave. Behind the breastwork that we had built in the narrow entrance,
+and armed with our repeating rifles and revolvers, we were absolutely
+secure.</p>
+
+<p>"It's not a bad thing that we're safe," said Young, "an' that we've got
+plenty of grub an' water, an' even lots of firewood; if we've got t' be
+shut up here we might as well be comfortable. But what I want is a
+through ticket for home. This treasure business has gone back on us th'
+worst kind. That old Fray Francisco had his eye shut up by th' tall talk
+of th' fellow who pretended to be converted; and th' Cacique just
+promiscuously lied. That's about the size of it. An' for bein' fools
+enough to swallow their stuff, here we are, as Rayburn says, like rats
+in a cage."</p>
+
+<p>There was so much probability in what Young said that I did not attempt
+to argue with him; yet was I convinced that in what Fray Francisco had
+written, and still more in what the dying Cacique had said to me, there
+was a substantial element of truth.</p>
+
+<p>Finding that nobody replied to him, for all of us were sore at heart and
+so disposed to silence, Young turned to the statue of Chac-Mool and
+proceeded to abuse it vigorously, on the ground that it was an
+idolatrous product of the Aztec race that was at the root of all our
+troubles. For, as he truly said, had there been no Aztecs to begin with,
+our departure on a wild-goose chase after an Aztec treasure-house would
+have been an impossibility. His attention having been thus fixed upon
+the idol, his habit of investigation got the better of his ill-will
+towards it, and he mounted the altar to examine it more
+closely&mdash;continuing the while to address it in language that was
+eminently unparliamentary.</p>
+
+<p>"A pretty-looking sort a specimen <i>you</i> are!" he said, in a tone of
+vast contempt. "But you're about what I'd expect folks like that friend
+of th' Professor's, th' Cacique, t' worship. It takes a low sort of a
+heathen, even in his blindness, t' bow down to a stone like you&mdash;with
+your twisted head, an' your stubby legs, an' your little fryin'-pan over
+your stomach. Why, where I come from they wouldn't have you even for a
+stone settee in a park. No, you're not fit even t' sit on&mdash;unless,
+maybe, it's on th' flat top of your crooked head;" and by way of testing
+this possibility, Young seated himself on the head of Chac-Mool.</p>
+
+<p>And then a very extraordinary thing happened. The idol, and the great
+slab of stone on which it rested and of which it was a part, slowly
+moved; the head sinking, and the other end of the slab, on which the
+legs were carved, rising in the air! Young sprang up with a cry as he
+felt the stone sinking beneath him; and the figure, relieved of his
+weight, settled back into its former position with a slight jar. In a
+moment that the slab was in the air there had come from under it a gleam
+of light.</p>
+
+<p>In the excitement wrought by this strange accident our hurts were
+forgotten; and we eagerly clambered upon the altar to investigate the
+matter further, while hope and wonder thrilled our hearts.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, then, Young," said Rayburn, "try it again. It looks as though this
+idol wasn't all the blackguard things you've been calling it, by a long
+shot."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I'll be hanged if I'll try it again," Young answered. "Try it
+yourself, if you want to. How do I know what's goin' t' happen with a
+stone thing that goes tippin' around that way? I don't mind sayin' that
+I'm a good deal jolted, an' don't feel like foolin' with it any more.
+Try it yourself, if you want to, I say."</p>
+
+<p>"All right," Rayburn answered. "You and the Professor stand here where
+you can grab me if anything goes wrong. It looks to me as though there
+was a chance for us of some sort here, and I mean to see what it is."</p>
+
+<p>Young and I stood on each side of Rayburn and held him by the arms as he
+seated himself on the idol's head. Borne down by his weight, the head
+slowly sank, the whole fore-end of the stone slab falling away into the
+rock, and the after-end correspondingly rising and disclosing a squared
+opening, through which came a strong burst of light. When the head was
+down to the level of the rock, and the slab stood up at an angle of
+nearly fifty degrees, the movement ceased. Looking into the opening we
+saw a flight of a dozen stone steps. On the bottom step the sun shone
+brightly, and in our faces blew a draught of fresh, sweet air. On the
+rock, beside the stair-way was carved the King's symbol, with the arrow
+pointing downward.</p>
+
+<p>"Hurrah!" cried Young. "Here's a way out&mdash;an' it looks as if that old
+monk an' th' Cacique weren't such a pair of blasted liars after all!"</p>
+
+<p>Rayburn jumped up to have a look with the rest of us; but before he
+could see anything the statue had fallen into place again and the
+opening was closed. "No matter, we know how to work it, now," he said.
+"We must prop it up somehow; that's all. I want to have a look at this
+thing. There's some mighty good engineering shown in the way the centre
+of gravity of that stone has been calculated; and there's a good
+mechanism in the way it's hung. Here she goes again. Just chock it with
+a bit of rock when I swing it open."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what I'm interested in," said Young, "is findin' out what sort of
+a place it'll get us into. It looks to me as if we might be goin' to
+strike the treasure right smack here."</p>
+
+<p>Much the same notion was in all of our heads by this time, and we were
+full of eagerness&mdash;the statue having been swung again, and propped in
+place with a fragment of rock&mdash;as we went down the little stair. But
+what we found was only a continuation of the ca&ntilde;on&mdash;as though, by some
+curious freak of nature, the thin walls of rock enclosing the cave had
+been left thus in the very middle of it. Rayburn drew our attention to
+the fact that we were on the crest of a divide, for a spring that
+bubbled up here flowed away from us; and this also was a cheering sign
+that the ca&ntilde;on had an outlet. How far away the outlet might be we could
+not tell; for the ca&ntilde;on, half a mile or so from where we stood, bent
+sharply to the right. But being thus assured that a way of some sort out
+of our prison was open to us, we turned to examine the work of the
+skilled mechanics who in some far past time had set this swinging statue
+in its place. From below, the simple apparatus, that yet for its fitting
+required so high a grade of scientific knowledge, was plainly disclosed
+to us. Into the great slab of stone, presumably running through it from
+side to side, was set a round bar of metal&mdash;the same bright metal of
+which the sword was made&mdash;more than a foot in diameter; and this worked
+in two concave metal sockets in much the same manner that the sockets of
+a gun-carriage hold the trunnions of a gun. What struck Rayburn as
+especially remarkable was the trueness to a circle of both the sockets
+and the bar; both showing, as he declared, that they had been worked
+upon a lathe. And he was puzzled, as in the case of the sword, as to the
+composition of the metal that thus defied oxidization through long
+periods of time. "Gold is the only thing that fills the bill," he said;
+"but a bar of gold, even of that size, would bend double under such a
+strain. I'd give ten dollars for a chance to analyze it&mdash;for there's a
+bigger fortune in putting a metal like that on the market than there is
+in finding this treasure that we're hunting for: especially if it turns
+out that there isn't any treasure to find."</p>
+
+<p>"Now, don't you go t' runnin' down that treasure," Young struck in.
+"Just now treasure stock is up. Me an' that idol have just boomed th'
+market. I'm sorry I called Jack Mullins, or whatever his name is, such a
+lot of cuss-word names. I take 'em all back. He isn't just th' sort of
+an idol that I'd pick out t' worship myself, at least not as a steady
+thing; but there are good points about him&mdash;especially th' way he tips
+up. I always did like an idol that tipped up. He's done th' square thing
+by us in gettin' us out all right from th' worst sort of a hole; an' I
+guess th' best thing we can do is t' yank our traps out of that cave
+an' get started again. Why, for all we know, th' treasure may be right
+around that corner."</p>
+
+<p>There was no doubt as to the soundness of Young's suggestion in regard
+to resuming our march; but the very serious fact confronted us that we
+now must do our marching on foot. To get the horses and mules down
+through the narrow opening was simply impossible, and there was nothing
+for us but to leave them behind. Rayburn looked very grave over this
+phase of the matter, for leaving the mules meant also that we must leave
+the greater part of our ammunition and stores. That these things would
+be abundantly safe in the cave, for any length of time, was not to the
+purpose; the essential matter was that we would be deprived of them. It
+was hard, too, to think that our animals would fall into the hands of
+the Indians&mdash;for our only course with them must be to turn them loose in
+the ca&ntilde;on, whence they certainly would go out in search of pasture into
+the valley, and so be captured; but it was still harder to think that we
+must go ourselves on foot and with a scant outfit of supplies.</p>
+
+<p>It was not very cheerfully, therefore, that we went back into the cave
+and began to sort out from our packs the articles which would be
+absolutely necessary to our preservation in the rough work among the
+mountains that probably was before us; and our shoulders already ached a
+little in anticipation of the heavy loads which they must bear.</p>
+
+<p>It was while we were thus engaged that Pablo begged that I would step
+aside with him for a moment that he might speak to my ear alone. I saw
+that there were tears upon his cheeks, and as he spoke he scarcely
+could restrain his sobs.</p>
+
+<p>"Se&ntilde;or," he said, "you know El Sabio?"</p>
+
+<p>"Surely, Pablo."</p>
+
+<p>"You know, se&ntilde;or, that he is a very small ass."</p>
+
+<p>"It is true."</p>
+
+<p>"And you know&mdash;you know, se&ntilde;or, how very tenderly we love each other.
+Since I came away from my father and my mother, in Guadalajara, and from
+my little brother and sister there, El Sabio is everything in the world
+to me, se&ntilde;or. I&mdash;I cannot leave him, se&ntilde;or. I should die if we were
+parted; and El Sabio would die also. And you say that you have perceived
+that he is a very small ass. Do not ask me to leave him, se&ntilde;or."</p>
+
+<p>"But we cannot take him with us, Pablo. What would you have?"</p>
+
+<p>"That is it, se&ntilde;or; truly, I think that we can take him with us. You
+see, he is so little; and it is quite wonderful through how small a
+place El Sabio can crawl. He can creep like a kitten, se&ntilde;or, and he can
+make himself into a very little bunch. And so I think that he can&mdash;if we
+help him, you know, se&ntilde;or&mdash;and speak to him so that he will not be
+alarmed, and will try to do his very best to make a small bunch of
+himself&mdash;I think that we can get him down through the hole, and so take
+him with us. But if we cannot, se&ntilde;or, then&mdash;you must forgive me,
+se&ntilde;or&mdash;I love him so very dearly, you know&mdash;then I will stay with him
+here. It would be better so than that El Sabio should think I no longer
+loved him. And he would think that, se&ntilde;or, were I to go with you and
+leave him here among these dreadful dead gentlemen alone."</p>
+
+<p>It had not occurred to any of us that El Sabio might be condensed
+sufficiently to go through the narrow way; but if he truly were the
+collapsable donkey that Pablo declared him to be, we had a good deal to
+be thankful for. He was a sturdy little creature, and his small back
+could bear easily twice as much as any two of ours. With his assistance
+we certainly would be able to carry with us all of our ammunition and
+arms&mdash;of which defensive stuff we could not well afford to spare the
+smallest part.</p>
+
+<p>And El Sabio, after Pablo had made a long explanation of the case to
+him, and had told him precisely what we expected him to do&mdash;to all of
+which he listened gravely and with an astonishing air of comprehending
+what was said to him&mdash;seemed to enter into the spirit of the situation,
+and to try his very best to meet its requirements. It is a puzzle to me
+to this day how El Sabio managed to shrink himself so that we got him
+through that narrow hole; but he certainly did manage it&mdash;and then went
+down the stone stair-way backward, as though he had been trained to be a
+trick donkey from his youth up. When the feat was accomplished, and he
+stood safely out in the ca&ntilde;on, the expressions of love, and of
+congratulation upon his cleverness, which Pablo lavished upon him were
+enough to have turned completely a less serious-minded donkey's head.</p>
+
+<p>Such of our stores as we were compelled to leave behind us, including
+our saddles, and the pack-saddles, and all the heavier portion of our
+camp equipage, we heaped in one corner of the cave and piled rocks
+over; and then we turned our poor horses and the mules loose in the
+ca&ntilde;on, feeling certain that their instinct would lead them out to the
+valley in search of food. It went to our hearts to know that these good
+beasts of ours were doomed to hard service under Indian masters to the
+end of their days.</p>
+
+<p>All being thus in readiness for our advance, we went down the stair-way
+beneath the swinging statue, and from beneath pulled out the piece of
+rock which propped up the great mass of stone. With a heavy jar it fell
+and closed the passage-way, and we prepared to start. Just then Fray
+Antonio remembered that he had left on a ledge in the cave&mdash;that we had
+used as a shelf for the storage of various small matters during our
+sojourn there&mdash;a little volume that he dearly loved: the <i>Meditations of
+Thomas &agrave; Kempis</i>. He was full of remorse for his forgetfulness, and did
+not ask that we should turn back to get his book for him; yet his
+distress over the loss of it was so evident that we had not the heart to
+go on.</p>
+
+<p>"It will take only ten minutes to go back," said Rayburn, and as he
+spoke he ran up the stair-way and set his shoulders to sway up the
+stone. In a moment he called: "Just come here, Young, and help, will
+you? It don't work as easily from this side." But even with Young's help
+the stone did not move. Then the rest of us joined these two, and all
+five of us together pushed with all our strength&mdash;and the stone did not
+yield by so much as the breadth of a hair! And then rather a queer look
+came into Rayburn's face, and he said: "I think that I understand what
+is the matter. The point of leverage falls beyond the edge of the hole.
+From where we have a chance to push, we are working against the whole
+weight of the stone. We might as well try to lift the mountain itself!"
+And then he added, "I guess we'd better give this thing up and start."</p>
+
+<p>Very curious feelings were in our breasts as we picked up our packs and
+set off along the ca&ntilde;on; for we knew that by that way only could we go,
+and that, no matter what was ahead of us, our retreat was cut off.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XI" id="XI"></a>XI.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE SUBMERGED CITY.</h3>
+
+
+<p>A sweet, warm wind blew in our faces as we set off along the ca&ntilde;on; the
+sun shone joyously upon us, and there was that fresh, tingling quality
+in the air that is peculiar to regions high above the level of the sea.
+In spite of the fact that the way behind us was irrevocably barred, and
+that no matter what dangers were ahead of us we had no option but to
+face them, our spirits were strong within us, and we went blithely on
+our way. Young, who was in advance, began to whistle "Yankee Doodle";
+and presently, from the rear of our procession, where Pablo walked
+beside the heavily laden El Sabio, there broke forth a mouth-organ
+accompaniment to this spirited melody.</p>
+
+<p>The bed of the ca&ntilde;on, through which a little stream ran, fell away
+before us along a slight down grade; which descent, since we found also
+a good foot-way beside the stream, made walking comparatively easy
+notwithstanding our heavy back-loads. Now and then our way would be
+barred by masses of rock fallen from above, and by whole trees blown
+down from their insecure roothold on the rocky cliffs; and twice we came
+to steep descents which would have given us trouble had we not brought
+along the ropes wherewith our packs had been bound. Shifting El Sabio
+down these places was our hardest task; but with the ropes, and the
+intelligent part that he took in the performance, we managed it
+successfully.</p>
+
+<p>So we went on for half a dozen miles or more through the windings of the
+ca&ntilde;on, but keeping all the while a sharp lookout ahead&mdash;for in the mouth
+of this end of the ca&ntilde;on, supposing it to open as at the other end upon
+a grassy valley, we well enough might come upon an Indian camp. And that
+we had come upon such a camp we felt quite sure when, late in the
+afternoon, Rayburn signalled us from his advanced position&mdash;he having
+gone to the head of the line in Young's place&mdash;to stand still until he
+should reconnoitre a little. Being thus halted, we unslung our rifles
+and loosed our pistols in their holsters, so that we might be ready in
+case fighting suddenly should begin; and Rayburn went on around a turn
+in the ca&ntilde;on, and for a while we lost sight of him.</p>
+
+<p>Presently he returned and signalled us to join him, but to move
+cautiously. When we came up with him he led us to the bend in the ca&ntilde;on,
+and there a broad view opened to us; for the ca&ntilde;on suddenly widened
+into a great valley, that was everywhere, so far as we could see,
+surrounded by walls of rock almost perpendicular and vastly high. In the
+bottom of the valley was a broad expanse of delectably green
+meadow-land, broken here and there by groves of trees; and in the
+valley's middle part, reaching from side to side of it, was a lovely
+lake, whereof the blue was flecked by white reflections of certain
+little idly drifting clouds: the sight of all which greenness and fair
+water and broad range of sky&mdash;after being for so long a season pent up
+in rocky fastnesses and wandering over brown, sun-baked plains&mdash;fairly
+brought tears into my eyes because of its fresh and open loveliness. And
+in the tender feeling that thus stirred my heart, as I could see in the
+quick glance that he gave me, Fray Antonio also keenly sympathized; for
+his nature was very open at all times to such gentle influences.</p>
+
+<p>But Rayburn and Young, as was evident from their anxious looks, were
+thinking only of the dangers which this lovely valley might hold in
+store for us; for the shore of the lake nearest to us had many houses
+built upon it, and we could see faintly, for the width of the lake was
+nearly two miles, that there were other houses upon its farther shore.
+Standing hidden behind a rock, Rayburn examined the valley carefully
+through a field-glass for a long while.</p>
+
+<p>"I must say this place beats me," he said at last, as he put the glass
+down from his eyes. "There's no doubt about there being a town down
+there; but I can't make out a sign of a single living thing. And what
+is still queerer, the houses seem to go right down into the lake. If
+you'll take the glass, Professor, you'll see that a few of them, on this
+side, stand all right on dry ground; and then, farther down the sloping
+bank, are a lot in the water; and beyond these there seem to be some
+roofs just showing above the level of the lake. And as far as I can make
+out, things are just the same over on the far shore. It looks as if the
+lake had risen after the town was built."</p>
+
+<p>As I looked through the glass I saw that what Rayburn had said was true;
+and I observed with much interest that many of the houses were large,
+and that all seemed to be well built of stone. Their construction
+reminded me of the buildings which M. Charnay examined at Tula, and I
+was eager to get down to them and examine them closely. Young and Fray
+Antonio took the glass, in turn, and as none of us saw any signs of life
+in the valley, we decided to go on. And we were mightily stimulated in
+this resolve by finding, just at the end of the ca&ntilde;on, where the sharp
+descent began, a graving of the King's symbol on the rock, with the
+arrow pointing directly down the steep path.</p>
+
+<p>"Here's a walled city, for sure," said Young; "and if this is where th'
+treasure-house is, we won't raise a row because th' folks have gone off
+an' left it. Just whoop up that burro of yours, Pablo, an' let's be
+gettin' along. It's a pity we had t' leave th' mules behind. If th'
+treasure's in silver, we can't get away with much of it with nothin' but
+El Sabio t' pack it on."</p>
+
+<p>Pablo did not understand this speech, of course, but he recognized his
+own name and the name of El Sabio, and Young's gestures helped out the
+meaning of his words. Therefore Pablo grinned, and "whooped up" El
+Sabio; and we all set off briskly down the steep decline.</p>
+
+<p>Presently we found our way much easier than we had been led to expect by
+its rough beginning. As we advanced along it there was ample evidence
+that the path had been graded and smoothed by the hand of man. In
+several places it was carried on a terrace supported by a well-laid
+retaining wall; a deep crevice was spanned by long slabs of stone, so
+placed as to form a bridge; and where it turned sharply around a high
+shoulder of rock, the face of the cliff had been quarried away. Yet that
+this all had been done in a very remote time was shown by the fragments
+of rock which had fallen into it here and there, and which were
+blackened by age. "The same fellow who set that statue in place probably
+was in charge here," was Rayburn's comment, "and he was a first-rate
+engineer. I wish I knew how he managed to swing those stone slabs over
+that crevice. There's no room there to set up a derrick, and it would
+puzzle me to set blocks like that without one."</p>
+
+<p>And Rayburn's admiration for the professional skill of this engineer of
+a long past age was still further excited when the path came fairly into
+the valley, and thence was carried downward along the gentle slope
+towards the lake, by a perfectly even two-per-cent. grade, over a broad
+way paved smoothly with squared blocks of stone. And Fray Antonio and I
+were much interested in this work also, for we both perceived the
+identity of its structure with the paved way that is found on the east
+coast of Yucatan, and that is continued on the island of Cozumel.</p>
+
+<p>By this paved avenue we entered the city&mdash;for, as we presently found, it
+was entitled to this more dignified name. The first houses that we came
+to were but small buildings enclosing a single room&mdash;such as are found,
+inhabited by working-people, on the outskirts of any Mexican city at the
+present day. They were silent and deserted; but they gave, at first
+sight, the impression of being but momentarily abandoned, for the
+belongings of their owners still remained in them as though the
+every-day affairs of life still went on within their walls. In the first
+that we entered we found an earthen pot still standing on a sort of
+fireplace, and beside the fireplace a little pile of charcoal. There was
+a fragment of bone in the pot, and beneath it were some scraps of
+charcoal which remained unconsumed. It was as though cooking had been
+going on here but an hour before. Rayburn even put his hand into the
+ashes to feel if they still were warm. But closer investigation gave us
+a juster notion of the long lapse of time that must have occurred since
+any fire had burned upon this hearth. In one corner of the room we found
+a pile of mats, but on touching these they crumbled into fragments in
+our hands; and the bone in the pot was so dry and so porous that it was
+light as cork.</p>
+
+<p>As in this first house that we examined, so was it in all of them. All,
+at the first glance, seemed to have been but a moment before deserted;
+but all had signs about them which showed that they had been abandoned
+for a very long time. In one we found a loom&mdash;in construction very like
+that which the Navajo Indians use at the present day&mdash;on which hung,
+partly completed, a sheer filament that once had been some sort of heavy
+woollen cloth. In another, a cotton garment was lying carelessly upon a
+shelf, as though but a moment before cast aside; yet, as I tried to pick
+it up, it crumbled between my fingers into a fine powder.</p>
+
+<p>Of humanity, the only sign that we found anywhere about this grim and
+desert place was the dried, shrivelled remnant of a woman that we came
+upon in an upper room of one of the larger houses farther on. She was
+lying upon a bed of mats, partly turned upon her side, and one arm was
+stretched out towards an earthen cup that stood just beyond her reach
+upon the floor. There was strong pathos in the action of the figure, for
+it told of the keen thirst of fever&mdash;of weakness so extreme that the
+inch or two between the hand and the cup was a gulf impassable&mdash;of a
+moaning struggle after the water so longed for&mdash;and then, at last, of
+death in that utter and desolate loneliness. And what added to the
+ghastliness of it all was that a thin ray of sunlight, coming through a
+crevice in the wall, struck upon the woman's teeth&mdash;whence the lips had
+dried away&mdash;and by its gleaming there made on her face a smile.</p>
+
+<p>As we came close to the lake, we perceived, as Rayburn already had
+discerned by the aid of the glass, that houses, partially submerged,
+actually rose from the water, and that houses of which only the roofs
+were visible were farther on. That this whole valley was the crater of
+an extinct volcano was sufficiently evident; and we could only surmise
+that in later times some fresh cataclysm of nature had poured suddenly
+into it a vast body of water, and so had submerged the city that had
+been builded here. Whatever had brought about the catastrophe, it
+evidently had come with a most appalling suddenness. Everywhere the
+condition of the houses showed how hastily they had been abandoned; and
+the wild hurry of flight was shown still more clearly in the case of the
+woman&mdash;whose surroundings gave evidence that she had been a person of
+consequence&mdash;deserted in her age or infirmity and left lonely to die.</p>
+
+<p>Young's face wore a melancholy expression as we stood upon the shore of
+the lake, and looked out across it towards the faintly seen western
+shore. "If this is th' place we're huntin' for," he said, "I guess our
+treasure stock is pretty badly watered, unless somebody's had th' sense
+t' keep th' treasure dry over on th' other side. We'd better move over
+there, I reckon, an' take a look for it, especially as we've got t' go
+that way anyhow in order t' get out. There ought t' be some sort of a
+path around th' lake, between th' edge of th' water and th' cliffs."</p>
+
+<p>But when we came to examine into this matter we found that there was no
+path at all. On each side of the valley the walls of rock rose directly
+from the water, sharp and sheer.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Rayburn, when we had finished our inspection, "we've got
+to get across somehow. I guess we'll have to sail in, the first thing
+to-morrow morning, and build a raft. These pine-trees down here by the
+water will cut easy and float well, and there's some comfort in that,
+anyway. But what I'm after right now is my supper."</p>
+
+<p>Pablo already had started a fire, having first unpacked El Sabio, that
+he might refresh himself by rolling on the soft, green grass and by
+eating his fill of it, and Young presently had some ham fried and some
+coffee boiled. We had counted upon having fresh meat for supper that
+night, for there was everything in the look of the valley to promise
+that we would find game there; but, so far, not a four-footed thing nor
+a bird had we seen, nor even signs of fish in the lake.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning we got out the axes and went to work at the building of
+the raft; and, notwithstanding what Rayburn had said in regard to the
+ease of cutting them, I must confess that for my part I found the
+cutting of pine-trees very wearying and painful. My hands were blistered
+by it, and the muscles of my back were made extremely sore by it for
+several days. Indeed, the construction of a raft big enough to float us
+all, and our heavy packs, and El Sabio, was a serious undertaking. We
+spent two days and a half over it, and I never in my life was more
+thankful for anything than I was when at last that wretched raft was
+done. As Young observed, as he regarded our finished work critically,
+there was no style about it&mdash;for it was only a lot of rough logs, of
+which the upper and lower layers ran fore and aft and the middle layer
+transversely, the whole bound together by our pack-ropes&mdash;but it was
+large enough for our purposes, and it was solid and strong.</p>
+
+<p>In the late afternoon we carried our belongings on board of it, and
+Pablo succeeded by dint of much entreaty in inducing El Sabio to board
+it also, and we pushed off from shore. For driving the clumsy thing
+forward we had made four rough paddles, which well enough served our
+purposes, for there was no current whatever in the lake and the air was
+still.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="illus6" id="illus6"></a>
+<img src="images/illus6.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>AFLOAT ON THE LAKE</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+
+<p>As we went onward we discovered how considerable the city was that here
+lay submerged. Through the perfectly clear water we could see to a great
+depth, and beneath us in every direction were paved streets, lined with
+houses well built of stone. Near the centre of the valley the size of
+the houses greatly increased, and the fashion of their building was more
+stately; and fronting upon a great open square in the very centre of the
+city was a building of such extraordinary size that we took it to be the
+palace of a king; but here the water was so deep that we could make out
+but faintly the looming far below us of its mighty walls. Never have I
+been more pained than I then was; for in that place I found myself close
+to making discoveries of surpassing arch&aelig;ological value, and yet I was
+as completely cut off from them as though they had no existence.</p>
+
+<p>Just beyond the palace, as we went onward, our raft almost touched the
+roof of a noble building that stood upon the top of a vast pyramidal
+mound, the base of which we could see but dimly far down through the
+waters of the lake. This, evidently, had been the chief temple of the
+city; and as we passed over it and came to its eastern side, we had
+ghastly and certain proof of the terrible suddenness with which the city
+had been overwhelmed. On the broad terrace before the temple was the
+sacrificial stone, and upon this dark mass we saw distinctly the
+gleaming of human bones; and as we peered down into the water we
+perceived that all the terrace was strewn thickly with human bones also,
+showing that when the rush of water came many thousands of human beings
+had here perished miserably. For a little while, no doubt, all the
+surface of the water round about where we were had been dotted thickly
+with the bodies of the drowned which had floated upward; and then, one
+by one, they had sunk again to the place where death first found
+them&mdash;where their flesh wasted away from them until only their gleaming
+bones remained.</p>
+
+<p>I pictured to myself the dreadful scene that once had passed, down there
+below us, where now was only the calm serenity of ancient death: the
+great crowd collected to witness the sacrifice, and then the sudden
+coming of the waters&mdash;possibly so quickly that the victim, held down by
+the neck-yoke upon the sacrificial stone, was drowned ere there was time
+to slay him. This great mound would be the last of all to be covered,
+and the wretched people gathered there must have seen their city
+disappear beneath the waters before death came to them. No doubt they
+thought themselves safe in that high place, made sacred by the presence
+of their gods. And when the water did reach them, what a writhing and
+struggling there must have been for a little while; what a crushing of
+the weak by the strong in mad efforts to gain even a moment's safety
+upon some higher standing-place! And then, at last, the water rose
+triumphant in its swelling majesty over all&mdash;and beneath its placid
+surface were hid the silenced terrors of all that commotion of mortal
+agony, whereof the outcome was the peaceful and eternal calm of death.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XII" id="XII"></a>XII.</h2>
+
+<h3>IN THE VALLEY OF DEATH.</h3>
+
+
+<p>As the raft approached the western shore of the lake we perceived
+beneath us no longer houses, but large walled enclosures which plainly
+had been gardens of pleasure&mdash;for gaunt trees, symmetrically planted in
+groves and beside stone-paved path-ways, yet stood in them; and seats of
+carved stone were placed in what once had been shaded nooks; and in many
+of the gardens were carved stone fountains of elegant design. Between
+the city and what once had been its charming suburb extended a broad
+paved way, like that which we had found upon the eastern shore; and this
+paved way was continued on the dry ground above the present level of the
+lake towards the cliffs westward. On the high western shore were a few
+houses, large and handsome, and having walled gardens around them,
+which evidently had belonged to persons of great wealth and consequence.</p>
+
+<p>In these we found shadowy remnants of a past magnificence. On many of
+the walls were hangings, once rich and heavy, that now were mere films
+of ghostly stuff held together by the many gold threads which had been
+woven into their fabric. Pottery, wrought into beautiful shapes, yet
+ornamented with designs that told of but half-redeemed barbarism, was
+scattered about everywhere, and scarcely a piece was broken. Some very
+handsome weapons we found also&mdash;swords and spears and knives&mdash;of the
+same curious metal as the sword which Pablo so opportunely had laid
+hands upon in the ca&ntilde;on, but far more finely finished and more delicate
+in design. And of this same metal was made a great throne, as it seemed
+to us to be, that was in the largest room of the finest of all the
+houses; a house that we believed was once the pleasure palace of the
+king. The audience-chamber in which this throne stood was of finely
+wrought stone-work, whereof the whole surface was covered with
+low-reliefs of men and animals&mdash;scenes of battle, of council, and of the
+chase&mdash;surrounded by curious tracery of such orderly design that Fray
+Antonio agreed with me in the belief that it was some sort of
+hieroglyphic writing. But this matter is treated of so fully in my
+<i>Pre-Columbian Conditions on the Continent of North America</i> that I need
+not enter upon discussion of it here.</p>
+
+<p>But in none of these houses, much to the disappointment of Rayburn and
+Young, did we find any scrap of the treasure for which they so
+earnestly longed. And, truly, if treasure remained in this wrecked city,
+it was less likely to be in these outlying country houses than in some
+strong building in the city's heart; and so beyond their reach in the
+depths of the lake. If this were indeed the walled city for which we
+were searching&mdash;as well it might be, for never was a city surrounded by
+grander walls than the mighty cliffs wherewith the valley was
+encompassed&mdash;our search was like to be a vain one so far as mere
+treasure was concerned; though I, for my part, felt myself well repaid
+for all that I had thus far suffered by the discovery of so much that
+was of arch&aelig;ological value. In this purer pleasure Fray Antonio shared;
+yet was he also dissatisfied&mdash;for he had come with us that he might
+preach Christianity to living souls: and here were only the bones of
+countless dead.</p>
+
+<p>The paved way still led westward, and we followed it&mdash;for to the
+westward must be the valley's outlet. As it rose to a higher level the
+way widened; and on each side of it was a stone statue of the god
+Chac-Mool. As we came to these statues Young proceeded, in a most
+business-like way, and with no apparent appreciation of the queer figure
+that he cut, to sit down in turn on each of their heads. And he was
+mightily disappointed when he found that neither of them stirred.
+"They're not th' tippin' kind," he said, ruefully, as he got down from
+the head of the second one and looked at it with an expression of
+reproach.</p>
+
+<p>But his countenance brightened, when we had gone a little farther, as he
+caught sight of another and much larger statue of the god that was set
+in a great niche cut in the cliff at the end of the paved way. To
+prepare here the god's abiding-place very arduous labor had been
+undertaken. For a space fully one hundred feet high and as many broad
+the whole face of the cliff had been quarried into; making a deep recess
+that was rounded above, and that from beneath was approached by a long
+flight of steps cut from the solid rock. In the centre of the recess,
+upon the terraced space above the stairs, was a huge squared mass of
+stone, on which the great stone figure of Chac-Mool rested. The opening
+faced directly eastward, and as we approached it the stone figure was
+seen but indistinctly in the duskiness of the recess, over which, and
+far beyond which into the valley, fell the shadow of the mighty cliff.
+From in front of this great altar all the valley was open to us; and
+hence, before the lake swallowed it, every part of the city must have
+been clearly visible in ancient times. As we mounted the steps and
+approached the idol I observed that Pablo hung back a little; as though
+in the depths of his nature some chord had been touched, some ancient
+instinct in his blood aroused, that filled his soul with awe.</p>
+
+<p>Certainly there was no suggestion of awe in Young's demeanor towards the
+statue. With a monkey-like quickness, that I would not have given his
+stout legs and heavy body credit for, he climbed upon the altar and
+plumped himself down on the head of the figure almost in a moment. But
+again he was disappointed, for the idol did not stir. As we examined it
+closely we perceived that its fixedness was not unreasonable; for the
+figure, and the altar on which it rested, were one solid mass of rock
+that itself was a part of the cliff&mdash;left standing here when the niche
+around it was hollowed out. A very prodigious piece of stone-cutting all
+this was, and as I contemplated it I was filled with admiration of the
+skill of them who had achieved it. But Young came down from the idol
+moodily; and he said that the way these people had of playing tricks on
+travellers, by making Mullinses that didn't tip when they ought to tip,
+was quite of a piece with their putting their treasure where it couldn't
+be got at without a diving-bell.</p>
+
+<p>Behind the altar the niche was cut into the cliff so far that the depths
+of it in the waning daylight were dusky with heavy shadows; indeed, so
+dense were these that Young came near to breaking his bones by falling
+into a little hole in the floor, that was the less easily seen because
+it was hidden behind a jutting mass of rock. But he caught the rock in
+time to save himself from falling, and eagerly struck a wax-match that
+he might see if here were a passage-way for us. Descending into the rock
+was a stair-way, the steps whereof were smoothed as though many feet had
+trodden them; and down these steps he promptly went, holding the lighted
+match before him&mdash;these Mexican wax-matches are as good as tapers&mdash;and
+having with him the full box of matches should further light be
+required. A minute later we heard his voice calling to us, but where it
+came from we could not tell&mdash;for he had descended into the rock below
+us, and the sound that we heard seemed to come from the air above.
+While we listened we saw the gleam of the light in the darkness below,
+and then he came up the stair laughing.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, that's just th' boss trick," he said. "I guess th' old priests
+who used t' run this place would be everlastin'ly down on me if they
+knew that I'd tumbled to it. There's a hole right up into th' idol an'
+room inside of him for half a dozen men, an' there's a crack in his head
+that you can see out through while you're lettin' off prophecies an'
+that sort o' thing. Why, if you had a crowd t' work with who really
+believed in Jack Mullins, you could set 'em up for almost anything with
+a rig like that!"</p>
+
+<p>But this curious discovery, in which Fray Antonio and I were deeply
+interested, did not forward our immediate purpose, which was to find a
+way out of the valley. We still cherished a faint hope, indeed, that we
+might find the King's symbol with the arrow pointing the way onward, and
+so be assured that the city buried in the depths of the lake was not the
+city of which we were in search. But in any event the need for getting
+out of the valley pressed upon us; and that we might accomplish our
+deliverance from this shut-in place, we examined closely the whole
+circuit of the cliffs at the western end. Not an inch of this great
+expanse of rock, for as far up the wall as our eyes could see clearly,
+escaped our attentive observation; yet nowhere was there, even by bold
+climbing, a place where the cliff might be scaled, still less an open
+path. And so, having walked slowly along the bottom of the cliffs to
+the edge of the lake on the north, and there turned upon our steps and
+come slowly back again to where we started from, and having made a like
+double journey of inspection to and from the edge of the lake to the
+south, we came at last to our first point of departure, and rested
+before the statue of Chac-Mool, disconsolate.</p>
+
+<p>One discovery we had made in the course of our explorations which
+enabled us to understand how the fate that had overtaken the drowned
+city had fallen upon it. Close by the northern border of the valley we
+saw, high up above us, a vast rift more than a thousand feet wide in the
+face of the cliff; and below this the ground was torn into a deep wild
+channel, and everywhere huge fragments of rock were scattered over the
+ground. Here it was, then, that the water had poured in&mdash;bursting forth
+from a lake above&mdash;by which the city at one stroke had been overwhelmed.
+Some little notice, by the mighty roaring that must have accompanied so
+great a crash of rocks and so vast a rush of water, the dwellers in the
+city must have had; and the gleam of the pouring waters would have shown
+them the nature of the ruin that was upon them. There would have been
+time, before the water was waist-deep in the city streets, for them to
+make their way to the high mound on which their temple stood; and in the
+appalling horror of it all they might have clamored to their priests
+that a victim should be sacrificed to stay this terrible outburst of
+anger on the part of their gods. But it was more than likely that before
+the sacrifice could be completed they all&mdash;people, priests, and he who
+was to be sacrificed&mdash;perished together beneath the flood.</p>
+
+<p>"Why," said Young, "th' Mill River disaster wasn't anything to it, an'
+that was pretty bad. I was runnin' th' way-freight on th' Old Colony
+road when that happened, an' I took a day off an' went up an' had a look
+at it. But this just lays that little horror out cold. It's as big as
+lettin' loose on Boston the whole of Massachusetts Bay."</p>
+
+<p>That we should be prisoners in a place where death had wrought so
+swiftly such tremendous havoc was quite enough to fill our souls with a
+brooding melancholy. But in addition to the sombre thoughts which thus
+were forced upon us, bred of sorrow for the thousands who had here
+untimely perished, the gloomy dread of a more practical sort assailed us
+that we also in a little while would join the silent company of the
+thousands who had died here in a long past time. And the death that
+seemed to be in store for us was less merciful than that which had come
+to them. Theirs had been a short struggle, and then a gentle ending as
+the waters closed over them. But our ending was like to be a lingering
+one and miserable&mdash;by starvation.</p>
+
+<p>With the loss of our mules and horses we had been compelled to leave
+behind us the greater portion of our stores; and for our protection
+against savages, and in the belief that in the mountains we should meet
+with an abundance of game, we had left almost all of our provisions, and
+made our lading mainly of ammunition and arms. But in this valley, so
+smiling and so beautiful, there was no live thing except ourselves. Not
+a beast, not a bird had we seen since we entered it; and in the lake, as
+we found presently, there were no fish; the only sign that animal life
+ever had existed here was that dried and withered remnant of a woman
+that we had found in the deserted house, and the bones which we had seen
+gleaming below us in the lake. This was, in truth, as we came thus to
+call it, the Valley of Death.</p>
+
+<p>While we worked at building the raft we had not thought to be sparing in
+our eating&mdash;for building that raft was hungry work&mdash;and now that
+consideration of the matter was forced upon us, we found that we had
+with us food barely sufficient for three days. We could, of course, eat
+El Sabio&mdash;though such was our feeling towards that excellent animal that
+eating him would be almost like eating one of ourselves; and Pablo, we
+knew, would regard eating this dear friend of his as neither more nor
+less than sheer cannibalism. And even if we did eat El Sabio, the meat
+of his little body would but prolong our lives for a week, or possibly
+for two weeks more. And what then?</p>
+
+<p>Had there been room in our souls for yet more sorrow, we could have had
+it in the thought that in all that we had set out to do we had
+completely failed. If this Valley of Death were indeed the place that we
+had been seeking, little good came to us from finding it. Of the souls
+which Fray Antonio had come forth to save, here there were none. Of
+arch&aelig;ological discovery, truly, I had something to make me glad; yet
+little compared to what was hidden beneath the waters; and even this
+little, since knowledge of what I had found soon must die with me, was
+of no avail. As for Rayburn and Young, the treasure which they sought
+might or might not be near at hand; but they certainly could no more
+come at it than, were it heaped up before them, they could carry it
+away. And most of all was my heart troubled by the fate that was like to
+overtake Pablo because of his love for me. Bitterly I blamed myself for
+permitting the boy to come with me; for I should have foreseen that a
+hundred chances might intervene to render impossible my intention to
+give him his free choice to go or to stay when the decisive
+turning-point in our adventure came. In point of fact, one of these
+chances had intervened; and the attack upon us that the Indians had
+made, and the closing of the passage in the rock behind us that rendered
+return impossible, had forced him to remain with us without voice of his
+own in the matter; and now would bring him, as it would bring the rest
+of us, to the most horrible death of which a man can die.</p>
+
+<p>Night was falling as we ended our search along the cliffs for a way of
+escape, and found none, and so came again in front of the great
+idol&mdash;where our packs had been left heaped up, and where the Wise One,
+happily unmindful of the fate that might soon be in store for him, was
+energetically cropping the rich grass. We built a fire, for the air in
+that deep valley, mingling with the mists rising from the lake, was damp
+and chill; and beside the fire we made our evening meal. There was no
+good in talking about what was so apparent to all of us; but Young, who
+was our cook, showed his appreciation of the situation practically by
+serving only half rations and by making our coffee very thin and poor.</p>
+
+<p>Silently we ate our short allowance of food; and thereafter we smoked
+our pipes with but little talk for seasoning, and that little of a
+melancholy sort. Of our own plight we did not speak at all, but in what
+we said there was constantly a reflection of the bitter sorrow with
+which all our hearts were charged. I remember that Young, who truly was
+as merry a man naturally as ever I knew, told us that night only of
+dreadful railroad accidents&mdash;of wrecks in which men lay crushed among
+the heaped-up cars, shrieking with the agony of their hurts; and then
+shrieking with dread, and with yet greater pain as the fire that seized
+upon the ruin around them came nearer and nearer until they fairly were
+roasted alive. And Rayburn told of a prospecting party besieged by
+Indians upon a mountain peak in Colorado; how, one by one, they slowly
+died in a raving horror of thirst until one man alone was left; and how
+this one man prolonged his life until rescue came by drinking the blood
+of his own body, and yet died in raging madness almost at the moment
+that he was saved.</p>
+
+<p>For myself, I had nothing to add to these horrors; yet such was my frame
+of mind that I found a certain bitter gladness in listening to the
+telling of them, and in tracing between them and our own case the
+ghastly parallel. In our talk, which wont on in English, Fray Antonio
+took no part; but he could follow well enough the meaning of it in our
+tones. On his face was an expression of tender melancholy that seemed to
+me to tell of sorrow for us rather than of dread of what might be in
+store for himself; and that this truly was his mood was shown when the
+others paused, sated and appalled by the horrors which they had conjured
+up, and he spoke at last.</p>
+
+<p>It was not a sermon that Fray Antonio gave us; but out of the abundant
+store of faith by which he himself was sustained he strove to comfort us
+with thoughts of better things than life can give. And with the promise
+of hope that he held out to us with the solemn authority that was vested
+in him by reason of the service to which he was vowed, he mingled a
+certain yearning for us, very moving, that came of the love and the
+tender gentleness that were in his own heart. And yet, though he knew
+that, excepting Pablo, we all were heretics according to his own creed,
+there was no word of doctrine in all of his discourse. Rather was what
+he said a simple setting forth of that primitive Christianity which has
+its beginning and its ending in a simple faith in an all-pervading,
+all-protecting love. And of this love, as it seemed to me, he himself
+was the human embodiment. Looking in his gentle face, which yet had such
+high courage, such noble resolution in it, I felt that in him the spirit
+of the saints and martyrs of long past ages lived again.</p>
+
+<p>With our souls soothed and strengthened by what Fray Antonio had spoken
+to us, we lay down at last to sleep; yet was it impossible for us to
+drive out from our hearts that natural sadness which men must feel who
+know that they have failed in a strong effort to accomplish a project
+very dear to them, and who know also that they are standing upon the
+very threshold of a most tormenting death.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XIII" id="XIII"></a>XIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>UP THE CHAC-MOOL STAIR.</h3>
+
+
+<p>We awoke the next morning at the very moment that the sun rose above the
+mountain peaks to the eastward; and our waking was due in part to the
+sunshine striking upon our faces, but more to the prodigious braying,
+that echoed thunderously from the cliffs around us, with which El Sabio
+welcomed the advent of the god of day.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a good sign, se&ntilde;or," said Pablo, "when El Sabio brays thus nobly
+at sunrise. He does not do it often, but when he does I know beyond a
+doubt that I am to have a lucky day."</p>
+
+<p>"An' I must say," Young struck in, "that for a man who expects t' have
+t' eat his boots in th' course of a day or two I'm feelin' this mornin'
+most uncommonly chipper myself. For one thing, I mean t' have another
+look around that idol. I'm not at all sure that he's not th' tippin'-up
+kind. Maybe we didn't put enough weight on him yesterday; or he may do
+his tippin' up from th' other end. Anyhow, I'm goin' t' have another
+whack at him as soon as I've eat my breakfast; an' that's a performance
+that won't take long t' get through with, considerin' how thunderin'
+little there is t' eat."</p>
+
+<p>Truly, the eating of our breakfast did not consume much time; and, so
+short did Young make our rations, I am not sure that we were not
+hungrier at the end of it than we were at its beginning. When we
+finished, the sun was still low in the east; and the bright rays struck
+full upon the statue of Chac-Mool, on the great stone altar, and into
+the depths of the niche that had been hollowed behind it in the face of
+the cliff. We observed that the idol was so placed that the very first
+rays of the sun, coming through a cleft between two great peaks to the
+eastward, shone brightly upon it, while yet all the rest of the valley
+save the cliff above the niche remained in shade.</p>
+
+<p>With the strong sunlight deeply penetrating it, the recess behind the
+altar no longer was filled with the black shadows that had obscured it
+on the previous afternoon; and even the hole into which Young so nearly
+had fallen was plainly visible. Taking advantage of the better light,
+the lost-freight agent&mdash;who certainly had found a fitting berth in that
+department of railway service, for such a man for hunting for things,
+and for finding them, I never came across&mdash;made a more careful
+examination of the deeper portion of the recess, and presently he gave a
+shout that told of a discovery.</p>
+
+<p>As we gathered around him he pointed in great excitement to a row of
+metal pegs, which were fixed in the rock one above the other,
+diagonally; and then to the point in the roof of the recess towards
+which these pegs tended. Even with the strong light that now aided us
+it was some time before I could make out among the black shadows of the
+roof a small opening; but the longer that I looked at it the more
+distinct it grew.</p>
+
+<p>"We've struck th' trail once more," Young cried. "We've struck it sure.
+It don't look promisin', but here it is&mdash;for if this ain't th' King's
+symbol carved right by th' first of these pegs, then you're all at
+liberty t' kick me right smack over th' top of that idol for a d&mdash;&mdash;n
+fool! Hurrah!"</p>
+
+<p>Pablo could not understand what Young was saying, but it was easy to
+perceive from his gestures the nature of the happy discovery that he had
+made. In a tone in which deference and triumph were curiously blended,
+Pablo said to me: "Did I not tell you, se&ntilde;or, that a good thing always
+happens when El Sabio brays at the rising sun?"</p>
+
+<p>Before Pablo had ended this short but exultant deliverance, Young was
+half-way up to the roof of the cave, treading gingerly upon the metal
+bolts and testing each one before he trusted his weight to it. In a
+couple of minutes he reached the roof and disappeared through the hole;
+and almost instantly he called down to us: "We're solid&mdash;here's a
+regular staircase. Come along!"</p>
+
+<p>We followed him promptly enough; while our hearts thrilled, and all our
+bodies trembled, with the gladness that possessed us as we found this
+way opening to us from the valley wherein we had thought that surely we
+must die. In a little chamber, cut in the rock above the opening into
+which the ladder of bolts led us, Young was waiting for us; and from
+this chamber a spiral stair-way ascended that was dimly lighted by
+crevices cut from it out to the face of the cliff. With Young leading
+us, up this we went; at first rapidly, but, later, slowly and wearily,
+for it seemed as though the stair would never end. Yet though our bodies
+were heavy our spirits were very light; for we knew by the wearisome
+length of it that the stair must lead to the very top of the towering
+cliffs by which we had believed ourselves to be irrevocably shut in. And
+at last there was a gleaming of light above us; and this grew stronger
+and stronger until we came out with a shout of joy into the glad
+sunlight&mdash;and saw far below us the valley that we once more thought
+beautiful, now that it no longer held us fast.</p>
+
+<p>In the depth below us we could discern El Sabio, looking no bigger then
+a rabbit; and he must have caught the sound of our shouting with those
+long ears of his, for there came up to us faintly from him an answering
+bray.</p>
+
+<p>"It's pretty hard lines on that jackass," said Young, "leaving him
+behind down there. But he might be left in a worse place, after all."</p>
+
+<p>I could perceive that Pablo was stirred by uneasy thoughts of the
+separation that now so clearly must take place between him and his dear
+friend; and he looked wistfully along the path across the mountain to
+the westward&mdash;cut and smoothed so that it was an easy path to go on&mdash;and
+evidently thought how simple a matter it would be for El Sabio to travel
+on with us if only once he were up the stair. But he did not speak, and
+I hoped that he was nerving himself to bear manfully this sore trial.
+For the rest of us, we had but one thought: to get our packs up the
+stair-way as quickly as possible&mdash;and at its quickest this work would be
+slowly and painfully done&mdash;and then once more go forward. Just as we
+turned to descend again an eagle came sailing slowly towards
+us&mdash;evidently without fear of us&mdash;and Rayburn was so fortunate as to
+bring him down with a pistol-shot. We tossed him over the edge of the
+cliff; and a famous breakfast we made on him when we returned into the
+valley again. I can't say that I would have much stomach for so dirty a
+bird now, but I certainly did think that eagle most delicious eating
+then.</p>
+
+<p>The hearty meal that we made on him strengthened us mightily, and we
+went to work with a will at getting our traps up the stair. With our
+pack-ropes we hauled the various articles first into the little room at
+the stair-foot, and then toilsomely carried them to the heights above.
+Saving only that this work did not blister my hands, it was worse than
+the building of the raft had been; and all of us, using in climbing and
+in descending the stair certain muscles which normally are not brought
+often into play, found our legs so stiff and sore for the next day or
+two that walking gave us very lively pain.</p>
+
+<p>It was as this heavy work went slowly forward that Pablo said to me,
+speaking in an insinuating and deprecating tone: "Up a stair such as
+this is, se&ntilde;ior, the Wise One would bound like a deer."</p>
+
+<p>I did not call in question Pablo's simile, for I knew that the boy's
+heart must be very sad. Laying my hand kindly upon his shoulder, I
+answered in a way to show that I was truly sorry for him: "The Wise One
+will lead a happy life, Pablo, in this beautiful valley&mdash;where nothing
+can do him harm, and where he will have an abundance of water and of
+rich fresh grass. Up the stair no doubt he could climb, for he knows
+wonderfully well how to use those dainty little feet of his; but even
+the Wise One could not climb up the ladder of metal bolts. Therefore
+must thou strengthen thy heart against the bitterness of this parting
+from him; for even if thou wouldst stay behind with him it is not
+possible&mdash;for thou canst not live, like the Wise One, on water and
+grass."</p>
+
+<p>"But he is so little and so light an ass, se&ntilde;or," Pablo urged, "that
+surely, all of us pulling together, we could pull him up by the ropes,
+even as the other things have been pulled up; surely, surely, se&ntilde;or,
+that would be an easy thing for four men to do&mdash;and I also can pull at
+the ropes, se&ntilde;or, almost as well as any man."</p>
+
+<p>It did not seem to me that even all of us pulling together could sway El
+Sabio up a hundred feet through the air; but Pablo was so pitiful in his
+entreaties, and seemed so resolutely bent upon remaining behind in the
+valley and dying there with his dear friend rather than go on without
+him, that I opened the matter to Rayburn and joined my plea to Pablo's
+that this curious effort should be made. And in addition to the
+sentimental reason for taking the ass with us, I pointed out to
+Rayburn&mdash;as, indeed, he understood without my telling him&mdash;how
+practically valuable El Sabio was to us in helping us to bear our heavy
+loads. Rayburn thought with me that the dead lift of so considerable a
+weight to such a height, without tackle of any sort to help us, was
+impossible. But Young, who had an inventive strain in his composition,
+was of the opinion that he could set up such rough tackle as would
+answer our purpose; upon understanding which, Pablo at once embraced El
+Sabio and danced for joy.</p>
+
+<p>Young was, I think, the handiest man I ever knew. He had a natural
+genius for mechanics; and in the many years of his railroad life he had
+gained a knowledge of all manner of expedients by which the work of
+complicated machinery could be accomplished by very simple means. "When
+you have a freight smash-up right in the middle of the section," he
+said, "with nobody to help you inside of forty miles, and the express
+due to come bouncing down on you inside of two hours, you've just <i>got</i>
+to get things out of the way whether you've got anything to do it with
+or not. If I had the equipment of a first-class freight-cab here I'd
+yank that burro up inside of twenty minutes; and if I don't do it,
+anyway, inside of two hours I'll promise to eat him."</p>
+
+<p>I did not translate the whole of this speech to Pablo, for talk even in
+fun about eating El Sabio was rather a delicate matter, considering how
+close a shave that worthy animal had had to being eaten in dead earnest;
+but I did tell him that the Se&ntilde;or Young felt sure that he could swing El
+Sabio up through the air to where the stair began. And with Pablo&mdash;who
+also could use his hands well&mdash;most willingly helping, Young contrived
+in a surprisingly short time to make a rough windlass, that was
+effective enough for the work to be done with it, and to pull it up bit
+by bit into the chamber in the rock and there fit it together over the
+hole. El Sabio, being brought into the recess behind the idol, regarded
+us all with a doubting expression that even Pablo's repeated assurances
+that we meant well by him could not change into a look of trustfulness.
+Pablo declared, however, that in his heart of hearts the Wise One knew
+that we all were his friends, and that even though we should hurt him a
+little he would understand that it was for his good. And the conduct of
+the ass during the exceedingly bad half-hour that he then went through
+seemed fully to bear out Pablo's words. Around his small body, with
+stays running forward around his neck and aft to his tail, we rigged
+looped ropes&mdash;which ropes were gathered together above his back and
+there made fast to the line that was pendent from the windlass above.
+From time to time, as this operation was going forward, El Sabio turned
+his head upon one shoulder or the other and gazed with a wistful
+expression at what we were doing to him; and the slow shake that he gave
+his head, whereby his great ears were set to wagging mournfully, as he
+finished each of these inspections, betrayed the grave wonder that was
+within him as to what it all could mean, together with a not unnatural
+apprehension of what might be its ultimate outcome.</p>
+
+<p>By a good chance, the effect upon the Wise One of finding the solid
+earth drop suddenly from beneath his feet&mdash;when at last all was in
+readiness, and Young and Rayburn began to hoist away at the
+windlass&mdash;was to render him quite rigid with terror; and there was a
+most agonized look upon his face as he went sailing up through the air.
+Pablo, standing below with me, that we might steady the ass with a
+guy-rope during his ascent, addressed to him all manner of tender and
+comforting words; but for once the Wise One seemed to be insensible to
+his master's voice. Neither with his eyes nor his ears did he respond;
+and he well enough might have been taken for a dead ass going
+heavenward, but for the sharp twitchings of his tail. And when at last
+he was safely within the upper chamber, he fairly fell down upon the
+rocky floor of it in sheer exhaustion begot of fright. It was not until
+we had passed up a bucket of water to him, whereof he drank the very
+last drop, and had been soothed by Pablo's fondling of him and by
+Pablo's gentle words, that his broken spirit revived. And so limp and
+weak was he that it was a long while before we could in conscience urge
+him to ascend the stair. When at last he set himself to this
+undertaking, he was far from accomplishing it in the bounding and
+deer-like manner that Pablo had promised for him; but he certainly did
+at last get to the top&mdash;which was all that was required of him&mdash;and
+there drank gratefully the bucketful of water that Pablo had carried up
+that great height for his comforting when his toilsome climbing should
+end. And Pablo went down into the valley once more that night in order
+to bring back to his friend a hearty supper of rich grass.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="illus7" id="illus7"></a>
+<img src="images/illus7.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>EL SABIO'S PREDICAMENT</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+
+<p>By the time that all this hard work was accomplished the day was nearly
+at an end; and even had there been light for us to see our way by we
+were too tired to go on&mdash;for every bone and muscle in our bodies was
+weary and sore. Therefore we made our camp for the night on the flat
+expanse of rock where the stair ended; and we were thankful that enough
+of the eagle remained to us for our supper&mdash;and, indeed, we made our
+breakfast on him also, for he was a prodigiously large bird. Very
+different were our feelings as we wrapped ourselves in our blankets and
+settled ourselves to sleep on that open mountain-top&mdash;with the path
+clear before us, and with the cheering hope in our hearts that among the
+mountains we should find a plenty of wild creatures suitable for
+food&mdash;from the dull despairing languor that had possessed us as we sank
+to sleep the night before. And with our joy was also a reverent
+thankfulness&mdash;that was more strongly stimulated by certain words which
+Fray Antonio spoke ere we lay down to rest&mdash;that our deliverance was
+accomplished from that death-stricken valley wherein we ourselves so
+surely had expected that we must die.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XIV" id="XIV"></a>XIV.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE HANGING CHAIN.</h3>
+
+
+<p>By the winding way which we followed along the mountain-top (and that
+this was the way we wished to follow the King's symbol and the pointing
+arrow plainly showed), we came presently close beside the rift in the
+cliffs through which the waters of the upper lake had been discharged
+upon the city in the valley below and so had buried it. And here we made
+a very surprising discovery&mdash;which was no less than that the great rift
+in the rocks through which the water had been let loose was not, as we
+had supposed, the result of some fierce convulsion of nature, but very
+plainly was the fiercer work of man. Along the face of the opening
+whence the water had poured forth the rock was grooved, showing that
+drill-holes had been made, close together, from the edge of the cliff
+backward to the lake that once had filled all the valley now lying bare
+and empty before us; and with the field-glass we could see that there
+was a like channelling of the rock upon the farther side of the break.
+And all doubt in our minds in regard to this matter was removed by our
+finding a vastly long drill&mdash;made of the bright, hard metal that we now
+were familiar with, yet could not at all understand its
+composition&mdash;lying close beside the chasm upon the bare rock.</p>
+
+<p>"There has been the devil's own work here!" said Rayburn, as he fully
+took in this extraordinary situation. "Whoever did this must have spent
+months over it, perhaps years, working with such tools as these. They
+evidently went at it systematically, with the deliberate intention of
+drowning the whole crowd down below. From an engineering stand-point I
+must say that it's a good piece of work. See how cleverly they've picked
+out this particular spot, where the wall of rock went down almost
+perpendicularly into the lake, and so got the full value of the thrust
+of the water when their cuts were finished. If I'm not mistaken, there
+was a third line of drill-holes sunk in the middle of the mass that they
+meant to cut loose. That's the way I should have done it: then there
+would have been a little giving in the centre that would have helped to
+loosen the sides. But what a lot of incarnate devils they must have been
+to go at such a job!"</p>
+
+<p>Truly, there was something chilling to the blood in the thought of the
+slow labor of them who had toiled here, day after day and month after
+month, until their ghastly purpose was accomplished, and they had slain
+a whole city without striking a single honest blow. Such vengeance upon
+an enemy as here was taken never had its equal for cold, malignant
+cruelty since the world began. Down in the valley below we had seen
+gleaming beneath the calm surface of the lake the bones of the thousands
+who had perished when this diabolical work was completed, and the waters
+bounded forth, shining and sparkling in the sunlight, on their mission
+of death. And whoever let them loose must have stood just where we now
+were standing; and at sight of what came of their long labor there must
+have been such joy as no hell could adequately punish in their black
+hearts.</p>
+
+<p>Our bodies shuddered as we turned and left the scene of this tremendous
+tragedy; that was the more appalling to us because of the profound
+mystery in which was buried everything related to it save the fact that
+it had been.</p>
+
+<p>For a long distance our way went onward beside the bare, deep valley
+that had been the basin of the lake, and so the thought of the horror
+which had been wrought so devilishly with its innocent waters lingered
+gloomily in our minds. Involuntarily we associated the unknown people of
+a long past time who had perpetrated this hideous wholesale murder with
+the people for whom we now were searching, and an uncertain dread filled
+our souls as to what might be our own fate should we end by finding what
+we sought. From the tender mercies of a race in which stealthy craft and
+cold, malignant cruelty evidently were such conspicuous characteristics,
+little was to be expected. Therefore, it was in a sombre mood, and with
+but little talk among us, that we went forward upon our way.</p>
+
+<p>The path that we followed showed the same care in the making of it that
+we had found in the path leading down from the ca&ntilde;on into the valley
+where the drowned city was. Throughout the length of it, by carrying it
+skilfully along the windings of the mountain-sides, an equable, easy
+grade was maintained; where it led across open spaces the loose stones
+had been cleared away and stood heaped along each side of it; where it
+skirted precipices the solid rock had been cut out in order to give a
+wider and a surer foothold; and here and there in its course crevices
+which traversed it were bridged with great slabs of stone. Rayburn was
+lost in admiration of the engineering skill that was shown in its
+construction, and declared that a very little extra work put on it would
+fit it for the laying of a line of rails.</p>
+
+<p>The valley on our right, in which the lake had been, narrowed as we
+advanced; and as the path that we followed had a steadily rising grade
+(according to Rayburn's estimate, of a trifle more than three per
+cent.), the bottom of it fell away rapidly. As we reached what had been,
+as we found, the foot of the lake, we discovered fresh evidence of the
+enormous amount of labor that had been expended in order to make its
+waters an effective engine of destruction. Far in the depths beneath us,
+extending across the whole width of the valley&mdash;but here the valley had
+so narrowed that it was less a valley than a ca&ntilde;on&mdash;we saw a high and
+vastly broad stone wall. It was then that we perceived fully the whole
+of the devilish design, and realized the years that must have been given
+to its execution. By the building of the wall the level of the lake had
+been raised fully three hundred feet, and so a head of water had been
+obtained strong enough to thrust out the mass of rock that had been
+loosened by drilling through its centre and at its sides. It would have
+been possible, also, for the rock that was to be broken away to be
+greatly thinned by quarrying its open face while the water was rising
+slowly after the great dam was built. Clearly, the whole work had been
+planned with a calm, diabolical ingenuity that assured with absolute
+certainty the accomplishment of the horrible purpose that those who
+labored at it had in view. It seemed impossible, but for the proof that
+we here had of it, that human hearts could have in them enough of purely
+devilish cruelty to spend years in thus working out to perfection so
+hideous a vengeance; and to me it seemed all the more dreadful because
+of the time that had passed since this most evil deed was done.
+Centuries had vanished, and the slayers&mdash;living out the few years of
+their lifetime&mdash;had perished from off the earth as utterly as had the
+slain; yet here the whole proof of the great crime that had been wrought
+lived on in enduring stone that was like to last until the very end of
+the world should come. Thus had these sinners left behind them, raised
+by their own hands, a monument telling of their sin; which sin had not
+even the redeeming quality of passionateness, but was slow and subtle
+and cruelly cold.</p>
+
+<p>We were glad to turn from sight of this place and press onward into the
+ca&ntilde;on, for such the valley now had become; and we found in the dark
+shadows which enveloped us in this deep cleft between the mountains a
+sombreness in keeping with the feelings in our hearts. So high above us
+towered the cliffs that at their top they seemed almost to meet, showing
+between them only a narrow ribbon of bright blue sky, and below us the
+chasm went down sheer for a thousand feet; a gloomy depth that our eyes
+could not have penetrated had there not gleamed at the bottom of it the
+foam and sparkle of a little stream. Here the path was hewn almost
+continuously out of the solid rock; and we could see that a like path
+was cut in the rock on the other side. That so prodigious a piece of
+work should be thus duplicated seemed to us a very astonishing waste of
+energy; for even Young did not have much faith in his own suggestion
+that two prehistoric railway companies had secured rights of way along
+the opposite sides of the ca&ntilde;on, and had begun the building there of
+rival lines.</p>
+
+<p>But the matter was explained, presently, by our finding that this other
+path was but a doubling of the path that we were on. As we rounded a
+turn in the ca&ntilde;on we came suddenly to a broad natural ledge in the rock,
+over which hung a great projection of the cliff so that the sky above
+was hid from us. Here our path went off into the air, and began again on
+the other side of the vastly deep chasm, a good sixty feet away. "Rather
+long for a jump," was Rayburn's curt comment as we pulled up on the edge
+of the precipice and looked at each other blankly. Yet it was evident
+that those who had made with such great expense of toil and time these
+path-ways on the opposite sides of the ca&ntilde;on had crossed in some way
+from the one to the other at this point, and the only surmise that
+seemed to fit the facts of the case was that there had been stretched
+across the chasm a swinging bridge of <i>lianas</i>&mdash;such as still are to be
+found spanning streams in the hot lands of Mexico&mdash;and that in the
+course of ages this had rotted entirely away. But as this bridge, if
+ever there had been one here, was absolutely gone, we found ourselves in
+as shrewdly strait a place as men well could be in. To go ahead was as
+clearly impossible as was the hopelessness of turning back upon our
+path. At the most, we could only return to the valley out of which we
+had climbed with such thankfulness; and rather than go back to die of
+starvation in that place, so beautiful and so desolate, there was not
+one of us but would have chosen to end all quickly by springing into
+the gulf above which we stood.</p>
+
+<p>But while we thus stood in dreary contemplation of the miserable
+prospect before us, Young, as his habit was, was spying about him
+sharply, and so spied out a way of deliverance for us. The announcement
+of his discovery was made in a very characteristic way.</p>
+
+<p>"You set up to be some punkins of an engineer, now don't you?" he said,
+addressing Rayburn. "But did you ever happen to hear of a bridge that
+was hung up at one end an' that was operated by swingin' it backward an'
+forward like a pendulum?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," Rayburn answered, promptly and decisively, "I never did."</p>
+
+<p>"So I thought," Young went on. "Well, you've admitted that in sev'ral
+things th' man who was in charge of construction on this line could have
+given you points, an' this swingin' bridge notion is one of 'em. I can't
+say that I think much of it. It wouldn't do in railroads, for sure; but
+there is a good deal to be said in favor of it when it helps folks out
+of such a hole as we're in now&mdash;an' if it still is in workin' order,
+that is just what it's going to do. There it is. Do you catch on?"</p>
+
+<p>We all looked in the direction in which Young pointed, for his gesture
+was so earnest that even Fray Antonio and Pablo caught the meaning of
+it, and so saw&mdash;pendent from a point far up on the overhang of rock, and
+but indistinctly showing in the shadow&mdash;a great chain that at its lower
+end was caught in a metal hook set in the face of the cliff at the
+extreme back of the ledge on which we stood. For my part, I did not at
+once catch the meaning of Young's words even when I saw the chain, but
+Rayburn understood it all in a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"By Jove!" he exclaimed, "that <i>is</i> a notion! You grab the end of it and
+just swing across to the other side!"</p>
+
+<p>Young already had loosened the chain from the hook and was testing its
+strength by putting his weight on it. At the end of it was a crossbar
+big enough to get a good grip upon; and this, and the chain itself, were
+wrought of the bright, hard metal of which we had encountered so many
+specimens. The upper end was made fast high above us in the out-jut of
+rock, very nearly over the centre of the ca&ntilde;on; so that no great force
+was required to carry whoever grasped the crossbar, and so swung out
+boldly, clear across the chasm to the ledge on the other side. But I
+confess that the thought of such a passage made me feel a little dizzy
+and sick; and never did I long to be safely back in my class-room at Ann
+Arbor as I did just then!</p>
+
+<p>"It seems t' be all right," said Young, "but I guess you may as well
+take a pull on it with me, Rayburn. There'd be no fun in havin' it fetch
+away when a man was about half across, an' we may as well make th' thing
+sure." And then, as the chain still held firm under the double strain,
+he added, "Well, here goes;" and, so speaking, took a running start and
+went swinging out over the abyss.</p>
+
+<p>My heart was in my mouth as he leaped forth and shot out from and far
+below us; but in a moment he rose along the curve that he was traversing
+and was safely landed on the other side. "It's a boss invention.
+Workin' it is just as easy as rollin' off a log," he called across to
+us; and to show how easily the passage was made, he instantly swung
+himself back again.</p>
+
+<p>Pablo had manifested signs of strong uneasiness while this talk and
+action were in progress, and in a very anxious tone he now inquired:
+"But how will it be with the Wise One, se&ntilde;or?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, gettin' <i>him</i> across will be as easy as open an' shut," Young
+answered, speaking in English to Rayburn and to me. "We'll just rig him
+in th' rope slings again, an' make him fast to th' chain, an' give him a
+good boost to start him, and over he'll go before he fairly knows he's
+started."</p>
+
+<p>But when we came to apply this brisk statement of the case practically,
+we found it by no means easy of execution. El Sabio grew restive as we
+arranged the slings of rope about his body, evidently remembering,
+fearfully, the strange journey that he had made in the air when we had
+rigged him in a like manner in order to trice him up to where the stair
+began; and he grew yet more restive as we fastened the rope slings to
+the end of the chain. Rayburn had crossed to the other side&mdash;passing the
+chain back by weighting it with a rock&mdash;and stood ready to receive El
+Sabio when he was swung across. But partly owing to a want of skill in
+our management of him, yet more to his own unruliness&mdash;for just as we
+started him, with a strong push, he clapped down his fore-feet upon the
+edge of the cliff and so checked his swing outward&mdash;he did not swing
+within reach of Rayburn's hands. And so he came back towards us again,
+and then out once more towards Rayburn; and so swung slowly and yet more
+slowly until at last he hung motionless over the very middle of the
+gulf, with nothing between him and the rocks below but a thousand feet
+of air. And then El Sabio began to kick with a vigor that set to
+rattling every link in the chain!</p>
+
+<p>Pablo was cast by this mischance into a veritable frenzy of fright; and
+we were most seriously frightened also&mdash;not only because the destruction
+of the poor ass was imminent, but because of the danger which menaced
+ourselves. Our party was divided, and should the chain give way, under
+stress of El Sabio's kicks and plunges, all possibility of our coming
+together again was at an end. Rayburn might leave us and go on; and so,
+perhaps, save his own life. But for the rest of us there would be no
+hope. Behind us was death by starvation. In front of us was this
+impassable gulf.</p>
+
+<p>From Pablo, who was quite wild with dreadful anticipations of the
+parting of the chain and the loss to him forever of his friend, least
+was to be expected in the strait wherein we were; yet it was from Pablo
+that our rescue came. With a quick apprehension of the needs of the
+case, he rove a running-knot in the end of one of the pack-ropes, and
+with a dexterous cast of this improvised lasso set the loop of it about
+El Sabio's neck as that unfortunate animal for a moment ceased his
+strugglings and hung still. And then we all strained on the rope
+together, and in a minute had El Sabio safely with us again; but in such
+a state of terror that pity for him wrung our hearts.</p>
+
+<p>But the limpness which the reaction from such deadly fear threw him into
+made handling him easy; and this time, when we launched him forth
+(taking the precaution, however, to fasten one end of a rope to the
+chain), he went sailing across the full width of the chasm, and Rayburn
+in a moment had him landed in safety. The instant that the chain was
+loosened Pablo hauled it back, and an instant later swung lightly across
+the ca&ntilde;on, and straightway fell to fondling the terrified creature and
+comforting him with all manner of tender words. And he so piteously
+besought us to give El Sabio one good drink that we passed the water-keg
+and the bucket across, and permitted the poor ass to drink half of our
+stock of water without debate of the sacrifice. Indeed, this refreshment
+was so necessary to him that without it I doubt if he could have gone
+on.</p>
+
+<p>While El Sabio thus gathered courage and strength again, Young swung
+over to the other side, and we passed our stores across from ledge to
+ledge&mdash;having ropes made fast to the chain, and so steadying each load
+from the one side while we hauled from the other. This was easy work,
+and we quickly finished it. When it was ended I braced myself for the
+flying journey through the air across that gulf so deep that the bottom
+of it was lost in black shadows, through which the sparkling water
+faintly gleamed; and my heart so throbbed within me as I took the bar in
+my hands, with the knowledge that should I lose hold of it death waited
+for me below in those dark shadows, that my breath came irregularly and
+I heard a dismal ringing in my ears. Yet I had less to fear than either
+of the others who had crossed before me, for the ropes still were fast
+to the chain; and should I not swing far enough I would be helped to
+safety by my companions. But for shame, I should have made my body fast
+to the chain by a rope sling, and so have gone across as our stores had
+gone rather than as a man. But my pride forbade my surrender in this
+fashion to my fears; and it was a lucky thing for me that it did.</p>
+
+<p>Holding the bar in my hands, I ran briskly across the ledge, and, with a
+strong kick on the edge of the cliff to give me additional impetus, I
+went spinning out into space. For an age, as it seemed to me, I sank
+rapidly; while that horrible feeling possessed me&mdash;the like of which
+people subject to sea-sickness feel as the ship drops away beneath them
+into the trough of the sea&mdash;of falling away from my own stomach. And
+then, just as my strength seemed to be failing, and my hold on the bar
+loosing, I perceived that I was rising again; and this put a little
+fresh heart in me, and I tightened my grip on the bar. Ten seconds, no
+doubt, was the full extent of the time that my passage consumed; but it
+seemed to me then, and it seems to me still as I think of it, a long ten
+years. And a thrill of terror goes through me as I think also of how
+near I then came to a horrible death; for at the very moment that I
+reached the farther side of the ca&ntilde;on there was a little tinkling sound
+in the air above me, and the bar that I held was twitched out of my
+hands, and then came a loud jingling of metal on rock, and as I turned
+quickly I saw a gleam of sunlight catch the great chain as it went
+twisting downward into the black gulf below.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XV" id="XV"></a>XV.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE TEMPLE IN THE CLOUDS.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Doubtless the violent strain to which the chain had been subjected by El
+Sabio's kicking and plunging had loosened the fastenings, centuries old,
+which held it to the rock; for the chain had not broken, but had come
+away entire. I sank down on the rock as weak with terror as the poor ass
+had been; and like him I drank greedily of water, and panted for a
+while, and at last found my courage coming back to me.</p>
+
+<p>Yet my case was a happy one compared with that of Fray Antonio.
+Howsoever narrow my escape had been, the fact remained that I had come
+out from my encounter with Death safe and unharmed; but on Fray
+Antonio's shoulder we could but dread that Death already had laid his
+hand. And that he knew how close to him Death was standing we could see
+by a certain elate and confident air of courage in his bearing, and by
+the wonderful tenderness and sweetness of his smile. Truly, never did I
+know a man so ready at all times as this man was to lay down the life
+that God had given him; holding it but as a trust that might at any
+moment be called back to the source whence it came. Yet because it was a
+trust, meant to be put to useful purposes, Fray Antonio valued his life
+and cared for it. And at this time it was he himself who devised a plan
+by which it might be saved.</p>
+
+<p>The ropes which were fastened to the chain, being held stoutly on the
+one side by Fray Antonio and on the other by Young, fortunately had
+broken as the great weight of the chain suddenly had come upon them, and
+had broken so close to the knots which held them that nearly the whole
+of their length remained. The plan that the monk now devised for coming
+across to us&mdash;and a bold heart was required even to think of this daring
+enterprise&mdash;was that with the two ropes fastened about his body at one
+end, and held by all of us at the other, he should swing down into the
+chasm and far under the promontory of rock on which we stood, and then
+that we should haul him up to us. The great difficulty in the way of
+executing this plan was in getting the line across between us; its great
+danger lay in the probability&mdash;notwithstanding the depth of the recess
+beneath us&mdash;that he would be dashed against the rocks with such force as
+to kill him outright.</p>
+
+<p>But Young, who usually was ready for any emergency that might arise,
+roused out a ball of twine that was a part of our stores, and one end of
+this he made fast to a fragment of rock, and by a strong heave of it
+landed it safe on the other side; whereafter the rigging of the double
+rope across was an easy matter.</p>
+
+<p>Very carefully, testing the knots as he made them, Fray Antonio fastened
+the double line about his body, beneath his shoulders, and so stood
+ready on the edge of the chasm; while we four stood holding the line,
+with all our muscles braced for the strain that would come upon it as
+he swung downward. For a moment he paused, with his face turned upward
+while his lips moved. Then he waved his hand, and smiled as he called
+across to us, "It is as God wills!" and so dropped away from the ledge,
+and like a flash went down beyond our range of sight.</p>
+
+<p>We felt the jar on the ropes as his body struck against the face of the
+cliff far below us, and the reflex action as he swung out again, and
+thereafter the slower motion of the ropes as he swayed back and forth
+dangling over that black and awful chasm. And as the ropes settled into
+steadiness we drew him up towards us; yet dreaded, because of the dull
+weight of it, and because no assuring cry came up to us, that what we
+lifted was a corpse.</p>
+
+<p>And, in truth, as we raised the body of Fray Antonio over the edge of
+the cliff it seemed as though this dread were realized; for a great
+bloody gash was upon his temple, and his limbs were limp and lifeless,
+and his face was deathly pale. At sight of which there came into my
+heart a bursting pain, as though some one had stabbed me there; and
+there were tears in Young's eyes; and Rayburn gave vent to his sorrow in
+a great curse that was half a groan. As for Pablo, whom no danger could
+daunt, and who would bear without flinching any hurt of his own, this
+dreadful sight so moved him that he fainted dead away.</p>
+
+<p>Yet even in the moment that such deep sorrow seemed to be settling down
+upon us, Fray Antonio slightly moved his lips, and there came forth from
+them a low faint sigh&mdash;whereupon Young jumped up with a shout and
+relieved his mind by administering to Pablo a hearty kick, which he
+accompanied with the remark: "You infernal fool of a Greaser Indian,
+what do you mean by swoundin'? He ain't dead at all!"</p>
+
+<p>As tenderly as I could for the trembling of my hands, I washed away the
+blood from about the cut and bathed Fray Antonio's pale face, while
+Rayburn gave him a sup of whiskey from his flask. And then, presently,
+his eyes opened and energy came into his body once more. In a little
+while he was on his feet again, and as well as ever, save for the
+smarting of his cut, and in his head a dizziness and a dull throbbing
+pain. Just what had happened he could not tell. He knew that he had
+struck against the rock with his feet, as he had planned to do; but he
+must have swung around, when the force of the impact had been thus
+partly broken, and struck his head against some sharp projection, and so
+have been cut and stunned. But it made no great difference how his hurt
+had come to him, since it had not proved to be a deadly one; therefore
+we forbore to question him further concerning it, and sought by quiet
+talk, that led softly into silence, to take his thoughts away from the
+peril that he had been in. Indeed, we all were glad to rest quietly
+where we were for the night, for our bodies were tired and our nerves
+were racked and strained.</p>
+
+<p>We should have been most thankful for a big potful of coffee, but there
+was no wood with which we could make a fire. The best that we could do,
+and there was not much comfort in it, was to chew some coffee grains
+after we had made a supper upon one of our few remaining tins of meat;
+and then we rolled ourselves in our blankets and lay down upon the bare
+rock. And I must say that if anybody had asked me at that moment if
+arch&aelig;ology was a study that paid for the trouble that it cost, I should
+have said most unhesitatingly that it was not.</p>
+
+<p>Even sleep, which I greatly needed, and for which I earnestly longed,
+did not come to me easily; for each time that I seemed to be dropping
+gently away into unconsciousness I would be roused by the feeling that I
+was holding fast to the chain again, and so was sliding down the long
+curve among the shadows, with the great walls of the ca&ntilde;on towering
+infinitely above me, and with the black depth below. And in my sleep I
+made again the dreadful passage, and heard the clinking of the chain as
+it parted, and the rattle of it as it struck the rocks, and felt the
+grasp of Rayburn as he caught me, just as the bar was twitched out of my
+hands&mdash;and so woke to find Young shaking me, and to hear him say:
+"There's no earthly sense in your kickin' around that way, Professor;
+an', anyhow, it's time t' get up. It's just a wonder how these Mexican
+mornin's put life into a man. Why, there's a freshness in th' air that's
+goin' t' waste in this ca&ntilde;on that's fit t' make a coffin stand right up
+on end an' dance a jig!"</p>
+
+<p>Even Fray Antonio, but for the soreness of his hurt, felt strong and
+well; and we ate another tin of meat&mdash;which was much less than we
+wanted to eat&mdash;and so started along the path hewn out of the side of the
+cliff; and what with the brightness and joyfulness of the morning, we
+certainly were in much higher spirits than was at all reasonable in the
+case of men who had had such close companionship with Death so short a
+time before, and who still stood a very fair chance of dying dismally of
+starvation. The knowledge that, by the falling of the chain, our retreat
+had been again cut off did not at all trouble us. Even could we have
+crossed the ca&ntilde;on, and so have retraced our steps, we could have gone no
+farther than the valley of the lake; and we could as well die here as
+there. And we were stayed by the reasonable conviction that the path
+which we were travelling upon certainly would lead us out of the
+mountains at last&mdash;even if it did not lead us to the hidden city that we
+sought.</p>
+
+<p>For five or six miles we doubled on our course of the day before, going
+back along the ca&ntilde;on and seeing the path that we had followed a little
+below us on the other side; then, by a very easy grade, our course began
+to ascend, and went on rising until the other path was so far below us
+that it ceased to be distinguishable. Thus we came to within a few
+hundred feet of the top of the cliffs, when a sudden turn to the left
+carried us into a narrow cleft in the rock. Here the path was very
+sharply inclined upward for a little way; and for the remainder of the
+distance to the top we ascended a long series of rudely cut steps, so
+steep that our legs fairly cracked under us as we neared the end of
+them.</p>
+
+<p>But we forgot our weariness as we came out upon the summit at last, and
+a great view of clouds and mountain peaks burst upon us; the like of
+which I never have seen approached save by the view out over the
+Gunnison country from the crest of the Marshall Pass. But here we saw
+all around us what there is seen only in one direction; for we were on a
+vastly high, square crest&mdash;very like that called the Gigante, which the
+traveller by the Mexican Central Railroad sees to the left as he nears
+Silao&mdash;and clouds and mountain peaks rose up about us on every side.</p>
+
+<p>But we did not long contemplate this heroic landscape, for a cloud,
+which almost enveloped us as we finished our ascent of the stair, was
+swept still farther away by the brisk wind then blowing; so that
+suddenly a vast building loomed largely through the flying vapor, and in
+a moment was clear and distinct before our eyes. To find upon this bare
+mountain-top, among cloud solitudes so profound as these, such
+overpowering evidence of the labor and strength of man, sent thrilling
+through our breasts a wonder that was akin to awe. It seemed unreal,
+impossible, that in such a place such work could be accomplished; and
+the very tangible reality of it made it seem to me one of those
+prodigies of man's creation which old stories tell of as having been
+wrought by a league with the devil and at the cost of a human soul.</p>
+
+<p>Had there been any signs at all of human life about this solemn and
+majestic building, or upon the mountain-top whereon it stood, the
+chilling hold that it took upon our imaginations would have been less
+strong. What wrought upon us was the deadly silence, and the absolute
+stillness of everything save the drifting clouds. It seemed to us as
+though we had come out from the living world and our own time into a
+dead region belonging to a long dead past; and I remembered with a
+shudder that we had entered this region through that gloomy cavern,
+where hundreds of the ancient dead were clustered in silent worship
+about the great silent idol carved in everlasting stone. It seemed as
+though some evil spell hung over us, that doomed us forever to wander in
+wild solitudes&mdash;which were the more appalling because constantly uprose
+before us tangible evidence of the strong current of eager human life
+that had pulsed through them in former times. Young but put into his own
+rough language the thought that was in all our hearts when he declared,
+with a great oath, that for the sake of getting safe out of this lonely
+hole he'd contract to fight Indians three days in every week for the
+rest of his life, and be glad to do it for the comfort of having
+somebody around who was alive.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XVI" id="XVI"></a>XVI.</h2>
+
+<h3>AT THE BARRED PASS.</h3>
+
+
+<p>The whole top of the mountain, near a mile square, had been so levelled
+by nature that little remained to be done for its further smoothing by
+the hand of man. But the amount of work that had gone into the mere
+preparation for the building of the great temple was almost incredible.
+In the centre of the plateau a pyramidal mass of rock near a thousand
+feet square, of a piece with the mountain itself, had been so shaped and
+hewn that it rose in three great terraces to the square apex on which
+the temple stood. These terraces slanted upward, surrounding the pyramid
+by a continuously ascending way that had its beginning and its ending in
+the centre of the eastern front&mdash;so that, allowing for the diminishing
+size of the pyramid, the distance by this way from the bottom to the top
+of it was more than a mile and a half.</p>
+
+<p>"It just took a slow-goin', lazy heathen Greaser t' think out a thing
+like this," Young observed as we went up the path. "Now, if th'
+Congregationalists that I was brought up among had put a church on a
+place like this&mdash;an' they wouldn't have been likely t' be fools enough
+t' do anything of th' sort&mdash;they'd 'a' had a set of steps runnin' smack
+from th' bottom t' th' top, an' folks would have got up in no time. It's
+just th' Greaser fashion all over t' spend a hundred years or so in
+makin' a path five miles long around a hill about as high as th' Boston
+State-house, so's they can get up it easy an' save their wind. But I
+wish they'd put in drinkin' fountains along th' road. I'm as thirsty as
+a salt cod&mdash;an' there's so precious little water left in th' keg that
+I'm afraid t' begin at it for fear of suckin' it all up."</p>
+
+<p>"Drinking fountains?" Rayburn, who was a little in advance, called back
+to us. "Well, so they did. Come along and drink as much as you want to."</p>
+
+<p>"Cut that, Rayburn," Young answered. "I'm too dead in earnest about my
+being thirsty to stand any foolin'."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not fooling"&mdash;we had caught up with him by this time&mdash;"look for
+yourself."</p>
+
+<p>To which Young's only reply was to spring forward eagerly and drink a
+long deep draught from a stone basin beside the path into which trickled
+a tiny stream from above. Finding water in this unlikely place was as
+great a surprise as it was a joy to us; for we all longed for it, yet
+dared not drink freely because our supply was nearly gone. It was
+touching to hear the long sigh of happiness that El Sabio gave when at
+last he lifted his dripping snout out of the basin; and then to see the
+look that he gave Pablo, as though to thank him for so blessedly
+plentiful a drink. In truth, the Wise One had not tasted a drop of water
+for nearly twenty-four hours&mdash;not since his perilous passage of the
+ca&ntilde;on&mdash;and his throat, and his poor little inside generally, must have
+been very dry.</p>
+
+<p>When we came out on the top of the pyramid at last, which at that moment
+was wrapped in clouds almost as dense as London fog, we perceived the
+ingenious plan that had been adopted in order to secure water
+plentifully on this mountain-top. By careful scoring of the rock with
+many little channels, all leading to a cistern that seemed to be of
+great dimensions, the warm vapor of the clouds as it condensed into
+water on touching the chill stone surface was captured and safely stored
+away. And from the overflow of the cistern the fountain below was fed.</p>
+
+<p>But we did not stop to examine very carefully into this matter, so eager
+were we to press on to the temple close before us. This stood upon a
+terraced platform, cut from the living rock, and was a perfectly plain
+structure&mdash;with walls slightly receding inward as they rose, and wholly
+destitute of ornamentation. For its majestic effect it depended upon its
+great size and upon its admirable proportions; and being built of the
+dark rock of which the mountain was formed, and having about it much of
+the sombre feeling that characterizes Egyptian architecture, it had an
+air of great solemnity and gloom.</p>
+
+<p>In silence we ascended the short flight of steps that led to the broad,
+doorless entrance&mdash;the only opening through the massive walls&mdash;and so
+came into the vast shadowy hall that these great walls enclosed. From
+front to back of this hall extended many rows of stone pillars&mdash;like the
+single row found in the great chamber among the ruins of Mitla&mdash;and by
+these were upheld the huge slabs of stone of which the roof was made.
+Far away from where we stood, down at the end of a long vista of
+pillars, was a stone altar on which was carved in stone a colossal
+figure of the god Chac-Mool. Looking back through the open entrance, I
+saw a break in the mountain peaks to the eastward; and so perceived that
+the first rays of the rising sun must needs enter here and strike full
+upon the disk that was poised in the figure's hands. As Pablo caught
+sight of the great idol recumbent there, a momentary shudder went
+through him and he made certain motions with his hand before his eyes
+that were strange to me.</p>
+
+<p>As we drew near to the altar we found that in front of it was a
+sacrificial stone, still darkly stained where blood had flowed upon it;
+and beneath the stone neck-yoke, still resting there, was a withered
+remnant of human vertebr&aelig;. There was something very ghastly in
+finding&mdash;preserved by the very stone that had held him down while life
+was let out of him&mdash;this mere scrap of the last human victim who had
+perished here. As in the desolate valley, so also on this desolate
+mountain-top, the only proof that human life ever had been here was
+found in proof of human death.</p>
+
+<p>Save that our curiosity was gratified, and the blessing of the water
+which we found, our ascent of the great pyramid and our examination of
+the temple bore no fruit. Young, who still seemed to think that tilting
+up and disclosing secret passages was an attribute of all statues of the
+god Chac-Mool, was here again convinced that his generalization from a
+single case was not a sound one. In a serious way&mdash;that in itself would
+have been laughable but for the gloom of our surroundings&mdash;he climbed
+upon the altar and sat first on the head of the god, and then on his
+feet, and even tried the effect of seating himself upon the stone disk
+that the god upheld above his navel. But through all of these
+experiments the stone figure remained solidly immovable.</p>
+
+<p>"I guess there was only one o' that tippin' kind," Young said, at last,
+"an' he sort o' flocked by himself. Let's get out of here, anyway. If
+this ever was the Aztec bank that we're lookin' for, there must have
+been a prehistoric run on it that cleaned it out. They must have done
+that sort o' thing in old times, eh, Professor? But it don't make much
+difference to us now what they did or what they didn't; an' we'd better
+fill up with water an' get out&mdash;that is, if there is any way of gettin'
+out except along the way we came. There's no good in goin' back that
+way. It would be better t' settle down here an' starve comfortably
+without wearin' out shoe-leather doin' it. But I don't mean t' do that
+until I've had a look all around th' top of this god-forsaken mountain,
+an' made sure that there's only one way down."</p>
+
+<p>My own thoughts had been dwelling on the possibility that Young's words
+expressed; for at this definite point to which we had come, the path
+that we had come by very reasonably might end&mdash;so leaving us in this
+lonely region among the clouds to die slowly for lack of food. And there
+was a certain fitness in our having made our way so far among the dead
+only ourselves to die that added sombre fancies to our environment of
+sombre realities. Yet there was a heartiness in Young's resolutely
+expressed determination to search for a way out of our difficulties
+before at all yielding to them that insensibly cheered me. His words had
+a plucky ring to them; and bravery is as catching as is fear.</p>
+
+<p>Our empty water-kegs were at the bottom of the pyramid, and when we
+reached the fountain on our downward way we waited there while Pablo
+went on with El Sabio and fetched them up to us. There was at least
+solid comfort in knowing, as we went on downward with the kegs all
+filled, that, whatever other death might come to us, at least we could
+not die of thirst. At the bottom of the pyramid we left Fray Antonio and
+Pablo, with El Sabio and the packs, and the three of us set out to
+explore the three sides of the mountain-top that were unknown to us in
+search of a downward path. A heavy mass of clouds had drifted over the
+mountain again, so thick that at a rod away all was white mist around
+us; and the light was growing faint, for the day had come nearly to an
+end. Indeed, had we been upon the lower levels of the earth night would
+have been already upon us.</p>
+
+<p>Making my way along the edge of the precipice, where the plateau broke
+sheer off, was ticklish work; and half humorous, half melancholy
+thoughts went through my mind touching the absurdity of an ex-professor
+of Topical Linguistics in the University of Michigan being thus employed
+in path-hunting upon a lonely mountain-top in Mexico. Truly, adversity
+brings us strange bedfellows; but far stranger are the straits into
+which a man comes who takes up with the study of arch&aelig;ology at
+first-hand. But my path-hunting was without result, for nowhere along
+the edge of the plateau was there a break fit for the descent of any
+creature save such as had wings. At the end of near an hour the clouds
+once more lifted; and then I saw Rayburn coming towards me, but with a
+serious look upon his face that told that he also had been unsuccessful
+in his search.</p>
+
+<p>"It has rather a bad look, Professor," he said, briefly, when I had told
+him that along all the face of the mountain that I had examined the rock
+went down sheer. He filled his pipe and lighted it, and we walked back
+to the base of the pyramid in silence, while he smoked. Young had not
+returned; but presently we heard a shout that had so hopeful a sound in
+it as to start us both to our feet and forth to meet him.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you found a way down?" Rayburn called, as he came nearer to us.</p>
+
+<p>"You bet I have," he called back; "and, what's more, I've seen somethin'
+to eat."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Seen</i> something!" Rayburn answered, as he joined us. "Why the dickens
+didn't you <i>get</i> it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, because it was better'n a mile away from me. It looked like a
+mountain sheep, as well as I could make out; but there it was for sure;
+an' thinkin' how good that critter will taste roasted has given me a
+regular twistin' pain all through my empty inside! But th' point is that
+down on that side o' th' mountain there's game; I saw birds, too, but I
+couldn't make out what they were; an', somehow, it looks different down
+there. It don't look like these d&mdash;n dead places we've been prowlin'
+through for more'n a coon's age. It looks as if God remembered it, an'
+it was <i>alive</i>! Why, th' very smell that came up had somethin' good
+about it; an' there was a different taste to th' air. I tell you,
+Rayburn, I didn't know what a lonely an' mis'rable an' lost chump sort
+of a way I was in until I looked over there into that place where th'
+whole business ain't run by dead folks. An' what's more, Professor,
+that's the trail for us; for, right where it starts down, there's th'
+King's symbol an' th' arrow, all reg'lar, blazed on th' rock."</p>
+
+<p>"Is the trail good enough to make a start on now?" Rayburn asked; "we
+won't have more than half an hour more light, but I'd give a lot to get
+off this mountain before dark, and every foot down that we go we'll be
+that much warmer. We'd stand a pretty fair chance of freezing up here
+to-night without any fire."</p>
+
+<p>"Th' trail's all right for a good half-mile, anyway," Young answered;
+"an' I guess it's good all th' way. It's pretty much th' same as th' one
+we come up by, an' that's good enough, where it don't jump ca&ntilde;ons, t' go
+along in th' dark; but we must rustle if we mean t' do much by
+daylight."</p>
+
+<p>We were back at the pyramid by this time, and we found Fray Antonio very
+willing to be off with us that we might try to get well down the
+mountain before night set in; for at that great elevation the quick
+beating of his heart added very sensibly to the throbbing pain of his
+wound. Therefore we lost no time in getting our packs upon our backs,
+and upon the back of El Sabio, and briskly started downward; and the
+keen cold that came into the air, as the sun sunk away behind the
+mountain peaks at last, warned us that it was safer to take the risks of
+a descent almost in darkness than to stay for the night upon that bleak
+mountain-top without a fire.</p>
+
+<p>In twenty minutes we perceived a comforting change in the temperature;
+and at the end of an hour&mdash;during the last half of which we walked
+slowly and cautiously through the fast-thickening darkness&mdash;there was
+enough warmth in the air about us to make camping for the night
+endurable. But we still were at a great elevation, and the thin air was
+bitingly keen, and all the more so because of the scant meal that we
+had to comfort us and to put strength into us before we wrapped
+ourselves in our blankets for sleep.</p>
+
+<p>"What's a mis'rable two pounds of corned-beef among five of us," Young
+exclaimed, in a tone of angry contempt, "when every man in th' lot is
+hungry enough t' eat th' whole of it, an' th' tin box it comes in, an'
+then go huntin' for a square meal? An' t' think o' that sheep I saw! I
+say, Rayburn, did you ever eat a roast fore-shoulder of mutton, with
+onions an' potatoes baked under it, an' a thick gra&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"If you don't hold your jaw about things like that," Rayburn struck in,
+"I'll murder you!"&mdash;and there was such fierceness in his voice, and he
+truly was such a savage fellow when his anger was up, that Young was
+half frightened by his outburst, and so was silent. I must say that I
+wish that he had altogether held his tongue; for, somehow, the smell of
+mutton and onions and potatoes, all cooking together, was so strong in
+my nostrils, and this smell so set to yearning my very hollow inside,
+that it was a long while before I could sleep at all; and when I did
+sleep, it was to be pursued by dreams of painful hungriness which were
+but too surely founded in painful fact. Certainly, it was very
+indiscreet in Young, to say the least of it, to make a remark of that
+nature at that untoward time.</p>
+
+<p>However, that was the last day that we suffered for want of food. I was
+awakened in the very early morning by the sound of a rifle-shot, and
+sprang to my feet, brandishing my revolver, with a confused belief in
+my sleepy mind that we were attacked by Indians again; and, truly, my
+first feeling was one of pleasure at the thought of meeting, even in
+deadly combat, with men who were alive.</p>
+
+<p>"It's all right, Professor," Rayburn said. "We're not fighting anybody.
+But I've killed a mountain sheep, and if we only can get him we'll have
+a solid breakfast, even if we have to eat him raw. He was over on that
+point of rock, and he's tumbled down clear into the valley, and the
+sooner we get down there and hunt for him the better."</p>
+
+<p>In the bright light of the early morning we could see below us a glad
+little valley, in which trees and grass grew, and in the centre of which
+was a tiny lake. But what gave us most joy was seeing birds flying over
+the face of the water, and half a dozen mountain sheep scampering away
+at the sound of Rayburn's shot. Truly, the sight of these live creatures
+was the most cheery that ever came to my eyes; and as I beheld them, and
+realized that at last we had emerged from the dreary, death-stricken
+region in which as it seemed to me we had spent years, a great wave of
+happiness rolled in upon and filled my heart. As it was with me, so was
+it with the others: who gave sighs of gladness as thus they found
+themselves no longer wanderers among the chill shades of ancient death,
+but once more moving in the warm living world.</p>
+
+<p>The path, cut out along the mountain-side, went downward by a sharper
+grade than that by which we had ascended; and we descended it joyfully
+at a swinging trot, with a new life in us that made us break out into
+lively talk and laughter that set the echoes to ringing. And presently,
+in a very jerky fashion because of his rapid motion, Pablo piped away on
+his mouth-organ with "Yankee Doodle"&mdash;and this was the first time that
+he had had the heart to play upon his beloved "instrumentito" since our
+passage of the lake beneath which lay the city of the dead.</p>
+
+<p>In an hour we came fairly down into that bright and lovely valley, where
+was the sweet sound of birds calling to each other, and the glad sight
+of these live creatures flying through the air. As for the sheep that
+Rayburn had killed, he was knocked pretty well into a jelly by his
+half-mile or so of tumble down the mountain-side. But we were not
+disposed to be over-fastidious, and we quickly had his ribs roasting
+over a brisk fire: that yet was not so brisk as was our hunger, for we
+began to eat before the meat was much more than warmed through. When our
+ravening appetite was appeased a little, Young got out the coffee-pot
+and set to making coffee. And then, with meat well cooked and coffee in
+abundance, we made such a meal as can be made only by half-starved men
+who suddenly have come forth from the dark shadows of threatening death
+into the glad sunshine of safety. Of what further perils might be in
+store for us we neither cared nor thought. Our one strong feeling was
+the purely animal joy bred of deliverance from gloom and danger, and the
+packing of our bellies with hearty food.</p>
+
+<p>When, at last, our huge meal was ended, we settled back upon our
+blankets, and fell to smoking. Presently Rayburn gave a prodigious yawn
+and laid aside his pipe. "I think I'll take a nap," he said. I saw that
+Young already was nodding and that Pablo had sunk down into slumber;
+while El Sabio, who had come even closer to starving than we had come,
+most thankfully rummaged among the rich grass. My eyes were heavy, and I
+stretched myself out on my blankets, with the warm sunshine comforting
+my stiffened body, and presently sunk softly into delicious sleep.</p>
+
+<p>I partly woke a few minutes later, as Fray Antonio rose, thinking that
+we all were lost in slumber, and walked a little apart from us. He alone
+had made a meal in reasonable moderation, and I saw now that he had gone
+aside to pray. For a moment the thought stirred in me that I would join
+him in what I knew was his thanksgiving for our deliverance; but sleep
+had too strong a hold upon me, and my body slowly fell back upon the
+blankets and my eyes slowly closed, carrying into my slumber the sight
+on which they last had rested: the monk kneeling upon the grass beside a
+great gray rock, with clasped hands and face turned upward, pouring his
+soul out in grateful prayer.</p>
+
+<p>It was well on in the afternoon when we all woke again; and Young's
+first remark was that it must be about supper-time. Rayburn fell in with
+this notion promptly, and so did I myself&mdash;rather to my astonishment,
+for it seemed unreasonable that after such a stuffing I should desire to
+eat so soon again. But we did make a supper almost as hearty as our
+breakfast had been, and in a little while wrapped ourselves in our
+blankets, with our feet towards the heaped-up fire, and went off once
+more to sleep, and slept through until sunrise of the following day. In
+truth, the mental strain, bred of our gloomy surroundings and of the
+dread of starvation that had possessed us, had taxed our physical
+strength more severely than our mountain climbing and our lack of
+nourishment. The great amount of strong food that we ate, and our long
+slumber, showed nature's demand upon us that our waste of tissue should
+be made good.</p>
+
+<p>When we woke again on the second morning, we all were fresh and strong
+and eager to press onward. There was little left of the sheep to carry
+with us; but Rayburn shot half a dozen birds, some species of duck, as
+we skirted the lake in our passage across the valley, so there was no
+fear that we should lack for food. At its western end the valley
+narrowed into a ca&ntilde;on. There was no choice of paths, for this was the
+sole outlet, and we were assured that we were on the right path by
+finding the King's symbol and the pointing arrow carved upon the rook.
+The ca&ntilde;on descended very rapidly, and by noon we were so far below the
+level of the Mexican plateau that the air had a tropical warmth in it;
+and so warm was the night&mdash;for all the afternoon we continued to
+descend&mdash;that we had no need for blankets when we settled ourselves for
+sleep.</p>
+
+<p>Rayburn was of the opinion that we were close upon the Tierra Caliente,
+the hot lands of the coast; and when we resumed our march in the morning
+he went on in advance of the rest of us, that he might maintain a
+cautious outlook. If he were right in his conjecture as to our
+whereabouts, we might at any moment come upon hostile Indians. It was
+towards noon that he came softly back to us and bade us lay down our
+packs and advance silently with him, carrying only our arms. "There's
+something queer ahead; and I thought that I heard voices," he explained.
+"But there must be no shooting unless we are shot at. Some of these
+Indians are friendly, and we don't want to start a row with them if they
+are willing not to row with us."</p>
+
+<p>The ca&ntilde;on was very narrow at this point, and high above us its walls
+drew so closely together that the shadows about us were deep. As we
+rounded a bend in it, the rock closed above our heads in a great arch,
+so that we were in a sort of natural tunnel; at the far end of which was
+a bright spot showing that a wide and sunny open space was beyond. But
+over this opening were bars which cut sharply against the light, as
+though a gigantic spider had spun there a massive web; and as we drew
+nearer to this curious barrier we saw beyond it a broad and glorious
+valley, rich with all manner of luxuriant tropical growth and flooded
+everywhere with the warm light of the sun.</p>
+
+<p>We approached the strange barrier cautiously, and our wonder at it was
+increased as we found that it was made of the bright metal of which we
+had found so many specimens; and still more we wondered as we found that
+the bars were fastened on the side from which we approached, so that we
+could remove them easily, while from the side of the valley they
+presented an impassable barrier. In strong excitement we drew out the
+metal pins which dropped into slots cut in the rock and so held the bars
+fast, and in a few minutes we had cleared the way for our advance. Just
+as we were making ready to pass through the opening we heard the sound
+of voices; and as we quickly drew back into the shadows two men sprang
+up suddenly before us, and cried in wonder as they saw that the lower
+bars across the opening were gone. Yet the expression upon their faces
+was not that of anger; rather did they seem to be stirred by a strong
+feeling of joy with which was also awe. Both men were accoutred in the
+fashion which the pictured records show was usual with the Aztec
+warriors, and one of them&mdash;as was indicated by his head-dress and by the
+metal corselet that he wore&mdash;was a chief; and they challenged us
+sharply, yet with gladness in their tones, in the Aztec tongue.</p>
+
+<p>So sudden and so ringing was this challenge, and so startling was the
+uprising of the men before us, that as we sprang back into the shadow we
+instinctively stood ready with our arms. But Fray Antonio, not having
+any intent to join in the fight, was cooler than the rest of us, and
+instantly perceived that fighting was not necessary. Therefore he it was
+who first spoke to these strangers; and his first word to them was,
+"Friends!"</p>
+
+<p>Then the watchmen, for such they seemed to be, spoke eagerly together
+for a moment, and pressed to the opening to look upon us; yet seeing us
+but dimly because of the dark shadows which surrounded us. Pablo was
+closest to them, and I marvelled to see how like them he was in look and
+in air. Him they first caught sight of, and as they saw him they both
+turned from the opening, and, as though calling to some one at a
+distance, gave both together a great glad shout. Instantly, at some
+little distance, the cry was repeated; and so again farther on and yet
+farther, with ever more voices joining in it; so that it swelled and
+strengthened into a great roar of rejoicing that seemed to sweep over
+the whole of the valley before us, and to fill it everywhere with
+tumultuous sounds of joy.</p>
+
+<p>As though the duty that they were charged with had been thus
+accomplished, the men turned again to us, and he of the higher rank,
+speaking the Aztec language, yet with turns and changes in that tongue
+which were strange to me, eagerly called to us:</p>
+
+<p>"Come forth to us! Come forth to us!" he cried. "Now is the prophecy of
+old fulfilled and the watch rewarded that our people have maintained
+from generation to generation through twenty cycles here at the grated
+way! Come forth to us, our brothers&mdash;who bring the promised message from
+our lord and king!"</p>
+
+<p>I turned to Fray Antonio as these words were spoken, and I saw in his
+face that which made me confident in my own glad conviction that here at
+last was the secret place for which so long, and through such perils, we
+had sought. Here indeed had we found the hidden people of whom the dying
+Cacique had spoken and of whom the monk's letter had told; the strong
+contingent of the ancient Aztec tribe that ages since the wise King
+Chaltzantzin had saved apart, that when their strength was needed they
+might come forth to ward their weaker brethren against conquest by a
+foreign foe. And the great happiness begotten of this glad discovery
+filled all my body with a throbbing joy.</p>
+
+<p>Yet as we went out through the opening that we had made between the
+bars, and the watchers saw us fairly in the sunlight, they sprang back
+as though in alarm. Rayburn met this demonstration promptly by making
+the peace-sign&mdash;raising aloft the right arm&mdash;that is common to all North
+American Indians; and after a moment of hesitation the chief answered to
+this in kind. So there was peace between us as we advanced; but it
+seemed to me that their regard of us now had in it more of wonder and
+less of awe.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="illus8" id="illus8"></a>
+<img src="images/illus8.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>MAKING THE PEACE-SIGN</h3>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XVII" id="XVII"></a>XVII.</h2>
+
+<h3>OF OUR COMING INTO THE VALLEY OF AZTLAN.</h3>
+
+
+<p>So unexpectedly had we come upon these strangers, and so marvellous was
+the finding thus of the hidden tribe for which we had sought so long,
+that I could not but dread, as we advanced towards the Aztec warriors,
+lest I should wake suddenly and find that it all was a dream. And they,
+also, as it seemed to me, looked upon us doubtingly, and with somewhat
+of dread in their regard, as though uncertain whether we were beings
+from another world, or men of flesh and blood like themselves.</p>
+
+<p>Not until we were close upon them did further words&mdash;after that first
+challenge and answer&mdash;pass between us; and then the elder of the two,
+still making the peace-sign with his raised right hand, and speaking
+with a trembling in his voice, as though deep emotion moved him, called
+to us: "Have our brothers need of our strength? Bring ye the token that
+summons us to their aid?"</p>
+
+<p>I should have been glad just then for opportunity to consult with my
+companions as to what answer I should make to these questions, for I
+perceived that our position was a very critical one, and that even our
+lives might depend upon the wisdom of my reply. For a moment I waited in
+the hope that Fray Antonio would make answer; but as he remained silent,
+there was nothing for it but that I should take the hazard upon myself.
+Therefore, bringing forth the ancient piece of gold from the snake-skin
+bag&mdash;for so I had carried it constantly, even as the Cacique had done
+before me, and others before him, for more than three hundred years&mdash;I
+held it towards the man who had spoken, and said, firmly: "Here is the
+token of summons left behind him by Chaltzantzin; but we come not to
+call you forth to battle, but to bring tidings that the fate which that
+wise king and prophet foresaw for his people, long since was fulfilled.
+In the time appointed, the stranger foemen overcame and enslaved your
+brethren, bringing to pass that which Chaltzantzin foretold; and the
+message that then was sent to call you forth to their aid reached you
+not, because even the wisdom of Chaltzantzin was powerless against the
+will of the gods. Yet the gods desired not to destroy your brethren, but
+to punish them; and their punishment now is at an end. Once more are
+they free, and once more is their ruler a wise and valiant man of their
+own race. Therefore, the news which we bring you is not sorrowful, but
+glad."</p>
+
+<p>While I was thus speaking, the ringing cries which at the first alarm
+had sounded over all the valley grew louder and stronger; but as yet we
+saw only the two men who at the first had confronted us&mdash;for we were in
+a deep recess in the mountain, whence the ground dropped away in front,
+so that the immediate foreground was hid from us, and we saw only some
+distant meadows, and then a broad lake, and over this more meadows and a
+sweep of heavy timber, and back of all great mountains rising against
+the clear blue sky.</p>
+
+<p>But as my speech ended, and before those to whom it was addressed at all
+had digested the wonder of it, and so hesitated in their reply, a
+half-dozen men and a woman or two came in sight in the narrow way before
+us, panting after their rapid ascent of the acclivity; and the calls of
+others pressing up the slope behind them sounded loudly, and in a very
+little while a crowd of a hundred or more pressed about us, all gazing
+at us and questioning us with a most eager surprise. For the most part
+these seemed to be laborers from the near-by fields; for many of them
+carried agricultural implements, and their bare legs and arms were
+splashed with mud and were grimy of the soil. As for the look of them,
+save that the flowing garments of cotton cloth which the women wore were
+embroidered in a fanciful fashion, I could not have distinguished these
+people from the tallest and strongest of the Indians dwelling in the hot
+lands of the coast about Vera Cruz. The men, who wore only a cloth
+twisted about their loins, were as magnificent fellows as I ever saw.
+Every one of them was tall and straight, with broad shoulders and
+narrow hips, and the muscles of their arms and legs stood out like
+cords. From Pablo, who was an unusually tall and well-formed lad, they
+differed only in the color of their skins&mdash;which were decidedly darker
+than his, as was to be expected in the case of men dwelling in this
+tropical region at the level of the sea.</p>
+
+<p>Towards Pablo these people manifested a familiar curiosity quite unlike
+their reverential manner towards the rest of us, who so obviously were
+not of their own race. And Pablo was as much perplexed by their
+questions as they were by his answers; for never was a conversation
+carried on so hopelessly at cross-purposes. Our boy, being spoken to by
+folk who obviously were as entirely Mexicans as he was himself, and in a
+tongue that practically was that which he had been born to&mdash;for the
+Indians dwelling in the Guadalajara suburb of Mexicalcingo, being the
+direct descendants of a pure Aztec stock, speak the Nahua language very
+correctly&mdash;could not at all realize that he was at last among the
+ancient race for which we had searched so long. It was his belief that
+we had come out, in accordance with Rayburn's forecast, into the coast
+country, and that the people around him were the ordinary dwellers in
+the hot lands. And the Aztecs, knowing him to be one of themselves, no
+doubt believed that he knew of the purpose for which they had been left
+to dwell apart, and so plied him with questions concerning their
+brethren from whom through long ages they had been separated.</p>
+
+<p>As their talk went on, getting the more involved with every question
+and reply, a tendency towards ill-temper began to develop itself on each
+side; for Pablo considered that these people, who professed to be
+ignorant of so important a city as Guadalajara, were making game of him;
+and they were not less disposed to believe that he either was answering
+them falsely or that he was a fool. Fortunately, before any harm came of
+these misunderstandings, an interruption brought a temporary end to
+their talk.</p>
+
+<p>There was a stir among the crowd, and then an opening was made in it,
+through which came an elderly man wearing military trappings similar to,
+but much handsomer than those worn by the two warriors whom we had first
+encountered; and it was obvious, from the air of deference with which
+these saluted him, that he was their superior officer. In spite of the
+dignity of his demeanor it was evident that he was greatly excited by
+our advent, and his voice quivered and broke a little as he asked us who
+we were and whence we came. As I repeated what I had already told the
+guard, and showed the gold token, the expression upon his face was that
+of extreme perplexity. That the gold token gave us a strong claim upon
+his respect, almost upon his reverence, was apparent in his manner as I
+showed it to him; but the conditions under which it was presented
+obviously rendered him very uncertain as to what action was proper for
+him to take.</p>
+
+<p>When I had finished my statement, and had returned the token to its
+place in the snake-skin bag (for the wisdom of carefully retaining this
+potent talisman in our possession was evident), the officer turned to
+the two warriors, and they conversed for a while in low tones apart
+from us. Of their talk I could catch only a few words, but several times
+I heard repeated the name Itzacoatl, and frequent reference was made to
+the Twenty Lords. I gathered, too, that the name of the officer was
+Tizoc, and that the name of the elder of the two warriors, a swarthy
+man, was Ixtlilton. In the mean time, out of respect to the officer, the
+crowd had drawn away from us&mdash;being now swelled to very considerable
+numbers&mdash;but those composing it gazed at us in wonder, and among them
+was a steady murmur of low talk, like the buzzing of a hive of bees.</p>
+
+<p>When his conference with the warriors was ended, Tizoc approached us,
+and with him came a younger man, who carried a roll of paper in his
+hand. The face of the officer still wore a troubled, doubting
+expression, and these feelings were expressed also in the tones of his
+voice as he spoke to us. "For the coming of the token from our lord
+Chaltzantzin we who dwell in this Valley of Aztlan have waited through
+many ages," he said; "but the promise was given that the token should
+come to us from our brethren in the time of their need, and should be
+brought by those of our own race. But you tell us that the time of need
+long since is past, and ye who bring the token are of a race that is
+strange to us; and even this one among you who seems to be of our
+brethren speaks strangely of strange things. Had ye come in the way that
+long past was promised, there would have been no room for questioning
+your right of entry here nor your authority over us; and I, who am the
+Warden of the Pass&mdash;being in right succession from him whom our lord
+Chaltzantzin appointed to this high office&mdash;would have been the first to
+do you reverence and honor. But in this strange case that has arisen I
+hold it to be my duty to send news of your coming to the Priest Captain,
+Itzacoatl, that he and his Council of the Twenty Lords may decide what
+now is right to do. In this I mean no disrespect and no unkindness; and
+while we await the Priest Captain's orders I shall have the pleasure to
+offer you that rest and refreshment of which you stand in need."</p>
+
+<p>To this firm but courteous speech I was in the act of replying in fit
+terms of equal courtesy&mdash;for all that Tizoc had said was so reasonable
+that no exception could be taken to it&mdash;when an outburst on Young's part
+interrupted me.</p>
+
+<p>"Hold on there, young fellow!" he cried. "I'll be shot if I'm goin' t'
+stand bein' made a fool of that way! If you can't make a better likeness
+of me than that, you'd better shut up shop an' go out of th' business."</p>
+
+<p>I turned quickly, and saw Young standing beside Tizoc's attendant, and
+looking half angrily and half laughingly at the sheet of paper that he
+held in his hand. Fearful that some harm might come from Young's
+maladroitness, I joined them quickly; and only a strong sense of the
+gravity of our situation restrained me from laughing outright as I
+behold the cause of his wrath. For the secretary, as I now perceived him
+to be, had made sketches in color of each member of our party; and while
+they all did violence to our vanity, that of Young&mdash;with a bald head
+out of all proportion to the size of his body, and with most
+aggressively red hair&mdash;was so outrageous a caricature that there really
+was some justice in his resentment of it.</p>
+
+<p>But this was not a time when resentment could be safely manifested, and
+I hurriedly explained to Young that these pictures, no doubt, were to be
+transmitted as a part of the report that Tizoc was about to make to the
+King concerning us, and that he must find no fault with them.</p>
+
+<p>"He's goin' t' send that thing t' th' King an' say it's me, is he? No,
+he's not&mdash;not by a jugful! See here, Professor! here's a photograph that
+I had taken last spring in Boston. I meant t' give it to a girl before I
+came away, but she went back on me an' I didn't. It's not much of a
+photograph, but it don't look like a squash trimmed with red clover. If
+they want to send anything, let 'em send that." And before I could stop
+him, Young had taken the photograph out of his pocket-book and had
+handed it to the secretary, with the remark, "Just say t' him,
+Professor, that he is t' give that t' th' King, an' tell him t' tell th'
+King that Mr. Seth Young, of Boston, sends it with his compliments."</p>
+
+<p>After all, no harm came of this absurd performance, but rather good; for
+the secretary exhibited the photograph to Tizoc, and both of them, and
+the two warriors also, were lost in wonder at its marvellous likeness to
+the original, and evidently held us in increasingly great respect
+because we were the possessors of such an extraordinary work of art.
+Young was a good deal chagrined, however, because the picture of him
+that the secretary had drawn was forwarded as a part of Tizoc's
+despatches. He said that since he had set up a good likeness of himself,
+it wasn't the square thing to send the King a bad one.</p>
+
+<p>When the secretary, bearing the despatches, had departed, Tizoc
+requested us to accompany him to the near-by guard-house, where we could
+refresh ourselves by bathing, and where food and drink would be provided
+for us. This order, for such it was, we obeyed gladly; for we were both
+weary and hungry, and the prospect of what Young described as a good
+wash and a square meal after it, was very pleasing to us. A detachment
+of men from the guard-house, accoutred in the same handsome fashion as
+Ixtlilton and his companion, had arrived while the secretary's
+portrait-work was in progress; and I observed that all of these
+guardsmen (excepting only Ixtlilton, whose skin was dark,) were much
+lighter in color and more gracious in bearing than the men in the crowd
+around us. So marked, indeed, was this difference that they seemed
+scarcely to belong to the same race.</p>
+
+<p>As we moved away through the opening that the crowd made for us, with a
+platoon of guardsmen in advance, and another in our rear, Pablo touched
+my arm and was about to speak to me; but before his mouth could open
+there sounded suddenly from the hollow way in the mountain behind us a
+mighty bray. "Ah, the little angel!" Pablo cried. "Hearken to him,
+se&ntilde;or, calling to me." And so moved was Pablo by this evidence of El
+Sabio's affection that only my firm grasp upon his arm restrained him
+from attempting a dash through the guards to where the creature was
+penned in by the metal bars.</p>
+
+<p>Truly, there is no sound more terrifying to those who are strangers to
+it than the braying of an ass; therefore, I was not at all surprised
+that a very considerable part of the crowd incontinently took to its
+heels; and I needed no better evidence of the bravery of the guardsmen
+who composed our escort than the steadiness with which they faced about
+in readiness to meet whatever danger might come forth from the gap in
+the mountain in the wake of this great roaring. Yet what they saw there
+was only the mild face of the Wise One extended towards us through the
+opening in the bars.</p>
+
+<p>To Tizoc, who was standing beside me, and who had not displayed even the
+slightest tremor of alarm as the appalling noise had broken upon us, I
+explained that the roaring creature was not harmful, but gentle and
+biddable; and I begged that other of the bars might be removed, so that
+it might come forth and join us. That he acceded instantly to my request
+gave me a good opinion of his own faithfulness and honesty; for a man of
+a suspicious and crafty nature assuredly would have believed that my
+request was but a trap laid for his destruction; and thereupon the bars
+were removed. And the truth of my words was made manifest, as El Sabio
+came instantly to Pablo and received his caresses with every sign of
+gentleness and affection. But even Tizoc did not disguise his wonder
+upon beholding this strange beast, for the largest four-footed creature
+in all that valley, as he told me, was a little animal of the deer
+species, that was not much bigger than a hare. And when I bade Pablo
+mount upon El Sabio's back, the look of surprise in Tizoc's face changed
+suddenly to an expression of troubled doubt, in which was also alarm.
+Under his breath I heard him mutter, "Can it be that the prophecy will
+be fulfilled?" But whatever the cause of his inward disturbance was, he
+spoke not of it, but turned once more forward, and gave the order to
+march.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="illus9" id="illus9"></a>
+<img src="images/illus9.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>THE FULFILMENT OF THE PROPHECY</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+
+<p>The crowd, seeing that no harm was like to come to them, pressed forward
+once more, and gazed with open-mouthed wonder&mdash;and also, as it seemed to
+me, with awe&mdash;at the prodigious spectacle which Pablo, gravely riding
+upon the ass's back, presented to them. And so, with the guards before
+and behind us, we marched onward into the Valley of Aztlan.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XVIII" id="XVIII"></a>XVIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE STRIKING OF A MATCH.</h3>
+
+
+<p>As we emerged from the nook in the mountain-side the whole of the valley
+lay open before us, and never was a more lovely spot beheld by the eyes
+of man. A half-dozen leagues in front of us rose the great mountain wall
+which shut in its farther side, and about as far away to the right and
+to the left these walls swept around in vast curves and joined the
+cliffs through which we had come by the hollow way that tunnelled
+beneath them. A noble lake extended nearly the whole length of the
+valley, and covered near a third of its width, and so seemed less like a
+lake than like a calm and majestic river. From the water-side the land
+rose in broad terraces, broken by belts of timber and by many groups of
+smaller trees, which, because of the regularity of their growth, I took
+to be fruit plantations. All the open country seemed to be one vast
+garden, most carefully tended, and everywhere cut up by little canals,
+whence water for irrigation was drawn. Scattered everywhere about the
+valley were single houses embowered in trees, and from where we stood we
+could see also four or five little towns, which also were plentifully
+shaded. And on the lake many boats were passing, of which several were
+of a considerable size, and were fitted with curiously shaped sails. And
+all this exquisite tropical beauty of ample water and luxuriant foliage
+shone richly beneath the bright splendor of a deep blue tropical sky.</p>
+
+<p>Yet that which most strongly attracted our attention was not this
+charming display of the manifold excellencies of God's handiwork, but
+rather a wonderful manifestation of the handiwork of man. Over against
+us, on the far side of the lake, slantingwise from where we stood, rose
+a mass of buildings of such vastness and such majestic design that at
+the first glance we took it to be one of the square-topped mountains
+which are found not uncommonly in this portion of the world, and around
+the bases of which are sloping heaps of the fragments of rock which
+have broken away through countless ages from their weather-worn sides.
+Yet in a moment we perceived that what we saw was a walled city built
+upon a great promontory, that jutted out from the mountain-side; and in
+the same breath Fray Antonio and I called out together, "It is the city
+of Culhuacan!"</p>
+
+<p>As we uttered this name Tizoc turned towards us quickly, and with a
+startled, troubled look upon his face. "They are not of our race," he
+said, as though speaking his thoughts aloud; "yet the sacred name, that
+among us only a few know, is known to them!" and the troubled look upon
+his face deepened as we went onward.</p>
+
+<p>The way by which we descended was a narrow road carried zigzag down the
+cliff&mdash;for the pass by which we had entered the valley was fully six
+hundred feet above the level of the lake&mdash;and at short intervals along
+its course this road was defended by walls of very solid masonry,
+pierced with openings so narrow that only one man at a time could pass
+through them. That the walls were for defence was shown by the piles of
+metal bars on the inner side of each opening&mdash;the side towards the
+mountain&mdash;so arranged that in a moment they could be slipped into
+sockets in the stone-work, thus closing effectually the way.</p>
+
+<p>Perceiving that we regarded with surprise this curious system of
+fortification, Tizoc explained: "These are the barriers set up against
+the Tlahuicos, who, heeding not the order given of old by our lord
+Chaltzantzin, have striven many times to break forth from the
+valley&mdash;for among these men there are many of perverse natures and evil
+minds."</p>
+
+<p>In <i>tlahuico</i> I recognized a Nahua word that means "men turned towards
+the earth," but what its meaning might be in the sense in which Tizoc
+employed it I did not know. I should have asked for further
+explanation&mdash;for the manner of this man was so frank and so friendly
+that it invited a cordial familiarity&mdash;but as I was about to speak we
+passed through the narrow opening in a wall of unusual height and
+strength, and so came into a charming garden, in the midst of which
+stood a large house well built of stone. For the making of this garden a
+natural nook on the side of the mountain had been enlarged by filling in
+along its outer edge against a great retaining-wall, built up from a
+depth of a hundred feet from the slope below; and on the farther side of
+the plateau thus created, where the path down into the valley went on
+again, were heavy defensive walls. Near this exit, also, was a long low
+building that I took to be a guard-house.</p>
+
+<p>The crowd that had followed behind us from the height above went on
+across the plateau, and out through the gate beside the guard-house&mdash;its
+members casting many curious looks at us as they departed&mdash;and the
+guardsmen who had formed our escort, at an order from Tizoc, went on to
+their quarters. But Tizoc led us across the garden to the large house
+that stood in the midst of it, and there, with a formal courtesy, bade
+us enter. This was his home, he said, and we were his welcome guests.</p>
+
+<p>The house was so like the houses ordinarily found in Mexico that we had
+no feeling of strangeness in entering it. It was built of stone neatly
+laid in cement; was but a single story in height, and enclosed a large
+central court, in the midst of which a fountain sparkled, surrounded by
+small trees and shrubs and beds of flowers. All of the rooms opened upon
+this central court, and in the outer wall the only opening was the
+narrow way by which we had entered&mdash;for the prompt closing of which
+there lay in readiness a pile of metal bars. The flat roof, also of
+stone, was reached by a stone stair-way from the court, and had about it
+a heavy stone parapet that was pierced with narrow slits through which
+javelins and arrows could be discharged. But these arrangements for
+defence did not by any means produce a gloomy effect, as they would had
+we encountered them in a country-house in our own part of the world&mdash;for
+similar defence arrangements are found in every hacienda in Mexico at
+the present day, and even I, though my stay in the country had been so
+short, already had become accustomed to them.</p>
+
+<p>A buzzing chatter of talk, in which women's voices predominated, ceased
+suddenly as we entered the court; and from the swaying and twitching of
+the curtains hanging in the front of the openings leading into several
+of the rooms, we inferred that we were undergoing a keen inspection. In
+response to a call from Tizoc, some men-servants came out from one of
+the rooms and received his order to prepare food for us; and he then led
+us to a large room in a corner of the court that was arranged very
+delightfully as a bath. Here was a great stone tank, twenty feet or so
+square, and with a slanting bottom, so that the depth of it ranged from
+two feet to nearly five, in which was fresh running water; and over the
+portion of the room that the tank occupied there was no roof but the
+bright blue sky. On the stone floor were beautifully woven mats, and
+towels of cotton cloth hung upon pegs driven into the walls, and in
+earthen bowls were fresh pieces of a saponaceous root that I have seen
+the like of in use among the Indians of New Mexico. It seemed to strike
+Tizoc as odd that we preferred to make use of the bath successively
+rather than all together; but he was too polite a man to interpose any
+objections to our eccentricities. Pablo only&mdash;coming last of all of
+us&mdash;had a companion in his bathing in the person of El Sabio; and the
+sleekness of that excellent animal, when Pablo had brushed carefully his
+long coat when his bath was ended, was a wonder to behold.</p>
+
+<p>Being thus refreshed, we heartily welcomed the excellent meal that was
+served to us in the cool shade of the veranda by which the court-yard
+was surrounded. Our eating was somewhat in the Roman fashion, for the
+table was a broad slab of stone, raised but a little from the ground,
+and around it we reclined upon mats, with cushions woven of rushes to
+lean upon. The food was excellent&mdash;a small animal of the deer species,
+but no larger than a hare, roasted whole; birds very like quails,
+delicately broiled; little cakes made of maize, which were rather like
+the hoe-cakes of our Southern negroes than <i>tortillas</i>; some sort of
+sweet marmalade; and a great abundance of oranges, mangoes, bananas, and
+other fruits common to the hot lands of Mexico; all of which fruits
+were much more delicate in flavor than Mexican fruits usually are; the
+result, as we found later, of the great care bestowed upon their
+culture. Only water was served with the meal, but at the end of it a
+small jar of some sort of potent liquor was brought, very cool, and with
+an excellent spicy taste, that Tizoc warned us must be taken but
+sparingly; and truly he was right, as I found from the warm and mellow
+feeling of benevolent friendliness that but half a cup of it infused
+into me. Tizoc himself did not follow very rigidly the advice that he
+had given us; and to this fact, probably, was due the exceeding
+frankness with which he subsequently spoke with us concerning grave
+matters, of which he surely would have been reticent had he been in a
+less genial mood.</p>
+
+<p>"Just ask th' Colonel if he minds my smokin' a pipe, won't you,
+Professor?" Young said, when our meal was ended; and as I myself wanted
+to smoke, and as I was sure that Rayburn did also, I made the request
+general. Tizoc, to my surprise&mdash;for I believed smoking to be common to
+all the indigenous races&mdash;evidently did not at all understand my
+meaning; but perceiving that I asked to have some favor granted, he
+courteously gave the permission that I desired. As we filled our pipes
+he watched us curiously; but when we drew out our matches and struck
+fire by what seemed to him but the turn of our hands, he started to his
+feet and manifested a strange excitement, in which there seemed to be
+less of alarm than of awe. His voice shook, and his whole person
+trembled, as he asked, "Are ye the children of Chac-Mool, the God of
+Fire, and therefore the chosen servants of Huitzilopochtli the
+Terrible, that ye thus can do what among us is done only by our Priest
+Captain Itzacoatl?"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="illus10" id="illus10"></a>
+<img src="images/illus10.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>THE STRIKING OF A MATCH</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+
+<p>Both Fray Antonio and I heard with delight this utterance, that in a
+moment settled the long-disputed question as to whether or not Chac-Mool
+was an idol, and settled it, also, in favor of the ingenious hypothesis
+presented by the learned Se&ntilde;or Chavero. The moment was not a favorable
+one, however, for pursuing the matter in its arch&aelig;ological bearings, for
+all of our tact and skill just then were required to restore Tizoc to
+calmness. As well as this was possible in the language common to us&mdash;we
+suddenly realized how difficult it was to express in the Nahua tongue
+more than rudimentary concepts of the ideas that we sought to convey&mdash;we
+explained to him how matches were made; and illustrated our words by
+showing him how fire was induced by friction, even as the rubbing of two
+pieces of wood together produced fire also. This explanation was less
+exact than ingenious; but it was one that he could understand, and it
+had the effect of allaying his alarm sufficiently to permit him to
+resume his seat, when he at once drank off a whole bowlful of the
+strong, spicy liquor at a draught. Added to what he already had inside
+of him, this draught set his tongue to wagging in the free way that I
+have already referred to, and he grew bold enough to take a match in his
+hand. But even in his cups he manifested a certain reverence in his
+handling of it; and presently, from a little bag that was hung about his
+neck, he produced the burnt remnant of a match that he compared with it
+critically. "They are the same?" he asked, as he extended the whole
+match and the fragment together towards us that we might examine them.</p>
+
+<p>"They are the same," Fray Antonio answered. "Whence comes the one that
+you guard so carefully?"</p>
+
+<p>"From the Priest Captain&mdash;from Itzacoatl. With such things does he
+miraculously set burning the fire of sacrifice; but he does not speak of
+them lightly, as you do; he tells us that they are the handiwork of the
+Fire God, Chac-Mool; and when the fire of sacrifice is kindled he gives
+what remains of them as high rewards to those who have served well the
+State by brave acts or honorable deeds. This which I cherish was my
+reward for crushing a revolt among the Tlahuicos."</p>
+
+<p>Fray Antonio and I exchanged curious glances, for the conviction was
+forced upon us both that the Priest Captain of whom Tizoc spoke must
+either have invented friction matches, or that he must have some secret
+channel of communication with the outside world. In either case it was
+evident that he must be a man of unusual shrewdness; and it also was
+evident that his feeling towards us&mdash;since we also could perform a
+miracle that he obviously made use of as a means of manifesting his
+divine right to rule&mdash;must be that of strong hostility.</p>
+
+<p>To Rayburn and Young, who had observed wonderingly Tizoc's extraordinary
+conduct, I rapidly translated what he had said; and explained how
+serious our situation appeared in the light of this new development.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it certainly <i>is</i> cold weather for this Priest Captain fellow,"
+Young commented, "if we've got hold of his boss miracle; and I guess
+you're about right, Professor&mdash;he'll want t' take it out of our hides.
+Just poke up th' Colonel t' telling all he knows about this old dodger.
+Th' Colonel's got his tongue pretty well greased just now with his own
+prime old Bourbon&mdash;pass me that jar, Rayburn, I don't mind if I have
+another whack at it myself&mdash;and we may get something out of him that
+will be useful. Try it on, Professor, any way. Here's luck, gentlemen."</p>
+
+<p>That Young's tongue also was a little greased, as he put it, by this
+very agreeable beverage was quite evident; but his wits were sharpened
+rather than dulled by the drink, and his present suggestion evidently
+was a very good one. As for Tizoc, his disposition towards us obviously
+was most soft and friendly; and as his mind slowly absorbed the fact
+that, somehow or another, the Priest Captain had made a fool of him with
+a miracle that was not really a miracle at all, his choler rose in a
+manner most favorable to our purposes. Yet this very feeling of
+resentful anger&mdash;showing a growing irreverence of one to whom all the
+traditions of his people gave reverence second only to that due to the
+gods themselves&mdash;was startling evidence of the menace that our presence
+was to the theocratic ruler's temporal and spiritual power. Therefore it
+was with a keen curiosity that we listened&mdash;and Tizoc needed, to induce
+him to talk freely, but little of the poking-up that Young had
+suggested&mdash;to what was told us concerning the strange people among whom
+we had come by ways so perilous, and of their chieftain, the Priest
+Captain Itzacoatl&mdash;with whom, as no spirit of prophecy was needed to
+tell us, we were destined soon to engage in a conflict that must be
+fought out to the very death.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XIX" id="XIX"></a>XIX.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE SEEDS OF REVOLT.</h3>
+
+
+<p>For the sake of brevity I shall summarize here the statement that Tizoc
+made to us, and for the sake of clearness I shall add to it some facts
+of minor importance which came to our knowledge later&mdash;thus at once
+exhibiting the whole of the troublous condition of affairs that stirred
+dangerously the people dwelling in the Valley of Aztlan at the time of
+our coming among them.</p>
+
+<p>At this period the political situation, as I may term it, was
+exceedingly critical. Three powerful factions were in existence; and
+peace was preserved only by the generally diffused belief that open
+revolt, on the part of either one, would be crushed instantly by a
+temporary coalition of the other two. The beginning of this unpleasantly
+volcanic condition of affairs dated back six cycles&mdash;that is to say, a
+little more than three hundred years&mdash;and was the direct result of a
+violation of the law set forth by the wise King Chaltzantzin when the
+colony was founded, by which it was ordained that all among the
+Aztlanecas who, on coming to maturity, were weaklings or cripples,
+should be put to death.</p>
+
+<p>Being once suggested, the repeal or the modification of this law found
+many advocates. Naturally, the change was urged most strongly by all
+those whose sons and daughters were sickly or malformed, and so were
+doomed to die in the very blossom of their years. It was urged by the
+nobles because the more astute among them perceived the possibility of
+so manipulating it that it would result in the creation of a
+distinctively servile class; and the priests urged it because they also
+perceived a way by which it might be made to provide more victims for
+sacrifice to the gods. And so it came to pass, through the influence of
+these diverse elements operating together towards a common end, that the
+law which Chaltzantzin had promulgated was set aside, and a law was made
+that embodied the provisions demanded by the nobles and the priests,
+whereby should be created a new social class; which class, because of
+the infirmities of those composing it, received the name of
+Tlahuicos&mdash;"men turned towards the earth." Thereafter, the sickly and
+the crippled were not slain upon reaching maturity, but then passed out
+from the class into which they were born and became servitors. And when
+the first cycle was ended after the making of this new law, and
+thenceforward every year, one in every ten among the Tlahuicos was taken
+by lot to be sacrificed to the gods&mdash;for the priests craftily had gained
+the barbarous concession that they demanded by placing the first
+fulfilment of it at a time so far in the future that all concerned in
+the granting of it would be dead in the course of nature before it
+became operative. Yet to the end that those of noble birth might be
+saved from the ignominy of servitude, it was provided that children
+which by reason of natural infirmity were doomed to become slaves, might
+be saved from that fate upon coming to maturity by being then
+surrendered by their parents to the priests for sacrifice. Other grace
+there was none. Excepting between death and slavery, there was no choice
+for the weak or the malformed.</p>
+
+<p>As time passed on, the Tlahuicos, marrying among themselves, had greatly
+increased in numbers; and so far from remaining a weakling race, they had
+become, by reason of their frugal mode of living and of the wholesome,
+hearty labor in which they constantly were engaged, exceptionally hale
+and strong; the weak and crippled among them being mainly those who each
+year, because of such infirmities, were added to their number from the
+higher ranks of the community. And thus was collected together material
+as dangerous as it was inflammable; for the fresh additions to the
+Tlahuicos kept constantly alive in the whole body a spirit of moody
+discontent, that time and again, at the season when the lots were cast
+by which one in every ten was doomed to death, was fanned into armed
+mutiny. These revolts ever had as their single object escape from the
+valley; which fact made evident enough the need for the elaborate system
+of defensive works by which the outlet of the valley was barred.</p>
+
+<p>From the Tlahuicos were drawn the house-servants of the rich; and by
+those of this wretched class who were stout of body all the heavy labor
+of the community was carried on&mdash;the tilling of the fields, the
+quarrying of stone, the building of houses and bridges and roads, the
+felling of timber, the carriage of all burdens, and the working of the
+great gold-mine, concerning which I shall hereafter have more to tell.
+And all of these people were held in absolute bondage, either as the
+serfs of individual owners or as the property of the State; for each
+year the new accessions to the class were sold publicly at an auction to
+whoever would bid the most for them; and those which none would buy,
+being too infirm to be useful as laborers, the State laid claim to&mdash;but
+only that they might be kept alive until such time as they should be
+needed by the priests for sacrifice.</p>
+
+<p>Yet out of this custom of sale, that on the face of it was harsh and
+barbarous, some slight mitigation of the cruelty of the system had come;
+for the practice had grown up of permitting parents to buy back their
+own children&mdash;nominally thereafter holding them as slaves&mdash;and so to
+save them at a single stroke from both death and servitude. One strong
+cause of the hatred of the Priest Captain Itzacoatl, Tizoc said (and we
+wondered then at the trembling in his voice, and at the evidently deep
+emotion that overcame him as he spoke), was that he had but lately
+forbidden the continuance of this practice, by which only the letter of
+the law was obeyed.</p>
+
+<p>Until the promulgation by the Priest Captain of this decree, the
+priesthood, the military aristocracy, and the mass of the army had
+constituted, politically, one single class. The civil government was
+vested in a body styled the Council of the Twenty Lords, the members of
+which originally had been chosen by Chaltzantzin, and from him had
+received authority, in perpetuity, to fill the vacancies which death
+would cause among them by selecting the wisest of each new generation to
+be Councillors. While the composition of this body was distinctively
+aristocratic&mdash;for its members were either military nobles or priests of
+a high grade&mdash;there was in it also an element of democracy; for both the
+priesthood and the army were recruited from all classes of society
+(saving only the servile class), and among the Twenty Lords there were
+always men who had risen from obscurity to distinction solely by their
+own merit. Over this body the Priest Captain presided; yet was his will
+superior to that of the Council, for he was the visible representative
+of the gods, and so centred in his own person their high authority and
+dreadful power.</p>
+
+<p>Until the time of Itzacoatl, each successive priest captain, in the long
+line that here had ruled, had exercised so discreetly his theocratic
+rights, and in all ways had shown such wisdom in his government, that no
+conflict had arisen between the temporal and the spiritual powers. And
+thus wisely had Itzacoatl governed in the early years of his reign. But
+as age stole upon him&mdash;and he now was a very old man&mdash;his rule had grown
+more and more tyrannical. He had drawn about him certain priests for
+intimate advisers, and these constantly led him to run counter to the
+will of the Twenty Lords, not only in matters about which divergent
+opinions reasonably might be held, but in matters wherein the will of
+the whole people was at one with the advice that the Council gave. Thus,
+gradually, two parties were built up within the State: that of the
+priests, which strongly seconded the disposition that Itzacoatl
+manifested to make the spiritual power absolutely supreme, and that of
+the nobles and people of the higher class, which sought to maintain the
+Council's ancient rights in matters temporal. In regard to these two
+factions, the affiliations of the army were so nicely balanced that
+neither side ventured to resort to open violence&mdash;for each dreaded that
+the other would turn the scale against it by invoking the aid of the
+servile class. Thus it was that the despised Tlahuicos actually held the
+balance of power. Yet of this fact, Tizoc declared&mdash;but I noticed that
+just here there was a curious hesitancy about his speech, as though he
+knew more than he was willing to disclose&mdash;the Tlahuicos were but dimly
+conscious; while they did know certainly that in the present state of
+affairs any attempt on their part to rise in mutiny would be met, as it
+had been met many times in the past, by all the forces of both factions
+of their superiors overwhelmingly united against them.</p>
+
+<p>But the bond that was stronger than all others in holding together this
+community, in which, beneath the surface, were working such potent
+elements of disintegration, was the loyal resolve pervading it to
+execute the mission to which its members were destined when they were
+set apart from the remainder of their race a thousand years before.
+Excepting only among the Tlahuicos&mdash;who, in the nature of things, could
+have no share in it&mdash;there had ever been among all classes a fervent
+longing for the summons that should call them forth to aid their
+brethren in the battling with a foreign foe that Chaltzantzin had
+prophesied. And by reason of this loyalty to a lofty purpose the open
+rupture that assuredly otherwise would have come had been thus far
+restrained. Honor forbade, Tizoc declared, that by falling to warring
+among themselves they should put in jeopardy their power to respond
+instantly to the summons that might at any instant come.</p>
+
+<p>It was therefore with a profound and solemn interest&mdash;for the grave
+import of it was plain to him&mdash;that Tizoc, having ended his own
+statement, questioned us as to the full meaning of the words which we
+had spoken when first we entered the valley: that the prophecy of
+Chaltzantzin long since had been fulfilled, and that now, having in its
+appointed time miscarried, the summons would never come.</p>
+
+<p>With awe, and in sorrowful silence, he listened as Fray Antonio and I
+told him how exactly the prophecy had been verified by the coming of the
+Spaniards, and by their conquest and enslavement of the Mexicans; yet
+was he cheered again as our narrative continued, and he learned of the
+brave fight for freedom that his brethren had made, and of the happy
+success that had crowned it in the end. Of the period between the
+achievement of independence and recent years we said but little&mdash;it is
+not a period of which those whose feeling towards the Mexicans is
+friendly have much desire to talk&mdash;contenting ourselves with
+emphasizing the fact that the race so long oppressed, having risen
+successfully against its oppressors, remained independent under a ruler
+of its own blood.</p>
+
+<p>To that part of our narrative in which we told how we had gained
+knowledge of the hidden city of Colhuacan, and possession of the token
+of summons, Tizoc gave but little heed. It was evident that his mind was
+engrossed with consideration of the more important matters of which we
+had told him, and of the direct bearing that they had upon the troubled
+condition of affairs in which his own people were involved. Seeing
+which, we left him to his own thoughts while we talked of these same
+matters among ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>Rayburn, in his quick, clear-headed way, grasped the situation promptly
+and accurately. "About the size of it is," he said, "that we've knocked
+the false work right from under everything that these folks have been
+building for the whole thousand years that they have been living here;
+and what they've built isn't strong enough to stand alone. As Young
+says, it's a cold day for the Priest Captain because we have got hold of
+his boss miracle; but it's still colder weather for him because the news
+that we have brought makes it all right for the crowd that wants to
+fight him to go right ahead and do it; and I guess they will do it, too,
+as soon as they get the fact fairly into their heads that there no
+longer is a chance of their being called off in the middle of their row.
+Unless I am very much mistaken, we shall see some pretty lively times in
+this valley inside of the next thirty days."</p>
+
+<p>"And unless <i>I'm</i> mistaken," Young struck in, "th' Colonel here will be
+about th' first man t' take off his coat&mdash;that is, th' thing that I
+suppose he thinks is a coat&mdash;an' sail in. I don't know just what he's
+got against th' Priest Captain, except that he seems t' be a sort of
+pill on gen'ral principles, but I'm sure that he's down on him from th'
+word go. From what th' Colonel says, I judge that his crowd has a pretty
+good chance of comin' out on top&mdash;for th' other crowd seems t' be made
+up for th' most part of parsons; an' parsons, as a rule, haven't much
+fight in 'em. What we'd better do it t' tie t' th' Colonel, an' when
+we've helped him an' his friends t' wallop th' other fellows they'll be
+so much obliged to us that they'll let us bag all th' treasure we want
+an' clear out. An' that reminds me, Professor&mdash;we haven't heard anything
+about any treasure so far. Just ask th' Colonel if there really is one.
+If there isn't, I vote for pullin' out before th' row begins. It's as
+true of a fight as it is of a railroad&mdash;that runnin' it just for th'
+operatin' expenses don't pay."</p>
+
+<p>Tizoc answered my question on this head somewhat absently, for he
+evidently was debating within himself some very serious matter; but his
+answer was of a sort that Young found entirely satisfactory. In the
+heart of the city, he said, was the Treasure-house that Chaltzantzin had
+builded there; and within it the treasure remained that Chaltzantzin had
+stored away. What it consisted of, nor the value of it, he could not
+tell. The Treasure-house was also the Great Temple; and of the treasure
+only the Priest Captain had accurate knowledge. In the Treasure-house,
+Tizoc added, was stored the tribute that the people paid annually, and
+the metal that was taken from the great mine. This metal was the most
+precious of all their possessions, he said, for from it their arms were
+made, and also their tools for tilling the earth, and for working wood
+and stone. It had not always been of such value, for it naturally was
+too soft to serve these useful purposes; but at a remote period, until
+which time their implements had been made of stone, a wise man among
+them had discovered a way by which it could be hardened, and from that
+time onward the people dwelling in the valley had prospered greatly,
+because they thus were enabled to practise all manner of useful arts.</p>
+
+<p>"And what is this metal like?" I asked, with much interest, for my
+arch&aelig;ological instinct instantly was aroused by hearing summed in these
+few words a matter of such momentous importance as the transition of a
+people to the age of metal from the age of stone.</p>
+
+<p>"It is like this," Tizoc answered, simply, disengaging as he spoke a
+heavy bracelet from his arm, "only this remains in its natural state of
+softness. To be of great value it first must be made hard."</p>
+
+<p>I had no doubt in my own mind as to what this metal was, but I knew that
+Rayburn, who was an excellent metallurgist, could pronounce upon it
+authoritatively.</p>
+
+<p>"Is this gold?" I asked, handing him the bracelet.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly it is," he answered, in a moment&mdash;"and it seems to be
+entirely without alloy."</p>
+
+<p>"Then your guess about the bright, hard metal that has been such a
+puzzle to us," I continued, "was the right one; it is hardened gold:"
+and I repeated to him what Tizoc had told me.</p>
+
+<p>Rayburn was deeply interested. "Scientifically, this is a big thing,
+Professor," he said. "These fellows can give points to our
+metallurgists. But for our purposes, of course, what they've caught on
+to here has no practical value. Gold has got to come down a good deal,
+or phosphor-bronze has got to go up a good deal, before it will pay us
+to turn gold dollars into axle-bearings and cogs and pinions. But it's
+mighty interesting, all the same. Fusing with silicium would give a
+gold-silicide that might fill the bill for hardness; but I can't even
+make a guess as to how they do the tempering. Ask the Colonel what the
+whole process is, Professor. It will make a capital paper to read before
+the Institute of Mining Engineers at their next meeting."</p>
+
+<p>As I turned to Tizoc to ask this question, I perceived that his regard
+was fixed upon something on the other side of the court-yard, and in his
+look most tender love was blended with a deep melancholy. Following the
+direction of his gaze, I saw that its object was a beautiful boy, a lad
+of twelve or fourteen years old, who was half hidden behind some
+flowering shrubs, and from this cover was peering at us curiously.</p>
+
+<p>"It is my Maza&mdash;my little son," Tizoc said, as he turned and saw the
+direction in which I looked. And then he called to the boy to come to
+him. For a moment Maza hesitated, but when the call was repeated he came
+out from behind the screen of flowers and so towards us across the
+court-yard; and as he advanced I perceived that he was lame. In his face
+was the look of wistfulness which cripples so often have, and there was
+a rare sweetness and intelligence in the expression of his large brown
+eyes. In a moment I understood why it was that Tizoc resented so
+bitterly the abrogation by the Priest Captain of the custom that had
+permitted parents to buy back their crippled children, and so to save
+them from slavery; and a selfish feeling of gladness came into my heart
+as this light dawned upon me&mdash;for I knew that when we faced the danger
+that threatened us (a most real danger, for our coming into the valley
+was nothing less than a deadly blow at Itzacoatl's supremacy) we surely
+would find in Tizoc an ally and a friend.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XX" id="XX"></a>XX.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE PRIEST CAPTAIN'S SUMMONS.</h3>
+
+
+<p>There was so much meaning in my look as I turned towards Tizoc that I
+had no need to speak; he knew that I had comprehended the situation, and
+so answered my look in words.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you wonder that I rejoice over your coming, and over the news which
+you bring? The will of the gods no longer is that we shall do the work
+for which our lord Chaltzantzin destined us; therefore are we free to
+set aside the custom that he decreed by which our weak ones are
+condemned to death, and with it the custom, yet more cruel, of our own
+devising, by which they are saved from death only that they may be made
+slaves. To my boy neither slavery nor death shall come. Through you the
+gods have spoken, and he is saved. And now also is fulfilled the
+prophecy that of ancient times was spoken, that with the coming into the
+Valley of Aztlan of a four-footed beast, bearing upon its back a man,
+the power of the Priest Captain should end."</p>
+
+<p>Much more, doubtless, Tizoc would have said to us, for an exalted
+emotion stirred him; but at that moment there was the sound of hurrying
+feet in the outer enclosure, and then Tizoc's secretary came through the
+narrow entrance into the court-yard, followed closely by a detachment of
+the guards. The secretary spoke hurriedly to his master, apart from us,
+and from his excited manner in speaking, and from the anxious look upon
+his master's face as he listened, we inferred that some very stirring
+matter was involved in the communication that he brought.</p>
+
+<p>For a few moments Tizoc stood in silence, his head bowed, as though
+engaged in earnest thought. Then he turned to us and spoke. "The Priest
+Captain has sent his order that you shall be brought before him," he
+said, "and that you must go hence without delay." And then he added,
+taking me aside and speaking in a low voice: "There is great commotion
+already in the city, for the soldiers have noised abroad the news which
+you bring. The Council of the Twenty Lords has been called together, and
+I am told that a messenger from the Council is on his way hither. That
+my order to take you to the city in such haste, and directly to the
+Priest Captain, is so stringent, I cannot but think is caused by his
+desire to get you hence before the messenger from the Council shall
+arrive. His purpose towards you surely is an evil one; but fear not&mdash;you
+bring a message of freedom and deliverance that has only to be published
+to raise around you a host of friends. And now we must go."</p>
+
+<p>In a few moments we had quitted Tizoc's house, passed out through the
+fortified gate-way in the heavy wall by which the little plateau on the
+mountain side was defended; and so, by a broad road that descended
+sharply, went downward towards the border of the lake. Our order of
+march was the same as that adopted in bringing us from the Barred Pass:
+before us and behind us were detachments of the guards, and Tizoc walked
+with us. In accordance with his desire, that he expressed to me in a
+cautious whisper, Pablo rode upon El Sabio's back. There was no need for
+him to explain his motive in making this suggestion. It was his purpose,
+evidently, to exhibit the fulfilment of the prophecy as conspicuously as
+possible, and so to prepare the ground for the sowing of the seeds of
+revolt.</p>
+
+<p>I had an opportunity now to tell Rayburn and Young of what Tizoc had
+been speaking at the moment when the summons from the Priest Captain
+came; and also of the strong personal reason that he had for protecting
+us, even to the extent of forwarding the outbreak of revolution, in his
+desire to save from death or slavery the son whom he so well loved.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not at all surprised to hear that what we've told 'em is going to
+start a revolution," Rayburn said. "That's just the way I sized the
+matter up, you know, as soon as I got down to the first facts. If they'd
+had a decent sort of a fellow at the head of things, they might have
+worked along so as to take a fresh start without fighting over it. But
+this Priest Captain chap isn't that kind. He goes in for Boss management
+and machine politics, I should judge from what the Colonel says, as
+straight as if he was a New York alderman or the chairman of a State
+campaign committee in Ohio. No doubt he's got a pretty big crowd back of
+him; but that kind of a crowd don't amount to much in a fight, when
+there's any sort of a show for the other side to win. It sort of gets
+out of the way, and stands around with water on both shoulders, and
+then, when one side begins to get pretty well on top&mdash;it don't matter
+which&mdash;it says that that's the side it's been fighting with all along,
+and begins to kick the fellows that are down. Where our chance comes in
+is in having the respectable element, the solid men who pay taxes and
+have an interest in decent government, to tie to. They may not pay taxes
+here, but that's the kind I mean. And that kind, when it takes to
+fighting, fights hard. Then there must be a lot of fathers with crippled
+children, like the Colonel here, who are down on the Priest Captain the
+worst kind, and will be only too glad of a chance to go for him; and
+they can be counted on to stand in with us, and to fight harder than
+anybody. I'll admit, Professor, that we're in a pretty tight place; but
+it might be a good deal tighter, and I do honestly believe that we'll
+get out of it."</p>
+
+<p>"And so do I," said Young, "'specially now that I know that that burro
+of Pablo's is part of a prophecy. I always did think that there was
+style about El Sabio, any way, an' now I know what it comes from. When I
+was a boy, th' one thing that used t' keep me quiet in church was
+hearin' our minister read that story about Balaam and <i>his</i> burro; but I
+never thought then that I'd actually ketch up with a live ass that was
+in the prophesyin' line of business for itself&mdash;or had prophecies made
+about it, which is pretty much the same thing. T' be sure, this prophecy
+don't come down t' dots quite as much as I'd like it to; but I s'pose
+that that's th' way with 'em always&mdash;eh, Professor? Th' prophets sort o'
+leave things at loose ends on purpose; so's they can run 'wild' on a
+clear track, without any bother about schedule time or connections."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, our burro lays over Balaam's," Rayburn struck in. "In that case
+it took the combined arguments of an ass and an angel to convince Balaam
+that he was off about his location, and was running his lines all wrong;
+but, unless we count in Pablo, El Sabio is playing a lone hand; and I'm
+sure that the Colonel's not fooling us about this prophecy business,
+either. It's rubbish, of course; but that don't matter, so long as the
+people here swallow it for the genuine thing. Just look at that old
+fellow there. He's tumbled to it, and he's regularly knocked out."</p>
+
+<p>We were close to the shore of the lake by this time, and as Rayburn
+spoke we were passing a small house, in front of which was gathered a
+group of Indians. In the midst of the group was a very old man, who
+with out-stretched arm was pointing towards Pablo and El Sabio, and who
+at the same time was talking to his companions in grave and earnest
+tones. There was a look of awe upon his age-worn face, and as we fairly
+came abreast of him he dropped upon his knees and raised his arms above
+his head, as though in supplication to some higher power. The action,
+truly, was a most impressive one; and even more strongly than we were
+affected by it did it affect those who were clustered around him. In a
+moment all in the group had fallen upon their knees and had raised their
+arms upward; and then a low moaning, that presently grew louder and more
+thrilling, broke forth among them as they gave vent to the feeling of
+awful dread that was in their hearts.</p>
+
+<p>"That's business, that is," Young said, in tones of great satisfaction.
+"Those fellows do believe in th' prophecy, for a fact; and if th' folks
+once get it fairly into their heads that th' time has come for their
+rascally Priest Captain t' have an upset, that's a good long start for
+our side towards upsettin' him. It was just everlastin'ly level-headed
+in th' Colonel t' make Pablo ride El Sabio, and so regularly cram th'
+thing down these critters' throats. I don't know how much of th'
+prophecy he believes himself, but he's workin' it for all it's worth,
+any way. There don't seem t' be any flies worth speakin' of on th'
+Colonel&mdash;eh, Professor? And I guess that anybody who wants t' get up
+earlier 'n th' mornin' than he does 'll have to make a start overnight."</p>
+
+<p>By this time the road that we followed had come down to the lake-level,
+and presently we reached the end of it, which was a well-built pier that
+extended out from the shelving shore into deep water. Here a boat was in
+waiting for us&mdash;a barge of near forty feet in length, with twenty men to
+row it, and carrying also a mast, stepped well forward, so rigged as to
+spread a sail that was a compromise between a lug and a lateen. There
+was some little talk between the officer in charge of the barge and
+Tizoc, and then the latter motioned us to go on board. The barge-master
+gave the order to the guard to follow us, as though the command of the
+party now had devolved upon him; and it seemed to us, from the close
+group that the guard made around us in the boat, and from the anxious
+looks which the barge-master cast upon us, that very strict orders must
+have been given concerning keeping us closely in ward. Under these
+circumstances, it caused us some little wonder that we were permitted to
+retain our arms, until the thought occurred to me that these people,
+having no knowledge of such things, did not at all realize that our
+rifles and revolvers were arms at all. To test which theory I drew one
+of my pistols&mdash;not violently, but as though this were something that I
+was doing for my own convenience&mdash;and so held it in my hands that the
+muzzle was pointed directly at the heart of the soldier who sat beside
+me; yet beyond the interest that its odd shape, and the strange metal
+that it was made of aroused in him, it was evident that the man regarded
+my action entirely without concern. I drew the attention of Rayburn and
+Young to what I was doing, and to how evident it was that fire-arms
+were unknown to this people; and in their ignorance we found much cause
+for satisfaction.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="illus11" id="illus11"></a>
+<img src="images/illus11.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>CHECKING YOUNG'S OUTBREAK</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+
+<p>"If they don't know enough to corral our guns," Young said, "we've got a
+pretty good-sized piece of dead-wood on 'em. Th' way things are goin',
+we may have a rumpus a'most any time, I s'pose; and if it does come to a
+rumpus, they'll be a badly struck lot when we open on 'em. Robinson
+Crusoe cleaned out a whole outfit of Indians with just an old flint-lock
+musket; and I should say that we'd simply paralyze this crowd when we
+all get goin' at once with our revolvers an' Winchesters. Isn't that
+your idea of it, Rayburn?"</p>
+
+<p>But Rayburn did not answer, for while Young was speaking he had taken
+out his field-glass and was examining the city, to within three or four
+miles of which we now were come. "Well, that <i>is</i> a walled city, and no
+mistake!" he said, as he lowered the glass from his eyes. "Take a look,
+Professor. These people may be easy to fool when it comes to prophecies,
+but when it comes to engineering and architecture they're sound all the
+way through. Just look at the straightness of that wall running up the
+hill, and how exact the alignment is of the two parts above and below
+that ledge of rocks. They had to get that alignment, you know, by taking
+fore-sights and back-sights from the top of the ledge; and I must say
+that for people who haven't got far enough along in civilization to wear
+trousers, it's an uncommonly pretty piece of work."</p>
+
+<p>As I looked through the glass I was less impressed by this technical
+detail, involving the overcoming of engineering difficulties which I did
+not very thoroughly understand, than I was by the majestic effect
+produced by the city as a whole, in conjunction with the site on which
+it was reared. At this point the lake came close up to the vastly high
+cliffs by which the valley everywhere was girt in, and here jutted out
+from the cliff a great promontory of rock, whereof the highest part was
+fully two hundred feet above the lake-level. For the accommodation of
+the houses which everywhere were built upon it, the sloping face of this
+promontory had been cut into broad terraces, of which the facings were
+massive walls of stone; and the whole was enclosed by a wall of great
+height and enormous thickness that swept out in an immense semicircle
+from the face of the cliff, and thus shut in the terraced promontory and
+also a considerable area of level land at the base of it between the
+lowest terrace and the margin of the lake.</p>
+
+<p>On the highest terrace, crowning and dominating the whole, was a
+majestic building that seemed to be half temple and half fort&mdash;a square
+structure, resting solidly against the face of the cliff, and thence
+projecting a long way outward to where its fa&ccedil;ade was flanked by two
+low, heavy, square towers. Architecturally, this building, unlike any
+other of which I had knowledge in Mexico, saving only the temple that we
+had found upon the lonely mountain-top, was pervaded by a distinctly
+Egyptian sentiment. Its walls sloped inward from their bases, and no
+trivial nor fretful lines weakened the effect of their massive dignity;
+for the whole of the decoration upon them was a broad panelling that was
+gained by a combination of heavy pilasters and a heavy cornice; and with
+the exception of a central entrance, the front was unbroken by openings
+of any kind. Possessing these characteristics, the building had about it
+an air of solemnity that bordered closely upon gloom; and the obvious
+solidity of its construction was such that it seemed destined to last on
+through all coming ages in defiance of the assaults of time. There was
+no need for me to question Tizoc; for I knew that what I beheld before
+me, crowning with sombre grandeur this strange city, girded with such
+prodigious walls, was the Treasure-house that Chaltzantzin, the Aztec
+King, had builded in the dim dawning of a most ancient past.</p>
+
+<p>Young took his turn in looking through the glass, and as he handed it to
+Fray Antonio he said: "If at any time in th' course o' th' past few
+weeks, Professor, you've got th' notion from any o' my talk that I
+thought that dead friend o' yours, th' old monk, was a liar, I want t'
+take it all back; and I want t' take back all that I've said about that
+other dead friend o' yours, th' Cacique, havin' set up a job on us. It's
+clear enough now that both o' your friends played an entirely square
+game. They said that there was a walled city, an' there it is; they said
+that there was a big Treasure-house, an' there <i>that</i> is. They were
+perfect gentlemen, Professor, and I want t' set myself right on th'
+record by sayin' so. If one of 'em hadn't been dead for more than three
+months, and if th' other one hadn't been dead for more than three
+hundred years, and if they both were here, I'd knuckle under and ask 'em
+t' take my hat."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXI" id="XXI"></a>XXI.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE WALLED CITY OF CULHUACAN.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Our use in turn of the field-glass was a mysterious performance that
+aroused keenly the barge-master's curiosity. I heard him ask Tizoc for
+an explanation of it; and Tizoc, who also was much interested, referred
+his question to me. Had I been dealing with Tizoc alone I should have
+tried to make the matter clear to him; but in the case of the
+barge-master, whose feeling towards us, I was convinced, was anything
+but friendly, I thought it wiser to be less frank. Therefore, covering
+the action with a negligent motion of my hand, I screwed the glasses
+close together, so that in looking through them there was to be seen
+only a mass of indistinct objects looming up in a blurred cloud of
+light, and so handed them to him. Naturally, neither he nor Tizoc
+arrived at any very satisfactory conclusion in regard to the real use of
+them; and from their talk it was evident that they conceived the
+ceremony in which we had engaged in turn so earnestly to be in the
+nature of a prayer to our gods. Fray Antonio was both shocked and pained
+by their taking this view of the matter, and was for making a true
+explanation to them; but at my urgent request he held his peace. Yet it
+was evident that he brooded over the matter in his mind, and so was led
+to earnest thoughts of the mission that had brought him hither into the
+Valley of Aztlan. Therefore was I not surprised&mdash;though I certainly was
+alarmed by the thought of what might be its consequences&mdash;when
+presently, in low and gentle tones, he began to speak to those about him
+of the free and glorious Christian faith, which in all ways was more
+excellent than the cruel idolatry in which they were bound. Naturally,
+he was not permitted long to speak in this strain, for the barge-master
+speedily ordered him in most peremptory tones to keep silence; which
+order doubtless would have been still more quickly given had not the
+officer been fairly surprised by Fray Antonio's temerity into momentary
+forgetfulness of the dangerous outcome of this gentle talk. And Fray
+Antonio, knowing the value of the word in season that is dropped to
+fructify in soil ready for it, did not attempt argument with the
+barge-master&mdash;by which the thoughts of those who listened would have
+been diverted from the hopeful promise of a better faith that he had
+offered to them&mdash;but obeyed the order meekly and so held his peace. That
+what he had spoken had taken hold upon the hearts of some at least among
+his hearers I was well assured by their grave look of thoughtfulness,
+and especially did Tizoc seem to be deeply moved; but&mdash;as I supposed for
+fear of the barge-master&mdash;there was no open comment upon what had
+passed.</p>
+
+<p>By this time, the barge being all the while urged rapidly forward by the
+steady strokes of the twenty oarsmen, the city rose so broadly and so
+openly before us that we could see the whole of it distinctly with our
+naked eyes. And what at this nearer view seemed most impressive about it
+was its gloominess; that was due not less to the prison-like effect of
+its heavily built houses and its massive walls than to the dull
+blackness of the stone whereof these same were made. Nowhere was there
+sparkle, or glitter, or bright color, or brightness of any sort to be
+seen; and it seemed to me, as I gazed upon this sombre stronghold, that
+dwelling always within it well enough might wear a man's heart out with
+a consuming melancholy begotten of its cold and cheerless tones.</p>
+
+<p>That it was indeed a stronghold was the more apparent to us the nearer
+that we came to it. The plan of it was that of a great fan, spread open
+upon the hillside, and extending also across the broad sweep of level
+land between the base of the promontory and the lake. The promontory had
+been so cut and shaped that its gentle slope had been transformed into
+six broad semicircular terraces, above the highest of which was a
+semicircular plateau of very considerable size, on which stood the
+Treasure-house, that also was the great temple. Along the face of each
+terrace, and around the face also of the plateau, a heavy defensive wall
+rose to a height of twenty feet or more; and from the base of the
+crowning plateau, thence accessible by a single broad flight of
+stairs&mdash;being led through openings in the rampart walls of the terraces,
+and down each terrace face by means of stair-ways&mdash;twelve streets
+descended, of which the central six ended at the water-side and the
+remainder against the great outer wall. It was this outer line of
+strong defence that gave the city&mdash;which otherwise would have
+corresponded curiously closely with the fortified city of Quetzaltepec,
+described by the Mexican chronicler Tezozomoc&mdash;its most distinctive
+characteristic. Such a vastly thick wall, for the great length of it, as
+this was I never have seen in any other place; and so solid was the
+building of it that it would have been proof against any ordinary train
+of siege artillery. For defence against a foe whose only missile weapons
+would be javelins and slings and bows, this great wall made the city
+absolutely impregnable. And that the protection that it gave might be
+still more complete&mdash;and also, as Tizoc explained to us, that in the
+case of siege the water supply might be assured, together with a supply
+of fish for food&mdash;the wall was carried out into the lake so far as to
+enclose a basin of more than four acres in extent; within which, should
+an enemy gain access to the valley, all the boats upon the lake could be
+brought together and held in safety. And finally, the one entrance to
+the city was by way of a tunnel-like canal cut in the wall thus rising
+from the water; the outer end of which canal was closed in ordinary
+times by a heavy grating, while in war time the inner end also could be
+closed by means of great metal bars.</p>
+
+<p>It was towards this entrance that the barge that carried us was heading.
+Presently we reached it, and the grating was raised for our admission by
+means of chains which were operated from the top of the wall. So low and
+so narrow was the passage that our heads were within a few inches of the
+huge slabs of stone of which its roof was formed; and the rowers had
+need to unstep the mast and then to lay their oars inboard, while they
+brought the barge through by pushing with their hands against the roof
+and sides. The canal was fully forty feet long, and thus the enormous
+thickness of the wall was made apparent to us. It truly was, as I
+observed to Rayburn, a work that well might be attributed to the
+Cyclops.</p>
+
+<p>"I never met a live Cyclop, Professor," Rayburn answered, "and I don't
+believe that these fellows ever did either; but it bothers me to know
+how they managed to do work like this without a steam-derrick. If we get
+out of here with whole skins and our hair on our heads, I hope it won't
+be until I've had a chance to talk to some of their engineers, and so
+get down to the facts."</p>
+
+<p>A moment later we emerged from the tunnel through the wall, and so
+entered the enclosed basin that extended along the whole of the city's
+front. Within the basin were lying many canoes, and also boats of a
+larger sort that carried oars and that were rigged with a sort of
+lug-sail; but these all kept away from us, even as all the boats which
+we had seen during our passage of the lake had given us a wide berth.
+That our barge&mdash;one of those employed exclusively in the Priest
+Captain's service&mdash;was thus shunned was due, as I found later, to the
+wholesome dread in which the special servitors of the temple and of its
+head universally were held; for these very frequently abused the
+authority acquired through their semi-sacerdotal functions by using it
+as a cloak to cover acts of purely personal oppression, while at all
+times they were feared as the executors of their master's wrath. There
+was, indeed (though I did not mention this fact to Fray Antonio), a
+curiously close resemblance between the officials of this class and the
+familiars of the Inquisition, both in the duties which they performed
+and in the fear and hatred which they everywhere inspired.</p>
+
+<p>But even dread of entanglement with the Priest Captain's servants could
+not restrain the curiosity of the crowd that pressed towards us on the
+broad pier upon which we disembarked. It was evident that this crowd was
+not made up of the common folk of the city, and also that it was moved
+by a purpose far higher than that of a mere idle longing to see
+something that was strange. From their dress, and still more from the
+beauty of their ornaments and the elegance of the arms which many of
+them carried, it was obvious that for the most part these men were
+citizens of the highest rank; and this fact was still further attested
+by the dignity of their demeanor and by the reverent age to which the
+majority of them had attained. So far from manifesting any vulgar
+excitement, the crowd maintained an absolute silence; and with this an
+exterior air of calm that was the more impressive because the eager,
+almost awe-struck expression upon every face showed how strong was the
+emotion that thus strongly was restrained. But when El Sabio, after much
+coaxing, crossed the gang-plank between the boat and the pier, and so
+came to where he could be seen of all plainly, there was a curious low
+sound in the air as though all at once every man in the crowd had
+heaved a sigh; and the sound swelled into a loud murmur as Pablo, in
+obedience to a quick order that I gave him in Spanish, briskly mounted
+upon the ass's back. In this murmur only one word was intelligible, and
+that I caught again and again: the prophecy!</p>
+
+<p>But Pablo was no more than fairly seated upon El Sabio's back than the
+officer in command of our guard took him roughly by the shoulders and
+snatched him thence to the ground again; which act led Tizoc and me to a
+quick exchange of startled glances, for it showed very plainly that the
+Priest Captain&mdash;to whom the messenger telling of our coming into the
+valley had been sent before any of these people had seen Pablo mounted
+upon El Sabio's back&mdash;had anticipated this sign of the fulfilment of the
+prophecy and had given orders to prevent it. Luckily, the celerity with
+which Pablo had executed my quick order to mount had saved the day for
+us; and even more than saved it, for as we passed through the crowd, on
+our way from the water-side into the city, I caught here and there
+fragments of comment upon what had just passed which showed that not
+only was the sign told of in the prophecy recognized, but that the
+effort on the part of the officer to neutralize it was understood.</p>
+
+<p>But before our going into the city there was a stirring conflict of
+authority concerning us between the temporal and the spiritual powers.
+We were no more than fairly landed, indeed, when an officer addressed
+the barge-master, who continued in charge of our party, and gave him a
+formal order to bring the strangers directly before the Council of the
+Twenty Lords. And to this the barge-master replied that he already was
+under orders to bring the prisoners, immediately upon their landing,
+before the Priest Captain&mdash;and there was something both curious and
+ominous, it struck me, in the marked manner in which the term
+"strangers" was employed by one of these men and the term "prisoners" by
+the other.</p>
+
+<p>At this juncture we had further proof of the foresight of the Priest
+Captain, and of the determined stand that he was prepared to make rather
+than to suffer the miscarriage of big plans. While the barge-master and
+the messenger from the Council still were engaged in hot talk as to
+which of the two conflicting orders should be recognised, there was the
+sound of tramping feet and of arms clanking; and then a body of fully
+one hundred soldiers came quickly from behind a house that was near by
+the water-side and swept down on a double-quick to where we were
+standing at the end of the pier. The crowd, jostled aside to make way
+for the passage of the soldiers, evidently regarded them with
+astonishment; and this astonishment rapidly changed to anger as the
+purpose that brought them thither was made plain. In a moment they had
+closed in around us, separating us from the Council's messenger and from
+Tizoc; the barge-master placed himself at the head of them, and in
+sharp, quick tones gave the order to march; and the whole force, with
+ourselves in the centre of it, went off the pier at a round pace, and
+thence along a street that led towards the city's heart. Evidently
+acting under orders, the men broke their platoons and closed in around
+us; and I was well convinced that this unsoldierly marching was adopted
+to the end that El Sabio might not be seen.</p>
+
+<p>Fray Antonio agreed with me that the Priest Captain was carrying matters
+with a dangerously high hand in thus opposing the will of the Council
+with armed force. This act of his, if Tizoc had correctly represented to
+us the excited condition of popular feeling, was quite sufficient in
+itself to stir into violent activity the slumbering fires of mutiny. But
+whether the revolt that we now believed must surely come would come in
+time to be of service to ourselves, we could not but look upon as a very
+open question.</p>
+
+<p>"If this old scoundrel is as sharp as he seems to be," Rayburn said,
+"and if he keeps things up in the way he's begun, it's about all day
+with us. His play should be to get rid of us as quick as he can manage
+it; and I should judge, from the cards that he's put down, that that's
+precisely the way he means to manage the game. It's not much comfort to
+us to know that after he's cleaned us out somebody else will rake his
+pile."</p>
+
+<p>As we talked, we went on rapidly through the city; and even the danger
+that we were in, and the excitement that attended this sudden shifting
+of our fortunes, could not prevent me from studying with a lively
+curiosity the many evidences of an advanced civilization that I beheld.
+The plan of the city, as I had discerned while we were approaching it,
+was that of a wide-open fan. From the Treasure-house, on the height in
+the centre, twelve broad streets radiated outward, of which three on the
+northern side and three on the southern ended against the great
+enclosing wall, and six came down through openings in the walls along
+the several terraces directly to the water-front. All of these streets
+were well paved with large smooth blocks of stone, and were led up the
+faces of the terraces by wide and easy stairs. The transverse streets
+were true semicircles, starting from and ending at the face of the
+cliff, and were carried along the outer edges of the terraces, just
+inside their facing walls. Rayburn was even more astonished than I was
+by the exactness with which these great semicircles were laid off; for
+he apprehended, as I did not, the difficulty attendant upon running a
+line in a true and regular curve. But I am not prepared to say that this
+work could not have been accomplished by mere rule of thumb. My friend
+Bandelier, in the course of his admirable analysis of the ruins at
+Mitla, has made clear to me how easy it is to attribute to scientific
+knowledge work that is the result only of manual skill. As I have
+pointed out in my discussion of this matter in my <i>Pre-Columbian
+Conditions on the Continent of North America</i>, the plateau at the top of
+this range of terraces easily might have been laid off in a true
+semicircle by the simple means of a pointed stick at the end of a long
+rope; and from the true line thus established the line of the terrace
+below it could have been had&mdash;and so on down to the lowest terrace of
+all.</p>
+
+<p>There could be no doubt, however, that engineering skill of a high
+order&mdash;howsoever crude might have been the actual method of its
+application&mdash;was exhibited both in the preparation of the site, and then
+in the city's building. On the site alone an almost incredible amount of
+labor had been expended; for the rocky promontory&mdash;that primitively, as
+the result showed, had been broken and irregular&mdash;had been so cut away
+in some places, and so filled in in others, and the whole of it had been
+so carefully trimmed and smoothed, that in the end it became a huge mass
+of rock-work, in the regularity of which there was not perceptible the
+smallest flaw. And in this preliminary work, as well as in the building
+of the houses afterwards, fragments of stone were used of such enormous
+size that the moving of them, Rayburn declared, would be wellnigh
+impossible even with the most powerful engineering appliances of our own
+time. Nor was the use of these huge pieces of stone confined to the
+foundations of the houses. Some of them were high above the ground;
+indeed, the very largest that we observed&mdash;the weight of which Rayburn
+estimated at not less than twenty tons&mdash;was a single block that made the
+entire top course of a high wall.</p>
+
+<p>All of the stone-work was well smoothed and squared; and while the
+exteriors of the houses were entirely plain, we could see through the
+open door-ways that the interiors of many of them were enriched with
+carvings. All were destitute of windows opening upon the street; and
+their dull, black walls, and the dull black of the stones with which the
+streets were paved, gave a dark and melancholy air to the city that
+oppressed us even more heavily when thus seen closely than it had when
+we beheld it from afar off. Yet the interior court-yards, so far as we
+could tell from the glimpses that we had of them through open door-ways,
+were bright with sunshine and gay with flowers; thus showing that the
+gloom of these dwellings did not extend beyond their outer walls. I
+observed with much interest that the provision for closing the entrances
+from the street was not swinging doors of wood, but either metal bars,
+such as we had seen in Tizoc's house, or else a metal grating, that was
+arranged like a portcullis to slide up and down in a groove; and I
+attributed the absence of wooden doors less to a desire for stronger
+barriers than to the comparative recentness of the acquisition of the
+knowledge of wood-working tools. Here, I thought, was a curious instance
+of development along the lines of greatest resistance; for in itself the
+invention and the making of a swinging door of wood was a much easier
+matter than was the invention and the making of these finely wrought
+sliding doors of hardened gold.</p>
+
+<p>As for Young, the sight of all this gold-work quite took his breath
+away. "It regularly jolts me, Professor," he said, "t' see th' genuine
+stuff, that's good t' make gold dollars out of, slung around this way. A
+front door of solid gold is a huckleberry above Jay Gould's biggest
+persimmon; an' as t' Solomon, these fellows just lay Solomon out
+cold&mdash;regularly down th' old man an' sit on him. Why, for just that one
+front door of th' big house ahead of us I'd sell out all my shares in
+this treasure-hunt, an' be glad t' do it. But I guess I'd have to hire
+Samson&mdash;who was in that line of business&mdash;t' carry it off for me. It
+must weigh a solid ton!"</p>
+
+<p>By this time we had mounted all of the terraces, and the house towards
+which Young pointed as he spoke was built directly beneath the crowning
+plateau on which the great temple stood. It was the largest and by far
+the most elegant house that we yet had seen, and the sliding grating of
+gold that closed the entrance was unusually heavy, and very beautifully
+wrought. Sentinels were stationed here, wearing the same uniform as that
+of the soldiers who formed our guard; and this further indication of the
+importance of the building gave us the impression that it was the
+dwelling of some great dignitary. Close by the portal we were halted,
+while the commander of our guard spoke through the grating to some one
+inside. A moment later the grating was slowly raised, and we were
+marched through the narrow entrance, and so along a short passage-way
+into a long, narrow chamber that obviously was a guard-room; for spears
+and javelins were ranged in orderly fashion upon racks, and swords and
+shields and bows and quivers of arrows were hung upon the walls. Here we
+were halted again; and while we stood silent together, wondering what
+might be in store for us in this place, we heard the heavy grating
+behind us close with a dull clang.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXII" id="XXII"></a>XXII.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE OUTBREAK OF REVOLUTION.</h3>
+
+
+<p>So dismal was this sound, and so many were the dismal possibilities that
+it suggested, that as I heard it a cold chill went down into my heart;
+and I was glad enough that we at once were led forth from the
+guard-room, and that in consideration of matters of immediate moment my
+mind was diverted from dwelling drearily upon a future that seemed full
+of gloom.</p>
+
+<p>For all the brilliant blaze of sunlight that brightened the large
+court-yard into which we were conducted, there was about it curious
+coldness and cheerlessness. As in the case of all the other houses which
+we had observed, the stone-work of the walls and of the pavement was a
+dull black; but here there were no flowers, nor bright-colored hangings
+over the inner doors, nor brightness of any sort or kind. The carving of
+the stone was extraordinarily rich, to be sure; but the bass-reliefs
+which covered the walls were wholly of a gloomy sort&mdash;being for the most
+part representations of the slaughter of men in sacrifice, and the
+tearing of hearts out&mdash;so that the eight of them made me shiver,
+notwithstanding the warmth of the sun. From the centre of the court-yard
+a broad stair-way ascended to the plateau above on which the temple
+stood; and this direct way of communicating with it led me to the
+conclusion that the building was a dependency of the temple, and that
+very likely the higher members of the priesthood were housed here.</p>
+
+<p>However, little time was given for looking around us, for our guard
+hurried us&mdash;El Sabio following close at Pablo's heels&mdash;across the
+court-yard to a door-way at its farther side, before which hung in heavy
+folds a curtain of some sort of thick black cloth. Across this entrance
+the guard was drawn up in orderly ranks behind us; and then the
+barge-master, who had preserved absolute silence towards us since our
+march through the city began, held aside the curtain and silently
+motioned to us to enter.</p>
+
+<p>From the bright sunshine we passed at a step into a chamber so shadowy
+that we involuntarily stopped on the threshold, in order that our eyes
+might become accustomed to the semi-darkness before we advanced. The
+only light that entered it came through two narrow slits in the thick
+wall above the portal that we had just passed; and the glimmer diffused
+by the thin rays thus admitted was in great part absorbed by the black
+draperies with which everywhere the room was hung. As our eyes adjusted
+themselves to these gloomy conditions we perceived that we were in a
+hall of great size; and presently we were able to distinguish objects
+clearly enough to see that at the far end of it was a raised dais,
+having a sort of throne upon it; but not until, being urged forward by
+the officer, we had traversed more than half the length of the hall did
+we discern upon the throne the shadowy figure of a man.</p>
+
+<p>Being come close to the dais, the officer halted us by a gesture; but no
+word was spoken, and for several minutes we stood in the semi-darkness
+of that strange place in absolute silence. For myself, I must confess
+that I was somewhat awed by my surroundings, and by the impassive
+silence and stillness that the dimly seen figure upon the throne
+maintained, and I am sure that Fray Antonio's imaginative nature was
+similarly impressed; as for Pablo, I distinctly heard his teeth
+chattering in the dark. But neither Rayburn nor Young, as the latter
+would have expressed it, awed easily, and it was Rayburn who presently
+spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"This fellow in the big chair would be a good hand at private
+theatricals. He's got a first-rate notion of stage effect. Hadn't I
+better stick a pin in him and wake him up?"</p>
+
+<p>"There's no good in stickin' pins into <i>him</i>," said Young, in a tone of
+great contempt. "What's the matter with him is, he's not real at
+all&mdash;he's stuffed!"</p>
+
+<p>There was something so absurdly incongruous in these comments that they
+acted instantly upon my overstrained nerves, and I burst into a laugh,
+in which the other two immediately joined. Evidently, this was not at
+all the effect that this carefully arranged reception was intended to
+have upon us; for the seated figure started suddenly and uttered an
+angry exclamation, and at the same time gave a quick order to the
+officer.</p>
+
+<p>"I take it all back," said Young; "he ain't stuffed. I guess he was only
+asleep."</p>
+
+<p>As Young spoke there was a slight rustle of draperies, and in a moment
+the curtains which had veiled four great windows in the four sides of
+the hall were pulled aside, and the darkness vanished in a sudden blaze
+of light. While we shaded our eyes for some seconds, Rayburn said, with
+great decision: "This settles it. He must have been in the show business
+all his life."</p>
+
+<p>But the man whom we now saw clearly did not look like a showman. He was
+a very old man, lean and shrivelled; his brown skin so wrinkled that his
+face looked like some sort of curiously withered nut. Yet there was a
+wonderful sinewiness about him, and a most extraordinary brightness in
+his eyes. His face was of the strong, heavy type that is found in the
+figures carved on the ruins in Yucatan; a much stronger type than I have
+observed anywhere among the Mexican Indians of the present day. His
+dress was a long, flowing robe of white cotton cloth, caught over his
+left shoulder with a broad gold clasp, and richly embroidered with
+shining green feathers; and shining green feathers were bound into his
+hair and rose above his head in a tall plume. His sandal-moccasins (for
+the covering of his feet was between these two) repeated the sacred
+combination of colors, green and white; and on his breast, falling from
+his neck, were several richly wrought gold chains. Even apart from his
+stately surroundings, his dress&mdash;and especially the shining green
+feathers which were so conspicuous a part of it&mdash;would have informed me
+that this man was a priest of very exalted rank; and the conditions of
+our presentation to him assured me that he was none other than the
+Priest Captain, Itzacoatl. And I may add that if ever a high dignitary
+of a heathen religion was in a rage, Itzacoatl was in a rage at that
+particular moment. Young's comment lacked reverence, but it was to the
+point: "Well, he <i>has</i> got his back up, for sure!"</p>
+
+<p>With an alertness that was astonishing in one of his years, Itzacoatl
+rose quietly from the throne; and as he pointed to us with a commanding
+gesture, he asked, sharply, why we had been allowed to retain our arms,
+and ordered them to be taken away from us; which order troubled us
+greatly, and also occasioned us a very lively surprise. As for the
+barge-master, he evidently was vastly puzzled by it; for, according to
+his notions, we were not armed. He did not venture to reply, but his
+uncertainty was to the duty that was expected of him was apparent in his
+hopeless look of entire bewilderment. It seemed to me that for a moment
+the Priest Captain was slightly confused, as though he recognized the
+incongruity between his own knowledge in this matter and his officer's
+ignorance; and in explaining his order he took occasion to refer to the
+superior knowledge with which he was endowed by the gods. Fray Antonio
+and I glanced at each other doubtingly as he spoke, for this explanation
+struck us as being decidedly forced. The gods of the ancient Mexicans
+pre-eminently were war gods; but they certainly were not likely to have
+any very extended knowledge of Winchester rifles and self-cocking
+revolvers.</p>
+
+<p>However, when the officer comprehended what was required of him, he was
+prompt enough in his actions. Without any ceremony at all he laid hands
+on Young's rifle, that was hanging by its strap on his shoulder, and
+endeavored to take it away from him. This was a line of action that the
+Lost-freight Agent by no means was inclined to submit to. Without any
+assistance he unslung the rifle, cocked it as he jumped back half a
+dozen steps, and then raised it to his shoulder, with his finger on the
+trigger and the muzzle fairly levelled at the officer's heart. "Shall I
+down him?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't shoot!" Rayburn cried, quickly; and in obedience to this order
+Young slowly dropped the rifle from his shoulder, yet held it ready for
+action in his hands. The perfect calmness of the officer through this
+exciting episode afforded the most convincing proof that fire-arms were
+wholly unknown to him. And the conduct of the Priest Captain afforded
+equally convincing proof that he not only understood the nature of
+fire-arms, but that he was very much afraid of them; for, at the moment
+that Young made his offensive demonstration, he very precipitately
+sheltered himself by crouching behind the throne.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't shoot!" Rayburn repeated. "We may have a chance to pull through
+if we don't rile these follows; but if we go killing any of them now
+it's all day with us, for sure. We'd better let 'em have our guns; but
+there's something mighty odd in their having found out all of a sudden
+what a gun is."</p>
+
+<p>Very reluctantly Young surrendered his rifle to the officer, who looked
+at it contemptuously, as though he considered it but a poor sort of
+weapon in case real fighting was to be done. In turn, the rest of us
+gave up our rifles also; and we were mightily pleased because the
+officer did not attempt to take our revolvers away from us. But in this
+our satisfaction was short-lived, for the Priest Captain quickly ordered
+the officer to relieve us of them, and of our cartridge-belts as well;
+nor was it until we had been thus entirely disarmed that he arose from
+his undignified position and resumed his seat upon the throne.</p>
+
+<p>While the disagreeable process of disarming us was going on I spoke to
+Fray Antonio of the curious possibilities suggested by the knowledge of
+fire-arms which the Priest Captain, alone among all the Aztlanecas, so
+obviously possessed; and he, in reply, bade me remember what Tizoc had
+told us of the use that Itzacoatl made of wax-matches in lighting the
+sacred fire. "Can it possibly be, then, that he is in communication with
+the outside world?" I exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>As I uttered these words I glanced at Itzacoatl, and the expression on
+his face was that of one who listens intently, and who is greatly
+enraged by what he hears. At the same moment Rayburn cried: "That man
+understands Spanish. He is listening to you."</p>
+
+<p>Doubtless, some sort of an explanation would have followed this strange
+discovery, for that we had made it was very obvious, but at that moment
+a man&mdash;seemingly, from his dress, a priest of high rank&mdash;came into the
+hall hurriedly, and very earnestly delivered a communication to
+Itzacoatl in low, excited tones. That the substance of this
+communication was highly disagreeable to him was shown by his manner of
+receiving it; and for a moment he slightly hesitated, as though very
+grave consequences might attend upon the decision that he then made. But
+it was for a moment only that he stood in doubt. Then he called the
+barge-master to him, and gave some order in a low voice; and then,
+accompanied by the priest, went out rapidly from the hall.</p>
+
+<p>Evidently in obedience to the order that he had received, the
+barge-master bade us follow him, and so led us into the court-yard
+again. Young proposed, since we had only this one man to deal with, that
+we should make short work of him, and so get back our arms&mdash;which
+remained where he had placed them in a pile beside the throne. But
+Rayburn's more prudent counsel overcame this tempting proposition. As he
+pointed out, the promptness with which the curtains had been pulled back
+showed that attendants of some sort were close at hand; and, in addition
+to these, we knew that the guard of soldiers was just outside of the
+entrance to the hall. It was certain, therefore, that we could not
+regain our arms without immediately using them in very active fighting;
+and no matter how well we fought, under these conditions we must
+certainly be defeated in the end. All of which was so just and so
+reasonable that Young could not in anywise gainsay its propriety; but he
+was in a very ill humor at being restrained from the pleasure of having
+it out with them, as he grumblingly declared; and as we passed out into
+the court-yard he relieved his mind by swearing most vigorously.</p>
+
+<p>For my part, even the peril that we were in did not suffice to distract
+my mind from curious consideration of the strange state of affairs that
+existed among the folk dwelling in this hidden valley if our surmise in
+regard to the Priest Captain's knowledge of the outer matches, his
+acquaintance with fire-arms, and his knowledge of the Spanish tongue.
+The implication was unavoidable that this extraordinary man actually had
+a more or less complete knowledge of the powers and appliances of the
+nineteenth century, and that he was using his nineteenth century
+knowledge to maintain his supremacy over a people whose civilization was
+about on a par with that of European communities of a thousand years
+ago. From the stand-point of the ethnologist, a more interesting
+situation than the one time developed could not possibly be devised.
+What I most longed for was the establishment of such friendly relations
+with Itzacoatl that I could carry out a systematized series of
+scientific investigations among the Aztlanecas before the impending
+crash of discovery came; and my keenest regret at that moment was caused
+by the conviction that the incapacity of Itzacoatl to understand the
+value of scientific inquiry into such curious ethnologic facts would
+result in his mere vulgar killing of me, whereby a precious store of
+knowledge would be withheld from the world at large.</p>
+
+<p>As we came out into the court-yard we heard the sound of voices, which
+seemed to be raised in angry altercation, coming from the direction of
+the main entrance, with which there was also a slight clinking sound as
+of arms being got in readiness; and, much farther away, the sound
+seemingly coming from distant quarter of the city, the tapping of a
+drum. When we first had crossed the court-yard it had been entirely
+deserted; but now many priests and soldiers were standing in groups
+about it, and more were coming down the stair from the temple; and all
+of these men had a look of eager alertness, as though some decisive
+event were imminent in which they expected to have a part. But we had
+only a moment in which to observe all this, for we were hurried away
+towards the corner of the building that was most remote from the street,
+and here, before I well could understand what was being done with me, I
+was thrust so suddenly and so violently through a narrow door-way that I
+fell heavily upon the floor. Before I could regain my feet Young had
+tumbled down on top of me, and then the others tumbled on top of us
+both&mdash;they having been in the same rude fashion injected into the
+apartment; and while we thus were lying in a heap together&mdash;my own body,
+being undermost, having the breath wellnigh squeezed out of it&mdash;we heard
+the rattle of metal upon stone as the door-way was quickly closed with
+heavy bars.</p>
+
+<p>We struggled to our feet in wellnigh total darkness&mdash;for outside the
+bars a curtain had been dropped that shut off almost wholly the light of
+day&mdash;and I am confident that no one room ever contained two angrier
+people than Rayburn and Young were then; for their very strength and
+hardihood made them the more ragingly resent being thus tumbled about as
+though they were bales or boxes rather than men. Rayburn's language was
+not open to the charge of weakness; but the words in which Young gave
+vent to his feelings were so startlingly vigorous that even a Wyoming
+cow-boy would have been surprised by them; yet I must confess that at
+the moment&mdash;so greatly was my own anger aroused&mdash;I thought his
+observations exceedingly appropriate to the occasion that called them
+forth, and I even was disposed to envy him the command of a technical
+vocabulary that enabled him to express so adequately his righteous
+wrath. However, I was for once well pleased that Fray Antonio did not
+understand English.</p>
+
+<p>But our anger quickly was swallowed up in anxious grief as we
+discovered, when our eyes had become somewhat accustomed to the very
+faint light, that only we four were in the room together; and a great
+dread fell upon us because of the imminent peril to Pablo which this
+separation of him from the rest of us implied. Assuredly there was
+strong reason why he should be an especial object of Itzacoatl's fear
+and hatred. He and El Sabio together were the visible sign which told
+that the prophecy touching the Priest Captain's downfall was about to be
+fulfilled; and, more than this, Pablo's simple statement of the
+condition of affairs among the modern Mexicans&mdash;showing that the crisis
+in their fate that Chaltzantzin had foretold, and for which he had so
+well prepared, long since had come and gone&mdash;would be far more
+convincing to the masses of the Aztlanecas than would be any exhibition
+of these same facts that we could make to them; for we were aliens among
+them, while Pablo was of their own race and class. That we all were like
+to be done to death by this barbarous theocrat we did not for a moment
+doubt; but it was plain enough that every motive of self-interest must
+prompt him to put Pablo and the poor ass most summarily out of the way.
+And as the logic of these facts irresistibly presented itself in my mind
+a keen and heavy sorrow overcame me, for I could not shirk the
+conviction that, whoever might strike the blow that killed him, I myself
+was the cause of this poor boy's death. Fray Antonio could not see my
+face in that shadowy prison, yet his fine nature divined the pain that I
+suffered and the cause of it, and he sought to comfort me with his
+sympathy. He did not speak, but he came close beside me and tenderly
+laid his hand upon my shoulder; and his loving touch, telling of his
+sorrow for me and with me, did bring a little cheer into my heavy heart.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the commotion outside increased greatly, and even through the
+thick folds of the curtain we could hear plainly the clanking of arms,
+and the heavy tread of men, and sharply given words of command. We
+pressed close to the bars and tried to push, the curtain aside that we
+might see out into the court-yard; but the bars were so near together
+that our hands would not pass between them, and we therefore could
+gather only from the sounds which we heard what was going on outside.
+But the sounds were unmistakable. There could be no doubt whatever that
+a vigorous assault upon the building was in progress, and those within
+it vigorously were defending it; and we knew that the cause of the
+fighting certainly must be ourselves. Already, it would seem, the
+prophecy of the Priest Captain's downfall was assuming a tangible
+reality; for this rising in arms against him could mean nothing less
+than that his high-handed refusal to permit us to be carried before the
+Council of the Twenty Lords had fairly brought matters to a crisis, and
+that the long-threatened revolution actually had been begun.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXIII" id="XXIII"></a>XXIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>A RESCUE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>That the two parties should be thus battling for possession of us gave
+us a gleam of hope for the saving of our lives. While we remained
+prisoners, in the ward of the Priest Captain, we knew that our death was
+inevitable; inasmuch as the witness which we bore against him, if
+suffered to be published, must of necessity bring his authority to an
+end. But should we pass into the ward of the Council, there was every
+reason why we should be cherished and protected; because, in their
+behalf, we would be witnesses to the justice of their rebellion against
+Itzacoatl's rule. Nor would this feeling of amity towards us be confined
+to the leaders of the revolt; for we had perceived the substantial
+nature of the reasons which Tizoc had given us in support of his
+assurance that the hope of deliverance from oppression which our coming
+brought would raise up around us a host of friends. Therefore we knew
+that upon the issue of the battling that we heard the sounds of so
+loudly, and yet that might as well have been a thousand miles away for
+all that we could see of it, our fate must depend.</p>
+
+<p>And knowing this, it was a hard trial of our nerves and tempers to be
+forced to remain there idle in the dark, without the chance to strike in
+our own behalf a single blow. Young strode backward and forward in such
+a fashion, and the mutterings beneath his breath were so like growls,
+that the likening of him to a wild beast in a cage, while trite, is
+strictly accurate. Rayburn, not less resolute, but more self-contained,
+pressed close against the bars and never stirred, save that now and then
+he cracked his thumbs and fingers together with such vigor that the
+sound was like a pistol-shot. And even I, who am not naturally of a
+blood-thirsty disposition, found the need of walking briskly about our
+prison in order to quiet a little my strong longing to be outside with a
+weapon in my hands wherewith I could crack some skulls open. Indeed,
+among us all, only Fray Antonio maintained an outward show of calm.</p>
+
+<p>Thus far, all the sounds which we had heard had come to us from the
+direction of the front of the house, whence we inferred that the fight
+was being waged, greatly to the disadvantage of the assailants, through
+the grating by which the entrance was closed. But suddenly there was an
+outcry of alarm close by us in the court-yard, and then the sound of
+hurrying feet there, and then a roar of shouting mingled with the fierce
+clash of arms&mdash;so that we knew that the assailants, either by beating in
+the grating or by scaling the roof, had got inside. They and the
+defenders were engaged, hand to hand, almost within arm's-length of us.
+We could hear loudly the yells with which every stroke was accompanied,
+and the clang of metal striking upon metal, and the dull, crushing sound
+of the blows which went home truly and carved through flesh and
+bone&mdash;and we could see no more of it all than if we were dreaming, and
+these sounds of savage warfare were but the imaginings of our brains!
+One man, being, as we supposed, pursued by another from the central part
+of the court-yard&mdash;where, as it seemed, the fight raged most hotly&mdash;made
+a stand just outside the curtain that overhung the bars whereby we were
+pent in; and we could hear him panting as he struck and parried there,
+and then the splitting of his flesh and the crash of his bones as a
+tremendous blow overcame his guard, and the soft, deep groan that he
+gave as his life left him. His body fell against the curtain and dragged
+it a little; and presently, as I stood there by the bars, I found that
+my feet were in a pool of blood.</p>
+
+<p>It was only a moment or two after this that the sounds of conflict very
+sensibly diminished, and we heard a rush made, and the confused tread of
+feet upon the stairs that led upward to the temple, and then came so
+jubilant a shouting that we knew that to one side or the other had come
+victory.</p>
+
+<p>"If th' Priest Captain's outfit's on top," Young said, grimly, "I guess
+we've about got t' th' end of a division; an' there's not much chance of
+our changin' engines an' keepin' on with th' run." To which figurative
+suggestion Rayburn gave an immediate grunt of assent.</p>
+
+<p>But at that very instant there was a lull in the tumult outside, and we
+heard a voice that I recognized as Tizoc's loudly calling to us; and to
+his hail, that carried such joyful meaning with it, I joyfully and
+loudly answered. To Rayburn and Young, of course, the call was
+unintelligible, nor did they recognize the voice of him who called; and
+they therefore were disposed to think, when I fell to shouting, that my
+brain was addled. However, they changed their views a minute or two
+later&mdash;the dead body resting against the curtain having been thrown
+aside, and the curtain itself torn down&mdash;when they saw Tizoc's friendly
+face outside the bars, and then saw the bars rapidly removed.</p>
+
+<p>"Colonel," said Young, very seriously, as we stepped forth thankfully
+once more into the sunshine, "you may not know what a brick is, but you
+are one. Shake!" and very much to Tizoc's astonishment, though he
+perceived that the act was meant to express great friendliness, Young
+most vigorously shook his hand. Under more favorable circumstances
+Tizoc, no doubt, would have asked for an explanation of this curious
+ceremony, but just then his whole mind was given to making good his
+retreat and so securing us against recapture. There was not a moment to
+lose, he said; throughout the city the priests everywhere were rallying
+forces to Itzacoatl's support, and at any instant we might be attacked.
+As he spoke he drew us away with him towards the street, where the main
+body of his men still remained&mdash;for only a small part of them had joined
+in scaling the roof, and so taking the enemy by surprise in the rear.</p>
+
+<p>"But what of Pablo, our young companion?" I asked, stopping short as I
+spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"My men are looking for him; they will find him in a moment; he surely
+is safe; he may be already outside. Come."</p>
+
+<p>The possibility that Pablo truly might be outside of the building was
+the only argument that could have induced us to leave it without him;
+and that possibility was so reasonable a one that we made no more delay.
+Indeed, we fully realized the necessity for promptness. From all parts
+of the city came a humming, angry sound, which assured us that
+everywhere the people were aroused; and Tizoc bade us arm ourselves with
+what weapons we could use most effectively among those which were
+scattered about the pavement of the court-yard, as we surely would have
+need of weapons soon. A sword was the only instrument of warfare of
+which I had knowledge&mdash;which knowledge was acquired during my German
+student days&mdash;and I took, therefore, one of the heavy maccuahuitls; and
+the others also, excepting Fray Antonio, similarly armed themselves,
+each with a sword that they found lying beside the dead hand that never
+would wield it more. It was as we obeyed Tizoc's order that we saw how
+fierce and how bloody the fight had been; for the court-yard was red
+with blood, like a slaughter-house, and over the stones everywhere dead
+bodies were lying, all cut and gashed with ghastly wounds. Excepting a
+few of Tizoc's men, who had bound up their hurts, and who staggered
+along with us, not a wounded man remained alive; whence we inferred that
+the fight had been waged on strictly barbarous principles, and that no
+quarter had been given. And of this we had proof; for as we passed
+through the guard-room we found there a moaning wretch, belonging to the
+Priest Captain's party, in whose chest was a great hole made by a
+spear-thrust&mdash;and at a sign from Tizoc one of our men stepped aside, and
+with a blow of his heavy sword coolly mashed in the wounded man's skull,
+and so finished him.</p>
+
+<p>The metal grating that closed the entrance had been raised by Tizoc's
+people from the inside, and we passed out beneath it to where the main
+body of his men was drawn up in readiness to march. But of Pablo and El
+Sabio there was no sign. Tizoc was not less distressed by the loss of
+the lad than we were, for he had counted upon the moral effect which the
+exhibition of Pablo and El Sabio most certainly would produce to aid
+powerfully in fomenting the spirit of revolt. When, therefore, we
+refused to go forward until further search had been made, he did not
+oppose us; but he told us plainly that further looking for him in that
+place was useless, for already every room in the building had been
+examined without the finding of a trace of him. There could be no doubt,
+he said, that when we had been made prisoners Pablo, and El Sabio with
+him, had been taken up the stair to the temple for greater security; in
+which place, if they were not both by this time dead, they still
+remained. Whereupon Young was for making an attack upon the temple
+instantly, and in this project Rayburn and I warmly seconded him; and
+even Fray Antonio said that this was a case in which he felt justified
+in using carnal weapons, since the fighting would be to rescue from
+among infidels a Christian soul.</p>
+
+<p>But Tizoc hurriedly explained to us the hopelessness, at that time, of
+such an assault. The success that had attended his bold rescue of us had
+been due to the suddenness of it; for the majority of the people in the
+city, including the large force of soldiery there, assuredly was on the
+Priest Captain's side. It was outside the city that the strength of the
+revolution must be gathered; and his orders were, when his rescue of us
+should be accomplished, to carry us safely out beyond the walls with all
+possible speed. Such of the Council of the Twenty Lords as had decided
+to take the chances of revolt&mdash;being all the members of that body save
+the five priests that had belonged to it&mdash;already had gone down to the
+water-side, together with the small force that they had gathered, that
+they might seize the water-gate and hold it until we should join them.
+Even now it was certain that in going down through the city we should
+have to fight our way, and each moment that we delayed our retreat
+increased our danger. Capturing the temple now was a sheer
+impossibility. Our only hope of saving Pablo's life lay in our getting
+away promptly, and so beginning the preparations that would lead to
+ultimate victory.</p>
+
+<p>All the while that Tizoc spoke he was edging us away towards the outer
+face of the terrace, where steps led downward; and when the men who had
+been searching the building once more for Pablo returned without him, he
+resolutely gave the order to march. To the arguments that he had
+advanced we were compelled to yield; but our hearts were heavy with
+sorrow for the boy whom we were leaving behind us, and little hope was
+in our breasts that we ever again should see him alive.</p>
+
+<p>The truth of Tizoc's words about the great danger that we ourselves were
+in became apparent as we crossed the terrace next below that on which
+our march began. Where the street passed through the rampart by a narrow
+portal, and so by a flight of stone steps descended to the next level,
+soldiers were clustered together with the evident intention of disputing
+the way with us. Their number was so much less than ours that we made
+short work of them; killing a few, and driving the remainder down the
+steps before us. But those who escaped ran on ahead of us to where the
+next rampart was, and there joined themselves to a much larger body that
+lay in wait for us. Here our work was less easy; for the force that
+confronted us was nearly our equal, and some resolute fighting was
+required before we could drive it before us and so pass on. Some of our
+men were killed there, and more of the enemy; and I got a trifling hurt
+in my arm from the point of a javelin, that, luckily, did little more
+than graze the skin. I do not think that I killed anybody there, but I
+remember very plainly the look of pain and of anger on the face of that
+fellow who poked his javelin at me when I gashed his arm, and broke the
+bone of it, with a blow from my sword. I was glad, at the moment, that I
+had succeeded in giving him a worse hurt than he had given me; and then
+the absurdity occurred to me of my thus fighting with a total stranger,
+against whom I had no personal ill-will; and I could not but feel sorrow
+for him as I thought of the long time that he must suffer severe pain
+and great inconvenience because I had chanced to strike him that blow.
+However, from the way in which they went cutting and slashing about
+them, it was evident that neither Rayburn nor Young were troubled with
+any compunctions of this nature. They were only too glad, apparently, to
+get a chance to whack away at any of the Priest Captain's
+representatives; and they made such use of their opportunity that the
+Aztlanecas fighting with us cried out in admiration of their prowess and
+their strength. Fray Antonio was more sorely tried than any of us during
+this passage, for I knew that his flesh greatly longed to take part in
+the fighting, and that only the strong spirit which was within him
+subdued the flesh and so held his hands.</p>
+
+<p>With a final rush we succeeded in forcing the enemy through the narrow
+opening in the rampart, and so down the steps beyond; but as we pursued
+them across the next terrace, keeping close at their heels so that they
+might not have time to form again, many of our wounded fell out from the
+ranks and dropped by the way&mdash;and we had left behind us a dozen or more
+of our dead on the ground where the fight had been.</p>
+
+<p>Our tactics of rapid pursuit of the force that we had defeated served us
+well at the next rampart; for the men whom we pursued and we ourselves
+came to it almost in one body, and thus threw into such confusion the
+fresh force that was waiting for us that, without any long fighting
+about it, we drove right through them and went on downward; and in the
+same dashing fashion we carried the rampart beyond. However, when those
+men whom we had pushed aside from our path so easily got over their
+surprise at being so lightly handled, they formed in our rear and came
+hurrying after us; the result of which was that as we approached the
+last of the ramparts that we had to pass through, where was gathered the
+largest body of men that we had yet encountered, we found ourselves
+fairly wedged in between two bodies of the enemy and outnumbered four to
+one. Here, too, the passage through the rampart had been closed by the
+metal bars that were in readiness for that purpose. Setting these in
+place was no real barrier to our passage, for, being intended to close
+the portal against assailants from below, the fastenings which held them
+were on the side nearest to us. But to remove them it was necessary that
+we should fight our way through the crowd&mdash;with no possibility of
+driving the enemy before us, as we had done upon the upper terraces,
+since here the way was closed. What we did was literally to cut a path
+through the throng; and over the men who fell dead or wounded beneath
+our blows we made our advance. There was a curious creeping, uneasy
+sensation in the region of my stomach as I trod thus on the bodies of
+wounded men who were not dead yet, and felt them moving, and heard their
+groaning; and I was conscious of a feeling of relief when a body that I
+trod upon did not squirm beneath my foot, and so by its stillness
+assured me that I was standing only on dead flesh that had no feeling in
+it.</p>
+
+<p>Very slowly did we go forward, for while the living barrier that we had
+to deal with was not at the outset more than twenty feet, or
+thereabouts, in thickness, hacking it down took us a tediously long
+time. While still we faced a dozen or more very desperate fighters, who
+held us off most resolutely from the metal bars which closed the way, a
+pang of dread and sorrow went through me as I perceived that Fray
+Antonio, who a moment before had been close beside me, had disappeared.
+That he might the better restrain his longing to take part in the
+fighting he had remained in the centre of our men; and it was hard to
+understand how, in that position, harm could have come to him, for
+missiles had no share in the work that was going forward, which was a
+fiery struggle hand to hand.</p>
+
+<p>As I looked for him in the throng&mdash;so far as I could do this and at the
+same time keep up my guard against the man whom at that moment I was
+fighting with&mdash;I saw some signs of uneasy movement among the enemy in
+advance of us, and several of them evidently made an effort to reach
+down as though to get at something that was on the ground; which effort
+was wholly futile, for they were wedged so tightly together by our
+pressure upon them that reaching downward was impossible. By a lucky
+blow, I just then finished the man with whom I was contending, and so
+had a moment's breathing spell; and at that instant I saw one of the
+enemy, whose back was ranged against the bars, rise up in the air as
+though a strong spring had been loosed beneath him, and then fall
+sidewise upon the heads and shoulders of his fellows. And then, in the
+place thus made vacant, the cowled head of Fray Antonio instantly
+appeared&mdash;whereby I guessed, what afterwards I knew certainly, that he
+had crawled along the ground through the press until he reached the
+place that he aimed at, and then had risen up beneath one of the enemy
+with such sudden violence that he fairly had sent the man spinning
+upward into the air. What his purpose was I saw in a moment, for no
+sooner did he stand upright than he had his hands upon the metal bars,
+and then I heard the clinking together of stone and metal as he lifted
+them bodily away.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXIV" id="XXIV"></a>XXIV.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE AFFAIR AT THE WATER-GATE</h3>
+
+
+<p>Rayburn gave a great roar of gladness as the clinking sound made him
+turn and he saw what was going forward; and Young and I joined him in
+lusty Anglo-Saxon cheering, while our allies, in the savage fashion
+natural to them, vented their joy in shrill yells. In the midst of which
+cheering and yelling we pushed forward so hotly that the enemy,
+disconcerted by this sudden shifting of fortune in our favor, and the
+men directly in front of us being most seriously incommoded by their
+comrade lying sprawled out and kicking upon their heads and shoulders,
+seemed suddenly to lose heart so completely that we had no difficulty
+in cutting them down. Even had they not been too closely wedged in to
+turn upon Fray Antonio, our strong dashing upon them would have
+compelled them to leave him unharmed in order to defend themselves; and
+so it was that, by the time we had cut a path to the portal, the monk
+had released the whole tier of bars from their fastenings, and the way
+was free.</p>
+
+<p>As we sprang down the steps&mdash;with Fray Antonio, once more in the guise
+of a non-combatant, safe in the midst of our company&mdash;we heard a great
+outcry from below, and saw a considerable body of men marching up
+towards us steadily from the water-side; but the alarm that sight of
+them gave us was only momentary, for their shouts, and the shouts of our
+men in answer, showed us that these were friends come to our support.
+However we had no great need of them, for those of the enemy whom we
+left alive behind us seemed suddenly to have grown sick of fighting, and
+made no attempt to follow after us down the stairs. Yet the coming of
+this supporting force, to be just in the matter, no doubt was the saving
+of us; for more than half of the men who had been with us when we
+started on our march down through the city had been slain by the way,
+and nearly all in our company were more or less disabled by wounds.
+Tizoc and Young and Rayburn had come through it all without as much as a
+scratch, and because of their extraordinary strength these three were
+almost as fresh as when the fighting began; but the rest of us were
+sorely weary, and our breathing was so heavy and so tremulous that each
+breath was like a long-drawn sob. Truly, then, we were glad to fall in
+in advance of the supporting column and so make our way, with a strong
+rear-guard for our protection, across the bit of level land that lay
+between us and the lake.</p>
+
+<p>At the water-side boats were in readiness for us, and here we found also
+the members of the Council who had ordered, and who were the recognized
+leaders of, the revolt. There was still more fighting ahead of us, for
+the necessity of sending back the relief party had prevented the seizing
+of the water-gate; and this was a matter that had to be attended to
+quickly, for we could see bodies of men coming down several of the
+streets in pursuit of us, and unless we escaped outside the wall before
+they overtook us there was a strong and dismal probability that our
+whole plan would fail. Therefore, we tumbled aboard the boats with all
+possible rapidity, and while the pursuing parties still were far in our
+rear we shoved off from the shore.</p>
+
+<p>Two minutes' quick rowing sufficed to carry our flotilla of boats across
+the basin, and so brought us to the long pier that extended landward
+from beside the water-gate, and from which an open stair-way ascended to
+the top of the wall. On the pier there was no one at all to oppose our
+landing; and the force on the wall was not likely to be a large one, for
+the outbreak had come so suddenly that there had been no time to
+increase the small detail maintained in this position in times of peace.
+Only a few of our men, therefore&mdash;thirty or forty, perhaps&mdash;were ordered
+out of the boats to the attack, of which the leader was Tizoc, and with
+which Rayburn and Young went as volunteers. I also would have joined the
+party; but Rayburn, knowing that I was slightly wounded, begged me to
+stay where I was; and Young, as he ran up the stairs, called back to me:
+"You just see that they keep steam up, Professor. We'll attend t' takin'
+off th' brakes."</p>
+
+<p>What went on above us, on top of the wall, we could not see; but the
+work done there was done quickly. There was a little shouting, a sound
+of arms clashing, and then four or five men&mdash;as though this were the
+easiest way of getting rid of them&mdash;were thrown over the parapet, and
+fell near us in the water. To these short shrift was given. As they came
+to the surface, our fellows instantly finished them with a spear-thrust
+or two. Then we heard the sound of a windlass creaking, and the clanking
+of chains; and as we looked through the opening in the wall we saw the
+grating that closed its farther end rise slowly until the way before us
+was free. Two of our boats already were in the passage, so that no time
+might be lost; and as these passed out into the lake, the others
+followed after them rapidly. One boat remained to bring off the
+attacking party, and we wondered a little because its coming was a good
+while delayed. But we wondered still more when it joined us at last, and
+we found that Tizoc and Young and Rayburn were not in it; indeed, at
+that moment I saw the three of them standing together on top of the
+wall. In answer to the shout that I gave, Rayburn leaned over the wall
+and motioned to me to keep silence; and so I knew that they had not been
+left behind through treachery, but were staying there because they had
+some plan against the enemy that they thus could execute. And for
+knowledge of what their plan was we did not have to wait long.</p>
+
+<p>As we lay on our oars, off the outer end of the water-gate, we could see
+through it into the basin that lay before the city, and in a very few
+minutes the pursuing boats of the enemy came into view. As they neared
+us, we saw standing in the bow of the leading boat the same officer who
+had commanded the guard that had brought us as prisoners before the
+Priest Captain; the man of whom I have spoken, for what his real title
+was I do not know, as the barge-master.</p>
+
+<p>He was calling to his men savagely to row faster; for our boats were so
+scattered that he only could see the one in which we happened to be, and
+he doubtless imagined that the others had gone forward, and that this
+one waited to carry off some of our men who yet remained on the wall. He
+evidently hoped to be able to cut us off from the rest of our party, and
+his eagerness had so communicated itself to his oarsmen that his boat
+led the others by nearly a hundred yards. So far as this one boat was
+concerned, we felt no alarm, for the moment that it came out through the
+wall our whole force was ready to dash upon it; yet we wondered why
+Tizoc permitted even a single boat to come out to the attack, when, by
+dropping the grating, they all could be penned in so effectually as to
+give us the advantage of a long start.</p>
+
+<p>As the boat neared the water-gate the barge-master went back from his
+place in the bow to the middle part of it, and there crouched down; and
+some soldiers who were standing crouched down also; and almost as the
+bow entered the low, narrow passage the oars were unshipped and taken
+aboard. So cleverly was the unshipping of the oars managed, and so good
+was the steering, that the boat shot into the passage under full speed,
+and so came nearly through it before losing head-way. And we who were
+nearest to it got our arms in readiness&mdash;for we were convinced that in
+another minute the barge-master would lay us aboard. But this was not
+destined to be, nor were the men in that boat destined ever to do any
+more fighting in this world.</p>
+
+<p>All this while Rayburn had stood close by the parapet, bending over it
+and intently watching the outside of the water-gate; above which the
+heavy metal grating had been hauled up, in the metal grooves that it ran
+in, almost to the top of the wall. At the moment that the bow of the
+boat showed outside the opening he raised his hand, as though signalling
+to Young and Tizoc behind him; and in that same instant we heard the
+shrieking of the windlass and the quick clanking of the unwinding
+chains, and saw the metal grating rushing down the face of the wall.
+With all the force generated by the fall from so great height of so
+ponderous a body, the grating came crashing into the boat just
+amidships, fairly dividing its heavy timbers and forcing the fragments
+of it, together with all the men that it carried, down into the water's
+depths. But the barge-master died by a quicker death than drowning. He
+still was crouched in the middle of the boat, and the sharp angle of the
+lower bar of the grating struck him just on the nape of his neck so
+keenly that his head was cut off and seemed of itself to spring forward
+and away from him; while the broad flat bar, coming down upon his bowed
+shoulders, crushed his body into a mere quivering mass of flesh.</p>
+
+<p>A great yell of delight went up from our boats as this brilliant stroke
+so brilliantly was delivered; and an answering cry of triumph&mdash;that was
+one-third a yell and two-thirds a cheer&mdash;came back from Tizoc and the
+others on top of the wall. However, they had no time to waste in
+shouting over their success, for the remaining boats of the enemy had
+come by this time to the pier inside the wall, and it seemed highly
+probable that in a minute or two more our three men would be prisoners.
+But for all their danger they coolly finished the work that they had in
+hand. As they explained to me afterwards, Rayburn stood at the head of
+the stair to hold the enemy in check should they come before the work
+was finished&mdash;and very strong as well as very brave men must the man
+have been who would have ventured to attack him as he occupied that
+position of overpowering advantage&mdash;while the other two cast off from
+the windlass the chains by which the water-gate was operated, and
+dropped them over the wall into the lake; and as the gate itself was
+jammed and wedged fast by the fragments of the boat, this throwing down
+of the chains made the raising of it a serious undertaking that well
+might require a day or more to accomplish.</p>
+
+<p>As the chains fell with a splash, and we comprehended the thoroughness
+of the work that these three were doing, our people burst forth into
+yells again; and a perfect roar went up from them when, the gate being
+closed and the apparatus for raising it being entirely disabled, Rayburn
+sprang from the outer edge of the parapet into the lake, and Tizoc and
+Young instantly followed him. In truth, a more gallant feat of arms had
+not been essayed, nor carried to a more triumphant conclusion, since the
+Roman gate was held by Horatius; and in my admiration of it I shouted
+until the muscles of my throat were strained and aching. Our boat
+already was near the wall&mdash;having pulled in that the soldiers aboard of
+it might spear such of the enemy as came up to the surface alive&mdash;and we
+had the three out of the water and safe among us in very short order;
+and then we pulled away towards the other boats with all possible
+speed&mdash;for the wall now was manned by the enemy, and they were beginning
+to make things unpleasantly hot for us with the heavy stones which they
+heaved over the parapet, that our boat might be sunk by them, and by a
+rapid discharge of darts. Luckily, none of the stones struck us, and
+because of the rapid way that we were making, only two of our men were
+struck with the darts. So, on the whole, we came out of this encounter
+very well; for these two men killed in our boat were all that we lost,
+while of the enemy at least forty were drowned or speared. However, we
+owed our light escape mainly to the fact that the enemy, having armed
+hurriedly, and expecting only to fight with us at close quarters, had
+with them neither bows nor slings&mdash;but for which fortunate fact it
+scarcely is possible that a single man in our boat would have come off
+alive.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="illus12" id="illus12"></a>
+<img src="images/illus12.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>THE LEAP FROM ABOVE THE WATER-GATE</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+
+<p>Dripping wet though they were, I fairly hugged Rayburn and Young when
+they were safe aboard with us, as did also Fray Antonio, whose daring
+spirit was mightily aroused by witnessing their splendid bravery. And in
+giving them hearty words of praise for what they had done&mdash;which yet
+fell far short of their deserts&mdash;I naturally likened them to the Roman
+hero. Indeed, I may say that the parallel that I there drew was an apt
+one, and in some of its turns was not devoid of grace.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't say, Professor," Young answered, when I had finished, "that I
+ever heard o' th' party you refer to, but if this Horace&mdash;what did you
+say his last name was?&mdash;pinched his fingers in th' drawbridge chains as
+damnably as I pinched mine in th' chains of that infernal grating, I'll
+bet a hat he was sorry that he hadn't run away!" And I truly believe
+that Young thought more about his pinched fingers than he did about the
+resolute bravery that he had shown in finishing his work upon the wall
+in the very face of the advancing enemy.</p>
+
+<p>Being once out of range of the darts, we pulled towards the other boats
+leisurely; for now we were entirely safe against pursuit, and were free
+to go upon the lake in whatsoever direction we pleased. That some
+positive line of action had been determined upon was evident, for the
+flotilla already was in motion as we came up in the rear of it&mdash;the boat
+containing the members of the Council leading&mdash;and the order was passed
+back to us that we should follow with the rest. From the direction in
+which we were heading, Tizoc inferred that we were bound for the only
+other considerable town in the valley, that which had grown up around
+the shafts leading to the great mine whence the Aztlanecas drew their
+supply of gold. There was a very grave look upon his face as he told us
+of our probable destination; and presently added that the population of
+this town&mdash;save the few freemen who were in charge of the workings, and
+the large guard of soldiers that always was maintained there&mdash;was made
+up wholly of Tlahuicos who had been selected from their fellows to be
+miners because of their exceptional hardiness and strength.</p>
+
+<p>It was among these men, he went on to tell us speaking in a low, guarded
+voice, that the most dangerous of the revolts of the Tlahuicos
+invariably had their origin; for the miners were fierce, half-savage
+creatures, naturally turbulent and rebellious, and were stirred
+constantly to resentful anger because of the life of crushing toil that
+they were condemned to lead. So dangerous were they that the only
+effective means of keeping them in subjection was to hold the major part
+of them continually prisoners underground in the mine, with a guard
+stationed at the mouth of each shaft under orders to kill instantly any
+man who attempted to come forth from the mine without authority. In
+order that their labor, a thing of positive value, might not be lost
+through their dying of being thus imprisoned in the bowels of the earth,
+they were divided into ten great companies, each one of which, in
+regular order, was employed in the surface work under the constant
+supervision of a strong guard. Yet even these stern measures were not
+wholly effective in preventing mutiny. Many times great revolts had
+broken out here that had set all the valley in an uproar, and that had
+been crushed only after pitched battles had been fought between the
+rebels and the entire military force of the state. The town was a
+veritable volcano, Tizoc declared; and because of the dread of it that
+universally obtained, by reason of the frequent outbursts there of
+lawless violence, it had received the name of Huitzilan: the Town of
+War.</p>
+
+<p>And there could be no doubt, he added&mdash;while the tones of his voice and
+the look upon his face showed how great he believed to be the risk
+involved in this line of policy&mdash;that in now directing our course
+towards the mining town the deliberate purpose of the Council was to
+incite these semi-savage, wholly desperate miners to join forces with us
+in our rising against the Priest Captain's power.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXV" id="XXV"></a>XXV.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE GOLD-MINERS OF HUITZILAN.</h3>
+
+
+<p>As we rounded a mountain spur that extended a long way out into the
+lake, a deep bay opened to us; which bay ran close in to the cliffs
+whereby the valley was surrounded, and was at no great distance from the
+Barred Pass, through which we had made our entry. At the foot of the
+bay, built partly upon the level land near the water-side, and partly
+upon the steep ascent beyond, was the town of Huitzilan&mdash;whereof the
+most curious feature that at first was noticeable was a tall chimney,
+whence thick black smoke was pouring forth, that rose above a stone
+building of great solidity and of a very considerable size.</p>
+
+<p>On arch&aelig;ological grounds, the sight of this chimney greatly astonished
+me; and Rayburn, who was a very well-read man in all matters connected
+with his profession, was greatly astonished by it also; for the chimney
+obviously was a part of extensive reduction-works, and we both knew that
+such complete appliances for the smelting of metal, as seemed from this
+sign to exist here, were supposed to be the product of a high state of
+civilization in comparatively modern times. As for Young, he declared
+that the chimney gave him a regular jolt of homesickness; for, excepting
+that it was built of stone instead of brick, it might have been, for the
+look of it, transplanted hither directly from the region of the Back
+Bay. "I s'pose we'll be hearin' th' noon whistle next," he said,
+mournfully; and presently he added: "Do you know, Professor, I b'lieve
+I'm beginnin' t' see daylight in all this tall talk you say th' Colonel
+has been givin' us about th' 'rebellions,' as he calls 'em, that go on
+here. He don't mean t' close our eyes up, th' Colonel don't, for he's a
+first-class gentleman; but, bein' born an' bred a heathen, he don't know
+any better. What he's tryin' t' tell us about, an' can't, because he
+don't know th' English for it, is <i>strikes</i>. That's what's th' matter.
+Miners are bound t' go on strikes. It's their nature, an' they can't
+help it. That chimbly gives th' whole thing away. You just tell th'
+Colonel that we've got down t' th' hard-pan an' really know what he's
+been drivin' at. An' t' think of there bein' strikes in Mexico! I didn't
+b'lieve that a Greaser had backbone enough, or ambition enough, t'
+strike at anything!"</p>
+
+<p>However, as I had no great amount of faith in Young's theory, I did not
+attempt to translate to Tizoc what he had said to me; nor was there any
+opportunity for further talk at that time. Already the foremost boats of
+the flotilla had made a landing at a well-built pier that extended from
+the shore into deep water; and a minute or two later our boat also
+pulled in to the pier, and we disembarked. The general view of the town
+that I then had showed me that it was closely built over an area rather
+more than half a mile square; that the houses for the most part were
+mere hovels, of which the largest could not contain more than two small
+rooms; and that the few houses of a better sort were within the strong
+stone wall by which the reduction-works also were enclosed. At the pier
+where we landed a boat was in process of lading with bars of gold for
+transport to the Treasure-house in the city; and I thought that I never
+had seen anywhere more savage-looking fellows than the almost naked
+laborers by whom the work of lading was carried on. Physically these men
+were magnificent creatures&#8212;tall and well-shaped and vigorous, and the
+ease with which they handled the great bars of gold showed how enormous
+must be their strength. But so full of venomous hate were the sullen
+looks which they cast upon us, and so savage was the effect of their
+coarse, dishevelled hair falling down over and partly veiling their
+great glittering eyes, whence these angry glances were shot forth at us
+like poisoned darts, that I was thankful to see that, all told, there
+were not more than a dozen of them, and that three times as many heavily
+armed soldiers served as their guard. And looking at these creatures,
+who were truly less like men than dangerous wild beasts, I could not
+wonder at the grave concern which Tizoc had manifested at thought of the
+risk which we ran in taking them for allies. "It's as easy t' start
+'em," Young said, when he came to an understanding of the situation, "as
+'tis t' start a freight-train down a three per cent. grade. But what I
+want to know is, when we want 'em t' stop, how in th' h&mdash;ll are we ever
+goin' t' set th' brakes?"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="illus13" id="illus13"></a>
+<img src="images/illus13.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>THE TLAHUICOS AND THEIR GUARDS</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+
+<p>Yet, dangerous to ourselves though the use of it must be, our hopes of
+success rested mainly upon our ability to control and to employ
+effectively this savage material. Fortunately, it was not the whole of
+our reliance; and it was our intention to leaven this dangerous lump
+with the very considerable number of trained and trustworthy soldiers
+that we had available as the substantial nucleus of our fighting force,
+and also with the larger body of both slaves and freemen&mdash;not regularly
+drilled soldiers, to be sure, yet many of them trained in the ways of
+war&mdash;that we counted upon to join us from among the people at large.</p>
+
+<p>This outline of the plan of action that the Council had determined upon
+was exhibited to us by Tizoc during our passage down the lake; and I was
+glad to find that Rayburn&mdash;for whose judgment I had much respect in
+such matters&mdash;was disposed to think well of it.</p>
+
+<p>"If I expected to stay here, Professor, after the row was over," he
+said, "I mightn't be quite as well satisfied with this plan of theirs
+for running things. The war part of the programme is all right. They
+won't have any difficulty in getting their Tlahuicos to fight anything
+in the way of an army that the Priest Captain shows up with. Fighting is
+just what will please them more than anything else. Where the trouble is
+going to come in is when the fighting is over and they go in for
+reconstruction. It's one thing to make fighters out of this sort of
+stuff, but it's quite another thing to make respectable citizens out of
+it. That's where the hitch will be. But as we don't intend to settle
+down in this valley&mdash;unless we find that there's no way out of it&mdash;we
+needn't bother about that part of the performance at all. That's their
+funeral, not ours. So, for my part, the sooner they get their army in
+shape, and get the fighting part settled, the better I'll be satisfied."</p>
+
+<p>To do the members of the Council justice, they seemed to be even more
+eager than Rayburn was to forward the work that they had in hand. From
+the pier they went directly to the enclosure in the centre of the town,
+within which was the building ordinarily occupied by the commandant of
+the post and by the officials of the civil government; and in this
+place, Tizoc informed us, they intended immediately to organize the new
+government, and then to proceed with all possible despatch to make
+arrangements for placing an army in the field.</p>
+
+<p>In Tizoc's company, but more leisurely, we also went on to the
+Citadel&mdash;as we found the enclosure about the smelting-works was
+called&mdash;where comfortable quarters had been provided for us in the same
+building wherein the Council was housed. Here we waited, in somewhat
+strained idleness, while the Council carried on, in a chamber not far
+removed from us, its exciting work of destroying a government that had
+endured for more than a thousand years; and we were mightily surprised,
+knowing how prodigious was the change that then was being wrought in
+ancient institutions, by observing how quietly it all went on. The
+murmur of talk that came to us, unchecked by any intervening doors, had
+no sound of excitement or of anger or of violent emotion of any sort;
+and I could not but hold in admiration the calm, self-contained natures
+of these men who thus equably and rationally could deal with such vastly
+weighty affairs.</p>
+
+<p>While this great matter&mdash;which could end only in wild commotion and
+fierce battling&mdash;went forward in this quiet way, Tizoc opened to us
+much that was of curious interest touching the near-by gold-mine and
+they who mined the gold. Of the existence of the mine, he said, the
+Aztlanecas had remained ignorant for many generations after their coming
+into the valley; and for many more generations but little gold had been
+taken from it, because the metal was of no value to his people save for
+the making of ornaments. But when the process had been discovered by
+which this metal could be hardened, and so made serviceable for all
+manner of useful purposes&mdash;and this the more because, by the
+manufacture that then ensued of tools wherewith the rock could be easily
+worked, mining in a large way became possible&mdash;the development of the
+mine upon a great scale had been begun, and had been continued upon a
+constantly increasing scale from that time onward. All the earth beneath
+where we then were, he said, was honey-combed with passages which
+followed the several veins; and of these there seemed to be no end at
+all, for ever as each vein was exhausted another not less rich was
+found&mdash;and thus it seemed as though all the substructure of that great
+mountain range were one huge mass of gold.</p>
+
+<p>What the measures of weight were with which he estimated the annual
+output of the mine, I could not clearly understand, but the matter was
+made approximately plain to us by his statement that the daily product
+of the mine never was less than one of the great bars of gold that we
+had seen upon the pier in process of carriage to the Treasure-house; and
+that sometimes, when veins of extraordinary richness were encountered,
+even so much as four of these bars had been smelted from the ore that
+the mine yielded in a single day.</p>
+
+<p>"Those bars don't weigh an ounce less than two hundred pounds apiece,"
+Rayburn said, when I had translated to him what Tizoc had told me. "That
+makes the output of the mine not less than three tons a month, and, in a
+rough way, a ton of gold is worth just about half a million of dollars.
+If the Colonel isn't mixed in his figures, and if you've translated him
+straight, Professor, these fellows are taking out somewheres in the
+neighborhood of twenty millions a year."</p>
+
+<p>Young gave a long whistle. "Great Scott!" he exclaimed, "that just is an
+all-fired big pile of money t' be wasted on a lot of barelegged heathen
+critters like these, who don't know th' Ten Commandments by sight, an'
+who've never even heard of a cocktail! D' you know what I'm goin' t' do,
+Rayburn, when I realize on this investment? I'm goin' t' buy th' Old
+Colony Railroad, just for th' sake of bein' able t' bounce th'
+Superintendent. He bounced me after that freight smash-up&mdash;and it wasn't
+my fault that th' operator got mixed an' gave me th' wrong orders&mdash;and
+I'll give him a taste o' th' same kind. Won't it just paralyze him when
+he gets his orders t' quit, signed 'Seth Young, President,' an' finds
+out it's th' same old Seth Young who used t' run Thirty-two on th' Fall
+River division?"</p>
+
+<p>"Hadn't you better let him down easy by telegraphing him right now to
+begin to look out for a new place?" Rayburn asked. "We'll wait for you
+here, while you step over to the Western Union office"&mdash;which cool
+comment upon Young's enthusiastic discounting of a bright future brought
+the gloomy present so clearly before his mind that his castle-building
+ended suddenly, and he lapsed into silence.</p>
+
+<p>But great though our wonder was at the prodigious quantity of precious
+metal that this mine yielded in each year, and amazed though we were by
+thought of the vast store of treasure that the valley now must hold, I,
+for my part, felt a far deeper interest in what Tizoc went on to tell
+us concerning the men by whose toil the treasure had been accumulated.
+And, truly, so bitter and so dreary was the life of the Tlahuicos who
+were forced to labor here unceasingly, and through so long a period had
+they been thus cruelly dealt with, that it seemed to me there must rest
+upon all the Valley of Aztlan a heavy curse that only some signal act of
+expiation could remove. And the coincidence struck me as most curious
+that here among the Aztecs, wrought by themselves upon the men of their
+own race, should be found identically the same cruelties which the
+Spaniards practised upon the Indians whom they enslaved as miners in New
+Mexico: whereof came that fierce outburst of revolt two hundred years
+ago, when the Pueblos ravaged with sword and flame the whole valley of
+the Rio Grande from Taos to the Pass of the North.</p>
+
+<p>There was small ground for wonder that the Tlahuicos, thus crushed by
+over-heavy labor, and dealt with as though they were not men, but fierce
+and dangerous brutes, should cherish at all times in their breasts a
+sullen fire of mutiny; nor that on every occasion at all favorable to
+their purposes there should spring forth from the glowing embers of
+their hatred a vivid and consuming flame. Only by the strength and the
+vigilance of the guard that constantly was maintained over them was
+their tendency to rebellion held in check; and even the guards could not
+prevent frequent outbreaks&mdash;which ended only in the cruel slaughter of
+all concerned in them&mdash;so passionately eager was the longing of these
+desperate creatures for revenge.</p>
+
+<p>Only once, a vastly long while past, Tizoc said, had success attended an
+effort on the part of the Tlahuicos to release themselves from their
+cruel slavery, and that they then eluded the vigilance of their masters
+was due to their employment of strategy against force. The whole matter,
+he continued, was now but a half-remembered tradition, yet the main
+details of it were clear. In that far-back time a vein of extraordinary
+richness had been followed for a very long distance in the direction of
+the Barred Pass; and, as the event proved, the gallery was carried
+beyond the bars, passing far beneath them, and so went onward, steadily
+rising, until an outlet was had into the ca&ntilde;on. That the secret of this
+outlet might be kept among the men who had opened it, these slew the
+guard that watched over them and thrust his body out into the ca&ntilde;on,
+thus most effectually placing it beyond the reach of the search that
+would be made for it; and the opening that they had made they closed
+carefully, and continued a little way onward into the rock the gallery
+in which they were working: so that the superintendent of the mine might
+see clearly (what, indeed, was the truth) that the vein of ore had been
+followed to its end.</p>
+
+<p>Tizoc knew not how long a time passed before the Tlahuicos made use of
+the way of escape thus opened to them; but their flight could not have
+been taken hastily, because it included a very great number of them, and
+included also carrying with them large quantities of arms for warfare,
+and of useful household stores. He could say certainly no more than
+that when all their well-laid plan was ready to be executed, they rose
+against the soldiers which guarded them with such suddenness and brave
+violence that they succeeded in seizing and in holding the Citadel;
+which gave no chance for grave uneasiness, for the officers of the force
+thus for a moment driven off thought that because of their retiring
+within so narrow a place they speedily must surrender for dread of being
+starved there; and it was held to be but a sign of their still greater
+simplicity&mdash;since thus would there be more hungry mouths to fill&mdash;that
+they carried their women and children with them into the stronghold
+where they lay besieged.</p>
+
+<p>But so strange was the desolate silence that hung over the place into
+which so great a multitude had retired, that the besiegers presently
+were moved by it to a wonder wherein was a strong feeling of awe; and
+still greater was the marvel that they had to ponder upon when, at last,
+meeting with no opposition, they broke in the grating that barred the
+entrance to the Citadel, and found within the enclosure not one single
+living soul! And so cleverly had the fugitives closed the way behind
+them that a long while passed before it was known certainly what had
+become of this living host that, as it seemed, in a moment had vanished
+from off the face of the earth. More than half a lifetime went by
+without the shedding of light upon this mystery; and it seemed as though
+a ghost had risen when one day a very aged man came forth from that
+long-abandoned passage in the mine and surrendered himself to the first
+of the guards whom he encountered&mdash;and then told that he was a priest
+whom the fleeing rebels had carried captive with them, and whom they had
+held a prisoner through all these many years. And he told also how the
+rebels had made their home in a certain fair valley that was shut in and
+hidden among the mountains; and how that they had built a great
+city&mdash;resting fearless in the conviction that they were safe from harm.
+By the heavy toil that had been needful to open anew the way into the
+mine from the ca&ntilde;on, the little remnant of strength in this old man's
+body had been exhausted; and presently, having told his story, he died.</p>
+
+<p>Then it was that the Priest Captain and the Council who ruled in that
+ancient time, having assured themselves by the sending out of spies that
+all which the old man had told them was true, planned to bring upon the
+rebels a very terrible vengeance; which was to drown them all in their
+city by letting loose upon them the waters of a mighty lake. And this
+plan, though its accomplishment was not arrived at until two full cycles
+had passed away, so mighty was the labor that it involved, at last was
+executed: and in one single day every living creature in all that valley
+was overwhelmed by the flood let loose into it; and where so great a
+mass of teeming life had been there remained thereafter only the
+desolate silence and stillness of universal death.</p>
+
+<p>It was with long-drawn breaths that Fray Antonio and I listened to
+Tizoc's telling of this tradition, which in many ways was far more real
+to us than it possibly could be to him; for we but lately had passed
+through that death-stricken valley&mdash;and ourselves had been like to die
+there&mdash;and every feature of the scene, that he could but vaguely
+describe to us, we had clearly in our minds. And thus we came to know
+the full meaning of the great catastrophe whereof we had seen the
+outworking, both in the destruction wrought by it and the way of its
+accomplishment, but of which we had divined no more concerning its cause
+than that in some way it must have resulted from a slowly worked-out
+vengeance prompted by a most malignant hate.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXVI" id="XXVI"></a>XXVI.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE GATHERING FOR WAR.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Although the whole of the discussion of their plan of revolt was carried
+on by the Council with so calm a gravity, there was enough of energy and
+of quick movement when their deliberations came to an end; and we
+augured well of the result because they thus had delayed their action
+until their plan for making it effective had been fully matured. The
+whole of that first day in Huitzilan, and much of the following night
+also, was given to arranging clearly what must be done in order to set
+up a temporary government and to get an army together; and how well this
+preliminary work was accomplished was shown by the precision and
+celerity with which the plans then made were executed during the
+immediately ensuing days.</p>
+
+<p>During this period we had ample time to look around us; and, being now
+upon a most friendly footing with the strange people among whom we thus
+strangely found ourselves, we were heartily aided&mdash;so far as this was
+possible because of the exigencies of that stirring time&mdash;in
+investigating the manner of their lives. The material then was obtained
+for my chapter on the "House Life and Domestic Customs of the Aztecs";
+and the knowledge which Rayburn gathered (also embodied in his own
+paper, that attracted so much attention when read before the American
+Institute of Mining Engineers) he has permitted me to use in my chapter
+on "Mining and Metal-working among the Aztecs"; which two chapters are
+among the most note worthy <i>Pre-Columbian Conditions on the Continent of
+North America</i>. Rayburn, indeed, was lost in wonder as he came to
+understand how far scientific investigation had been carried among this
+isolated people, and how well they had learned to apply their scientific
+knowledge to their practical affairs. In many matters, to be sure, they
+fell far behind the remainder of the civilized world; but a large part
+of the useful knowledge that has been gained by study under civilized
+conditions elsewhere we found here also as the fruit of independent
+discovery. In many cases the discovery was identical in every respect
+with our own. Thus, their process (the adding of hydrochloric acid to a
+neutral solution of auric-chloride) for producing from gold a rich
+purple stain, that was employed in the coloring of hard-wood and bone,
+was precisely that which Boyle mentioned in 1663; and, as nearly as I
+could determine the date, it was about that very time that they, also,
+first effected this combination. In the matter of hardening gold, and
+thereafter giving it all the qualities of tempered steel, they had made
+a step that was distinctly in advance of anything which our
+metallurgists had accomplished; and I am strongly inclined to the belief
+that&mdash;at least among the priests&mdash;knowledge had been gained of a process
+quite unlike that known to us for producing a gold fulminate. I was not
+so fortunate as to gain more knowledge of this matter than could be
+learned from hearsay, but from several sources I heard of the splitting
+asunder of a certain great rock by the Priest Captain&mdash;which wonder was
+accompanied by a thunderous noise and a gleam of flame and a bursting
+forth of smoke&mdash;whereby he was considered to have proved that the aid of
+the gods was at his command. But to my mind, and also to Rayburn's, the
+proof was, rather, that he had at his command&mdash;in some way that as yet
+our chemists have not fathomed&mdash;the aid of a gold fulminate that could
+be controlled in use as readily as we control gunpowder. That this
+agent, whatever it might be, was not easily available, was indicated by
+the fact that the Priest Captain never had given more than this single
+exhibition of the wonders which he could accomplish with it; and that it
+then had served his purpose well was shown by the obvious awe with which
+all who told me of it spoke of the dreadful havoc that thus visibly was
+wrought by what they termed the thunder of the gods.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, a very serious difficulty that the leaders of the revolution had
+to overcome was the unwillingness on the part of the people at large to
+defy the power of their spiritual chief; which feeling among the upper
+classes was mainly because disobedience to the Priest Captain was, in
+effect, heresy; while among the lower classes there was joined to a like
+horror of heresy a very lively dread of the punishment, both temporal
+and spiritual, that the Priest Captain could bring upon them because of
+his intimate relations with the supernatural beings by which the forces
+of the world were controlled.</p>
+
+<p>Yet out of this condition of affairs arose an opportunity that Fray
+Antonio was not slow to make the most of. Our coming into the valley
+with news of the outside world that directly controverted the Priest
+Captain's claim to infallibility gave a great shock to the religious
+faith of the community, and so induced a willingness to listen to the
+preaching of a new and purer creed. And on the part of those of the
+Council who were organizing the revolution&mdash;among whom religion seemed
+to be regarded less as a vital fact than as a matter of political
+expediency&mdash;there was a strong disposition to encourage the spread of
+doctrines which obviously, by weakening the Priest Captain's hold upon
+the people, would increase their own strength. Therefore, Fray Antonio
+found himself free to preach to this heathen multitude the glorious
+Christian faith; and that he was granted this most rare and signal
+opportunity, the like of which was not given even to the blessed Saint
+Francis himself, so filled and exalted his soul with a radiantly joyful
+thankfulness that he was as one transformed. And his holy enthusiasm,
+that thus made every fibre of his being vibrate with a grateful
+gladness, gave him also so eloquent a command of beseeching language
+that it was a living wonder to perceive how his inspired words
+penetrated into the minds, darkened by superstitious doctrines, of those
+to whom he spoke, and so sunk into their hearts and brought the restful
+happiness of the faith Christian to those who had known only the
+restless terror of idolatry throughout all their lives. Like a pure
+flame, the doctrine that he preached ran through that host of the
+heathen, burning out from among them the impure creed whereby their
+souls had been held in a most cruel and desolate bondage, and giving in
+the place thereof the tender comfort of a saving Christian grace.</p>
+
+<p>Yet the very fervor of Fray Antonio's preaching, and the strong hold
+that the gentle doctrine which he set forth took upon the hearts of the
+multitude, tended also to stir up against him a lively enmity among
+those who, refusing to hearken to him, remained steadfast in the ancient
+faith. Many such there were among us at that time in Huitzilan; but
+because of the firm grasp that Fray Antonio had upon so many hearts, and
+also because of the countenance which the Council gave him, these did
+not venture to assail either him or his doctrine openly; yet, as I noted
+at times the evil glances which they shot forth at him&mdash;which surely
+would have killed him could he thus have been slain&mdash;I was filled with
+dread that hate so malignant as here was shown must surely find
+expression in a direct attempt upon his life. Fortunately, there no
+longer were any priests among us. Of these there had been a
+considerable number in Huitzilan upon our first coming there, but
+silently, one by one, they had disappeared&mdash;going, as we well knew, to
+join themselves to the force which the Priest Captain was gathering
+against the time when the issue between us would be settled by the
+arbitration of arms. And those who went from our camp to his must have
+carried with them news of the peril that menaced the ancient faith
+through the new faith that Fray Antonio preached so zealously in such
+burning words; for of his knowledge of what Fray Antonio was doing, and
+of his dread of what might therefrom result, we presently had proof in a
+way that filled our hearts with a very dismal fear.</p>
+
+<p>All the while that this curious, and to me most interesting, conflict
+between a primitive and a highly developed religion went on, the more
+practical work went on also of establishing a new government and of
+organizing an army whereby it might be maintained. So far as the setting
+up of a government was concerned, the matter was comparatively easy; for
+the majority of the Council had come out with us from Culhuacan, and
+these had but to adapt to the requirements of the new situation the
+governmental machinery that already was established and at their
+command. And they were surprised pleasurably by finding how readily this
+transformation was effected; for among the higher classes&mdash;from which
+classes the officials of the government exclusively were drawn&mdash;the
+feeling of hatred against the Priest Captain, begotten of his many acts
+of cruelty and oppression, was so strong that the opportunity now
+offered to turn against him was seized upon most gladly. In every town
+throughout the valley the emissaries of the Council were warmly
+welcomed; and presently the new government was established everywhere
+save in the capital city and in certain villages upon the lake border
+lying close beneath its walls.</p>
+
+<p>The work of organizing an army, however, was a more difficult matter;
+for very serious obstacles, both moral and material, had to be overcome
+before we of the revolutionary faction could place an effective fighting
+force in the field. Of what I may term regular troops, that is to say,
+thoroughly drilled and disciplined soldiers, we could count upon but
+few; for, practically, the whole body of the army had remained faithful
+to the Priest Captain and was with him in Culhuacan. For the most part,
+also, the regular troops scattered through the garrisons of the various
+towns had betaken themselves immediately to Culhuacan upon the
+acknowledgment by the civil officers of these towns of the authority of
+the new government; and at the same time had departed with them nearly
+all the priests, and such few persons of the upper classes as desired
+the maintenance of the ancient order of things. The result of which
+general movement at least gave us the advantage of carrying on
+unmolested our own work of concentrating and organizing; and, so far,
+was a positive service to us.</p>
+
+<p>As the nucleus of our army we had the corps that Tizoc commanded, the
+highly organized body of troops charged with the important duty of
+guarding the Barred Pass; and we had also the few hundreds of men who
+had come out with us from Culhuacan. From these sources we were able to
+draw officers to command the irregular force, largely made up of
+Tlahuicos, that the Council rapidly got together; while for the
+organizing of the main body of our troops, the savages who worked in the
+mine, the bold stroke was made of mingling them with the men who, until
+then, had been their most relentless enemies&mdash;the soldiers who had
+served as their guards. That it was possible to put in operation this
+daring plan was due, I think, in great part to the fact that both guards
+and miners were led to accept the extraordinary fellowship that it
+created by a genuine shock of surprise; and before they had at all
+recovered from their astonishment their interests became identical,
+through their common need of defending themselves against a common
+enemy. And, further, I am well convinced that the Tlahuicos had been in
+part prepared, before our coming into the valley, to join in the revolt
+that under any circumstances could not have been much longer delayed. In
+regard to this matter, Tizoc persistently evaded my questions; but I
+remembered very distinctly his curious hesitancy when he had told me of
+the effective part that the servile class could be made to take in the
+event of a rebellion; and I perceived many evidences of a secret
+understanding between him and certain of the miners during the time that
+the gathering for war was going on in Huitzilan. Therefore, I inferred
+that the seeds of revolt which germinated so readily had been long since
+sown.</p>
+
+<p>Of all the disabilities under which we then labored, the most serious
+was the lack of an adequate supply of arms. The great arsenal of the
+Aztlanecas was in Culhuacan; and thus nearly the whole of the supply of
+munitions of war in the valley was in the Priest Captain's hands.
+Fortunately, the shipment of hardened gold that we had intercepted&mdash;by
+landing at the pier whence in a few hours it would have been despatched
+to the Treasure-house&mdash;gave us a good supply of raw material out of
+which spear-heads, and the heads of darts, and swords could be made; and
+night and day the forges blazed in Huitzilan while the manufacture of
+these weapons went on. Of bows and arrows it was not possible to make
+many in that short time, but of slings there was no difficulty in making
+enough to supply our entire force&mdash;and among these people, who are
+wonderfully skilful in the use of it, the sling is a most deadly
+implement of war. We lacked time, also, to make any large number of
+shields, and our deficiency in this respect was regarded by Tizoc, and
+by all the military officers who were with us, as a most serious matter;
+for not only would our men without shields be the more easily slain in
+battle, but their fighting value would be lessened by their
+consciousness that they were without this piece of furniture that all
+savage races hold to be so necessary in war.</p>
+
+<p>However, of defensive armor we had a good supply, for it chanced that in
+the Citadel there was a great store of cotton cloth, suitable for making
+long kirtles of many thicknesses of cloth quilted together; which
+kirtles were arrow proof, and well protected a man from his neck
+downward almost to his knees. Young was disposed to think but lightly of
+this curious armor, but when Tizoc, to convince him of its utility,
+demonstrated its power to resist a well-pointed arrow shot at very short
+range he was forced to confess its entire applicability to the purpose
+for which it was designed.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell th' Colonel that I give in, an' think it a first-rate notion,
+Professor," he said. "But if you can get it into his head, an' I'm
+afraid you can't, just tell him that when this barelegged army of ours
+gets fitted out with those little night-shirts they'll look for all th'
+world like a lot o' fellows who've scrambled out of a hotel that's
+caught fire in th' middle o' th' night. All that'll be wanted t' make
+th' thing perfect 'll be a couple o' steam fire-engines, an' a crowd
+with all their clothes on, an' a line of policemen. I guess it's goin'
+t' be one o' th' funniest lookin' armies that was ever seen outside of a
+lunatic asylum. What I'd like to do, Professor, instead o' tryin' t' do
+any fightin' with it, is just t' take th' whole outfit back t' th'
+States an' make a show of it. I'd get Benito Nichols t' go in with
+me&mdash;he's a first-class man, Benito is, an' he's a boss hand as a show
+manager&mdash;an' we'd call it 'Th' Aztec Warrior Army an' Circus
+Combination,' an' we'd just rake in th' dollars quicker'n we could count
+'em. That makes me think o' that show we were talkin' about makin' with
+Pablo an' his burro." Young's voice changed as he spoke, and there was a
+huskiness in it as he added: "I s'pose by this time there ain't much
+left for show-makin' purposes of either of 'em. No, I guess I'll stay
+around an' take a hand in any fightin' that's goin' on; for I'd pretty
+near be willin' t' be killed right away after it myself for th' chance
+t' square things with that old devil for killin' our boy. He was a good
+boy, Professor, an'&mdash;How this devilish dust does get into my eyes an'
+make 'em water." With which highly irrelevant remark&mdash;for there was no
+dust blowing just then&mdash;Young suddenly ceased speaking and walked away.</p>
+
+<p>This was the only time that we spoke of Pablo while we lay at Huitzilan,
+for talk about the boy only increased the bitter sorrow for him that was
+in all our hearts. As for my own heart, it was wellnigh broken as I
+thought that but for me his gentle life would still be flowing on
+smoothly&mdash;as I had found it flowing when, in an evil hour, I joined his
+fortunes with mine, and so had brought him to so untimely and to so
+cruel a death. And I, too, longed for the fighting to begin that I might
+avenge him; for the accomplishment of which vengeance I was not merely
+in part, but altogether ready to yield up my own life.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, excepting only Fray Antonio, who saw in warfare only the
+wickedness and the cruelty of it, we all were most eager for our
+inaction to end, and for the battling to begin that would give us
+opportunity to let the life out of some of those by whom Pablo had been
+slain. It was with delight, therefore, that we noted the rapidity with
+which the preparations for the impending campaign were carried forward,
+and saw how each day the disorderly host that had been gathered at
+Huitzilan was changing from a confused mass of good fighting material
+into a body fairly well adapted to the needs of war. It was, in truth,
+astonishing to us&mdash;for we could not well comprehend how essentially
+warlike were the instincts of this people, and how quick, therefore,
+they must be in military matters&mdash;to observe the promptness that was
+shown in getting our army in readiness for the field. And with our
+astonishment came also a comforting conviction that the force that could
+be so quickly, and, as it seemed, so effectively organized, must surely
+hold well together, and fight well together, when the hour for fighting
+came.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXVII" id="XXVII"></a>XXVII.</h2>
+
+<h3>AN OFFER OF TERMS.</h3>
+
+
+<p>During the time that our various preparations thus went forward we had
+no direct news from the stronghold of the enemy; yet many vague rumors
+reached us of the army that was being set in order there to take the
+field against us. On the other hand, the constant departure from among
+us of those who were loyal to the ancient government kept the Priest
+Captain well informed of all that was in progress in our camp. No effort
+was made by the Council to prevent these departures, for all of our
+plans were working so well, and our forces were increasing so
+prodigiously, that it was to our advantage that the enemy should have
+news of our rapidly augmenting strength; and especially was it hoped
+that the news thus carried to the city might incline many there who
+wavered in their allegiance to take open part with us&mdash;or, at the least,
+to refuse to take part against us&mdash;and that in this way there might be
+stirred up a very dangerous spirit of mutiny within the enemy's lines.</p>
+
+<p>The plan of campaign that the Council had adopted struck me as being an
+exceedingly prudent one. This was that we should not attempt an attack
+upon the city&mdash;for, indeed, to assail such fortifications without
+artillery would have been utterly hopeless&mdash;but should wait until the
+enemy came out to assail us, and then meet him on our own chosen ground.
+In every way this plan was in our favor. It most obviously was to our
+advantage to delay as long as possible the battle that was inevitable,
+and that, when it did come, must decide the fate of the rebellion
+finally. Every day that this was deferred was a substantial gain to us,
+in that the organization of our army was thereby rendered the more
+complete, and also in that the effective hold of the new government upon
+the people throughout the valley was thereby strengthened. On the side
+of the enemy, delay would produce no corresponding gain, rather would it
+tend to weaken the hold of the Priest Captain upon those who remained
+faithful to him; and, being shut up with his whole army and a multitude
+of non-combatants within those great stone walls, a very terrible foe,
+against which stone walls are no defence, presently would attack him in
+the shape of hunger. Therefore we had only to wait&mdash;maintaining the
+while a vigilant patrol of guard-boats on the lake, so that no fresh
+supplies might reach the garrison in the city&mdash;in the sure conviction
+that our foe would of his own accord come forth to give us battle, and
+that we then would have the advantage of standing wholly on the
+defensive until some happy turn of chance should so favor us that we
+would risk nothing in making an assault.</p>
+
+<p>It was a very fortunate thing for us that matters stood in this way; for
+wellnigh the whole of the trained army of the Aztlanecas was with the
+Priest Captain, and against this well-disciplined body of men our own
+hastily assembled and imperfectly organized army would have made but a
+poor showing had we met on equal terms. Even under the existing
+circumstances, so favorable in many ways to our success, Tizoc and the
+other military officers who were with us did not at all disguise their
+anxiety as to what might be the outcome of the battle so soon to be
+fought; and especially did they dread some well-planned stealthy
+movement of the enemy, by which our camp might be suddenly set upon and
+fairly carried before our own untrained forces could be rallied from the
+bewilderment and confusion into which they would be thrown by the shock
+of such surprise.</p>
+
+<p>Rayburn, who had seen a good deal of Indian fighting in his time, fully
+shared in this feeling of anxiety. "Indian fights, you see," he said,
+"are not like any other kind of fights. The side that wins has got to do
+it with a whoop and a hurrah. Indians haven't got any staying power in
+them. They can't hold out against anybody who stands up against them
+squarely, and won't be scared by a howling rush into running away.
+That's the reason why our little bit of an army at home is strong enough
+to police our whole Indian frontier. A single troop of our boys&mdash;if the
+fighting's square, and they haven't been corralled in an ambush&mdash;can
+stand off a whole tribe; and they can do it because they just get their
+backs together and won't give in. What bothers me about the fight that
+we're going to have is that the regulars are on the other side. Of
+course, being Indians too, regulars like these don't amount to much; but
+they are bound to be a long chalk better than this rowdy crowd of ours.
+We've got a pretty fair chance to win, because we're in a strong
+position, and because our people mean to wait until the other fellows
+come at 'em; but I tell you what it is, if ever they manage to get
+inside here, or if ever we go outside after them&mdash;that is, while they're
+fresh and full of fight&mdash;it's bound to be all day with us. These miners,
+and the rest of this Tlahuico outfit, will fight like wild-cats as long
+as they're on top, but every bit of fight will go right out of them the
+minute they find that they're beginning to get underneath. That's the
+Indian way. I'm trying hard to believe that our crowd will whip the
+other crowd; but I must say, Professor, that I'm not betting on it."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm bettin' on it, and bettin' on it high," said Young. "I don't
+pretend t' know as much about this sort o' thing as Rayburn does; but I
+do think I know a live devil when I see one&mdash;an' these miners are about
+as lively an' about as devilly as anything that ever broke loose from
+hell. They're just as full o' th' wickedest sort o' fight as they can
+stick in their ugly skins, an' they're just sick for a chance t' let it
+get out of 'em. All we've got t' do is t' worry th' other crowd for a
+while by lettin' 'em monkey around tryin' t' bag us; an' then, when
+they've been pretty well shot off, an' are gettin' tired, just make a
+rush for 'em an' scoop 'em in. Regulars or no regulars, these miners 'll
+go through 'em like a limited express; an' the' first thing th' Priest
+Captain knows we'll have walloped him right smack out o' th' baggy
+things he wears on his feet an' thinks are boots. That's th' size of it,
+Rayburn. That's what's goin' t' happen right here&mdash;an' don't you forget
+it! An' then, if there's any way out o' this d&mdash;n valley, we'll load up
+with dollars an' pull out for home."</p>
+
+<p>For my own part, I was not disposed to be either so doubtful as Rayburn
+or so sanguine as Young. In what each of them said there was much truth,
+and my inference from such of the facts in the case as were within my
+knowledge and my comprehension was that the chances for and against our
+success were very evenly divided. Had I listened only to the promptings
+of my hopes, I should have entertained no doubt whatever touching the
+certainty of our victory; for I was at that time so elated by the
+knowledge that I had acquired, and that each day was increased by the
+acquisition of new and most precious facts, whereby a flood of light was
+let in upon what hitherto had been hopelessly dark places in Aztec
+arch&aelig;ology, that I was disposed to believe as firmly as ever did the
+first Napoleon in the assured ascendency of my lucky star. However, I
+did not wholly permit my wits to be run away with by the joy begotten of
+my truly wonderful discoveries; and I strove even to contemplate calmly
+the possibility that I might myself be slain in the battle that was so
+close upon us; and that thus the exceedingly valuable information which
+I had acquired would be lost to the world, and to myself would be lost
+the honorable fame due me for having gathered it. Yet I regret to
+state&mdash;for until that time I had entertained unreservedly the belief
+that I truly was a philosopher&mdash;my attempt at calm contemplation of this
+dismal and far from improbable combination of evil circumstances had no
+other effect upon me than to throw me into a most violent rage. It
+seemed to me so stupidly unreasonable that some mere common brute of an
+Indian, by the crude process of splitting my skull open, might deprive
+me, and through me the scientific world, of the priceless knowledge that
+with much effort I had stored within my brain.</p>
+
+<p>But all thought of my own fortunes, and of this possible sudden cutting
+of my life-strings, presently was thrust aside by the inroad of another
+matter that was of far more serious moment to me, inasmuch as there was
+involved in it a menace against the life of one of my companions; and,
+indeed, this matter was one which startled our whole camp, for it was
+nothing less than a formal offer on the part of the Priest Captain to
+condone the rebellion, and to compromise with the rebels, on certain far
+from exacting terms.</p>
+
+<p>The envoy sent to treat with us came in a manner befitting his dignity
+and the importance of his mission, having a considerable retinue with
+him in his barge, and being himself a grave and dignified man well
+advanced in years. Two of our guard-boats accompanied his barge across
+the lake, and he alone was permitted to land in Huitzilan. Being led
+before the Council, he delivered himself briefly of his message, and
+added to it neither argument nor comment of his own. The Priest Captain,
+he said, desiring to avoid the shedding of blood among brethren, was
+willing to forgive the wrong already committed, and was willing even to
+concede in part the demands made by the rebels, in consideration of the
+acceptance by those now in arms against him of certain very easy terms.
+For his part, he would yield in so far as to restore the custom of
+permitting parents to buy back their own children, and so to save them
+from being sacrificed or from becoming slaves; and he would withdraw
+also his claim to the exercise of certain rights (which need not here be
+specified) in civil matters, to which a counter-claim was set up by the
+Council. In return for these concessions, he demanded that the army
+raised by the rebels should be immediately disbanded; that order should
+be restored in Huitzilan by returning the miners to their work, and the
+Tlahuicos generally to their masters throughout the valley; and that the
+arms which had been manufactured should be turned over to the keeper of
+the arsenal in Culhuacan. The final demand made by the Priest Captain
+related to ourselves; and the Council was given to understand that upon
+its punctual and exact fulfilment the whole of the negotiation must
+depend. Young and Rayburn and I, the envoy said, must be thrust out
+through the Barred Pass, whence we came, and there left to shift for
+ourselves; Fray Antonio must be without delay surrendered&mdash;that the
+dreadful sin that he had committed by preaching vile doctrines,
+subversive of the true faith, might be punished in so signal a manner
+that the gods whom he had outraged would be appeased.</p>
+
+<p>Both Fray Antonio and I were present in the Council chamber when the
+envoy delivered his message; and when this final demand was
+made&mdash;hearing which made me grow sick and faint, so keen was the pang of
+sorrow that it caused me&mdash;I turned towards him quickly, expecting that
+he also would feel the hurt of the blow which through him, because of my
+great love for him, had stricken me so grievously. But so far from being
+at all cast down by the knowledge thus rudely conveyed that a very cruel
+death menaced him, there was upon his face a look of such joyful
+elation, of such rejoicing triumph, that it seemed as though the very
+greatest happiness that life could hold for him had been thrust suddenly
+within his grasp.</p>
+
+<p>Within the Council, and outside of it also, when the terms which the
+envoy offered were spread abroad, there was at once aroused a very hot
+antagonism between contending factions in regard to the wisdom of
+placing trust in the Priest Captain's promises, and to the justice of
+yielding to his demands. So far as the Council was concerned, its
+members having no especial regard for our welfare now that we had served
+their purpose, the slaying of Fray Antonio, and the expulsion from the
+valley of the rest of us, were trifling matters which well enough might
+be conceded if thereby peace might be secured. The matter of importance
+that this body had to consider was how far the Priest Captain could be
+trusted to fulfil promises made to rebels in arms, when these same
+rebels voluntarily had submitted to disarmament and were at his mercy;
+and on this essential point the whole debate that followed turned. The
+faction that favored disarmament insisted that such yielding was not
+surrender, inasmuch as the Priest Captain had conceded all that the
+rebels had asked; while those of the faction that favored war rested
+their case on the ground that the promises of concession were made only
+to be broken, and that this sudden willingness on the part of the Priest
+Captain to grant what he had heretofore so persistently refused was
+proof that he recognized the hopelessness of his position, and so was
+seeking to retain by craft the power that he no longer could hold by
+force. These latter, therefore, urged that his false promises should not
+be heeded; and that the matter at issue should be settled surely and
+finally by carrying to a triumphant conclusion the war, for the waging
+of which all needful preparations had been made.</p>
+
+<p>The debate upon this matter continued throughout the whole day without
+any conclusion being arrived at, and we listened to it&mdash;Fray Antonio and
+I translating to the others&mdash;with a very earnest interest, inasmuch as
+the outcome of it all might be the instant slaying of one of us, and for
+the rest of us an imprisonment in wild fastnesses among bleak mountains
+for what was like to be the whole remainder of our lives. When night
+came, and the Council, being still unresolved, broke off its session
+until the day following, we came back to our quarters and there talked
+over the situation, and not cheerfully, among ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>"Even if these fellows understood algebra," said Rayburn, "I don't see
+how they could get an answer to the problem that they're trying to work.
+All the <i>x</i>'s that ever were made are not enough to represent an unknown
+quantity like the Priest Captain; and it simply is not in the conditions
+of the case that they possibly can know what allowance to make for the
+factor of error. For the last three hours, as far as I can make out,
+they've just been talking in a circle, and going over and over the same
+ground. The size of the business is that half of them believe the Priest
+Captain is telling the truth, and the other half believe that he is
+lying. This is a matter of conviction; it is not a thing that they can
+argue about. As far as I can see, there is nothing to prevent them from
+keeping on talking without getting anywhere for the next twenty years."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, all I can say," said Young, "is that if they'll put me in th'
+cab, an' let me run their train for 'em, I'll get it up this grade in no
+time; an' what's more, I'll just take it down th' other side o' th'
+divide a-kitin'! What's th' matter with th' Priest Captain, an' only
+half of 'em have th' sense t' see 't, is that he's just solidly lyin'.
+He's been lyin' to 'em from away back, I reckon; an' he's lyin' to 'em
+now; an' he'll keep on lyin' to 'em right smack along till he gets t'
+th' end of his run. If they're fools enough t' believe him they're bound
+t' get left th' worst kind. They've got him in a hole now, an' he knows
+it&mdash;an' that's more'n they do, t' judge from th' way they're goin' on.
+I did have some respect for that Council. So far, they've managed things
+first-rate. They've run in advance o' their schedule right along, an'
+they've kep' up a rattlin' head o' steam with mighty d&mdash;&mdash;n bad coal.
+But if they really mean t' draw their fires, just when they ought t' put
+on th' forced draught an' let her go for all she's worth, I must say I
+haven't any more use for 'em. Seein' 'em shilly-shallyin' around like
+they're doin' now, when they ought t' be takin' their coats off an'
+sailin' in, just makes me sick!"</p>
+
+<p>Fray Antonio&mdash;whose habit of quiet was such that he rarely sought to
+take part in the talks that we had in English among ourselves&mdash;somewhat
+surprised me by asking me to translate to him what Young and Rayburn had
+been saying; and when he had heard it all he was silent for a while, and
+evidently was engaged in earnest thought. At last, speaking very
+gravely, he asked us if we greatly feared being thrust out from the
+valley in case the Council decided to accept the Priest Captain's terms;
+and without giving us a chance to answer, he bade us remember that we
+had not at all explored the last valley that we had passed through
+before we entered the ca&ntilde;on that ended at the Barred Pass, and that from
+it there well might be some outlet through which we could return to the
+civilized world; and even were we forced to end our days in it, he
+continued, speaking quickly and urgently, a much worse fate might come
+to us; for the valley was a bright and beautiful one, as we had seen,
+and had in it an abundant supply of food. Would living there, he asked,
+be any worse for us than living where we then were&mdash;where we were
+equally shut in? And even supposing that the war ended in victory for
+us, and that our allies gave us entire freedom of action, what more
+could we do than end our days in the Valley of Aztlan, or else go back
+to that other valley and search for an outlet thence whereby we could
+get into an open way among the mountains, and so once more to our homes?
+And then, still denying us opportunity to answer, he went on to speak of
+the pain and misery and despairing sorrow that the threatened war would
+bring; and then, more gently, of the duty that pressed upon us of
+averting this calamity, that was also a crime, even though to do so we
+must sacrifice hopes and wishes very dear to our hearts.</p>
+
+<p>"What th' dickens is th' Padre drivin' at, anyway?" Young exclaimed; "I
+don't ketch on at all."</p>
+
+<p>"No more do I," said Rayburn. "It's a first-rate sermon that he's giving
+us, but I don't see where he means the moral of it to fetch up."</p>
+
+<p>For myself, so closely were Fray Antonio and I bound together by bonds
+of sympathy, I saw but too plainly what he meant should be the outcome
+of his discourse; and I was not surprised, therefore&mdash;though hearing
+thus plainly expressed in words what I had been dreading, sent a dull,
+cold pain into the very depths of my heart&mdash;when he unfolded to us the
+whole of the plan that he had been forming within his mind. What he said
+was said very simply, and with a loving sorrow for the pain that might
+come to us through shaping our actions in accordance with his strong
+desire; and this desire was: that, of our own free-will, we should
+retire from the valley by the way that we came thither, and so leave the
+Council free to accept unhesitatingly the Priest Captain's terms.</p>
+
+<p>"And what of yourself?" I asked; for I felt within me a strong
+conviction that for himself he had in view a very different fate.</p>
+
+<p>He hesitated for a moment before answering me, and his color changed a
+little; and then an unwonted ruddiness gave animation to his face, and a
+light of glad and strong resolve shone in his eyes as he replied, in a
+voice that was very low, and at the same time very clear and firm: "I
+shall go to the Priest Captain, in Culhuacan!"</p>
+
+<p>"And so go to your death," I said, speaking brokenly, for the pain that
+his words caused me went through me like a knife-thrust.</p>
+
+<p>"Say, rather," Fray Antonio answered, "that I go to win the life,
+glorious and eternal, into which neither death nor sin nor sorrow
+evermore can come!"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXVIII" id="XXVIII"></a>XXVIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE SURRENDER OF A LIFE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Knowing as I did Fray Antonio's resolute nature, and understanding far
+more clearly than it was possible for the others to understand the
+heroic impulses which stirred within him, I took no part in the attempt
+that they then made to oppose the purpose which he had declared. But
+when they somewhat shifted their position&#8212;perceiving how hopeless was
+their effort to shake by argument his firm resolve&#8212;and sought to win
+him to their way of thinking by consenting to leave the valley if only
+he would accompany them, then I most earnestly joined my entreaties to
+theirs. But no more by entreaty than by argument was Fray Antonio to be
+moved.</p>
+
+<p>And, in truth, there was a logical consistency in what he urged in
+answer to us that, much though we might resent it, we yet were compelled
+to respect. He had come with us, he said, for the single purpose of
+preaching the saving grace of Christianity to heathen souls which
+otherwise would perish utterly in their idolatry. And this was not a
+matter wherein he had any right of election, but was a solemn duty that
+the vows by which he was bound compelled him to fulfil. He was not free,
+therefore, as we were free, to consider side issues relating to his
+personal well-being or to mere expediency; his sole endeavor must be to
+accomplish by the most efficient means the duty wherewith he was
+charged. It was evident, he urged, that should there be war in the
+valley the chance for the further spread of Christian doctrine would he
+scant; for the seed that he had sown, and that already was well rooted
+in many hearts, would die quickly and be utterly lost in the foul growth
+of evil passions which would spring up rankly amid this bloody strife.
+But if the war could be averted, not only would these people be spared
+the misery that war must bring upon them, and the crime also of slaying
+each other, but their hearts would remain open to the gentle doctrine
+that he had taught; and his willingness&mdash;should such sacrifice be
+necessary&mdash;to yield his life that peace might be preserved, would force
+upon them strongly the conviction, tending thus to their own
+strengthening, of his faithful trust in the creed which he avowed. And
+it well might happen, he said, that such grace would be given him that
+even within the very stronghold of the heathen faith he might win souls
+to the purer faith which it was his glorious privilege to preach and
+still remain unharmed; in proof of which possibility he cited the case
+of the blessed St. Januarius, whom the lions refused to devour. But
+whatever might be the outcome of thus yielding himself into the Priest
+Captain's hands, his duty was so clear, he declared firmly, that no
+evasion of it was possible. And what he purposed doing, he said,
+finally, was but what countless of his brethren had done in the course
+of the six centuries since the founding in Assisi of the Order to which
+they and he belonged&mdash;and precisely was it what was done by the glorious
+proto-martyr of Mexico, San Felipe de Jesus, who boldly carried the
+Christian faith among the heathen, and so died for that faith upon the
+cross in Japan.</p>
+
+<p>Rayburn was far from willing to yield to this line of argument; yet he
+understood it, as I did also, and perceived that it was the only logical
+outcome of the only premises which Fray Antonio would recognize. Young,
+on the other hand, did not in the least understand it, and Fray
+Antonio's reasoning simply threw him into a rage.</p>
+
+<p>"It's all d&mdash;&mdash;n nonsense," he said, "for th' Padre t' talk about his
+duty towards a set o' critters like th' Priest Captain's crowd. What's
+th' life o' that whole outfit worth compared t' one life like his? He
+might just as well sit down an' chop his own head off as go in among
+those fellows; an' he knows it, too. I never heard o' th' man he's
+talkin' about who didn't get eat up by th' lions&mdash;somebody in th' show
+business, I s'pose&mdash;but if he thinks there'll he anything worth speakin'
+of left of him two hours after he gets back into that city, he's makin'
+a pretty d&mdash;n big mistake. Oh, I say, Professor, we've <i>got</i> t' stop
+this. Th' Padre's off his head, that's all there is to it; an' we've got
+t' look after him till he braces up an' gets sensible again. I'll do
+anything reasonable that he wants, but I'll be d&mdash;&mdash;d if I'm goin' t'
+stand by doin' nothin' while he cuts his own throat!"</p>
+
+<p>Young was quite ready, I am sure, to resort to the radical measure of
+clapping Fray Antonio into a strait-jacket; and had the opportunity
+arisen for bringing their difference of opinion to a practical issue I
+am confident that we should have witnessed an exceedingly curious
+conflict, in which heroic self-devotion would have struggled with a
+rough but very honest love. And that Fray Antonio anticipated such a
+conflict was shown by his taking effective measures to render it
+impossible. During the remainder of that day he steadfastly refused to
+discuss the matter further; not harshly, but by shifting away into other
+channels our earnest talk. Only at night, before we lay down to sleep,
+of his own motion he turned once more to the matter; and when he briefly
+had exhibited to us again the motives which urged him forward upon a
+way so perilous, he begged that we would not think ill of his insisting
+upon traversing our wishes, but that once more we would clasp hands with
+him in sign of our forgiveness and continued love.</p>
+
+<p>So tender was the mood that came upon us with his gentle words that none
+of us well could answer him; and this he understood as in turn we took
+his hand and strove to utter that which was in our hearts, and only
+could say huskily a word or two, of which the meaning was conveyed for
+the most part by the sorrow and the longing that were in our tones.
+Young's natural instincts were wholly opposed to any display of the
+softer emotions, and for shame of the weakness that in this case he
+could not help but show, his face and neck flushed red, and he declared
+that he had the toothache. And then, as a vent for his overwrought
+feelings&mdash;of all things in the world&mdash;he fell to cursing the
+Superintendent of the Old Colony Railroad: on the ground that but for
+this functionary, who most unjustifiably had discharged him, he never
+would have come to Mexico at all!</p>
+
+<p>For my own part, I was well convinced that Fray Antonio meant then to
+say good-bye to us; and for a long while, as I lay awake that night, my
+thoughts went backward over the time that we had been companions
+together, and so dwelt upon the faithfulness of his friendship, and upon
+his gallant bearing in all times of peril, and upon the pure and perfect
+holiness which characterized his every act and word. Into the future I
+dared not let my thoughts wander, for I could foresee no outcome to the
+purpose which he had planned so resolutely but a dreary sorrow that
+would rest heavily upon me through all the remainder of my days. And at
+last, worn out by my own grief, I fell into a troubled sleep.</p>
+
+<p>The faint gray light of early morning shone dimly in the room as Rayburn
+awakened me by shaking my arm; and the first words which he spoke to me
+were, "The Padre is not here!"</p>
+
+<p>As I roused myself fully, and sat up and looked into his face, I saw by
+the look that he gave me how fully he shared the dread that was in my
+heart. Young still was sleeping, and we waited to rouse him until we
+should make sure that what we feared must be the truth really was true.
+Together we went out quietly into the court-yard and so to the main
+entrance of the building, where a guard was stationed. But this man was
+asleep; and when I wakened him, and questioned him as to whether the
+monk had gone forth, he could give me no answer. Therefore we went on to
+the gate of the Citadel&mdash;which gate, being a vastly heavy grating,
+raised and lowered by chains, was not usually closed even at night&mdash;in
+the hope that there we might gain some certain knowledge. And here also
+we found all of the half-dozen men on guard slumbering, saving only one
+man, who seemed to have been aroused by the sound of our footsteps, and
+who raised himself on one elbow and looked at us with a sleepy
+curiosity.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="illus14" id="illus14"></a>
+<img src="images/illus14.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>IN THE GATE-WAY OF THE CITADEL</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Even the urgency of the quest that we were upon did not suffice to
+distract our attention from the peril that we all were in because of the
+slumbering of these sentries. "If this is a specimen of the way all the
+watches are kept," Rayburn said, angrily, "we stand a pretty good chance
+of being murdered in our beds. It all comes of trying to make soldiers
+out of savages. These Tlahuicos will fight well enough, I never doubted
+that, but to put such men on guard is simple idiocy. They have been
+slaves all their lives, and they haven't the least notion in the world
+of personal responsibility. It's a lucky thing that we have found out
+their methods, for I shall give the Colonel a talking to about putting
+on guard some of his own men who can be trusted. It's clear that these
+fellows cannot tell us anything. We'd better keep on down to the
+landing; if the Padre has gone"&mdash;there was a sudden break in Rayburn's
+voice as he said these words&mdash;"it's pretty certain that he has gone by
+water, and we may come across somebody down there who happened to be
+awake and saw him start."</p>
+
+<p>There were slight signs of wakefulness beginning to show themselves as
+we went down towards the water-side; a few doors already were open; here
+and there thin threads of smoke curled upward through the still air;
+around a fountain a half-dozen women were clustered, drawing water in
+great earthen pots, and chattering together softly in half-drowsy talk.
+At the pier, however, we found some people who really were wide-awake:
+fishermen just returned with a boat-load of fish that they had caught in
+the lake. And these, when I questioned them, in a moment resolved all of
+our troubled doubts into a sad certainty. Only an hour before, as they
+lay out on the lake, a canoe had passed them paddled by a single
+Indian, and in the canoe they had plainly recognized Fray Antonio. It
+was impossible that they should be mistaken, they declared, for the
+habit which the monk wore made him very plainly recognizable; and they
+had observed him with a particular care, for they had been greatly
+surprised by perceiving that the canoe was heading directly for "the
+great city"&mdash;by which name all save the priests were accustomed to speak
+of Culhuacan.</p>
+
+<p>Neither Rayburn nor I spoke, as we walked back together through the town
+to the Citadel. Our hearts were altogether too full for words. Even I,
+who had been in part prepared for Fray Antonio's departure by the tenor
+of his speech with us the night before, had not anticipated his going
+from us so suddenly to what surely must be his death; and to Rayburn his
+departure came with the startling force of a heavy and unexpected blow.
+Young was awake when we returned, and was in much anxiety concerning us;
+for our custom at all times was to hold closely together, and he knew
+that something out of the common must have happened to make us break
+through this very necessary rule; and his fears were further aroused
+when he perceived the sad gravity of our faces, and that Fray Antonio
+was not in our company. Yet, though thus prepared to learn that evil of
+some sort had overtaken us, he was not at all prepared to learn how
+great that evil was. When, therefore, we told him of what we had
+discovered, which gave absolute assurance that Fray Antonio had carried
+out his purpose of surrendering himself into the Priest Captain's hands,
+Young stared at us for a moment in a dazed sort of way, as though by no
+means grasping the meaning which our words conveyed. And then the whole
+meaning of them seemed to come to him suddenly, and he burst forth into
+such a raving volley of curses that it seemed as though he were fairly
+maddened by his ungoverned rage.</p>
+
+<p>I envied Young, as I am sure Rayburn did also, the relief that must come
+to him with this rough but frank and natural expression of his bitter
+grief. For ourselves, we stood sad and silent, yet with our hearts
+almost breaking within us, as we thought how small was the chance that
+ever in this world should we see the face of Fray Antonio again.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXIX" id="XXIX"></a>XXIX.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE ASSAULT IN THE NIGHT.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Neither the Council, in its irresolute parleyings, nor Fray Antonio, in
+his resolute action, had at all considered certain factors which they
+themselves had interjected into the problem that they then were dealing
+with from such widely different stand-points and in such widely
+different ways. The Council, at a stroke, had transformed the Tlahuicos
+into soldiers, and had given the promise that in reward for their
+faithfulness and valor these slaves thenceforward should be freemen.
+Fray Antonio had preached to all those assembled at Huitzilan a creed
+that had taken strong hold upon many hearts, and that especially had
+won the hearts of those of the long-oppressed servile class&mdash;to whom its
+doctrine of equality seemed to hold out an absolute assurance that their
+life of slavery was at an end.</p>
+
+<p>When, therefore, the terms which the Priest Captain offered were spread
+abroad through the town, and through the camp close beside the town in
+which the army lay&mdash;being there in readiness instantly to occupy the
+Citadel should the enemy appear&mdash;a very lively anger was aroused because
+such terms should even be listened to. For what the Priest Captain
+demanded was that the apostle of the new religion should be relinquished
+to him to be slain as a sacrifice to the Aztec gods, and that once more
+the Tlahuicos should be thrust back into slavery; while what he
+conceded&mdash;in that it affected only the higher classes&mdash;made the lot of
+the Tlahuicos but the more unjustly cruel and hard to bear.</p>
+
+<p>And those who resented the delay on the part of the Council in sending
+back the Priest Captain's envoy with a sharp denial, presently went on
+from hot words to violent deeds; being directly led from mutinous talk
+to mutinous action by the knowledge that the Council had so far accepted
+the offered terms as to send Fray Antonio to the great city to be
+slain&mdash;for not one among them could be led for a moment to believe, so
+impossible from their stand-point did such an act appear, that the monk
+truly had gone thither of his own free-will.</p>
+
+<p>Practically, the whole army was involved in the movement that then took
+place; for even its officers, while not of the servile class, dreaded
+the punishment that their revolt might bring upon them, and so
+preferred to take the chances of the war rather than to yield themselves
+to be dealt with as the Priest Captain might dispose. Therefore it was,
+on the day that Fray Antonio departed from us, that all the soldiers
+together marched in from their camp and massed themselves compactly
+about the Council Chamber within the Citadel, and then with loud cries
+demanded that the envoy should be sent back to the great city with an
+absolute refusal of the offered terms. Thus was there created a
+rebellion within a rebellion; and one that the Council was powerless to
+put down, for the reason that practically the whole of the force which
+it had created to serve against the enemy was now risen against its own
+authority with a most masterful strength.</p>
+
+<p>In the case that thus was presented there was no opportunity to
+temporize. The fierce, wild creatures of whom soldiers suddenly had been
+made stood there before the Council Chamber, shouting and waving their
+spears angrily and clashing together their arms. And so they continued,
+without one moment of quiet, until their will was obeyed. Through the
+savage and tumultuous throng the envoy was led forth&mdash;his looks showing
+plainly his very natural expectation that his life would be let out of
+him amid that ferocious company&mdash;and so down to the water-side; and
+thence was sent back again to Culhuacan with the firm assurance&mdash;which
+message of defiance the soldiers themselves dictated&mdash;that the terms
+offered by the Priest Captain would be accepted only when all the
+Tlahuicos then risen together in arms against him had been slain!</p>
+
+<p>"Bully for th' Tlahuicos!" cried Young, as I translated to him these
+ringing words. "Just tell 'em, Professor, that I've volunteered for
+three years or th' war, an' that they can count on me t' keep up a full
+head o' steam as long as there's any fightin' t' be done. Accordin' t'
+my notions, now that th' Padre's over there in th' city&mdash;t' say nothin'
+o' what we owe 'em on Pablo's account&mdash;th' row can't begin one minute
+too soon. These Tlahuicos are th' boys for me! Didn't I tell you that
+nobody could stop 'em when they once got fairly started? They're a tough
+lot; but they're just everlastin' rustlers&mdash;an' their style suits me
+right now all th' way down t' th' ground floor!"</p>
+
+<p>The sharp excitement attendant upon this vigorous action gave place, as
+the day wore on, to a dull heavy pain as our thoughts dwelt upon the
+fate that Fray Antonio had gone forth to meet, and upon our present
+powerlessness to defend him in any way against it. Although the envoy
+had been sent back, and war was now resolutely determined upon, the
+situation remained unchanged in so far as concerned the necessity
+of our waiting for the Priest Captain to take the initiative. To
+attack that great walled city was so hopeless a task that even the
+Tlahuicos&mdash;flushed though they were by their victory over the
+Council&mdash;did not venture to propose it; for they knew, as we all did,
+that our only chance of carrying the enemy's stronghold lay in first
+defeating its garrison in a battle in the open field. Yet this dull
+inaction of waiting was a scarce of grave danger to us, in that it
+tended to wear out the spirits of our men and to make them still more
+careless of their guard. What Rayburn and I had seen that morning had
+shown how little trust could be placed in them, in so far as the
+soldierly attribute of watchfulness was concerned; and Tizoc, with whom
+we conferred in regard to this important matter, had little to say that
+we found comforting. Being himself a thorough soldier, he perceived the
+danger to which the unsoldierly lack of vigilance on the part of the
+Tlahuicos exposed our camp; but the situation was such that he was
+powerless to take effective measures for our protection. The few regular
+troops in our little army were not enough to do sentry duty everywhere,
+and the best that could be done would be to dispose them at the points
+most open to attack&mdash;"And then trust to luck," Rayburn put in, rather
+bitterly, "that the enemy will be polite enough to try to surprise only
+the part of the camp where the sentries are awake!"</p>
+
+<p>Partly that we might see for ourselves how our pickets were disposed,
+but more that by action of any sort we might divert our thoughts from
+the sorrow that was gnawing at our hearts, we walked out together in the
+late afternoon to the rocky heights of the promontory that on the
+western side of the town extended far into the lake. From a military
+stand-point this position was of great importance to us, inasmuch as
+bowmen or slingmen gaining access to it could command a considerable
+part of the town, and even could annoy very seriously the garrison of
+the Citadel; and it also was of value to us as a place of lookout whence
+an attacking party coming by way of the lake from the city could be
+perceived while yet it was a long way off.</p>
+
+<p>We were surprised, therefore, when we had come well out upon the
+promontory, that no sentinel challenged us; but our surprise vanished a
+moment or two later as we perceived one of our men curled up comfortably
+against a sunny rock and apparently sound asleep. However, as we got
+close to the man it was clear to us that his sleep was one that he never
+would waken from, for a pool of blood stained the rock beside him, and
+an arrow was shot fairly through his heart. We made but a short stop
+beside this fellow&mdash;who plainly had been shot in his sleep, and so
+deserved the fate that had overtaken him&mdash;and then went forward
+anxiously that we might see how the other sentinels stationed hereabouts
+had fared. The result of our quest was as bad as it could be; for in one
+place or another among the rocks we found all five of the men who had
+been posted upon the promontory, and all of them were dead. Three more
+of them certainly had been shot while asleep or wholly off their guard,
+as was shown by the easy attitudes in which we found them sitting or
+lying among the rocks. The fifth had not been instantly killed; as we
+inferred from finding a broken arrow sticking in his left arm, and some
+signs of a struggle about where he lay, and a great split in his skull,
+as from a sword stroke, that finally had let the life out of him. It
+struck us as strange that this man had not aroused the camp with his
+shouts; but his post was at the extreme end of the promontory, so that
+he must have called very loudly in order to be heard; and it was
+possible that in the suddenness of his danger he never thought to call
+at all. However, the important matter, so far as we were concerned, was
+that these five sentinels had been slain close beside the town and in
+broad daylight, and that but for the chance of our coming out upon the
+promontory the most important of our outposts would have remained
+unguarded until the night relief should have come on. It was Rayburn's
+theory that the plan of the enemy was to place his own men on the vacant
+posts&mdash;trusting to the reasonable certainty that in the dusk of evening
+one naked Indian would look much like another&mdash;and so despatch the
+relief, one by one, as the guard was changed.</p>
+
+<p>Of those of the enemy who had accomplished this piece of work so
+skilfully we could see no sign&mdash;unless it were a boat that we dimly saw
+a long way off on the lake, and that presently wholly disappeared in a
+bank of haze; and despite the hot sunshine basking upon us a chill went
+through me at thought of the stealthy daring and truly devilish cunning
+of the men who thus could do their evil work in the full light of day,
+and close to the encampment of an army, and yet could get safely away
+without leaving a trace of their presence save the dead bodies of their
+foes.</p>
+
+<p>Having made sure by carefully searching among the rocks throughout the
+length of the promontory that none of the enemy was hidden there, we
+hastened back to the town to tell what we had come upon, and to provide
+for mounting fresh sentinels in the place of those who had been relieved
+by death. We had expected that the news which we brought would stir up a
+great commotion; and we were not a little troubled, therefore, knowing
+how serious the matter was in its exhibition of the carelessness of our
+guards, by finding that only Tizoc and a few other tried soldiers were
+more than lightly discomposed by what we had to tell. The general
+feeling seemed to be&mdash;inasmuch as our lucky discovery had dispelled the
+danger&mdash;that there was no need to worry about a calamity which had not
+occurred; and what after all was the most essential consideration&mdash;the
+constant danger that threatened us by reason of the criminal laxity of
+the watch maintained by our pickets&mdash;practically was lost sight of.
+Apparently neither the Council nor the higher officers of the army had
+the power to remedy this dangerous condition of affairs. At no time had
+any very strong authority been exercised over the Tlahuicos&mdash;for all the
+orders which until now had been given to them had been directed only
+towards urging them along a way that they were glad enough to follow of
+their own accord&mdash;and since their assertion of their will that morning,
+what little control had restrained their waywardness seemed to have been
+wholly lost.</p>
+
+<p>However, as there was a chance in it of fighting, and as fighting was
+what they longed for earnestly, our unruly soldiers were willing enough
+that a strong detachment should be placed in ambush on the promontory,
+to the end that the force which the enemy probably would land there that
+night might be summarily dealt with. And the better to carry out our
+plan of a counter-surprise the dead sentinels were left where we found
+them. Tizoc was given the command of the ambushed force, and he
+willingly granted our request that we might accompany him; which
+request was prompted by the desire that we fully shared with the
+Tlahuicos to get at close quarters with the enemy, and also by the
+conviction that in Tizoc's company&mdash;though in his company we were like
+to have hot fighting and plenty of it&mdash;we would have better chances of
+safety than anywhere else in all our camp.</p>
+
+<p>For this expedition we put on for the first time our armor of quilted
+cotton cloth; and the look of these garments certainly did justify
+Young's comments upon them. "It's a pity we can't get photographed now,"
+he said, "so's t' send our likenesses in this rig home t' our folks.
+You'd just jolt the Cap Cod folks, Rayburn, with that pair o' telegraph
+poles you call your legs stickin' out from under th' tails o' that thing
+that looks like a cross between a badly made frock-coat and an
+undersized night-shirt. And I guess your college boys 'd be jolted, too,
+Professor, if they could get a squint at you. And I s'pose that if some
+o' th' hands on th' Old Colony happened t' ketch up with me dressed this
+way they'd think I'd gone crazy. But I haven't got anything t' say
+against these little night-shirts except about their looks. When you get
+right down t' th' hard-pan with 'em, they're a first-rate thing."</p>
+
+<p>For three American citizens, belonging to the nineteenth century, we
+certainly presented a strange appearance, and appeared also in very
+strange company, as we marched out from the town late that afternoon
+with Tizoc and his men. Each of us carried half a dozen darts, and
+strapped around our waists, outside our cotton-cloth armor, we each wore
+a maccahuitl&mdash;the heavy sword with a jagged double edge that we knew
+from experience was an excellent weapon when wielded by a strong hand.
+Indeed, Young and I carried the darts rather to satisfy Tizoc than
+because we expected to make any very effective use of them, and all of
+our reliance both for assault and defence was upon what we could do with
+our swords at close quarters. Rayburn, however, had been practising
+dart-throwing very diligently, and as he naturally was an
+extraordinarily dextrous man he had made rapid progress in this savage
+art. The soldiers in our company, naked creatures, lithe and sinewy,
+were armed for the most part with spears and slings; and the officers
+wore each a sword and carried each a handful of darts. As we all stepped
+out briskly together I could not but think how amazed would be the
+President of the University of Michigan, and my fellow-members of the
+Faculty of that institution of learning, should they happen to encounter
+me in that barbarous company, and arrayed in that most barbarous garb!</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="illus15" id="illus15"></a>
+<img src="images/illus15.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>THE LAST RALLY</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+
+<p>It was a little before sunset when we reached the place that Tizoc had
+selected for our ambush upon the promontory; and an hour later, just as
+the shadows of evening were beginning to fall, one of our lookout men
+reported that a large boat&mdash;of which the oars must be muffled, for no
+sound came from it&mdash;was pulling around a point just beyond where we lay.
+There was a little stir among our men when this news was received, and a
+shifting and arranging of weapons, so that all might be in readiness
+when the moment for opening the ambush came; but we had a picked force
+with us, each man of which fully understood how necessary was silence
+to the success of our plans, and the quick thrill of movement was so
+guarded that it scarcely ruffled the deep stillness of the night.</p>
+
+<p>But the moments lengthened out into minutes, and the minutes slowly
+slipped by until a full hour had passed, and the thick darkness of
+tropical night was upon us, and still there was no sign of a foe. Tizoc
+grew uneasy, for it was evident that we were in error in our conception
+of the enemy's plan. Had he intend-to mount his own men as sentinels in
+place of our men whom he had slain, and then get save possession of the
+promontory by killing the relief as it came on, we should have been long
+since engaged with him; but here the night was wearing on, and,
+excepting only the boat that our scouts had seen, there had been nothing
+to show that the attack which we had expected so confidently was
+anything more than a creation of our own fears. Yet our only course was
+to remain where we were until morning; for some accident might have
+delayed the attack, and the necessity of holding the promontory was so
+urgent that we could not take the risk of withdrawing our force.</p>
+
+<p>It was weary work sitting there in the darkness, after all the weariness
+of so exciting a day, and as the hours dragged on I found myself now and
+then sinking into a doze, for which I reproached myself; yet also
+excused myself by the reflection that I did not at all profess to have
+either the training or the instincts of a soldier, but had been brought
+up, as a man of peace and as a scholar, in accordance with the sound
+principle that night rationally is the time set apart for sleep. It was
+from a most agreeable nap&mdash;in which I was dreaming pleasantly of my old
+life in Ann Arbor&mdash;that I was roused suddenly by Rayburn's quick grip
+upon my shoulder, and by his sharp whisper, "What's that?"</p>
+
+<p>In an instant I was thoroughly awake, and as I bent forward and listened
+intently I heard very distinctly a faint cry of alarm, that seemed to
+come from a long way off. Tizoc, I perceived&mdash;for he had risen to his
+feet&mdash;also was most eagerly listening; and I heard a slight sound of
+movement and of arms clinking as our men roused themselves, showing that
+they also had heard that warning cry.</p>
+
+<p>But in a moment there was no need to strain our ears to catch the sounds
+which came to us. The cry that a single throat had uttered was taken up
+by a thousand; and so grew into a dull, distant roar, that pierced the
+black and sullen stillness of the night. And with this came also the
+higher notes of savage yells, and then we heard the clash of arms&mdash;which
+evidence that fighting was going on, no less than the direction whence,
+as we now perceived clearly, the sounds came, assured us that while we
+had maintained our watchful guard on the promontory the enemy had
+surprised our camp.</p>
+
+<p>Rayburn sprang up with a growl like that of a savage beast. "By G&mdash;&mdash;d!"
+he cried, "they meant us to do just what we've done, and we've walked
+into their trap like so many d&mdash;&mdash;n fools!"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXX" id="XXX"></a>XXX.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE FALL OF THE CITADEL.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Tizoc, I was glad to see, had his men well under his command, as was
+shown by the orderly manner in which they waited, despite their eager
+impatience to be off, until he gave the command to march. And hard
+marching we found it, as we floundered about that rough, rocky place,
+tripping and stumbling, and now and then hearing a crash in the darkness
+as one of our men went down. But, somehow or other, we certainly managed
+to get over the ground very rapidly; and all the while the sounds of the
+fight that was raging hotly struck with a constantly increasing
+clearness upon our ears.</p>
+
+<p>The whole width of the town lay between our camp and the foot of the
+rugged path that led down from the promontory; but when we were fairly
+in the streets, and no longer had rough rocks to stumble over in the
+darkness, we went forward at a very slashing pace. And we were further
+helped now by the fact that day was breaking, so that we could see
+clearly where we were going; and we had also within us that feeling of
+cheer and encouragement that ever is given to man by the return of the
+sun. In but a few minutes more, in that tropical region, a flood of
+daylight would be about us; and Tizoc's hope was that when the horror of
+darkness, ever appalling to barbarians, should be lifted, and when our
+coming should afford a firm centre to rally around, our army might
+regain the courage and steadiness which it had lost in the terror and
+bewilderment of a night surprise.</p>
+
+<p>But he quickly found that this hope was doomed to disappointment. Only a
+little beyond the gate of the Citadel we came upon a flying body of
+Tlahuicos&mdash;though no pursuers were in sight beyond them&mdash;and these were
+so completely demoralized that they took our company for a detachment of
+the enemy, and with wild cries fled away from us down a side street and
+so disappeared. "What do you think of your friends now?" Rayburn asked
+Young, grimly. But Young's only answer was to curse the vanished
+Tlahuicos for cowards.</p>
+
+<p>A moment later the whole street in front of us was filled with a howling
+mob of our men, and these came surging towards us with the evident
+intention of seeking safety in the Citadel. Tizoc saw at a glance the
+hopelessness of trying to rally a rout like this until the terrified
+creatures, fleeing like sheep from a pack of wolves, had been given rest
+for a while in some safe place where their courage might return to them.
+Being once within the Citadel they would be for a time wholly out of
+danger; for even should the enemy try to set scaling-ladders in place,
+and so break in upon us there, it would be an easy matter for a few
+determined men to hold the walls until some sort of order had been
+restored among our broken forces. Tizoc therefore promptly wheeled our
+little force aside into an open space, and so made a way for the
+struggling crowd to sweep past us. We noted, as the stream of
+terror-stricken men flowed by, that their officers were not with them;
+from which Tizoc drew the hopeful augury that the officers, being all
+trained soldiers, had drawn together into a rear-guard that sought to
+cover this wild retreat. And presently we found that Tizoc was right in
+his inference, for soon the crowd began very perceptibly to grow
+thinner, and the sound of loud cries and the rattle and clashing of arms
+rang out above the tumult, and then there came around a turn in the
+street, a little beyond where we had halted, a compact body of men who
+were falling back slowly, and who were laying about them most valiantly
+with their swords. Our party gave a yell, by way of putting fresh heart
+into these gallant fellows, and Tizoc quickly disposed our company in
+such a manner that the retreating force fell back through our midst; and
+then we promptly closed in, and so took the fighting to ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>I cannot tell very clearly how our retreat to the Citadel was managed,
+nor even of my own part in it; for fighting is but rough, wild work,
+which defies all attempts at scientific accuracy in describing it&mdash;and
+for the reason, I fancy, that it engenders a wholly unscientific frame
+of mind. Reduced to its lowest terms, fighting is mere barbarity; a most
+illogical method of settling some disputed question by brute force
+instead of by the refined reasoning processes of the intelligent human
+mind; and by the anger that it inevitably begets, the habit of accurate
+observation, out of which alone can come accurate description, is
+hopelessly confused. Therefore I can say only that foot by foot we
+yielded the ground to the enemy that pressed upon us; that wild shouts
+rang out&mdash;in which I myself joined, though why I should have shouted I
+am sure I do not know&mdash;together with the sharp rattle of clashing
+swords; and that through the roar of this outburst of fierce sounds
+there ran an undertone of groans and sobs from the poor wretches who had
+fallen wounded to the ground. The one thing that I remember clearly is a
+set-to with swords that I had with a big fellow, just as we had come
+close to the Citadel, that ended in a way (that would have surprised him
+mightily had he lived long enough to comprehend it) by my finishing him
+by means of a stop-thrust followed by a beautiful draw-cut that was a
+famous stroke with my old sabre-master at Leipsic. And I well remember
+thinking, at the moment that I made this stroke&mdash;and so saved my life by
+it, for the fellow was pressing me very closely&mdash;how happy it would have
+made the old Rittmeister could he have seen me deliver it.</p>
+
+<p>As we made a rush for the gate of the Citadel, that we might get inside
+this place of safety and drop the grating before the enemy could follow
+us, we were surprised by finding many of our own men lying dead about
+the entrance; and what was far worse for us, we found that unskilled
+hands had been at work with the machinery whereby the gate was lowered
+and by their bungling had managed to start it downward in such a way
+that it had jammed in the grooves. What actually had happened there, as
+we knew afterwards, was that the first of the cowardly wretches who had
+entered the Citadel had tried to drop the gate in the faces of their
+companions and so secure their own safety; whence a fight among
+themselves had sprung up, in course of which many of them very
+deservedly were slain, and, most unhappily for us, their frantic efforts
+to lower the gate had resulted in thus disabling it.</p>
+
+<p>We had a moment of breathing space before the enemy came up with us, and
+in this time Rayburn and Young and I had a grip of each other's hands,
+in which, without any words over it, we said good-bye to each other; for
+we neither of us for one moment doubted that our last hour had come.
+Tizoc stood a little distance from us, as steady and as gallant in his
+bearing as ever I saw a man; but that he also counted surely upon dying
+there was shown by the glance of grave friendliness that he gave us, and
+by his making the gesture that among his people is significant of
+farewell. Then we ranged ourselves across the gate-way, holding our
+swords in hand firmly, and Rayburn, who had caught up a javelin, stood
+with it poised above his shoulder in readiness to discharge it as the
+enemy came on. The sight of his splendid figure towering defiantly in
+that heroic attitude set my mind to running upon the Homeric legend of
+the glorious battling of the Greeks before the gates of Troy, and of
+Hector uplifting the rock; and I was very angry with Young, whose
+disposition to seize upon the whimsical side of everything was the most
+irrepressible that ever I came across, when he exclaimed: "I'll bet you
+five dollars, Rayburn, that when you throw that clothes-prop you don't
+hit th' man you fire at!"</p>
+
+<p>But Rayburn did hit his man, straight in the heart too, a moment later,
+as the enemy with a wild yell charged us; and then, with his back set
+well against the wall, he fell to work most gallantly with his sword.</p>
+
+<p>From the very beginning of it we knew that our fighting was utterly
+hopeless; for all of our company together did not number fifty men, and
+we were confronting there a whole army. Up the street, as far as we
+could see, the troops of the enemy were solidly massed; and for every
+man whom we struck down twenty were ready to spring forward, fresh and
+vigorous, to exhaust still further the strength that rapidly was leaving
+us. That we fought on was due not to our valor but to our desperation;
+and also&mdash;at least such was my own feeling&mdash;to a swelling rage that made
+us long to kill as many as possible of these savages before we ourselves
+died beneath their blows. Death, we knew, was the best thing that could
+happen to us; for it would save us from the worse fate, that surely
+would come to us should we be captured, of being turned over to the
+priests, that they might torture us before their heathen altars, and in
+the end tear our still quivering hearts out. And that the wish of our
+enemies&mdash;according to the Aztec custom&mdash;was rather to capture us than to
+kill us was shown by the way in which they fought; for all their effort
+was to disable us, and so to take us alive; nor did they seem to have
+any great care, if only this purpose could be accomplished, how many of
+themselves were slain.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes in my dreams the wild commotion of that most desperate combat
+comes back to me. I see again before me the crowd of half-naked men,
+curving in a semicircle measured by the length of my sword, their faces
+distorted by the passionate anger that stirred their souls; and I see
+one fierce face after another lose out of it the look of life, yet not
+the look of hate, as my sword crunches into the vitals of the body to
+which it belongs; and I hear the wild din around me, and the yells of
+rage and of pain, and my feet tread in slippery pools of blood, and my
+body aches with weariness, and sharp thrills of agony dart through the
+strained muscles of my right arm&mdash;yet still I fight on, and on. And,
+truly, all this seems more real to me now in my sleep than it did to me
+then in its reality; for a dull weight of most desolate hopelessness
+settled down upon me as I fought out to the end that most hopeless
+battle&mdash;so that my spirit shared in the numbness of my body, and I cut
+and parried and gave men their death-blows with the stolid energy of a
+mere death-dealing machine.</p>
+
+<p>It had been from the first no more than a question of minutes how long
+this unequal fight would last; and when I heard a great yell from the
+enemy, and perceived a flood of soldiers swirling inward through the
+gate-way just beyond the fellows whom I was dealing with, I knew that
+Tizoc's men had been beaten down or slain, and that the end was very
+near at hand. As I glanced across the shoulders of the man whom I just
+then put forever on the list of the non-combatants, I saw what seemed to
+be an eddy in the midst of the crowd that was rushing into the Citadel;
+and in the thick of the tightly knotted group that thus choked the
+narrow way I saw Tizoc still laying about him with his sword. He was a
+very ghastly object, for a cut on his head had loosened a piece of his
+scalp, that hung down over his forehead and waved and trembled there
+like a draggled plume; his face was bathed in blood from this horrid
+wound, and his armor of cotton cloth was soaked with the blood that had
+run down upon it from the cut in his head, and also from a wound in his
+neck. In the moment that I had free sight of him he made as fine a
+sword-stroke as ever I saw, wherewith he fairly severed from its body
+the head of one of his assailants; and at the very same instant, while
+that head still was spinning in the air, a man directly behind him
+forced back the pressing crowd by main strength and so gained a free
+space in which to swing his sword. I shouted to Tizoc to warn him of the
+danger, and he half turned to ward against it; but before he could turn
+wholly around the blow had fallen, splitting his whole head open from
+the crown to the very chin. And in the midst of the fierce yell of
+triumph that went up as this cowardly stroke was delivered there passed
+from earth the soul of as brave and as true a man as earth has ever
+known.</p>
+
+<p>A dizziness came over me as I saw Tizoc fall, and saw in the same moment
+the wild rush forward of the enemy over his dead body into the Citadel;
+and so I suppose that what with this dizziness and my great weariness I
+must have dropped my guard. I faintly remember hearing a shout of
+warning from Young, who was close beside me, which shout mingled with
+the shrieks of those inside the Citadel whom the enemy everywhere were
+cutting down, and the great roar of victory that went up from all the
+army, both within and without the Citadel, rising tempestuously in
+mighty waves of sound: and then a crash like that of a thunder-bolt
+burst directly upon my head, and a sickening pain shot through me, and I
+seemed to be falling through untold depths into vast gloomy chasms (so
+that I thought I was dropping once more into the hollow darkness of the
+ca&ntilde;on), and there was a very dreadful surging and roaring and ringing in
+my ears; and then all this horror of evil sounds grew fainter, and I
+felt myself slipping quickly into the awful stillness and blackness that
+I surely thought must be the entrance-way to death. And with this
+thought a numb sort of gladness came over me, for in death there was
+promise of restfulness and peace.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXXI" id="XXXI"></a>XXXI.</h2>
+
+<h3>DEFEAT.</h3>
+
+
+<p>After all, the life that I thought was lost, and had but little sorrow
+for the losing of it, slowly came back to me again. For a good while
+before I recovered consciousness fully, I understood a little of what
+was going on around me by sounds which, no doubt, were loud and ringing,
+yet which seemed to me to come faintly from a long way off. They plainly
+were the sounds of fighting&mdash;of weapons rattling together, of shouts and
+yells and death-cries&mdash;but I did not associate them with our present
+battling, but thought that we still were in the ca&ntilde;on, and were still
+fighting those wild Indians by whom poor Dennis was slain. And I knew
+that I had been hurt badly; for in my head was a throbbing pain so keen
+that it seemed like to split my skull open, and my stomach was stirred
+by most distressing qualms, and my weakness was such that I could not
+ease the sore muscles of my body by moving by so much as a
+hair's-breadth from the cramped position in which I lay.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed to me a vastly long while that I remained in this dreary
+condition of half-consciousness, with no certain knowledge of anything
+save the pain that I suffered; and then I felt some one touch me, and a
+hand laid upon my heart; and this touch so far roused me that I heaved a
+long sigh and slowly opened my eyes. For a moment I did not know the
+face that I saw bending over me; nor was this wonderful, for in place of
+its usual ruddiness was a death-like pallor, that was the more marked by
+contrast with the blood that trickled down over it from a great gash
+across the brow whereby the bone was laid bare. But there was no
+mistaking the voice that called out: "He's alive, Rayburn!" and added,
+"I don't see what right he's got t' be alive, either, after a crack like
+that. I guess studyin' antiquities must everlastin'ly harden an' thicken
+a man's skull!"</p>
+
+<p>"Studying engineering doesn't harden a man's leg, anyway," I heard
+Rayburn answer. "That cut pretty near took mine off. But now that we've
+stopped the bleeding I guess I'm all right. I think I can work over to
+you on my hands and knees and help you with the Professor. Now that I
+know he's alive I seem to be a lot more alive myself."</p>
+
+<p>"Just you stay where you are," Young called back, sharply. "If you move
+you'll start that bandage an' I'll have t' tie you up all over again.
+I'll attend t' th' Professor." And then Young bent over me, and, with a
+tenderness that I never would have thought his rough hands capable of,
+set himself to bandaging my wounded head. But the best thing that he did
+for me was to give me a draught of water from a gourd that had been
+slung about the neck of one of the soldiers lying dead there; which
+draught, with the comfort that the cool wet bandage about my head gave
+me, brought back to me so much of my strength that I was able presently
+to sit up and look around.</p>
+
+<p>Truly, a more ghastly sight than that which my eyes then rested upon I
+never saw. The gate-way of the Citadel was a very shambles. Piles of
+dead men lay all around me; and the prodigious number of the enemy lying
+slain there testified with a mute eloquence to the desperate fashion in
+which our handful of men had fought. Over the rough pavement, down the
+slope towards the lake, there flowed a stream of bright red blood that
+in places shone a brilliant vermilion where it was touched by the
+glintings of the sun. Among the dead I did not see Tizoc's body, and for
+this I was glad. Half a dozen of the enemy stood by us as a guard; but
+these suffered us to minister to each other, evidently feeling that no
+great amount of caution was necessary in dealing with three badly
+wounded men. Indeed, these guards, in their way, manifested a kindly
+feeling for us; for when they perceived that our gourd of water was
+empty one of them picked up another full gourd from amid the dead and
+handed it to us. From inside the Citadel there still came a tumult of
+fierce sounds which gave proof that though the battle&mdash;if it could be
+called a battle&mdash;was ended the work of killing still was going on; but
+these sounds sensibly diminished while we lay there waiting to know what
+fate would come to us, and we concluded, therefore, that there remained
+no more rebels to be slain.</p>
+
+<p>Rayburn was seated upon the ground at no great distance from me, his
+back propped against the wall. As he saw that I was looking towards him,
+and had again my wits about me, he greeted me with a very melancholy
+smile. "It's been a pretty cold day for us, Professor," he said, "and
+there's no great comfort in knowing that it's partly our own fault that
+these fellows have laid us out. I didn't give them credit for such good
+tactics; and even with the bad watch that we kept I don't see how they
+managed to get their men round on the other side of our camp. Well, it
+must please them to know how straight we walked into the trap that they
+set for us, like the pack of fools that we were."</p>
+
+<p>"You won't ketch me joinin' in any more Indian revolutions, anyway,"
+Young put in. "I did think I could bet on those Tlahuicos, an' they've
+just gone back on us th' worst kind. Do you feel strong enough,
+Professor, to tie th' ends o' this rag?" He had been binding up the cut
+in his forehead, and now he got down on his hands and knees in front of
+me, and bent his head down within easy reach of my hands; and my
+strength had so far returned to me that without being very tired after
+it I was able to make the ends of the bandage fast. The blow on his head
+had glanced from the skull, luckily; but it had been heavy enough to
+stun him for some minutes after he received it&mdash;and his falling as
+though dead had been the means, no doubt, of saving his life, even as in
+the same manner my life had been saved. Rayburn's wound was a worse one
+than either Young's or mine, for a great gash in his thigh had wellnigh
+cut his leg off, and until, with Young's help, he had improvised a
+tourniquet, from a bowstring and a broken fragment of a javelin, he had
+been in great danger of bleeding to death.</p>
+
+<p>For more than an hour we were suffered to lie in the gate-way; while the
+work went on of slaying the wretched Tlahuicos, and then of marshalling
+the more important personages who had been reserved alive as prisoners,
+and, finally, of restoring order in the victorious ranks. At the end of
+this time an officer with a squad of men came to where we were lying,
+and roughly ordered us to rise, to the end that we also might be placed
+among the prisoners. Young and I had so far recovered our strength that
+we managed to scramble on our feet with no great difficulty; though in
+my case this exertion, which made the blood flow more briskly in my
+veins, suddenly increased so greatly the pain in my head as to bring
+upon me for a little while a dizziness that compelled me to lean against
+the wall for support. In Rayburn's case standing was quite out of the
+question; and I shortly told the officer in what manner he was wounded,
+and that to make him rise and walk assuredly would start the bandage on
+his leg, and so lead to his quickly bleeding to death. Thereupon the
+officer gave an order to some of his men to fetch a stretcher such as
+their own wounded were carried in; yet at the same time he said to me:
+"This companion of yours is a brave man; and but for my orders, I would
+loosen the bandage with my own hands, and so let him die without further
+pain;" which speech, notwithstanding the obviously kind intention of it,
+I did not translate to Rayburn at that time.</p>
+
+<p>While we waited for the stretcher to be brought, the soldiers fastened
+about Young's neck and about mine heavy wooden collars, which set well
+out over our shoulders and were not unlike great ruffs. I confess that
+for my own part my professional interest in this curious piece of gear
+entirely overcame my repugnance to wearing it, for I instantly
+recognized it as the cuauh-cozatl, with which, as the ancient records
+tell us, the Aztecs were accustomed to secure their prisoners of war.
+But Young, who could not be expected to share in my delight at seeing
+actually alive, and ourselves made party to it, a custom that was
+supposed to have been extinguished to more than three centuries, grew
+exceedingly indignant at having thus placed about his neck what he
+coarsely described as "an overgrown d&mdash;&mdash;n goose-yoke." Nor was I at all
+successful in my attempt to soothe him by telling him that the
+discomfort to which we were subjected was a very trifling matter in
+comparison with the gain to the science of archeology that flowed from
+this positive identification of an exceedingly interesting historical
+fact.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, come off, Professor," he growled. "What th' d&mdash;&mdash;l do I care for
+historical facts, or for historical lies either?&mdash;an' they're all about
+th' same thing. What I want t' do is t' punch th' head o' th' fellow who
+put this thing on me, an' I can't. They'll be hangin' me up by my heels
+an' stickin' a corn-cob in my mouth next, I s'pose, an' makin' a regular
+stuck-pig out o' me; an' then likely enough you'll try t' make me
+believe that <i>that</i> proves something or other that nobody but you thinks
+ever happened, an' so want me t' feel pleased about it. Antiquities be
+d&mdash;&mdash;d! I've had as much of' em as I want, an' more too!"</p>
+
+<p>While the collars were being placed about our necks, and while Rayburn
+was being lifted upon the stretcher which the soldiers had brought, we
+heard from within the Citadel the sound of drums tapping, and then the
+measured tread of soldiers marching; and as we looked through the
+gate-way we saw that the troops had been formed in regular order and
+were moving towards us. At the head of the column were the
+prisoners&mdash;numbering three or four hundred, and all wearing wooden
+collars about their necks&mdash;covered on both flanks by a strong line of
+guards. They were ranged in order of their dignity, the unlucky members
+of the Council coming first, and after them the other officers of that
+short-lived government; then the military officers, and in the rear a
+few private soldiers. The fact that no Tlahuicos were among the
+prisoners led me to conclude that such of these as had not been slain
+had been held under guard until they might be returned to their owners
+or set again to toiling hopelessly in the mine.</p>
+
+<p>The importance that in the estimation of our captors attached to
+ourselves was shown by their placing us at the very head of the column,
+in advance even of the members of the Council; and this was a compliment
+that we willingly enough would have declined, for such honorable
+consideration, according to the customs of this people, meant surely
+that we were reserved for a very exemplary fate. But we were in no
+position to raise objections of any sort just then, and we therefore
+fell into the place assigned to us and tried as well as we could to show
+a bold front as we went downward towards the lake.</p>
+
+<p>Only a few terrified women and children, who fled away as we advanced,
+were in sight as we passed through the streets of the town; and from
+many of the hovels came the moans of poor wounded wretches who had
+crawled to their miserable homes to die in them; and from others came
+the lamentations of women over their dead; and in nooks and corners,
+whither with their last strength they had dragged themselves, we saw men
+lying dead in pools of their own blood. But down by the water-side there
+were live men in plenty, soldiers and oarsmen, and the pier was crowded
+with them; while out beyond the pier the whole bay was swarming with
+the boats in which the enemy's forces had stolen down upon us in the
+darkness from Culhuacan; making their landing, as we now learned, just
+beyond the town in a bay that ran up close to where our army was
+encamped. And this scene of bustling activity in the bright sunshine
+made a joyous and brilliant picture; that was all the brighter because
+of its setting in that sunlit bay, opening out between beaches of
+golden-yellow sand upon the broad expanse of restful water which fell
+away in gleaming splendor into a bank of soft gray haze.</p>
+
+<p>But the picture was still more stirring that we saw as we looked
+landward, when the barge that we were put aboard of pulled out from the
+pier and our rowers lay on their oars, and so waited while the work of
+embarkation went on. Right in front of us was the broad central street
+of the town; and the whole length of this, from the pier to the Citadel,
+was filled with a solidly massed body of soldiers that came down the
+steep descent slowly, and halting often, to the boats which were in
+waiting to bear them away. Barbarians though they were, these soldiers
+made a gallant showing. In front of each regiment was borne its feather
+standard, and in the midst of each company was its rallying flag of
+brightly painted cotton cloth. The higher officers wore wooden casques,
+carved and painted in the semblance of the heads of ferocious beasts;
+the cotton-cloth armor of all the officers was decked with a great
+variety of strange devices, wrought in very lively hues, and similarly
+strong hues were used in the decoration of the universally-carried light
+round shields. And all this brilliant color, the more vivid because of
+its background of bare brown skins, was flecked with a thousand
+glittering points of light where the sunshine sparkled on swords and on
+spear-heads of hardened gold.</p>
+
+<p>"Its not much wonder that those fellows got away with us," Rayburn said,
+as he watched the orderly manner in which the disciplined ranks moved
+out upon the pier and stepped briskly into the boats at the word of
+command. "They're as fine a lot of fighters as I ever saw anywhere. Just
+look how steadily they stand at a halt, and how sharply they obey
+orders, and how well set up they are! I must say I don't see what the
+Colonel could have been thinking about when he said that we had a
+fighting chance against an army like that. Well, he's paid for his
+mistake about as much as a man can pay for anything. It breaks me all up
+to think that the Colonel is dead. He was good all the way through. And
+I wonder what will become of that little lame boy of his now? They'll
+make a Tlahuico of him, I suppose. By Jove! what a mess we've made of
+this whole business from first to last!"</p>
+
+<p>My heart was too heavy for me to answer Rayburn save by a nod; for while
+he spoke the thought came home to me very bitterly that upon me rested
+the responsibility of the black misfortune in which he and Young were
+involved; and with this came also a great burst of sorrow as I thought
+how still more closely at my door lay Pablo's death&mdash;for Rayburn and
+Young at least had come into my plans with a reasonable understanding of
+the danger to which they exposed themselves; but Pablo, having no such
+knowledge, had followed me unquestioningly because of his loving trust
+that I would hold him safe from harm. My sorrow concerning Fray Antonio
+was keen enough, Heaven knows; but in his case I had the solace of
+knowing surely that he had come to his death not because of my urging,
+but in pursuance of his own strong desire. There was a little comfort in
+the thought that even one of these four lost lives could not be charged
+to my account; and yet this reflection seemed only to make my sorrow
+heavier as I thought of the woful weight of my responsibility for the
+other three.</p>
+
+<p>For nearly two hours we lay there in the bay while the embarkation of
+the prisoners and the troops went on&mdash;our boat moving farther out from
+the pier from time to time as the double line of boats behind it
+lengthened. In that sheltered place there was little wind blowing, and
+the blazing heat of the sun beating down upon my wounded head gave me so
+sharp a pain that I gladly would have died to be rid of it; and I could
+see, from the drawn look of their faces, that Young and Rayburn were
+suffering not less keenly. We were thankful enough, therefore, when at
+last the embarkation was completed&mdash;more than half of the army remaining
+in Huitzilan to restore order there&mdash;and we pulled out from the bay into
+the open waters of the lake and were comforted by the light breeze,
+which yet brought with it a delicious refreshment, that was blowing
+there.</p>
+
+<p>All the bright beauty of that lovely lake was around us, having for its
+background the green meadows and the darker green of the forests
+hanging above them on the upward slopes, and beyond all the towering
+height of the cliffs, which shaded in their colorings from delicate gray
+to dark brown, and were touched here and there by patches of black
+shadow where some great cleft opened; and yet all that we then thought
+of was that across those blue waters, which gleamed golden in the
+sunlight, we were going swiftly to a cruel death, and that the cliffs,
+whereof the beauty was hateful to us, irrevocably shut us in. Which
+gloomy feelings pressed upon us throughout that dismal passage, while
+all our oarsmen pulled stoutly together, and we went gliding onward over
+the sunlit waters towards the evil fate that we knew was waiting for us
+within the dark walls whereby was encircled the city of Culhuacan.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXXII" id="XXXII"></a>XXXII.</h2>
+
+<h3>EL SABIO'S DEFIANCE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>While yet we were a long way off from the city, we heard faintly the
+yells of triumph with which the watchers above the water-gate gave
+notice to those within the walls of the return of the victorious army;
+and from all the boats of our flotilla there went up a shrill chorus of
+answering yells. Our barge was the first to pass through the water-gate,
+out from which we had come so gallantly so short a time before, and
+thence went onward across the basin to the very pier that we had
+started from with such high hopes to gather the forces for the rebellion
+that had come to so sorry an end.</p>
+
+<p>All the water-side was black with the crowd that had gathered to watch
+our landing; but, considering that these people were there to welcome a
+victorious army, it seemed to me that they were strangely still and
+dull. There was, to be sure, no lack of yelling, but it came for the
+most part from a company of priests clustered on the pier where we
+landed, and from the soldiers and oarsmen in the boats&mdash;not from the
+townsfolk at large. And when we were marched upward through the
+city&mdash;following the same street that we had fought our way along when
+last we traversed it&mdash;I saw in the crowd so many sullen and dejected
+faces that it seemed to me there still was in that city a good deal of
+material for the making of another mutiny.</p>
+
+<p>This time we were not taken to the house in which we had met the Priest
+Captain, and whence we had been delivered from imprisonment by Tizoc's
+gallant rescue of us; but, passing a little beyond this house, we were
+led up a broad stair-way to the plateau which crowned the city, and on
+which stood the great Treasure-house that also was the temple in which
+the Aztlanecas housed their most venerated gods. And I confess that my
+delight at seeing closely this building, that until then I had beheld
+only from afar off, for a time completely overcame the dread and sorrow
+that had oppressed me; and the very strongest desire that stirred within
+me just then was for a tape-measure and a pair of compasses and a steel
+square, together with the opportunity to fall to work with these several
+instruments upon those mighty walls. Indeed, I almost had forgotten that
+I was a prisoner, and was like to die soon a very dreadful death, when a
+groan that poor Rayburn gave&mdash;wrung from him by the pain that he
+suffered in being carried up the stairs&mdash;recalled me suddenly to a
+realizing sense of our situation, and so pressed home upon me the sad
+conviction that the science of arch&aelig;ology would gain nothing of all that
+I might see or learn during the little while that I should remain alive.</p>
+
+<p>The outer facing of the plateau, like that of the terraces below it, was
+a prodigiously heavy wall of squared stones set in cement; and for a
+coping this wall had great stones carved in the similitude of serpents'
+heads, with mouths wide open, that instantly recalled to my mind the
+like enclosure that the Spaniards found surrounding the principal temple
+in the city of Tenochtitlan&mdash;and I had a sudden strong longing that my
+friend Bandelier might be with me at that moment to see how precisely
+his very ingenious speculations concerning the snake-wall about the
+great Teocalli were here confirmed.</p>
+
+<p>Through a portal formed of two huge blocks of stone carved to represent
+two serpents coiled upon themselves, the heads meeting above in a sort
+of arch (not a true arch, for each of these serpents was a monolith, and
+was supported wholly on its own base), we entered the large enclosure
+before the temple. I was surprised to find&mdash;for of such a thing among
+the ancient Aztecs there is no record&mdash;that in the centre of the
+enclosure the rock had been hewn away in such a fashion as to create a
+vast amphitheatre; and that this was the place where sacrifice was
+offered by the priests was shown by the blood-stained altar in the
+centre of it, to which fragments of flesh also adhered, whence was
+wafted up to us a dreadful stench that instantly racked us with queasy
+qualms. Save directly in front of the entrance to the temple, where was
+a great stone balcony with a smaller balcony below it, all the sides of
+the amphitheatre were cut in steps, which made, also, benches where the
+multitude could sit at their ease and behold the bloody work going on in
+the pit below them; and so enormous was this rock-hewn cavity that fully
+forty thousand people could at once be seated there. Under the balcony
+there was visible the entrance to a dark tunnel-like passage, that
+evidently communicated with the temple, and a smaller passage, not large
+enough for a man to pass through, slanted downward to where it opened on
+the terrace below; which last was to drain the blood away, and also to
+free the amphitheatre from water in the season of rains.</p>
+
+<p>We held our noses as we skirted this shocking place, and we were glad
+enough when we got beyond it and came to the entrance to the temple&mdash;a
+very noble portal, severely simple, and because of its simplicity the
+more majestic, in which, as in the whole of the fa&ccedil;ade, was manifest the
+grave and sombre Egyptian feeling that I had before observed. Through
+this we passed into the shadowy interior, lighted by only a few narrow
+slits cut in the enormously thick walls, where the lofty roof was
+upheld by a wilderness of columns which opened before us seemingly
+endless vistas where an eternal twilight reigned. Of interior decoration
+there was nothing save a broad and simple panelling upon the walls, and
+the great pillars were mere round monoliths without either bases or
+capitals.</p>
+
+<p>As we entered this, to them, most sacred place a hush fell upon our
+escort, and even I felt something of that reverent awe that is inspired
+by any building which has been sanctified by the worship of multitudes
+within it through countless years. But that Young did not at all share
+this feeling with me was made manifest by his observing, after taking a
+long look around him: "Well, this wouldn't answer for a Congregational
+church, anyway. There ain't a pew in th' whole place, an' here in broad
+daylight you couldn't see a hymn-book if you tried. I wonder what they'd
+say, Professor, to a bid for puttin' in a dynamo for 'em an' lightin'
+this dark old hole with electricity? An' it 'u'd take off a lot o' this
+chill an' dampness if they'd have a steam-heater put in at th' same
+time. It's enough t' give all hands rheumatism th' way cold creeps
+strike up your legs." But at this point Young's observations were cut
+short peremptorily by the hand that one of the guards laid across his
+mouth; which hint that it was desirable for him to keep silence was
+quite unmistakable.</p>
+
+<p>This decided repression of Young's chattering, no doubt, was the more
+vigorous because we now were approaching the farther end of the temple,
+where loomed before us amid the shadows a great idol, set upon an
+altar-like throne. This figure, fully ten feet high, was a strange
+medley of grotesque and hideous carvings that yet in its entirety was
+like a man; and so cruel and so ferocious was the general air of it that
+it well might inspire a very lively terror in simple souls. The most
+striking feature of the figure was a dismal skull, that was outheld from
+the region of the waist by two great hands placed there arbitrarily and
+without any relation to the figure's arms; and for a crest&mdash;repeating
+the motive of the gate-way&mdash;it had two serpents' heads, the bodies
+pertaining to which were twisted and involved about the whole mass. For
+eyes this evil thing had large and gleaming green stones&mdash;being, in
+truth, emeralds, though I did not at that time recognize them as
+such&mdash;and golden serpents, very beautifully wrought, were twisted about
+it, and a collar of golden hearts was hung around its neck over a sort
+of apron of shining green feathers; and feathers of a like sort rose
+above the heads of the serpents in a thick plume; and over every part of
+the figure were scattered glittering objects&mdash;emeralds, and disks of
+gold, and scraps of mother-o'-pearl, and fragments of obsidian&mdash;whence
+shone through the heavy shadows faint, shimmering points of light. In
+one of its out-stretched hands the figure held a bow, and in the other a
+bunch of arrows; but even without these unmistakable attributes I should
+have known from the skull and from the serpents' heads that this fierce
+and hideous idol represented the god Huitzilopochtli: the first
+divinity, and throughout the whole time that their bloody religion
+endured, the principal divinity, that the ancient Mexicans adored.
+Young did not venture to speak aloud again, but he turned to me with a
+long sigh and whispered, earnestly, "That certainly is, Professor, the
+very d&mdash;&mdash;dest thing I ever saw!"</p>
+
+<p>As I knew, it was in keeping with the Aztec customs that prisoners taken
+in war thus should be brought first of all before the god
+Huitzilopochtli, that they and their captors together might do him
+reverence; therefore, I was not surprised when a priest came forth from
+behind the altar and bade us prostrate ourselves in adoration of the
+idol. As this order was given, all the Aztlanecas with us bowed
+themselves to the floor; but Young, who did not understand the order,
+and I, who felt my gorge rising at the thought of thus humbling myself,
+remained erect. However, we did not continue through many seconds in
+that position; for a couple of soldiers instantly laid hands upon each
+of us, and by shoving our shoulders sharply forward, and at the same
+moment kicking our legs from under us, they summarily laid us face
+downward at full length upon the floor. As for Rayburn, they seemed to
+be satisfied with his recumbent position upon the stretcher; at any
+rate, they suffered him to remain as he was.</p>
+
+<p>While I lay prone, quivering with rage at the double indignity of being
+thus roughly handled, and of being compelled even in form to worship a
+disgusting idol, I heard an odd little pattering upon the stone floor,
+and then something cold and clammy was thrust against my hand, and at
+the same instant I heard close beside me a curious snuffling noise; and
+while a glad doubt, that I scarce ventured to give way to, was rising
+within me, the clammy thing was taken away from my hand, and there
+straightway rang out through the gloomy silence of the temple a
+thunderous braying that seemed fairly to shake the walls. There was no
+mistaking the voice of the friend who with this triumphant blast
+welcomed me; and as I heard it there came into my heart a sudden glow of
+hope that Pablo, and that even Fray Antonio also, might still be alive.
+And this hope was destined to be immediately and most joyfully realized,
+for as we rose to our feet again I saw the lad standing, with El Sabio
+beside him, not a dozen feet away from me; and a little beyond them was
+the monk, his face all lighted up with a bright look of happiness and
+love. And seeing these three once more standing alive and well before me
+was the most amazing and also the very gladdest sight that ever met my
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>It was a sore trial to me that I could not immediately hold converse
+with Pablo and with Fray Antonio, and so come to know through what
+adventures they had passed, and by what miracles their lives had been
+saved; but the ceremony in which our captors were engaged was but half
+completed, and the better to assure our orderly conduct during its
+continuance we were kept asunder in the procession that then was
+formed&mdash;the object of which procession, as my knowledge of the Aztec
+customs led me rightly to infer, was that the ceremonial of triumph
+might be ended by leading us thrice around the sacrificial stone. And in
+truth I dreaded less the fate which this leading us about the altar of
+sacrifice implied was in store for us than I did the close association,
+made necessary by the ceremony, with the direful stench which that vile
+altar exhaled.</p>
+
+<p>At the edge of the amphitheatre, where already the evil odor was almost
+overpowering, the soldiers who had charge of us relinquished us&mdash;as it
+seemed to me, most thankfully&mdash;to a company of the temple priests;
+whereof the chief was a round, fat little man, whose shortness of legs
+very obviously was accompanied by a corresponding shortness of wind. He
+was, in truth, a most hopelessly undignified little personage; yet he
+did his best to assume a look of dignity as he waddled down the steps in
+advance of us, and he manfully endeavored to conceal the difficulties
+encountered by his short fat legs in the course of this descent. And I
+was glad enough that we had his absurd performances to distract our
+minds a little from the dismalness of our surroundings, and especially
+from the queasiness that again beset our stomachs as our noses were
+assailed more and more violently by that most evil smell. The priests, I
+observed, had cotton stuffed in their nostrils; but for us there was
+nothing for it but to hold our noses tightly with our hands.</p>
+
+<p>El Sabio, who had a most generous and broadly open nose, and who was not
+blest with hands to hold it fast with, grew restive as the first whiff
+struck him; which resulted less, I suppose, from the intrinsic vileness
+of the smell than from the fact that he, in common with all peace-loving
+animals, had aroused in him an instinctive terror by the odor of blood.
+Pablo's voice, and Pablo's touch, possibly might have soothed and
+quieted him; but the efforts which the priests who were leading him made
+to restrain him only served the more to terrify him, and so to increase
+his violence. And the priests, who now for a considerable time had seen
+him daily, and had known him only as the most gentle and biddable of
+creatures, were mightily astonished, and evidently were terrified, by
+this sudden outbreak of a fierce temper that most reasonably took them
+entirely by surprise. Partly by pulling at the rope that they had about
+his neck, and partly by such pushes as they dared to give him while he
+was momentarily at rest, they succeeded in forcing him down the steps;
+and so at last into the large circular space at the bottom of the
+amphitheatre, in the midst of which stood the stone of sacrifice and
+where the smell of blood was overpoweringly strong. But by the time that
+this victory was won El Sabio had ceased to be a quiet orderly donkey,
+accustomed to conform to the usages of human society, and had become a
+veritable crazy creature, inflamed by the madness of fear and rage.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="illus16" id="illus16"></a>
+<img src="images/illus16.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>EL SABIO'S DEFIANCE</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+
+<p>By some miracle&mdash;a very happy miracle for those whom the poor ass most
+naturally regarded as his tormentors&mdash;El Sabio's nimble heels had until
+this moment lashed the air harmlessly; but just as the last step
+downward was accomplished he let out both of his hind-legs together, and
+with such precision that both of his hoofs struck a remarkably tall
+priest who had taken a very active part in persecuting him. The blow was
+landed fairly on the tall priest's stomach, and instantly the two long
+halves of that priest shut together like a jack-knife, and he fell to
+the ground with a gasp that told how thoroughly the wind was knocked out
+of him. Doubtless this outburst of violence served but to increase El
+Sabio's terror, for he straightway gave so strong a plunge that he
+fairly broke away from the men who were holding him; and then he bent
+all his energies to working such destruction as never was worked by one
+single ass since the very beginning of the world!</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately for our own safety&mdash;for El Sabio was in no condition to
+discriminate between friends and foes&mdash;we still were at some distance
+from the bottom of the amphitheatre when this outbreak occurred; the
+greater part of the priests having preceded us, and El Sabio having been
+led in the van of the prisoners. It was wholly upon the priests,
+therefore, that his mad rage was expended, and the way that he "got in
+his work," as Young expressed it, on these enemies of his and ours was a
+joyful wonder to behold. Being closely penned in&mdash;for the way whence
+they had entered the amphitheatre was barred by the crowd of which we
+were a part, and the entrance to the subterranean passage leading to the
+temple was closed&mdash;the priests had no chance to escape from the furious
+creature save by clambering up the smooth wall, fully eight feet high,
+by which was enclosed the circular space that immediately surrounded the
+altar. Even an agile man, going at it quietly, would have found a little
+difficulty in executing this gymnastic feat, that required for its
+accomplishment sheer lifting of the body until a leg could be thrown
+over the top of the wall; and as these priests, for the most part, had
+grown fat and sluggish in their sacred calling, they were wellnigh
+incapacitated from performing it. Furthermore, El Sabio manifested what
+had the appearance of being a most diabolical ingenuity&mdash;yet that, no
+doubt, was no more than chance&mdash;in delivering flying kicks against the
+legs of these dangling creatures; wherefrom such keen pain resulted that
+they instantly let loose their hold, and came tumbling to the ground.</p>
+
+<p>So far as we were concerned&mdash;our sympathies being wholly on the side of
+the ass&mdash;this astonishing spectacle remained a broad farce until the
+very end; but it presently became to the men engaged in it a very
+serious tragedy. As he made his wild charges, El Sabio galloped backward
+and forward again and again over the bodies of his prostrate enemies; in
+the course of which gallopings his sharp little hoofs cut their naked
+flesh savagely, and now and then, when he happened to land a kick fairly
+against a man's body, we could see, from the sinking in of the fellow's
+ribs and the gush of blood that burst from his nostrils, that the ass
+had delivered a death-blow.</p>
+
+<p>As for the noise that attended this most extraordinary performance,
+words can but faintly describe it. From the men directly engaged with El
+Sabio came yells of fear and shouts for assistance and cries of anger,
+beneath all of which was a dull undertone of groans; the crowd around us
+and higher up behind us gave vent to a shrill roar of shouts and yells
+that seemed to be partly in the nature of advice, and partly the result
+of that instinct which prompts all barbarians to yell whenever anybody
+else yells, on general principles. Pablo interpolated a most despairing
+note in the way of beseeching cries of "B-u-r-r-r-o! B-u-r-r-r-o!"
+whereby he sought to allay El Sabio's frenzy, and so to save him from
+the direful fate that well might be expected to overtake him in
+recompense of his direful deeds; and Young fairly tossed his battered
+Derby hat up into the air as he shouted: "Go it, El Sabio! Give it to
+'em, my boy! Ten t' one against th' fat priest! Three cheers for th'
+jackass! Hip-hip-hurrah!" In short, it seemed as though Bedlam had
+broken loose among us, and as though all of us together were going mad.</p>
+
+<p>What with dodging behind his fellows, and keeping clear of El Sabio's
+frantic charges by the display of an agility that I would not have given
+him credit for, the little fat priest managed to preserve his small
+round body unharmed until all of his companions had either escaped over
+the wall or had been, as Young put it, knocked out by El Sabio's heels.
+Once or twice he had made a dash for the passage-way in which we were
+standing, but the lower end of this was choked with the dozen or more
+badly wounded wretches who had crawled thither in their efforts to
+escape; and these the priests in front of us, being but cowardly
+creatures, had made no effort to succor or to lift away, for the reason
+that so long as this barrier remained they themselves were safe from El
+Sabio's fury.</p>
+
+<p>Having, therefore, no longer any one to hide behind, the fat little
+priest evidently realized that his only hope of salvation lay in making
+an effort, truly heroic in one of his height and girth and woful
+shortness of wind, to clamber up the face of the wall; and to this
+wellnigh impossible task he most resolutely set himself. It was only by
+jumping that he was able to get a grip over the top of the wall; yet
+when this grip was gained he could get no farther on his way to
+deliverance, and so he hung dangling there, his face to the wall,
+jerking his short fat legs about spasmodically, and wasting in most
+piercing yells what little there was in him of wind.</p>
+
+<p>It did really seem as though El Sabio's action in these premises was
+dictated by reason, for when he saw the priest in this wholly
+unprotected position he deliberately took his stand at precisely the
+point behind the little man where all of his kicking power could be most
+effectively used. There was a momentary hush as El Sabio thus placed
+himself, for every one perceived how very open was the priest to
+assault; and at the same time it was apparent that while El Sabio's
+kicks assuredly would be exceedingly painful, they were not likely to
+inflict upon the priest, while he remained in that attitude, a deadly
+wound. In an instant the two small heels flashed through the air, and
+there was heard a dull, soft sound&mdash;such as might come from the striking
+of an over-ripe melon with a heavy club&mdash;and with this burst forth a
+most piercing shriek of pain. Yet the little priest, knowing that his
+life depended upon it, most gallantly retained his hold. Again El Sabio
+kicked, and again a piercing shriek sounded; and one hand loosened for a
+moment and then clutched fast again. But when El Sabio kicked for the
+third time human nature was too weak to resist further against brute
+violence. With a yell that fairly cracked our ears the priest let go
+his hold and fell downward and backward; and at that same instant El
+Sabio delivered a final kick that struck fairly on the head of the
+falling man and battered in his skull.</p>
+
+<p>As for El Sabio, it seemed as though he himself were like to die in the
+very moment of his victory; for with a sort of groan that, coming from a
+brute beast, was most pitiful to listen to, the poor terrified creature,
+utterly exhausted by his fright and his outlay of energy in furious
+violence, sank down panting by the side of the man whom he had slain.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXXIII" id="XXXIII"></a>XXXIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>IN THE AZTEC TREASURE-HOUSE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Even with El Sabio reduced to this condition of complete quiescence, the
+Aztlanecas, soldiers as well as priests, still were terribly afraid of
+him; being firmly convinced, as was not at all unnatural, that for the
+time being there was embodied in him a devil of a most dangerous sort.
+Therefore they were but too glad to yield to Pablo's burning eagerness
+to get to the poor ass; and when he called for aid to carry the
+exhausted creature out from the amphitheatre, and so away from among the
+dead and wounded and from the dreadful smell of blood, Young and I
+promptly were pushed forward and ordered to perform this piece of work
+that even the bravest of them shrunk from undertaking.</p>
+
+<p>However, there was no real peril in it, for El Sabio was so weak that he
+could not even stand, and still less was he strong enough to kick
+anybody. Lifting him in this dull, limp state, and carrying him up the
+steep steps, was heavy work for us, wounded and weary as we were; but
+with Pablo's help we managed it, and so got him up from the depths of
+the amphitheatre to its windward side&mdash;where a fresh sweet breeze that
+was blowing, and some water that a soldier brought when Pablo called for
+it, in a little while put new life into him. Why the ass was not made to
+pay the penalty of his sins, by being there and then killed, at first
+was a good deal of a puzzle to me; but presently, from the talk that
+went on about us while Pablo ministered to him, and while the wounded
+lying around the altar were being cared for, and the dead borne away, I
+gathered that no one dared to kill him for fear of being himself
+possessed by the devil that needs must enter another body upon being
+thus set free. And as this seemed to be a view of the case that was
+worth encouraging, I very gravely told one of the priests that I myself
+had seen a man all in an instant go raving mad upon slaying one of these
+creatures and so letting the devil loose from him. As this story was
+circulated among the crowd I was glad to perceive that the dread of El
+Sabio obviously greatly increased.</p>
+
+<p>As a result of the untoward outbreak that had occurred, no attempt was
+made to complete the ceremonial of triumph. Indeed, the victory now lay
+so decidedly with El Sabio that there was but little to triumph over.
+Therefore we presently were herded together by a party of soldiers&mdash;who
+took good care that Pablo should lead the ass, and that Young and I
+should walk directly behind him as a protection against any further
+uplifting of his heels&mdash;and so we all were marched once more into the
+temple. This time we did not stop in front of the great idol, but went
+on beyond it towards a portal in the rear of the building that opened on
+an inner court; on the farther side of which court, as we knew from the
+description of the place that Tizoc had given us, was the
+Treasure-house, in which was stored not only the treasure placed there
+in long past ages by King Chaltzantzin, but also the treasure belonging
+to the State and to the temple that had been accumulated in later times.</p>
+
+<p>At the entrance to the court-yard, where the way was closed by a metal
+grating over which a heavy curtain hung, the soldiers formally
+relinquished us into the charge of a company of priests; and then the
+curtain was drawn aside and the grating was raised, and we passed out
+into the bright sunlight&mdash;and saw close before us the place which for so
+long a time had so largely filled our thoughts. It was a building of no
+great size, being but a single story high, and was dwarfed by the vastly
+stupendous cliffs which so far overtopped it that they seemed to extend
+upward to the very sky; but it was most massively constructed, and the
+actual available space within it was far greater than was indicated by
+the relatively small dimensions of its exterior walls. When we entered
+the building, through a narrow opening protected by a metal grating, the
+chamber into which we came was of so considerable a size that a part of
+it, we perceived, must extend actually into the cliff; and that the work
+of quarrying out the living rock had been carried still farther was
+shown by an opening at its rear end that evidently gave access to some
+hollow depth beyond.</p>
+
+<p>It was towards this inner recess that our guards led us. Here another
+grating was raised that we might pass, and we went onward through a
+narrow passage cut in the rock, along the sides of which were many
+openings giving access to small cell-like rooms. Nor was this place, as
+we had expected to find it, wholly dark; for narrow slits had been cut
+through the rock out to the face of the cliff, through which came so
+much light that we could see about us very well. And but for that
+blessed light, faint though it was, I doubt not that we should have gone
+mad there; and even with the light to cheer and to comfort us I felt a
+black despair settling down upon me at the thought of being thus
+imprisoned within the very bowels of the mountain, with no possibility
+of other release than being taken thence to die.</p>
+
+<p>At the extreme end of the passage the rock had been hollowed away
+smoothly and carefully so as to form a chamber nearly thirty feet square
+and at least twenty feet high, whereof all the walls were covered with
+plates of gold which overlapped each other in the manner of fishes'
+scales; and advantage had been taken of some wide crevice or deep
+depression in the cliff above to open in the roof of this chamber a
+small aperture, whence a pale light entered in long fine rays which
+gleamed through the shadows, and gleamed again more faintly in
+reflections from the golden walls. In this oratory&mdash;for such it
+evidently was&mdash;stood a statue, smaller than that in the temple yet still
+more magnificently arrayed, of the god Huitzilopochtli; before which
+odious image we were thrown upon our faces by our guards. When this
+ceremony was ended we were led forth once more into the passage, and so
+into two of the little cells which had been meagrely prepared for us by
+tossing into each of them a bundle of mats; and there our guards left us
+to shift for ourselves&mdash;shutting the grating behind them with a sharp
+ringing of metal on stone that echoed dismally through the rock-hewn
+chambers wherein we were held fast.</p>
+
+<p>For a while we stood in melancholy silence about the stretcher on which
+poor Rayburn lay; and very pale and worn he looked after his great loss
+of blood and heavy fatigue and the pain and excitement of the last few
+hours. Pablo had taken up his quarters with El Sabio in a cell on the
+opposite side of the passage&mdash;for within the limits of our prison we
+were left to arrange ourselves as we pleased&mdash;and we could hear him
+talking to the ass in a fashion that at any other time we should have
+laughed at; for by turns he upbraided him for his rash acts, and
+complimented him upon his bravery, and expressed dread of the punishment
+that might be visited upon him, and told him of his very tender
+love&mdash;all of which, so far as we could judge, El Sabio took in equally
+good part.</p>
+
+<p>"There ain't no good in standin' 'round here doin' nothin'," Young said,
+at last. "This don't look like much of a place t' break out of, but we
+may as well see how things are, anyway. Th' Padre'd better take a
+squint at Rayburn's busted leg an' set th' bandages straight; an' while
+he's attendin' t' that, me an' you, Professor, can do a little
+prospectin'. This is th' Treasure-house, for sure, an' it'll be some
+satisfaction t' see what it amounts to. I'll bet a hat there ain't
+anything worth havin' in th' whole place, after all."</p>
+
+<p>I was glad enough to have any occupation that would change even a little
+the sad current of my thoughts, and I therefore very willingly acted on
+Young's suggestion&mdash;after first making sure that Fray Antonio had no
+need of help in his work of dressing Rayburn's wound&mdash;and together we
+set about this curious exploration; that had in it a strong charm for
+me, notwithstanding my heavy sorrow, because of the possibility that it
+opened of finding curious traces of a new community so far advanced in
+civilization as was that which the King Chaltzantzin had brought with
+him into this valley a thousand years ago. Here, unquestionably, was the
+oldest deposit of the belongings of any of the primitive dwellers upon
+the American continent; and I trembled a little with excitement at the
+thought of what arch&aelig;ological treasures I here might find&mdash;and then I
+heaved suddenly a long sigh as I remembered how useless in my present
+case would be even the most brilliant of discoveries.</p>
+
+<p>As for Young's bet of a hat that there was no treasure here worth
+having, he would have lost it, had it been accepted, at the very first
+of the rooms which we examined; for the whole of this room, a cube of
+about ten feet, was packed full of bars of hardened gold from the mine
+at Huitzilan. And so was the next room, and the next, until we had found
+five rooms thus filled. But all the remaining rooms were entirely empty,
+and of the treasure set aside in long past ages by King Chaltzantzin
+there was no sign. Yet here, truly, was stored wealth the like of which
+the richest monarch in the world could not match for greatness; and as
+Young beheld before him such enormous riches his face grew ruddy, an
+eager light came into his eyes, the muscles of his throat worked
+convulsively, and his breathing was labored and short&mdash;until I
+demolished all his fine fancies at a blow by saying: "Much good this
+treasure is to us, when there isn't a ghost of a chance that either of
+us ever will get out of this valley alive!" As I uttered these bitter
+words his look of animation left him, and for some moments he was
+silent; and when at last he spoke, it was in a tone of calm though
+melancholy conviction, and with a most dispassionate air.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall be obliged t' you, Professor, really obliged t' you," he said,
+"if you'll just kick me for a blasted fool. Ever since that night in
+Morelia when you told me an' Rayburn about this treasure I've regularly
+had it on my brain. Through all these months I've been thinkin' about it
+when I was awake an' dreamin' about it when I was asleep. An' it's true
+for a fact, Professor, that never until this blessed minute, when we've
+really struck it, has th' notion come into my fool head that when we did
+ketch up with it the folks it rightly b'longed to might want t' keep it
+for theirselves! Yes, just kick me, please. Just kick me for a forlorn,
+mis'rable, blasted fool!"</p>
+
+<p>I was not disposed to laugh at Young's words; rather was I disposed to
+weep over them. For they brought freshly and strongly to my mind the
+fact that I was responsible for alluring him, by the hope of acquiring
+great riches quickly, into this accursed valley, where in a little while
+he would be most barbarously done to death. And I knew too that I was
+responsible for the like fate that must overtake Rayburn, and that in
+regard to Pablo my guilt was greatest of all. It was a comfort to me,
+truly, that not one of these ever by look or word reproached me for thus
+so wofully misleading them; and yet, in a certain way, their very
+forbearance but added to my pain.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore was I a little gladdened, when we returned again to the
+others, to find that Fray Antonio was speaking to Rayburn, with a grave,
+calm hopefulness, of those spiritual realities which are higher and
+better than material realities, and without steadfast trust in which,
+most of us, in the course of this sorrowful thing that we call life,
+assuredly would go mad in sheer despair. And listening to this
+comforting discourse, which was not checked by our return, did much to
+strengthen me to bear my heavy load of vain regret. Presently Fray
+Antonio shifted his ground&mdash;for he had the wisdom to speak but shortly
+on these grave topics, yet using always pregnant words which sank down
+into men's hearts and germinated there&mdash;and told us of what had befallen
+him since he had stolen away from us that night in Huitzilan.</p>
+
+<p>In truth, he had but little to tell, for his adventures had been of a
+very simple kind. Upon his arrival in the canoe at the water-gate he
+had been at once recognized and admitted, and had been carried directly
+to the building in which, on our first coming into the city, we all had
+been confined. And there he had been imprisoned until he was led up to
+the temple to take part in the triumph that El Sabio's violence so
+seriously had marred, and so once more was in our company. Of the Priest
+Captain he had seen nothing at all; nor had any answer come back to him
+from that dignitary to his urgent plea that, inasmuch as he had thus
+surrendered himself, his companions&mdash;that is, ourselves&mdash;should be
+suffered to leave the valley in peace; which silence on the part of the
+Priest Captain was not surprising, however, in view of the brave
+defiance in words sent by the Tlahuicos, who afterwards were such
+cowards in deeds.</p>
+
+<p>In fact, during the brief time of his imprisonment Fray Antonio had not
+spoken to a soul save the man who brought him drink and food. Yet his
+talk with this man, scant though it had been, had filled him with the
+hope that, could he only hold free converse with the people at large,
+even as he had done at Huitzilan, the purpose that he had in mind in
+coming into the valley would be fulfilled. Although a priest of the
+temple, his jailer had listened with a most earnest and hearty attention
+to the expounding of Christian doctrine that was opened to him, and had
+shown a very cheering willingness to recognize the shortcomings of his
+own idolatrous belief as compared with the principles of this purer and
+nobler faith. And he had told Fray Antonio that many of his companions
+in the service of the temple, having heard somewhat of the new creed
+from those who had tome up from Huitzilan, were eager to know more
+concerning it; so that it would seem, Fray Antonio declared, as though
+there were a harvest there ready to be reaped to Christianity by his
+hand. The case was such, he thought, that could he but speak publicly to
+the multitude, and especially could there but be vouchsafed from Heaven
+some sign by which the verity of his words might be established, he yet
+would win to the glorious Christian faith this whole community, that,
+through no fault of its own, until that time had remained lost in
+heathen sin.</p>
+
+<p>Rayburn and I exchanged glances as Fray Antonio spoke of aid being given
+him in his work by a sign from Heaven, for to our notions the time of
+miracles was a long while past. But Fray Antonio, as we knew (for once
+or twice we three had spoken together of this matter), did not at all
+hold with us in believing that miracle-working had come to an end; and
+indeed his faith was entirely logical; for, as he himself put it, those
+who believed that miracles ever had been wrought for the advancement of
+Christianity could not reasonably draw a line at any year since the
+Christian Church was founded, and say that in that year miracles ceased
+to be. In this matter, as in many others, the resemblance between Fray
+Antonio and the founder of his Order, Saint Francis of Assisi, was very
+strong.</p>
+
+<p>Pablo's experience as a prisoner had been of a far more trying sort; for
+the priests had sought earnestly, he said, by most stringent means, to
+pervert him from Christianity to their own faith. When we had been so
+rudely separated that day, after our interview with the Priest Captain,
+he, and El Sabio with him, had been hurried up the stairs to the temple,
+and thence to the Treasure-house; and there, though not in the part of
+it in which we then were, he had been ever since confined. Strong
+measures certainly had been taken to make a heathen of him. He had been
+starved for a while, and he had been deprived of water, and he had been
+cruelly scourged, and very harrowing presentments had been made to him
+of the death that he must die should he much longer refuse to yield.
+That the lad had remained firm in his faith, he told us, sobbing a
+little at memory of his hardships, was because of the sorrow that he
+knew his yielding would bring upon Fray Antonio and upon me; which
+certainly was not the reason that Fray Antonio most would have approved,
+but it did not in the least detract from the steady courage that he had
+shown in holding out firmly under pressure that would have made many a
+man succumb. In all the time that so many cruelties had been practised
+upon him, only one man had shown him kindness&mdash;an old man, who seemed to
+be in charge of the archives that the Treasure-house contained, who
+twice had risked his own life by secretly giving him water and food. But
+he never had been separated from El Sabio, Pablo said joyfully, in
+conclusion, nor had his mouth-organ been taken away from him; and these
+blessings had done much to lessen the misery that he was compelled to
+bear.</p>
+
+<p>When, in our turn, Rayburn and Young and I had told of the far more
+stirring adventures that we had passed through, and of our high hopes
+seemingly so well founded that had suffered so dismal a downfall, we all
+of us wisely refrained from speculating at all upon the future; instead
+of which profitless and painful topic we strove to speak cheerfully of
+indifferent matters; and this we did not only that we might the better
+keep our hearts up, but that we might not excite Rayburn, who already
+was in a dangerously feverish condition by reason of his wound. But,
+though we spoke not of it, we none of us doubted what our fate would be;
+nor did we imagine that the death that surely awaited us would be long
+delayed.</p>
+
+<p>It was a source of wonder to us, therefore, that day after day went by
+without bringing the end that we so confidently expected. From the man
+who brought us our food we could learn nothing; but this was not from
+ill-will on his part, but because he himself knew nothing of the Priest
+Captain's plans. This man, though a priest, was not unkindly disposed
+towards us, and he even listened to the words which Fray Antonio
+addressed to him touching Christian doctrine; but while he
+listened&mdash;being made of a sterner stuff than the priest who previously
+had been Fray Antonio's jailer&mdash;he gave no sign of assent. The only
+other person whom we had a chance to speak with, and this but rarely,
+was the old man who had shown kindness to Pablo, the guardian of the
+archives&mdash;who, by right of his official position, had free access to
+that portion of the Treasure-house from which the second grating cut us
+off. At the grating he and I had some very interesting conversations
+together upon arch&aelig;ological matters; but Fray Antonio took but little
+interest in him when he found how slight was the impression made upon
+him by the most serious of doctrinal talk. In truth, this old
+fellow&mdash;wherefore my own heart warmed to him&mdash;was wholly given to the
+study of antiquities; and so full was his mind of this delightful
+subject that there was no room left in it for thoughts about religions
+of any sort. He was entirely catholic in this matter, for his unconcern
+respecting Christianity was neither more marked nor less marked than was
+his unconcern toward his own avowed faith.</p>
+
+<p>Many curious things this old man told me touching the history of his
+people; and he showed me, also, the manner in which their annals were
+kept&mdash;an obvious evolution from the picture-writing of the Aztecs that
+had advanced to a stage closely resembling the cross between ideaographs
+and an alphabet that the Coreans use&mdash;all of which I have dealt with
+exhaustively in my larger work. And he told me also, with a wonder that
+did not seem uncalled for, that several times in each year the Priest
+Captain retired to the very place in which we then were imprisoned, and
+remained there sometimes for as much as a whole month cut off from his
+people, without food or drink, while he communed with the gods.</p>
+
+<p>But what seemed strange to me, and also bitterly disheartening, was that
+this old man, notwithstanding the office that he held and his hungry
+love for ancient things, could tell me nothing of the treasure that King
+Chaltzantzin had stored away. He knew of this treasure, he said, only
+as a vague tradition; and although, at one time or another, he had
+explored every chamber in the Treasure-house, he never had found of this
+ancient deposit the smallest trace; for which excellent reason he had
+concluded that if ever there had been such a treasure it long since had
+been dispersed. No doubt&mdash;considering how useless to me, beyond the mere
+gratification of my own curiosity, would have been its discovery&mdash;my
+regret at this abrupt ending of my hopes was most unreasonable; but I
+confess that, so far as I myself was concerned, the very keenest pang of
+sorrow that I suffered through all that sorrowful time was when I thus
+learned that the arch&aelig;ological search that I had entered upon so
+hopefully, and that I had so laboriously prosecuted, had been but a
+fool's errand from first to last.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXXIV" id="XXXIV"></a>XXXIV.</h2>
+
+<h3>A MARTYRDOM.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Heavily and wearily the days dragged on as we lay in that dismal prison
+hewn from the mountain's heart; and as they slowly vanished there stole
+upon us a new sorrow, that was deeper and more searching than the
+doubting dread by which we were beset touching the cruel ending of our
+lives.</p>
+
+<p>Rayburn's wound&mdash;a very savage cut in the thigh, made by the jagged edge
+of a maccahuitl&mdash;from the first had been a dangerous one; and the danger
+had been aggravated by inflammation that had followed that long, hot
+journey across the lake, and by the rough handling that his bearers had
+given him, and by the excitement that had attended El Sabio's fiery
+outburst beside the sacrificial stone. Even Fray Antonio's skill in
+surgery, without which he assuredly would have quickly died, only barely
+sufficed to keep him alive while the fever was upon him; and when at
+last the fever left him, the little strength remaining to him grew less
+with every passing day. It was pathetic to see this man, who until then
+had been the very embodiment of rugged vigor, so worn with suffering
+that without Fray Antonio's tender assistance he scarce could move; and
+still more pathetic was it to hear him moaning in his pain, and uttering
+heart-sick longings for sunlight and fresh air, for need of which, Fray
+Antonio affirmed, he was dying there quite as much as because of his
+wound. Indeed, the chill chamber in the rock where he was lying was no
+fit place even for a well man at that time to dwell in; for the season
+of rains had come, and all the nights were cold and damp, while through
+the afternoons and in the night-time, during which portions of the day
+the rain fell in torrents, the whole mountain was shaken by the
+tremendous peals of thunder which roared and crashed about its crest.</p>
+
+<p>It was after one of poor Rayburn's pitiable outbreaks of weak moaning
+that Young led me away into the oratory, with the evident intention of
+delivering himself of some matter that pressed heavily upon his mind.</p>
+
+<p>"See here, Professor, I just <i>can't</i> stand this any longer," he said,
+when we were alone. "I'm goin' t' send word t' th' Priest Captain t'
+ask him if finishin' me off in short order won't make him willin' t' let
+Rayburn out o' this damp hole into some place where he can be
+comfortable, an' where in th' mornin's he can get some sun an' air.
+Rayburn won't mind bein' squarely killed after he's healthy again. He
+ain't th' kind t' be afraid of anything when he's feelin' all right. But
+it's just infernal cruelty t' kill him this way&mdash;it wouldn't be fair to
+a dog. So I'm goin' t' try what I can do. It's nothin' much t' do, any
+way&mdash;only runnin' a little ahead o' th' schedule, that's all."</p>
+
+<p>Oddly enough, something of a like purpose had been for some time past
+slowly forming in my own mind&mdash;though what I intended to do would have,
+I hoped, still better consequences; for my notion was to urge that for
+the pleasure that could be had from killing me, my companions should be
+given such freedom as was to be found in that rock-bound region beyond
+the Barred Pass. Therefore, when Young thus brought up the matter openly
+between us, I told him of my own intention; and with some emphasis I
+advised him that inasmuch as I first had thought of it, to me belonged
+the right to carry this project into execution; and especially was this
+right mine, I urged, because but for me neither he nor any of the rest
+of us&mdash;saving only, possibly, Fray Antonio&mdash;ever would have come into
+that valley at all. Thereupon we fell to wrangling somewhat hotly; for
+Young was a most pig-headed man when his mind was set upon anything, and
+his notions of argument even at the best of times were of the loosest
+kind.</p>
+
+<p>How our talk might have ended I cannot tell, for each of us most
+resolutely was determined to have his own way; but it actually did end
+because of an interruption by which we presently learned that a will
+finer and stronger than either of ours had been acting, while we had
+been only thinking, in a fashion that cut the ground completely from
+under us both. And all that followed within the next hour or two came
+upon us with so startling a suddenness that it seemed less like reality
+than like a terrible dream.</p>
+
+<p>The first intimation that we had that anything was upon us out of the
+common run of our drearily dull prison life was hearing a creaking noise
+that we knew must be caused by the raising of the grating that shut us
+in; and as we hurried out from the oratory into the long passage-way we
+saw a company of soldiers coming towards us, at the head of which was a
+priest. Fray Antonio and Pablo, startled as we had been by the sound
+caused by the opening of the grating and the tramp of feet, also had
+come out into the passage; but while Pablo evidently was wondering, even
+as we were wondering, what might be the purpose that these men had come
+to execute, the look upon the monk's face was of expectation rather than
+of surprise. And without waiting for the others to speak, he asked,
+eagerly: "Is it to be?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is to be," the priest answered; and it seemed to me that there was
+sorrow in the look that went with his words, and sorrow also in the tone
+of his voice; and that this man truly was sorrowful because of the
+message that he brought I doubt not, for he was the priest who had been
+jailer to Fray Antonio, and whose mind had seemed so open to receive the
+doctrine that Fray Antonio taught.</p>
+
+<p>But there was only joy in the bearing of the monk as his question thus
+was answered; and there was a ringing gladness in his voice as he
+replied&mdash;being most careful first to draw us away from the room in which
+Rayburn was lying&mdash;to our looks of wondering inquiry. "The Priest
+Captain has granted my request," he said, and added quickly: "Do not
+sorrow for me, my friends. Dying for the Faith is the most glorious
+ending that life can have; and happier still is he to whom, with this
+rare privilege, is given also that of dying that those whom he loves may
+yet be saved alive. The Priest Captain has promised that when I have
+paid this little debt of life you whom I love so greatly shall go
+free&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you believe him! He's a blasted liar from the word go!" Young
+struck in, clean forgetting, in the passionate sorrow that was rising in
+his breast, that what Fray Antonio so plainly had in mind to do he
+himself had been most strongly bent upon doing but a moment before. But
+Young spoke in English, and without heeding him Fray Antonio went on:
+"You two, and the boy, surely will live; and perhaps life may be given
+also to our friend. He is in God's hands. And then, until&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But further speech was not permitted to him. Two soldiers stepped
+forward and grasped his arms, yet first suffering him for a moment to
+clasp hands with us, and so led him towards the open grating; and behind
+him Young and I and Pablo were conducted in a like fashion by the
+guards. As we passed the room in which Rayburn lay we heard him moaning
+faintly; and so weak was he that it seemed to me a very likely thing for
+us to find him dead there upon our return&mdash;if, indeed, we ever returned
+at all.</p>
+
+<p>As we passed out into the inner court of the temple, where the sum shone
+joyously&mdash;for the day still was young, and the rain-clouds had but begun
+to gather about the mountain peaks&mdash;we heard a murmur in the air like
+the distant sound of bees buzzing; and as we entered the rear portal of
+the temple this sound grew louder, yet still was soft and blurred. In
+the temple, Fray Antonio was separated from us, being led towards the
+inner entrance of that subterranean passage which opened into the pit of
+the amphitheatre; and as we went onward to the great portal in the
+temple's front we cast towards him sorrowful looks, in which all the
+bitter pain that was in our hearts was concentrated, but had in answer
+from him, as he walked with elate bearing between his guards, only looks
+of most joyful hope in which was also a very tender love.</p>
+
+<p>The noise that at first had seemed to us like bees buzzing grew louder
+as we advanced, until, when we came out upon the open space before the
+temple, it swelled into a mighty roar. And there the cause of it was
+plain to us; for before us lay the great amphitheatre crowded with a
+seething multitude, and all the thousands gathered there were uttering
+savage cries of delight at thought of the savage spectacle that now in a
+few moments would gladden their fierce hearts. In the midst of this
+tumult we were hurried into a sort of balcony, heavily built of stone,
+that hung upon the slope of the amphitheatre; just behind and above
+which was a much larger balcony of richly wrought stone-work that was
+covered by a canopy of colored stuffs, and that had in its midst a sort
+of throne. And at sight of us a great shout went up, that in a moment
+died away into a hush of silence as the Priest Captain, with a company
+of priests about him, entered the balcony behind us and took his seat
+upon the throne.</p>
+
+<p>But in another instant the shouting burst forth again as Fray Antonio
+came out from the passage that opened beneath us, and in a moment was
+lifted bodily by his guards and placed upon the Stone of Sacrifice in
+plain view of all. I wondered as I saw that only soldiers accompanied
+him, and that there was no sign of the coming of the priests by whom the
+sacrifice would be made. But my wonder ceased, and the burning pain that
+then consumed me was a little lessened, as there came forth from the
+underground passage, guarded by four soldiers, a very tall, strong
+Indian, whose muscles stood out in great knots upon his lithe body and
+legs and arms, and immediately following him six others no less
+powerful&mdash;for then I knew that Fray Antonio was not to die the cruel and
+bloody death of a sacrificial victim, but was to have, in accordance
+with the Aztec custom, such chance of life as was to be found in
+fighting these seven men in turn and receiving his freedom when he had
+slain them all. Yet as I looked at the slim figure of the monk, and then
+at these burly giants ready to be pitted against him, I knew that but
+one result could issue from that unequal combat; and a sudden dizziness
+came upon me, and for a moment all around me was dark. Nor was this
+momentary darkness wholly imaginary; for just then&mdash;with a low growl of
+distant thunder&mdash;a fragment broke away from the great mass of black
+cloud that hung upon the crest of the cliff above us and drifted
+sluggishly across the face of the sun.</p>
+
+<p>When my dizziness had passed, and I could again see clearly, the warrior
+was standing upon the Stone of Sacrifice&mdash;naked save for his
+breech-clout, and armed with a round shield and a maccahuitl of hardened
+gold. The monk still wore his flowing habit, whence the hood had fallen
+back, so that his head was bare; in one hand he held his crucifix, and
+with the other he was motioning away the sword and shield that a soldier
+held out to him: at sight of which refusal on his part to be armed there
+was a shrill outcry among the multitude that the fight would not be
+fair; and to this sharp noise of strident voices there was added a
+solemn undertone that came in a low roll of thunder from the overhanging
+cloud.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="illus17" id="illus17"></a>
+<img src="images/illus17.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>FRAY ANTONIO'S APPEAL</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+
+<p>As though to still the clamor, the monk waved his hand; and when at this
+sign the outcries ceased, he asked&mdash;yet addressing not the Priest
+Captain but the whole mass of people gathered there&mdash;if certain words
+which he desired to utter would be heard. And in answer to him there
+went up a shout of assent, in which was drowned completely (save that
+we, being close beneath him, heard it) the Priest Captain's order that
+the fight should begin. And it struck me that the Priest Captain showed
+his appreciation of the critical situation with which he then was
+dealing, and his dread of the forces which an ill-timed word in
+opposition to the will of the multitude might let loose against him, by
+refraining from repeating his order when silence came again, and all the
+thousands gathered there leaned forward eagerly to hearken to what Fray
+Antonio would say.</p>
+
+<p>And what he did say was the most moving and the most exalted deliverance
+that ever came forth from mortal man. To that great multitude he
+preached there shortly, but with an eloquence that I doubt not was born
+directly of heavenly inspiration, a sermon so searching, so full of
+God's great love and tenderness, and so full also of the majesty of His
+law and of the long-suffering of His mercy and loving-kindness, that
+every word of it falling from his lips seemed to burn into the depths of
+all those heathen hearts. My own heart was thrilled and shaken as it
+never had been stirred before, and the boy Pablo wept as he listened;
+and even Young, to whom the spoken words had no meaning, grew pale, and
+sweat gathered upon his forehead as his soul was moved within him by the
+infinitely beseeching tenderness of Fray Antonio's voice: for most
+wonderfully did his voice rise and fall in its cadenced sweetness and
+entreaty, and there was a strangely vibrant quality in his tones that
+matched the tenor of his words, and so held all that vast multitude
+spellbound.</p>
+
+<p>As he spoke on, a hush fell upon them who listened; and then through the
+throng a tremor seemed to run, but less a sound of actual speech than a
+subtle manifestation that in a moment a great outburst of assent would
+come, and I felt within me that the work which Fray Antonio had dared
+death to accomplish already was triumphantly concluded; and so waited,
+breathless, to hear this heathen host proclaim its glad allegiance to
+the Christian God.</p>
+
+<p>But the Priest Captain also perceived how imminent was the danger that
+menaced the ancient faith, and dared to take the one chance left for
+saving it, and that a desperate one, by breaking in upon Fray Antonio's
+discourse with a ringing order that the fight should be no longer
+delayed; whereat a deep growl of dissent ran through the crowd, that was
+echoed in a still deeper roar of thunder in the dark sky. In truth, the
+gathering of the storm in the heavens above seemed to be wholly in
+keeping with the storm that with an equal celerity was gathering on the
+earth below. There was a heavy languor, a dense stillness in the air,
+and the cloud above us had drifted out from the face of the cliff so far
+that it now hung over all the city like a vast black canopy. From this
+sombre mass, that buried all beneath it in gloomy shadows, flashes of
+lightning shot forth that each moment increased in fiery intensity, and
+the rolling roar of thunder each moment grew louder and sharper in its
+dark depths. Even as the Priest Captain spoke there came a yet more
+vivid flash, and almost with it a crashing peal.</p>
+
+<p>At the word of command, so vehemently given, the warrior faced about
+upon Fray Antonio, and held high aloft his sword; but the monk, firmly
+standing there, while in his eyes shone so glorious a light that it
+seemed as though the wrath of outraged Heaven blazed forth from them,
+opposed to this earthly weapon only his out-stretched crucifix, and thus
+confronted the death that menaced him with so splendid a bravery that
+for an instant his huge antagonist was held still by a wonder that was
+born half of admiration and half of awe; and in the breathless hush of
+that supreme moment Fray Antonio cried out, in tones so clear and so
+ringing that his words were heard by all the thousands gathered there:</p>
+
+<p>"I call for help upon the living and the only God!"</p>
+
+<p>And even as these words still sounded in our ears there shot forth from
+the cloud above us a swift red flash of blinding light, and with this
+came a crash of thunder so mighty that the cliffs above strained and
+quivered, and great fragments of rock came hurtling down from them, and
+a shivering trembling surged through the whole mountain, so that we felt
+it swaying beneath our feet.</p>
+
+<p>And as we gazed in awe, through the gloom that from all parts of the
+heavens was gathering towards the height whereon we were, we saw before
+us God's wrath made manifest; for the warrior, still holding raised the
+metal sword that had tempted death to him, trembled, reeled a little,
+swayed gently forward, and then, with, a sudden jerk, swayed backward
+again, and so fell lifeless&mdash;his bare right arm, and all the length of
+his naked body to his very heel marked by a livid streak of bloody
+purple that showed where the thunder-bolt had passed. For a moment the
+monk also seemed stunned; and then, kneeling beside that
+lightning-blasted corpse, and holding his hands out-stretched towards
+heaven, whence his deliverance had come, he cried in a clear strong
+voice, of which the solemn tones rang vibrant through that awful
+silence: "The Christian God liveth and reigneth! Believe on Him whose
+love and whose mercy are not less tender than is terrible His
+transcendent power!"</p>
+
+<p>There was no mistaking the thrill of movement that ran through the
+multitude as these words were spoken. I drew a long breath of
+thankfulness, for I felt that Fray Antonio was saved, and that in
+another instant my ears would be nigh burst by the thunderous roar of
+all those thousands&mdash;won to him by his own most moving eloquence, and by
+sight of the miracle whereby his deliverance had been wrought&mdash;that he
+should be set free.</p>
+
+<p>And in this instant&mdash;in the very moment that this sigh escaped me, while
+yet the pause lasted before that great shout came&mdash;the Priest Captain
+sprang from, his seat above us into the balcony where we prisoners stood
+guarded, on downward into the arena below, and thence upon the Stone of
+Sacrifice&mdash;all with a demoniac agility most horrible to look upon in one
+of his withered age&mdash;and there, with a fierce thrust of a spear that he
+had caught from a soldier's hand in passing, he pierced Fray Antonio
+between the shoulders straight through the heart; and the monk, still
+grasping in his hands his crucifix, fell face downward upon the Stone of
+Sacrifice, and lay there dead!</p>
+
+<p>Then Itzacoatl, standing with one foot upon the monk's dead body, and
+grasping still the spear that he had planted in that noble heart, cried
+out, triumphantly, "Behold the victory and the vengeance of our Aztec
+gods!"</p>
+
+<p>And the multitude, swayed backward from the very threshold of the
+Christian faith, shouted together in one mighty voice, "Victory and
+vengeance for our gods!"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXXV" id="XXXV"></a>XXXV.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE TREASURE-CHAMBER.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Close in the wake of that great thunder-crash there burst upon us so
+mighty a flood of rain that it seemed as though the lightning had riven
+solid walls asunder within the thick black mass of overhanging vapour,
+and so had let loose upon us the waters of a lake. In a moment the whole
+pit of the amphitheatre was awash, knee-deep, and before those who were
+standing there could flounder to the steps leading upward they were
+buried to their waists&mdash;and this although the water was pouring out
+through the vent provided for it with such violence that we could hear
+the rush and gurgle of it above the dashing and roaring of the falling
+rain. And all the dark mass of cloud above us was aflame continuously
+with blinding flashes of red lightning, while a continuous crash of
+splitting peals of thunder rang through the shattered air.</p>
+
+<p>Doubtless this storm was our salvation. That the Priest Captain's
+intention, even from the first, had been to kill us also, and so make
+his victory complete, I do not for a moment doubt; but he was too shrewd
+to waste upon a few terrified spectators an exhibition that would carry
+with it a salutary demonstration of his power; and with the bursting of
+the flood upon us, the crowd that filled the amphitheatre had begun a
+tumultuous flight to the temple; going thither partly for shelter, and
+partly being awe-struck by what had passed before them and by the
+tremendous fury of the storm, that they might find safety in the
+abiding-place of their gods.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore, the order was given hurriedly that we should be taken back to
+our prison; in obedience to which command our guards led us through the
+temple&mdash;where they had difficulty in forcing a way for us through the
+dense throng that had gathered within its walls&mdash;and thence to the
+Treasure-house beyond; and they were in such haste to be quit of us,
+that they also might seek safety in the temple, that they scarce waited
+to close the grating behind us before they sped away.</p>
+
+<p>So overwhelming was the grief that had fallen upon us that for some
+moments we stood as though stunned where the guards had left us; and,
+for myself, my one regret was that the chance of the storm, by saving me
+yet a little while longer alive, had lost to me the happiness of dying
+in the same hour with the friend whom I had so strongly loved. I think
+that this thought was in Young's heart also, as he stood there silent
+beside me, the blood so drawn away from his face that a dull yellow
+pallor overspread his bronzed skin, while his breath came short and
+hard. As for the boy Pablo, his whole being was shattered. He sank down
+on the rock at our feet, and seemed to be moaning his very life out in
+long quivering sobs.</p>
+
+<p>But presently, as our minds grew steadier, the thought of Rayburn came
+to us; and the strain upon our heart-strings was relaxed a little by
+remembering that our lives still were worth holding fast to in order
+that we might minister to his needs. Yet when we came again into the
+room where he lay, it seemed at first as though he also was lost to us;
+for even in that faint light we saw that his face was a deadly white,
+and when we spoke to him he neither spoke nor moved. But, happily, our
+dread that he had died in that gloomy solitude was not realized; for as
+I laid my hand upon his bare breast I felt his heart feebly beating, and
+at the touch of my hand he sighed a little, and then slowly opened his
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"He's only swounded," Young cried, joyfully. "It's th' smotherin'
+shut-upness o' this forlorn hole he's lyin' in. There's a little more
+air out in th' big room. Just grab t'other end o' th' stretcher,
+Professor, an' we'll yank him out there&mdash;nobody's likely t' come in t'
+stop us while this storm lasts. An'&mdash;an' we must be careful how we talk,
+Professor, y' know," he added, in a lower tone, as we raised the
+stretcher. "It won't do for him t' know about&mdash;about <i>it</i> now." There
+was a break in Young's voice as he spoke, and I could feel by the
+momentary quiver of the stretcher that a shiver went through him as he
+thought of that "it," about which we must for a time hold our peace.</p>
+
+<p>Young bore the forward end of the stretcher, and as we came into the
+oratory I felt him start as he exclaimed, "What th' devil's broke loose
+here?"</p>
+
+<p>The darkness of the storm outside shrouded the oratory in a dusky
+twilight; but even through the shadows which lay thick about us we could
+see that there had been within this chamber some outbreak of
+extraordinary and tremendous violence; for the image of the god
+Huitzilopochtli had been cast down and broken into fragments, and just
+behind where it had stood there was a dark rift in the gold-plating of
+the walls, where several plates had been wrenched bodily away.</p>
+
+<p>A strong odor of sulphur hung heavily in the air, and, as I perceived
+it, the whole matter was plain to me. But Young sniffed at this odor
+suspiciously when we had brought the stretcher gently to rest upon the
+floor, and in a startled voice exclaimed, "Th' devil has been bustin'
+around in here for sure, an' he's left his regular home-made stink for a
+give-away!" and as he spoke there was manifest a decided bristling of
+his fringe of hair.</p>
+
+<p>I could not help smiling at this quaint proof of the shattered condition
+of Young's nerves&mdash;for, under ordinary circumstances, he was the very
+last man in the world to place faith in things supernatural&mdash;but I
+answered him promptly: "Then the devil did a stroke of honest business
+at the same time, for all this is the work of the same thunder-bolt, or
+of a part of it, that killed that Indian. Didn't you hear the rocks
+flying from the cliff where it struck?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's just what I was goin' t' say myself," Young replied, a little
+awkwardly. "An' that's what's the matter with Rayburn, an' made him
+swound away. How d' you find yourself now, old man?" he went on&mdash;rather
+glad to change the subject, I fancied&mdash;as Rayburn, at sound of his own
+name, moved a little.</p>
+
+<p>"I feel queer," Rayburn answered. "Sort of numb and dizzy. Where's the
+Padre?"</p>
+
+<p>"An' it's not much blame to you that you do feel queer," Young replied,
+hurriedly. "This last thing you've taken it into your fool head t' do is
+bein' busted all t' bits by a stroke o' lightnin'. Most folks would 'a'
+been satisfied with havin' their legs pretty much sliced off by
+Injuns&mdash;but reasonableness ain't your strongest hold, Rayburn; an' I
+guess it never was."</p>
+
+<p>Rayburn smile faintly as Young spoke, but instead of attempting to
+answer him&mdash;being still numbed by the heavy shock that he had
+received&mdash;he settled his head back upon the rolled-up coat that served
+him for a pillow, and languidly closed his eyes. Whereupon Young, seeing
+that there was nothing further that we could do for his comfort, betook
+himself&mdash;as his bent at all times was when any strange matter presented
+itself, and in this case with the half-crazed eagerness with which those
+upon whom a great sorrow has fallen seek instinctively to engage their
+minds with any trifling matter that will change the current of their
+thoughts&mdash;to investigating carefully the work of destruction that the
+thunder-bolt had wrought: examining the fragments of the idol, and the
+loosened plates of gold and the place on the wall whence these last had
+been wrenched away; which examination was the easier because the
+storm-cloud was leaving us&mdash;though the almost continuous loud rolling of
+the thunder still stunned our ears&mdash;and a stronger light came in through
+the opening in the roof.</p>
+
+<p>I seated myself beside Rayburn and paid no attention to what Young was
+doing; for my brooding sorrow was like a slow fire consuming me&mdash;as the
+tragedy that I had but just witnessed, and the infinite pathos that
+there was in seeing Rayburn thus miserably dying, overwhelmed me with a
+desolate despair. Even when Young called to me, in a tone so eager and
+so penetrating that at any other time I should have been startled into
+quick action by his words, I did not rouse myself to answer him; though,
+in a dull way, I knew that he would not thus have spoken unless some
+matter of great moment had aroused the full energy of his mind.</p>
+
+<p>"Professor! I say, Professor!" he repeated: "Get right up and come here.
+Don't sit there like a chuckle-headed chump. Get up, I tell you. Here's
+some sort of a show for us. Here's what looks like a way out o' this
+God-forsaken hole!"</p>
+
+<p>As I heard these words I did get up, and in a hurry, and so joined Young
+where he was kneeling on the floor close beside the rear wall of the
+oratory, directly behind where the idol had stood until the thunder-bolt
+had dashed it down. It was at this point, apparently, that the lightning
+had entered the chamber; for here several of the plates of gold with
+which the walls were covered&mdash;overlapping each other like
+fish-scales&mdash;had been loosened, while three of them had been wrenched
+entirely from their fastenings and had fallen down. As I joined him,
+Young excitedly pointed to the opening thus made, through which was
+visible not a solid wall of rock but a dark cavity, and from which was
+blowing a soft current of cool air.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a way out! It's a way out! I tell you," he cried. "This suck o'
+wind proves it. If we only can get some more o' these blasted plates
+loose we'll light out o' this and euchre the Priest Captain an' his
+whole d&mdash;n outfit yet! Ketch hold here, Professor, an' put your muscle
+into it for all you're worth. Grab right here; now!" And Young and I
+together pulled at the same plate with all our might and main. But for
+all the impression that we made upon it we might as well have tried to
+pull down the mountain; the plate did not stir. Young gave a hearty
+curse (and I confess that hearing him swearing in that natural way again
+was a real comfort to me), and then we took another pull; and all this
+while, so much does the thought of saving his life put cheer into a man,
+my heart was bounding within me and the hot coursing of my blood seemed
+like to burst my veins. Young's fervor was not less than mine, and we
+wrenched and tugged together, and never stopped to mark our cut and
+bleeding hands.</p>
+
+<p>"We've <i>got</i> t' do it!" Young exclaimed, as we paused at last, without
+having loosened the plate in the least degree. "There's some way o'
+workin' this thing, I know. It must be some sort of a door, an' if we
+only can get th' hang of it we'll be all right. Have you got your wind
+again, Professor? Let's try 'f we can't sort o' prize this plate out;
+it's a little loose. Just get your fingers under it an' we'll sort o'
+pull it up an' out at th' same time. So! Now sling your muscle into it.
+Heft!"</p>
+
+<p>We were stooping a little, and so had a strong purchase, and with all
+our united strength we heaved away together. There was a rattling of
+metal, a yielding of the plate so easy that our tremendous effort was
+out of all proportion to it; my fingers seemed suddenly to be nipped in
+a red-hot vice; Young uttered a yell of pain, and then we both were
+sprawling on our backs on the floor, while in front of us was a broad
+opening in the wall where a wide section of the panelling had risen
+upward (the plates sliding up under each other), and so had made an open
+way.</p>
+
+<p>"H&mdash;ll! how that did hurt!" Young mumbled, with his nipped fingers in
+his mouth; and I must say that the vigor of his language was not
+uncalled for, as I well understood by the pain that I myself was
+suffering. I never remember pinching my fingers so badly as I did then
+in the whole course of my life.</p>
+
+<p>However, we did not suffer our hurts, which were not really serious, to
+delay us in exploring this hidden place that so suddenly and with such
+unnecessary violence had opened to us. Pushing upward the ingeniously
+contrived door from the bottom, we easily raised it until an opening was
+discovered the full height of a man; and through this we went into a
+narrow passage in the rock that in a moment turned and so brought us
+into a room that was nearly as large as the oratory that we had just
+left, and that, as we presently found, actually communicated with the
+oratory by means of two narrow slits high up in the wall; which
+apertures here were plainly visible, but on the other side were so
+cleverly disguised by an ingenious arrangement of the overlapping plates
+as to be entirely concealed. Like the oratory, too, this room had an
+opening in its roof through which air entered, and so much light that we
+could see about us plainly. And the very first glance that I cast around
+me in this strange place assured me that, by sheer accident, we had
+found our way at last to the secret chamber wherein King Chaltzantzin's
+treasure had lain hidden for a thousand years.</p>
+
+<p>Rude shelves had been cut in the rock on all four sides of the room, and
+on these were ranged earthen pots of curious shapes, ornamented with
+strange devices that my newly acquired knowledge enabled me to
+recognize&mdash;to express the matter in the terms of our system of
+heraldry&mdash;as the arms of a king quartered with the arms of certain
+princely houses or tribes. On these shelves, also, were many quaintly
+wrought vessels and some small square boxes, all of which were of
+gold&mdash;together with a score or so of small idols moulded in clay or
+roughly carved in stone, in which last the workmanship was so far
+inferior to that of the earthen-ware pots and golden vessels as to show
+at a glance that they were the product of a much earlier and ruder age;
+but belonging to the same age as the gold-work, or to a period even
+later, was a very beautiful Calendar Stone most delicately carved in
+obsidian, that was identical, save in the matter of size, with the great
+Calendar Stone that now is preserved in Mexico in the National Museum.
+This was placed at one end of the room upon a carved pedestal; and at
+the opposite end of the room, the end farthest removed from the
+entrance, was a great stone image of the god Chac Mool. Lying upon the
+Calendar Stone was what at first I took to be a cross-bow made of gold;
+but more careful examination convinced me, especially in view of the
+place where I had found it, that this certainly was an arbalest&mdash;called
+also a Jacob's staff and a cross-staff&mdash;such as in no very ancient
+times, until the invention of the quadrant, was used by Europeans in
+taking the meridional altitude of the sun and stars.</p>
+
+<p>At the moment that I made this last most curious and exceedingly
+interesting discovery, Young, who had been investigating on his own
+account, gave a yell of delight, and bounded towards me flourishing his
+own brace of revolvers in his hands. "They're all here!" he cried. "All
+our guns are here, an' th 'ca'tridges too! Now we <i>have</i> got the bulge
+on these devils for sure!"</p>
+
+<p>As he spoke I also was thrilled with joy at the thought of the vengeance
+which this recovery of our arms might enable us to take upon Fray
+Antonio's murderers; but my joy was only momentary, for I could not but
+reflect that, after all, these Aztlanecas had but acted in accordance
+with their lights&mdash;excepting only the Priest Captain, for whom the most
+cruel death would be all too merciful&mdash;and that our slaying them would
+not be vengeance, but mere brutal revenge. Having which thoughts in
+mind, I answered, "At least we can shoot ourselves with them, and so be
+safe from death by sacrifice."</p>
+
+<p>"Not much we won't shoot ourselves," Young replied, with great energy;
+"an' nobody's goin' t' come monkeyin' 'round us with sacrifices, either.
+Why, man alive, we ain't goin' t' stay here&mdash;not by a jugful! We're
+goin' t' light right out o' this an' be smack off for home."</p>
+
+<p>"How?" I asked, blankly, and with real alarm; for the hot hope that had
+filled me at the thought of our having found a way of escape had
+vanished as I perceived that from this chamber there was no outlet save
+the hole in the roof; which hole also accounted for the current of air
+whereby my hope had been inspired. Therefore, when Young spoke in this
+extravagant fashion, the dread came over me that he was going mad.</p>
+
+<p>"How?" he answered, "why, through that Jack Mullins, of course. He <i>is</i>
+th' tippin' kind. I was just tryin' him, while you was pokin' 'round in
+that old rubbish, when I happened t' ketch sight of our guns; an' seein'
+them, you bet, made me bounce. Here goes for another shot at him! Stick
+somethin' under him t' keep him up when I heave."</p>
+
+<p>I was so dazed by the stunning wonder and by the joy that Young's words
+carried with them, that I obeyed his order mechanically. With a grave
+seriousness he seated himself upon the head of the idol; and as the
+figure and the stone base upon which it rested settled down at the end
+upon which he sat, and its other end correspondingly swung upward,
+showing beneath it a dark opening, I wedged up the mass with a heavy
+plate of gold that served as the lid of one of the boxes ranged upon the
+shelves.</p>
+
+<p>"It won't do for us both together t' go down there," Young said, as he
+rose from his seat and we peered into the dark cavity. "Mullins might
+take 't into his fool head t' shut himself up while we was down there,
+an' that ud mean cold weather for Rayburn an' Pablo. I'll just jump down
+them steps an' prospect a little, while you look after him t' see that
+he keeps steady;" and with these words down he went into the hole.</p>
+
+<p>In five minutes or so he joined me again. "It don't look like th' nicest
+place I ever got into," he said, "but I guess we'll have t' take th'
+chances on it. There's a little room down there, an' out o' that a kind
+of a back entry leads into an everlastin' big cave. But there seems t'
+be a sort of a path runnin' along in the cave&mdash;it's all as dark as th'
+devil&mdash;an' as paths mostly have two ends to 'em, I guess if we keep on
+long enough we'll get somewhere. We can't stay here, that's sure, so
+we've just got t' risk it, an' th' sooner we get Rayburn down there th'
+better. When he's solidly safe, then we can do some prospectin'&mdash;by
+good-luck we've got lots o' matches&mdash;an' see where that path goes to.
+Just sling on your guns, Professor, an' let's mosey back an' get th'
+percession started. It's hard lines on Rayburn t' tumble him into a hole
+like that when he's feelin' so bad; but I guess it's better t' take th'
+chances o' killin' him that way ourselves than it is t' let these devils
+do it for sure. Come on!"</p>
+
+<p>While he was speaking, Young had buckled his revolvers about his waist
+and had slung his rifle over his shoulder, and I also in like manner had
+armed myself&mdash;whereby was restored to me a most comforting feeling of
+strength. As for Young, the recovery of his weapons seemed to make him
+grow two inches taller, and he swaggered in his walk.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXXVI" id="XXXVI"></a>XXXVI.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE VENGEANCE OF THE GODS.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Almost in the moment that we thus found ourselves in condition to show
+fight again, the need for fighting seemed like to be forced upon us; for
+as we turned to leave the treasure-chamber we were startled by hearing a
+creaking sound that we knew came from the sliding upward of the grating
+in its metal grooves wherewith the entrance to our prison was made fast.</p>
+
+<p>We paused for a moment, and then Young motioned to me to follow him,
+stepping lightly; and as we came out into the oratory we heard a fresh
+creaking, by which we knew that the grating had been closed.</p>
+
+<p>"I guess it's only th' fellow puttin' in th' grub," Young whispered.
+"But go easy, Professor, an' have your guns all handy, so's you can
+shoot. If anybody <i>has</i> come in it won't do t' let 'em get out again.
+Only mind you don't shoot unless you really have to. If there's only two
+or three of 'em we'd better try t' club 'em with our Winchesters, so's
+not t' bring all hands down on us with a rush before we can get Rayburn
+away."</p>
+
+<p>As he spoke, we were assured that some one had entered when the grating
+was raised and had remained on our side of the grating when it was
+closed again, for we heard footsteps in the room where we ordinarily
+lay; and then the footsteps drew nearer, as though the unseen person
+were examining the other rooms in search of us, and we knew that in
+another moment or two this person would enter the chamber wherein we
+were. Rayburn was lying so quietly that it seemed as though he had
+fallen into a swoon again; and Pablo, as we could tell by hearing his
+sobs, had betaken himself to the room in which El Sabio was tethered in
+search of solacing companionship. Young motioned me to stand on one side
+of the entrance to the oratory, and himself stood on the other; and thus
+we waited, while the footsteps rapidly drew nearer, in readiness most
+effectually to cut off the retreat of whoever might enter the room.</p>
+
+<p>The man who did enter, passing between us, was the Priest Captain. As he
+saw the wreck of the idol, and the opening in the wall behind where the
+idol had stood, he uttered an exclamation of alarm and rage; and in the
+same moment some instinctive dread of the danger that menaced him caused
+him to turn suddenly around. So, for an instant, he confronted us&mdash;and
+never shall I forget the look of malignant hatred that was in his face
+as in that instant he regarded us, nor his quick despairing gesture at
+sight of Young standing there with his rifle raised. Even as he opened
+his mouth to cry out, before any sound came from his lips, the heavy
+barrel of Young's rifle swept downward, and with a groan he fell.</p>
+
+<p>Had the blow struck fairly it could not but have split the man's skull
+open; but he swerved aside a little as the rifle came down, and the
+weight of the stroke, glancing from his head, fell upon his shoulder. In
+an instant, dropping the rifle, Young was kneeling on his breast with a
+hand buried in the flabby flesh of his old throat, holding tight-gripped
+his windpipe. Excepting only Rayburn, Young was the strongest man I ever
+knew (though, to be sure, at that time he was weakened by his then
+recent wound and by the privations of his imprisonment), yet it was all
+that he could do to hold that old man down and to maintain his choking
+grasp. With a most desperate energy and a fierce strength that seemed
+out of all nature in a creature so lean and old and shrivelled, the
+Priest Captain writhed and struggled in his efforts to throw Young off,
+and sought also to grasp Young's throat with his long bony hands&mdash;while
+foam gathered on his thin lips, and his withered brown face grew black
+with congested blood, and his black eyes protruded until the half of the
+eyeballs, bloody with bursting reins, showed around the black, dilated
+pupils. And then him struggles slowly grew less and less violent, his
+knotted muscles gradually relaxed, his mouth fell open so that his
+tongue lolled out hideously, his legs and arms twitched a little
+spasmodically&mdash;and then he lay quite still.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="illus18" id="illus18"></a>
+<img src="images/illus18.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>YOUNG'S STRUGGLE WITH THE PRIEST CAPTAIN</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+
+<p>For a minute or two longer Young maintained his grasp. Then rising to
+his feet, breathing heavily, he wiped the sweat from his face as he
+exclaimed, at the same moment giving the dead body a vicious kick: "You
+black devil, take that! Now I've squared accounts with you for killin'
+th' Padre&mdash;and it's the best day's work I've ever done!"</p>
+
+<p>Though the struggle between the two had been a very desperate one, there
+had been no noise about it. Through the whole fight Rayburn had remained
+buried in his death-like stupor; and Pablo, though so near to us, had
+heard no sound of it at all.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, then, Professor," Young said, when he had got his wind back,
+"we've got t' bounce. Th' first thing t' do is t' fasten that gratin' on
+our side, so's nobody can get in here t' bother us while we're doin' our
+skippin'. I guess we can sort o' wedge it fast so's t' stand 'em off for
+an hour or two, anyway, an' that's time enough to give us a fair start."</p>
+
+<p>"We can do something better than that, I think," I said, as we went
+together towards the grating. "Unless I am much mistaken, only the
+Priest Captain knew about this sliding door and the treasure-chamber
+beyond it. If we can restore to their places those three plates, and can
+close the door behind us, I am persuaded that so far as pursuit of us is
+concerned we shall be absolutely safe."</p>
+
+<p>"Gosh!" Young exclaimed. "D' you know, Professor, I wouldn't 'a' given
+you credit for havin' that much common-sense. It's a big idea, that is,
+an' we'll try it on. But, all th' same, we've got t' make things as
+sure as we can, an' this little job must be attended to first."</p>
+
+<p>As we approached the grating we saw two of the temple guard standing
+outside of it, apparently waiting for the Priest Captain's return; and
+these men looked at us with such evident suspicion that I feared for the
+success of our plans. "Just talk to 'em," Young said, hurriedly. "Talk
+to 'em about th' last election, or chicken-coops, or anything you
+please, while I take a look 'round an' sec how we're goin' t' get this
+job done."</p>
+
+<p>Young dropped behind me, and then aside and so out of sight, as I
+advanced to the grating and spoke to the men, whose faces somewhat
+cleared as I told them that the Priest Captain desired that they should
+wait there a little longer. And then I managed to hold their interest
+for some minutes while I spoke about the devil that was in El Sabio, and
+about other devils of a like sort whom I had known in my time. While I
+thus spoke I heard a little tinkling sound, as of metal striking against
+stone&mdash;but if the soldiers also heard it they paid no attention to
+it&mdash;and then Young whispered, "We're solid now; come on!" Whereupon I
+quickly ended my imaginative discourse upon demoniac donkeys, and with
+no appearance of haste we walked away.</p>
+
+<p>"It was just as easy as rollin' off a log," Young said, jubilantly.
+"There was a big gold peg stickin' there all ready t' slide into a slot,
+so's t' hold th' gratin' down, an' all I had t' do was t' slide it. I
+guess, with a plug like that holdin' that gratin' fast, they'll need
+jacks t' open it. Th' only other way t' start it 'll be rammin' it with
+a bit o' timber; but bustin' it in that way 'll take a lot o' time, an'
+half an hour's plenty for all we've got t' do. If you're straight in
+thinkin' nobody knows about that slidin' door we're solid."</p>
+
+<p>I felt very sure in my own mind that I was right in believing that only
+the Priest Captain had known of this secret opening; for, after him, the
+most likely person to have knowledge of it was the keeper of the
+archives, and that he was altogether ignorant of it I was well assured.
+Therefore I most cheerfully helped Young, so far as my unskilful hands
+could be useful, in the work of restoring the gold plates to the places
+whence the lightning had wrenched them loose; and when this work was
+done, so cleverly did Young manage it, there was no possibility of
+distinguishing the door from any other portion of the wall; nor was
+there then a sign of any sort remaining to show that by the passage of a
+thunder-bolt the idol had been destroyed.</p>
+
+<p>As we were finishing this piece of work we heard the soldiers at the
+grating calling to the Priest Captain&mdash;at first in low tones, and then
+more loudly; and then we heard them give a yell together, which
+convinced us that they had tried to raise the grating and had found that
+it was fastened down.</p>
+
+<p>The ten minutes that followed was the most exciting time that I ever
+passed through. Notwithstanding the secure fashion in which the grating
+was fastened, we could not but dread that those outside had knowledge of
+some means whereby it could be loosened; and in any event there was no
+doubt but that they could force a way in upon us by beating it down.
+Therefore we knew that there was no safety for us until we were fairly
+out of the oratory, and had closed behind us the sliding door&mdash;and with
+such difficult material to deal with as Rayburn, who still lay in a
+heavy stupor, and Pablo, whom sorrow had wellnigh crazed, we found it
+hard to make such haste as the sharp exigency of our situation required.
+Pablo, indeed, was so lost in wonder at finding the broken idol, and the
+dead body of the Priest Captain, and a door open in the solid wall, that
+what little remained of his wits disappeared entirely; so that we had
+almost to carry him&mdash;while El Sabio most intelligently followed
+him&mdash;into the treasure-chamber, and there we left the two together while
+we returned for Rayburn. And as we lifted the stretcher our hearts
+bounded, for at that instant there was a tremendous crash at the
+grating; whereby we knew that those without had brought to bear against
+it some sort of a battering-ram that they might beat it in.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a close call," Young said between his teeth; and added, as we
+rested the stretcher inside the passage while we closed behind us the
+sliding door: "If you're off your base, Professor, an' they do know th'
+trick o' this thing, it may be all day with us yet&mdash;but it's a comfort
+t' know that even if they do finish us we'll everlastin'ly salt 'em
+first with our guns."</p>
+
+<p>We heard another great crash behind us, but faintly now that the sliding
+door was closed, as we went onward into the treasure-chamber; and here
+we heard the like sound again, more clearly, through the slits cut in
+the wall. As gently as our haste, and the awkwardness of that narrow
+way would permit, we lifted Rayburn from the stretcher, and so carried
+him down the short flight of stairs beneath the upraised statue to the
+little chamber that there was hollowed in the rock. Here we laid him
+upon the stretcher again; and then, without any ceremony whatever, we
+bundled Pablo and El Sabio down the hole. It was a smaller aperture,
+even, than that through which we had come forth from the Cave of the
+Dead, and how El Sabio was able to condense himself sufficiently to get
+through it will remain a puzzle to me to my dying day.</p>
+
+<p>All this while we could hear plainly, through the slits in the wall, the
+crashing blows which every minute or so were delivered against the
+grating, together with a shrill roar of shouts and yells; and we knew
+that before this vigorous assault the grating must give way within a
+very brief period, and so let in the whole yelping pack. If I were right
+in my belief that the Priest Captain alone knew of the secret outlet to
+the oratory, we still would be safe enough, and could make some
+preliminary examination of the cave before we closed the way behind us
+irrevocably by letting the statue fall back into its place; but if I
+were mistaken, then there was nothing for us but to take the chance of
+life and death by going on blindly into that black cavern, after wedging
+fast the under side of the statue in such a way that it no longer could
+be swung open from above.</p>
+
+<p>It was most necessary, therefore, that we should see what course our
+enemies would take when they came into the oratory and found it empty
+of us, and the idol broken, and the Priest Captain lying dead there;
+and, that we might compass this end, Young and I returned into the
+treasure-chamber and mounted upon a ledge that seemed to have been
+provided for a standing-place&mdash;whence we had a clear view into the
+oratory through the slits in the wall. And at the very moment that we
+thus stationed ourselves there reverberated through those rock-hewn
+chambers a deafening crash and a jingling clang of metal and a rattle of
+falling stone; and with this came a yell of triumph and a rush of
+footsteps&mdash;and then, in an instant, the oratory was full of soldiers and
+priests, all yelling together like so many fiends.</p>
+
+<p>But upon this violent hubbub there fell a hush of awe and wonder as
+those who had thus tumultuously entered the oratory saw the Priest
+Captain lying dead amid the fragments of the shattered idol, and
+perceived that the prisoners who had been shut within these seemingly
+solid walls had vanished utterly away; and then a sobbing murmur, that
+presently swelled into moans and cries of terror, arose from the throng;
+and in a moment more, seized by a common impulse, the whole company
+bowed downward, in suppliant dread of the gods by whom such direful
+wonders had been wrought.</p>
+
+<p>Young gave a long sigh of relief, and with a most mouth-filling oath
+whispered in my ear, "They haven't tumbled to it, an' we're all right!"</p>
+
+<p>As we gazed at these terror-stricken creatures, a thought occurred to me
+on which I promptly acted. "Get both of your revolvers pointed through
+that hole," I whispered to Young. "Point high, so that the balls will
+not hit anybody; and when I begin to shoot do you shoot also, and as
+quickly as you can. Mind, you are not to hit anybody," I added; for I
+saw by the look on Young's face that he longed to fire into the crowd
+point-blank. For answer he gave me a rather sulky nod of assent; but I
+saw by the way that he held his pistols that my order was obeyed. "Now,"
+I said, "Fire!"&mdash;and as rapidly as self-acting revolvers would do it, we
+poured twenty-four shots through the slits in the wall. No doubt several
+people were hurt by balls bounding back from the rock, but I am
+confident that nobody was killed.</p>
+
+<p>When we ceased firing it was impossible to see anything in the oratory,
+because of the dense cloud of sulphurous smoke wherewith it was filled;
+but such shrieks and yells of soul-racking terror as came from beneath
+that black canopy I hope I may never hear again. I waited a little,
+until this wild outburst had somewhat quieted, and then&mdash;placing my
+mouth close to one of the openings and speaking in a voice that I tried
+to make like that of Fray Antonio&mdash;I said, in deep and solemn tones,
+"Behold the vengeance of the strangers' God!"</p>
+
+<p>What effect my words produced I cannot tell. Our firing must have
+loosened a fragment of rock between the gold plating that lined the
+oratory and the outer surface of the wall, and even as I spoke this
+fragment fell. With its fall the opening was irrevocably closed.</p>
+
+<p>"That was a boss dodge," said Young, as he recharged his revolver.
+"Those fellows 'll just think hell's broke loose in here, for sure; and
+I guess after they've onct fairly got outside they'll rather be skinned
+alive than come back again. But what did you say to 'em? Hearin' you
+talkin' like th' Padre, that way, gave me a regular jolt. Don't you
+think, though, maybe it was a little bit risky t' give ourselves away?"</p>
+
+<p>But when I had repeated in English the words which I had spoken, Young
+very seriously shook hands with me. "Shake!" he said. "I've done you
+injustice, Professor. Sometimes I've thought that you was too much
+asleep for your own good&mdash;but if anybody ever did anything more wide
+awake than that, I'd like t' know <i>what</i> he did and who he was. Why,
+when those fellows tell about all that's been goin' on in here&mdash;about
+their busted idol, an' their dead Priest Captain, an' our skippin,' an'
+this row our shootin' has made, an' then about th' Padre's ghost talkin'
+to 'em that way&mdash;it's bound t' give 'em such a jolt that th' whole
+outfit 'll slew smack round an' be Christians right off!"</p>
+
+<p>Some such notion as this had been in my own mind as I executed the plan
+that on the spur of the moment I had formed. When, later, I thought
+about it more calmly, I could not but regret, for Fray Antonio's sake,
+my hasty action; for he would have been the very last man to approve of
+such stringent methods of advancing the Christian faith. If any result
+came from my demonstration, it certainly came through terror; and the
+essence of Fray Antonio's doctrine, as it was also of his own nature,
+was gentleness and love.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXXVII" id="XXXVII"></a>XXXVII.</h2>
+
+<h3>THROUGH DARKNESS TO LIGHT.</h3>
+
+
+<p>"I guess we're solid now, as far as bein' bothered by those sacred
+devils goes," Young said, as we stepped down from the ledge of rock on
+which we had been standing; "but this ain't no time t' take no chances,
+an' th' sooner we see what show we've got for gettin' anywhere through
+that cave, th' better it'll be. An' we've got t' look after Rayburn.
+He's closter t' handin' in his checks t'-day than he's been at all. Just
+think o' him keepin' still through all that row, an lettin' himself be
+yanked around like a bag o' meal without takin' any notice of it! But
+there's just a squeal of a chance for him if we do get clear away.
+Knowin' that he's safe 'll do him more good, even, than fresh air an'
+sunshine&mdash;an' oh Lord! how good fresh air an' sunshine 'll be, if ever
+we do strike 'em again!"</p>
+
+<p>When we descended the stair-way again to the little hollow in the rock
+where Rayburn was lying, we found that he still remained in his dull
+stupor and took no notice of our coming. Close beside were Pablo and El
+Sabio, huddled together for mutual support in this very trying passage
+of their lives. El Sabio, indeed, was a most melancholy and dejected
+creature, for his short commons and his long confinement had taken the
+spirit out of him pretty thoroughly; but for our purposes just then,
+when his tractability was very necessary to us, it was a piece of
+good-fortune that he had fallen into so low a way. As for Pablo, the boy
+was in so dazed a condition that I feared greatly he would wholly lose
+his wits.</p>
+
+<p>There was only a faint suggestion of light in that deeply hidden place,
+and Young struck a match that he might see to begin his explorations.
+"Well, I'll be shot," he exclaimed, as the wax-taper shed its clear
+light around us, "if here ain't a conductor's lantern hangin' up all
+ready for us, an' a can o' kerosene oil!" As he lighted the lantern, and
+the letters F. C. C. showed clearly on the glass, he added, in a tone of
+still greater amazement: "Ferro-Carril Central! Why, it b'longs t' one
+o' th' boys on th' Central!&mdash;but how th' dickens did it ever get <i>here</i>?
+An' here's a lot of old clothes&mdash;th' sort o' rags th' low-down Greasers
+wear. An' I'm blest," he went on, as he picked up a scrap of paper from
+the floor, "if this ain't a Mexican Central ticket from Leon to Silao!
+It's dated last June, an' it's only punched once, so 't couldn't 'a'
+been used all the way. I say, Professor, am I asleep or awake?"</p>
+
+<p>As I examined the several articles which we had come upon so strangely
+in this incongruous plate, a flood of light was let in upon my mind, and
+with this came also the glad certainty that the way before us to freedom
+was open and assured. My belief that the Priest Captain had been in
+communication with the outside world no longer admitted of a doubt, for
+here was absolute proof of it: the clothes which he wore when making his
+expeditions into the nineteenth century; the lantern that he had stolen
+in order the more easily to find his way through the cave; the railway
+ticket that he had but lately used. In an instant I had connected all
+this with what the guardian of the archives had told me concerning the
+Priest Captain's habit of retiring for long periods of time to one of
+the chambers in which we had been imprisoned, and the whole matter was
+as plain to me as day; and I knew now, that in order to guard against
+discovery, he, or one of his predecessors, to whom this secret way must
+also have been known, had caused to be set in place the fastening by
+which the grating could be secured upon its inner side; which fastening,
+within that very hour, had been the means of saving our lives.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Young, dryly, when I had briefly explained these several
+matters, "I guess he won't pull th' wool over nobody's eyes any more!
+An' now you an' me 'll do some prospectin'. We must go back upstairs,
+before we pull out for good, an' bag what there is there that's worth
+carryin' off; but th' first thing t' do is t' get Rayburn where he'll be
+comfortable an' safe. Until that's attended to we've got t' be careful
+an' go slow; so we'll rouse up this fool of a Pablo, an' get it into his
+head that if he hears anybody comin' he's t' knock th' plug from under
+Mullins an' let him down, an' then chock him fast with a rock
+underneath. It's not likely that anybody <i>will</i> come, an' even if they
+do, I don't think that they'll know th' trick about Mullins' tippin',
+for that's a point that I'll bet a whole kag o' beer th' Priest Captain
+didn't give away t' nobody. I tell you, Professor, there wasn't any
+flies on that old man, now was there? He was a wicked old devil, an'
+I'm glad I did for him; but he was just an everlastin' keen one, an' a
+rustler from th' word go!"</p>
+
+<p>In the dazed condition in which he then was, we scarcely should have
+ventured to place Pablo in a position of such grave responsibility had
+there been any likelihood of his being called upon to perform the duty
+with which we charged him; but we were well satisfied that to the Priest
+Captain alone had been known the secret of the sliding door, and that,
+consequently, the need for closing the passage leading upward into the
+treasure-chamber would not arise. Without any fear for Rayburn's safety;
+therefore, we left him lying in the little room at the foot of the
+stair-way, and thence went forth through a cleft in the rock&mdash;that
+seemed to be a natural crevice, where the mountain was split apart&mdash;and
+so came into a natural cave of such great size that the light of the
+lantern was not sufficient to enable us to see its roof nor its farther
+wall. Save that the well-defined path that we followed was continuously
+steep, we did not find walking difficult, for the fragments of rock with
+which the floor of the cave everywhere was strewn had been lifted aside
+carefully, so as to make a smooth and easy way. And only in one
+place&mdash;where for a short distance the path skirted the edge of a black
+gulf, in the depths of which we could hear the rush of water&mdash;was any
+part of it dangerous.</p>
+
+<p>For near an hour we went onward, all the while steadily ascending; and
+then, as we turned a corner, we saw a long way before us a faintly
+luminous haze. It was so very faint that only by holding the lantern
+behind us, and then closing our eyes for a moment, could we assure
+ourselves that what we saw really was light at all; but when we turned
+another corner, presently, the light, though still faint, was
+unmistakable; whereat Young gave a whoop of joy, and we quickened our
+steps in our eager longing to behold the sunshine that we knew could not
+be far away. Suddenly the path dipped downward, and then another turn
+brought us into light so strong that the lantern no longer was needed to
+show us where to tread; and by a common impulse we gave a great glad
+shout together and went onward at a run; and so, running and shouting
+like the crazy creatures that truly for the time being we were, we made
+one turn more, and then beheld before us, reaching away broadly and
+openly in a fashion to give one a sense of most glorious freedom, a
+vastly wide plain, over which everywhere the blessed sunshine blazed
+full and strong. As we stood together in the mouth of the cave for a
+moment in silence&mdash;for no words seemed strong enough to express the
+bursting gladness that was in our hearts&mdash;two short blasts of a whistle,
+wafted upward on the light breeze that was blowing towards us from the
+plain, sounded very faintly but clearly in our ears. Young started as he
+heard this sound, and as he turned towards me he held out his hand and
+said, in a voice that was husky and tremulous, "Professor, that's a
+locomotive whistle, an' th' d&mdash;&mdash;n fool is&mdash;is whistlin' 'down brakes'!"
+And in these curiously chosen, yet not unmeaning words, did we celebrate
+our deliverance.</p>
+
+<p>When we returned to Rayburn&mdash;and as we now knew the way, and as almost
+the whole of it was downhill, our return was accomplished rapidly&mdash;some
+of the joyous strength that we had gained seemed to be imparted to him.
+He opened his eyes as we stooped over him, and there seemed to be more
+life in them than there had been through all that day.</p>
+
+<p>"Rouse up, old man!" Young cried cheerily. "We've struck th' trail out
+o' this cussed hole at last, an' we're goin' t' hike you right along to
+where you'll get some of God's sunshine again, an' some air that's fit
+for a white man t' breathe;" which words brought still more light into
+Rayburn's eyes, and a little color came into his pale cheeks as we told
+him of the open way that we had found to light and life.</p>
+
+<p>"Where's the Padre?" he asked, as we together raised the stretcher,
+while Pablo, holding the lantern and leading El Sabio, went on ahead of
+us. Fortunately Rayburn could not see Young's face as he answered: "Th'
+Padre's&mdash;well, th' Padre's just gone on up th' line. You've got t' hold
+your jaw, Rayburn. You ain't fit t' talk; an' while we're packin' you
+along we can't talk either. Come on, Professor; and you, Pablo," he
+added, in his jerky Spanish. "Be careful with that lamp or I'll break
+the head of you!"</p>
+
+<p>Although a good third of his flesh had wasted away, Rayburn would have
+been a heavy load for us to carry over level ground, even had we been
+hale and strong. Worn as we then were by our prison-life, we found
+carrying him up that long steep path in the heart of the mountain a
+weary work that only the hope and joy that strengthened us enabled us
+to accomplish. As it was, we went so slowly, and made so many halts for
+rest, that the sun had sunk almost to the level of the distant
+mountains, wherewith that great plain was bordered to the westward, when
+at last our toilsome journey was at an end. But we thought nothing of
+the heaviness of our labor as we saw the glad look that came into his
+face when he gazed out over that broad expanse of sunlit landscape, and
+snuffed eagerly the sweet fresh air, and so felt his soul grow light
+within him as he realized that he once more was safe and free.</p>
+
+<p>In the mouth of the cave&mdash;within its shelter, yet where he could see out
+freely, and so have constantly in his mind the comforting thought of his
+deliverance&mdash;we made a bed for him of soft pine-branches, which some
+near-by trees gave us; and we took care that this couch should be so
+thick and so evenly laid that he would lie easily upon it; for we knew
+that many days, perhaps even weeks, must pass before we could venture to
+put so heavy a strain upon his strength as would come when we carried
+him down that rough mountain-side, and so began our journey towards home.</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately, a little spring came out from the rock, clear and cool,
+just inside the cave; and game was so abundant on that mountain-side
+that Young came back presently from a foraging expedition with half a
+dozen codornices, that he had come so close to as to shoot with his
+revolver, and a jack-rabbit that he actually had caught with his hands
+as it jumped up almost beneath his feet; which excellent fare made a
+most satisfying supper for all of us; and eating it so added to
+Rayburn's strength&mdash;as we could tell by the fuller tones of his voice,
+and by his being able to move a little on his bed without our helping
+him&mdash;as to rouse in us a warm hope that the death that seemed so near to
+him might yet be thrust away. Our chief concern, lest the shock that
+would come to him of knowing it should fairly kill him, was to hide from
+him for the present the knowledge that Fray Antonio was dead; and to
+compass this end we plumply told him the flat-footed lie that the monk
+had gone on in search of some town whence he might bring back horses and
+supplies; and so, for a time, we laid at rest his doubts.</p>
+
+<p>In his own original way, also, Young tried to put heart into him. "You
+see, old man," he said, "you've just <i>got</i> t' pull through. Think how
+d&mdash;&mdash;d ashamed o' yourself you'd feel after you was dead when you had t'
+tell all th' folks in heaven that you was killed by nothin' better'n a
+mis'rable chump of an Injun! That was what bothered poor old Steve
+Hollis when he was handin' in <i>his</i> checks&mdash;'t least it was th' same
+general sort of idea. I guess you never knew Steve, did you, Rayburn? He
+was an old railroader&mdash;had been a-workin' on th' Old Colony one way and
+another for more'n twenty years. When I knowed him he used t' run th'
+steamboat express from Boston t' Fall River&mdash;their boss train on that
+blasted old road. Steve owned a house clost t' th' line just a little
+way out o' Braintree; an' when 't was his day off he'd mostly slide down
+from Fall River on No. 2, an' walk out home from Braintree along th'
+track. Nobody ever know'd just how 't happened&mdash;Steve was th' soberest
+man I ever knowed; never drunk a drop o' nothin'&mdash;but one day, as he was
+walkin' out home, No. 15, that was th' slow freight from Boston t'
+Newport, ketched him an' got in its work on him&mdash;an' that was th' end o'
+Steve. It didn't kill him right smack off, an' I went down t' see him;
+for I did think th' world of old Steve. He was a-layin' in his bed, an'
+I could see that he was a-most gone when I got there; but he chippered
+up a little for a minute as I shook hands with him and ast him how he
+was. He said he was poorly; an' then he kep' quiet for a while. Then he
+kind o' ketched his breath an' seemed t' want t' say somethin'. So I
+bent over him, an' he said, in a kind of a whisperin' groan: 'Jus' think
+of it, Seth, what did it was th' slow freight! That's what cuts me;
+that's what cuts me the worst kind. I wouldn't a-minded if 't had been
+th' express&mdash;them things will happen, an' they've got t' come. But here
+I've been a-railroadin' for more'n twenty year, an' t' think o' <i>me</i>
+bein' busted by that d&mdash;&mdash;n slow freight!' An' then he turned over, an'
+give a sort of a grunt, an' died."</p>
+
+<p>I am not sure that I myself should have selected this particular story
+to tell to Rayburn just then; but the moral that it contained
+unquestionably was a sound one, and, in a way, was calculated to impress
+upon him strongly the conviction that his duty was to get well.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXXVIII" id="XXXVIII"></a>XXXVIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>KING CHALTZANTZIN'S TREASURE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Whether or not Young's story had this good effect upon Rayburn, I am not
+prepared to say; but it is certain that he slept well that night&mdash;his
+first good night's sleep for many weeks&mdash;and that when morning came he
+was so much stronger and brighter as to fill us with a still more
+earnest hope that he was well started on the way to recovery.</p>
+
+<p>Young quickly brought in some birds for our breakfast, and when the meal
+was finished he took me aside and said: "Now, Professor, lets me an' you
+go back t' that hole an' bring away all there is there that's worth
+carryin'. It's not much, I guess, but it's better'n nothin'. It just
+makes me sick t' think of all that gold, that ud 'a' made our
+everlastin' fortunes if we'd only been able t' pack it along with us.
+There was millions an' millions there, I s'pose&mdash;an' it 'll never do us
+any more good than if we'd never seen it at all!" and as Young spoke he
+heaved a very melancholy sigh. "But we may as well grab all we can get,"
+he went on, more cheerfully. "There was a lot o' gold boxes an' jugs in
+th' room where Mullins is; an' maybe there's somethin' that's worth
+havin' in all them little pots. Let's go back an' see, anyway. Rayburn's
+lookin' almost all right this mornin'; and Pablo's got his wits back
+now, an' can give him anything he wants."</p>
+
+<p>For my own part I did not desire, because of their money value, any of
+the articles which I had seen in the treasure-chamber; but I did very
+earnestly long to possess myself of that most curious arbalest, and I
+desired also to examine carefully&mdash;because of the discoveries of great
+arch&aelig;ological value which I hoped to make&mdash;the contents of the gold
+boxes and vases and earthen jars. Therefore, Rayburn having expressed
+his entire willingness that we should leave him, I assented readily to
+Young's proposition; whereupon Young lighted the lantern and we set off.</p>
+
+<p>As we entered again the treasure-chamber there was within me a strong
+feeling of awe. During our hurried passage through it, the imminent
+danger in which we were, and then the excitement of the scene in the
+oratory, and then the joyfulness of our finding a way of escape, had
+prevented me from realizing how wonderful was the deposit that this room
+contained; a deposit that certainly had lain there for not less than a
+thousand years, and that unquestionably was the most perfect surviving
+trace of the most intelligent and most interesting people that in
+prehistoric times dwelt upon this continent. Which strange reflections,
+now that my mind was free to entertain them and to dwell upon them,
+aroused within me a feeling of such reverent wonder that I hesitated for
+some moments before I could bring myself to disturb what thus through so
+long a sweep of ages had remained sacredly inviolate.</p>
+
+<p>But reverence, as he himself would have said, was not Young's strongest
+hold; in truth, I am persuaded that there was not an atom of it in his
+entire composition; and as I stood hesitating beside the statue of
+Chac-Mool he briskly called to me: "Come right along, Professor; there
+ain't nobody t' stop us now. We've got th' drop, you might say, on th'
+whole outfit, an' we can do just as we blame please. This looks like a
+badly kept drug store, don't it?" he went on, "with all these pots an'
+boxes an' little jars stuck round on th' shelves. Well, here goes t' see
+what's in 'em: not much o' nothin', I guess; but then it <i>might</i> be
+di'monds, an' that just would be gay!"</p>
+
+<p>As Young spoke he thrust his hand into one of the earthen jars, and
+thereby set flying such a cloud of dust that for some seconds his
+violent sneezing prevented him from examining the small object that he
+had brought forth from the jar and held in his hand; and when he did
+examine this object an expression of intense disgust appeared upon his
+face, and he exclaimed, indignantly, "Why, it's nothin' but a fool
+arrow-head!"</p>
+
+<p>I could not but laugh at Young as I took the arrow-head from him. For my
+purposes, this beautifully carved piece of obsidian was far more
+precious than a diamond would have been; and I tried&mdash;quite
+unsuccessfully, however&mdash;to arouse his interest in this proof of the
+high degree of skill to which the prehistoric races of America had
+attained in the manipulation of an exceedingly hard yet delicate variety
+of stone; and I added that not less interesting was the proof thus
+afforded us of the great value which these same races attached to
+implements of war.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, come off with your prehistoric races, Professor!" he growled. "A
+whole car-load o' rubbish like this wouldn't be worth a nickel t'
+anybody but a scientific crank like you. If this is th' sort o' stuff
+that that old king o' yours thought was worth hidin', I guess he must
+'a' been off his head. But that pot may 'a' got in by mistake. Before I
+get too much down on him I'll give him another show." With which words,
+but cautiously, that the dust might not be disturbed, he thrust his hand
+into another jar, and was mightily resentful upon finding that what he
+brought forth from it was only the head of a lance. However, the
+determination to give King Chaltzantzin a chance to prove his sanity,
+together with the hope that something of real value might be found, led
+him to continue his investigations, and he presently had examined all
+the jars ranged on two sides of the room; and his grumbling curses
+increased constantly in vigor as jar after jar yielded only arrow-heads,
+and lance-heads, and chisel-shaped pieces of obsidian, that I perceived
+must have been intended for the making of the cutting edges of the
+maccahuitl, or Aztec sword; but, for my part, all of these things filled
+me with the liveliest pleasure as I took them from Young and attentively
+examined them; for the delicate and perfect workmanship that they
+exhibited showed them to have been made by a people that had reached the
+highest development of the Stone Age.</p>
+
+<p>"This business is gettin' worse, instead o' better," Young said,
+gloomily, as he began his search on the third side of the room by
+opening one of the small gold boxes. "The stuff in here is nothin' but a
+mean sort o' wrappin'-paper with pictures on it&mdash;like that old map o'
+yours that got us started on this tomfoolin' treasure-hunt. I s'pose
+<i>you'll</i> just have a fit over it!" And as I uttered an eager cry of
+delight, and bent over this casket that contained such inestimable
+riches, he gave a sniff of contempt, and added: "There, I thought so.
+You think more o' that rotten old stuff than you would o' gold dollars.
+Well, there's no accountin' for tastes, and it takes all sorts o' people
+t' make th' world." But I paid no attention to him as I rapidly glanced
+over these priceless manuscripts; and then had my cup of happiness
+filled absolutely to overflowing by the glad discovery that in every one
+of the gold boxes, of which there were nine in all, treasures of a like
+sort were stored. In the supplemental volume (in elephant folio) to my
+<i>Pre-Columbian Conditions on the Continent of North America</i> these
+wonderful manuscripts are reproduced in fac-simile; and when that great
+work is published the surpassing value of my discovery will be at once
+recognized. It is sufficient to say here that these several codices
+together constituted a complete hieratic chronicle of the Aztec tribes;
+and that (herein lying the extraordinary value of the collection) the
+uncertain picture-writing was accompanied by a translation into the
+ideographic characters of later times, the meaning of which I was
+enabled, thanks to the instruction that my friend the guardian of the
+archives had given me, fully to understand. In short, my discovery
+precisely paralleled that of Boussard; for even as the Rosetta Stone
+gave the key to Egyptian hieroglyphics, so did this transliteration into
+intelligible characters make all Aztec picture-writing plain. As the
+full significance of my discovery burst upon me, my joy and the
+excitement of my splendid triumph so moved me that my hands trembled as
+I held these precious manuscripts, and I no longer could see clearly the
+painted characters because of the tears of happiness which filled my
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Young, however, whose longing was only for material treasure, continued
+his investigations in anything but a thankful mood. "There ain't no
+doubt of it <i>now</i>," he said presently in a most melancholy tone. "That
+old king o' yours must 'a' been just as crazy as a loon. Look here: this
+thing ain't even a fool arrow-head; it's nothin' but a bit o' green
+glass! I reckon it's part o' th' bottom of a porter-bottle. Nice sort o'
+stuff this is t' call treasure, an' t' take such an all-fired lot o'
+trouble t' hide away! Why, I should jedge that that king must 'a' spent
+most of his time settin' up nights a-puzzlin' over plans for makin' sure
+that he was th' very d&mdash;&mdash;dest biggest fool that ever lived!&mdash;an' that's
+just what he was, for sure! It's tough, gettin' left this way; but it
+wouldn't begin t' be as tough as 't is if 't wasn't for all them
+car-loads an' car-loads o' gold right clost by us here that we might 'a'
+got away with as easy as rollin' off a log if we'd only ketched on to
+this back-door racket in time. An' see here, Professor," he went on in a
+very earnest tone, "I don't believe there's anybody in there now; why
+shouldn't we just chance things a little an' go back an' get some of it?
+We've got our guns; an' even if we do strike a crowd too big for us t'
+tackle, an' have t' run for it, we won't be no worse off 'an we are now.
+Come, let's try it on!"</p>
+
+<p>While Young spoke I had been looking closely at the object that so
+violently had excited his indignation, and instead of replying to him I
+asked, "Are there any more pieces of that porter-bottle in the jar?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's full of 'em," he answered with a contemptuous brevity.</p>
+
+<p>"And the next?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's full of 'em too. All th' jars on this side o' th' room are full
+of 'em," he added, as he rapidly thrust his hand into one after
+another&mdash;and so set the dust to flying that we both fell to sneezing as
+though we would sneeze our heads off. "Oh come along, Professor: what's
+th' use o' foolin' over this rubbish; let's go for th' stuff that's good
+for its weight in spot cash every time!"</p>
+
+<p>"Wait till we see what is in these gold vases over here," I answered,
+turning as I spoke to the side of the room that as yet we had not
+examined.</p>
+
+<p>"What's th' good?" he asked, sulkily. But he lifted down one of the
+vases, and with his thumb and finger brought forth from it a little
+round black ball. "Worse an' worse," he said, as he handed the ball to
+me. "We've got down t' what looks like lumps o' shoemaker's wax now.
+That's about th' sickest lookin' thing t' call itself treasure I ever
+did see!"</p>
+
+<p>It did not seem to me probable that the little ball was shoemaker's wax;
+but in order to settle this point experimentally I cut into it with my
+penknife. Under the gummy exterior I found a layer of cotton-wool, and
+enclosed in this a hard substance about the size of a hazel-nut. While I
+was making this examination, Young investigated into the contents of
+the remaining vases&mdash;which themselves were exceedingly interesting,
+being made of hammered gold and most curiously engraved.</p>
+
+<p>"They're no good," he said, "except I s'pose th' mugs must be worth
+somethin'. Shoemaker's wax in 'em all! It's worse 'an th'
+porter-bottles&mdash;for what's th' use o' shoemaker's wax t' folks who don't
+rightly know what a shoe is? Come along, I say, Professor, an' let's
+have a whack at them piles o' gold. If we don't tackle 'em we might just
+as well never have come on this treasure-hunt at all. Some o' the stuff
+in here's worth havin'&mdash;th' gold mugs an' boxes, an' that old gold
+bow-gun that you're so busted about&mdash;but what does th' whole of it
+amount to, anyway, when you come t' divide it up among four men an' a
+jackass? I guess even th' jackass ud turn up his nose at it if he knowed
+what a lot more there was that was t' be had just for grabbin' it an'
+packin' it along. It's somethin', I s'pose, that we've pulled through
+without losin' our hair; but we <i>have</i> pulled through all right, an' now
+we want t' make this business pay; an' unless we go for that gold this
+business won't 'a' paid worth a cuss&mdash;an' instead o' comin' out on top
+we'll be left th' very worst kind!"</p>
+
+<p>As Young was delivered of this dismal remonstrance I handed him the
+small object that I had extracted from the pitch-coated ball. "Before
+you make up your mind that we are likely to be 'left,' as you term it,
+suppose you look at this," I said.</p>
+
+<p>He held out his hand carelessly; but as he saw what I had placed in it
+his expression suddenly changed, and he burst forth excitedly: "Great
+Scott! where did this come from? Why&mdash;why, Professor, it <i>looks</i> like it
+was a pearl; but if 't truly is one it's about th' bustin'est biggest
+one that Godamighty ever made! Do you truly size it up for a pearl
+yourself?"</p>
+
+<p>"Most assuredly," I answered. "And it is a fair assumption, I think,
+that there is a pearl in each one of all these little pitch-covered
+balls. As to what you called bits of green glass, they are neither more
+nor less than extraordinarily fine emeralds; I should say that the
+smallest of them must be worth more dollars than you could carry at a
+single load. Of course, all the emeralds and pearls together are not
+worth a single one of these manuscripts"&mdash;here Young gave a sceptical
+grunt&mdash;"but in the way of vulgar material riches I am confident that the
+value of what is in these jars is greater than that of all the gold
+together that we saw in the Valley of Aztlan. Without a shadow of doubt,
+you and I at this moment are standing in the midst of the most enormous
+treasure that ever has been brought together since the world was made!"</p>
+
+<p>"Honest Injun, Professor?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly," I answered; "and if this is your notion of getting 'left'
+on a treasure-hunt," I continued, "it assuredly is not mine."</p>
+
+<p>"Left?" Young repeated after me, while his eyes ranged exultantly over
+the rows of jars in which this vast wealth was contained. "Well, I
+should smile! I take it all back about that old king bein' crazy. He was
+just as level-headed as George Washington an' Dan'l Webster rolled into
+one. These pots full of arrow-heads an' such stuff was only one of his
+little jokes, showin' that he must 'a' been a good-natured, comical old
+cuss, th' kind I always did like, anyway. Left? Not much we ain't left!
+We've just everlastin'ly got there with all four feet to onct!
+Professor, shake!"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="EPILOGUE" id="EPILOGUE"></a>EPILOGUE.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Throughout my whole life I have been saddened, as each well-defined
+section of it has come to an end, by the thought that during the period
+that has then slipped away from me forever I have wasted more
+opportunities than I have improved. As I write these final lines,
+therefore, I feel a sorrowful regret, which, in a way, is akin to the
+regret that weighed upon me when Young and I, having carried into the
+cave the contents of the treasure-chamber, removed the prop wherewith
+was upheld the swinging statue, and so suffered to fall into place again
+that ponderous mass of stone. From below, where we were, lifting it was
+impossible; and by heaping fragments of rock under the forward end of it
+we presently made it equally immovable from above. Thus for outlet or
+for inlet that way was irrevocable barred; and as I write now I know
+that I am not less irrevocable severing myself from one portion of my
+past. For, says the Persian poet, "A finished book is a sealed casket.
+To it nothing can be added. From it nothing can be taken away.
+Therefore should we pray to Allah that its contents may be good."</p>
+
+<p>The record that I am now ending was begun partly that I might find in
+the writing of it relief from the more serious work in which I have been
+engaged, and partly because I perceived that I could properly include in
+a personal narrative many matters which were too trivial or too entirely
+personal to be incorporated into my extended scientific treatise, but
+which, I was persuaded, were of a sufficient interest to be preserved.
+But I certainly should not have finished this history of our adventures
+nearly so expeditiously had not Rayburn and Young taken a very lively
+interest in it, and pressed me constantly to bring it to an end.</p>
+
+<p>"You see, Professor," said Young, "I don't want t' say anything against
+that big book you're writin'. I don't doubt that in its way it'll be a
+daisy; but you know yourself there won't be more'n about three cranks in
+th' whole o' God's universe who'll ever read more'n about ten lines of
+it; an' that's why I want you t' rush ahead with th' little book&mdash;that
+stands some chance o' bein' read outside o' lunatic asylums&mdash;so's
+folks'll know what a powerful queer time we've had. Don't be too cussed
+particular t' say just where that valley is&mdash;for, while it's not likely,
+we might want t' take a fightin' crowd along an' dynamite our way back
+there some day after more cash; but, exceptin' that, just give 'em th'
+cold facts. I reckon they'll make some folks open their eyes."</p>
+
+<p>From times to time, as my narrative has grown beneath my hand, I have
+read aloud to my fellow-adventurers what I have written, and have
+received from them suggestions in accordance with which it has been
+corrected or amended in its several parts; and it is but just to add, in
+this connection, that in every case where I have referred (as it seems
+to me now in words not nearly strong enough) to the loyalty to our
+common interests, and to the splendid bravery which Rayburn and Young
+constantly exhibited throughout that trying time, I have been compelled
+to exert the whole of my authority over them in order to win their
+grumbling permission that my words might stand. Even Pablo&mdash;for the love
+that there was between this boy and me was far too strong to permit me
+to leave him behind in Mexico, and we are like to live together as long
+as we live at all&mdash;has taken issue with me concerning what I have
+written of his steadfast faithfulness and courage; and this on the
+ground that he could not possibly be anything but faithful to those whom
+he loved, and that it is only natural for a man to fight for his own
+life, and for the lives of his friends. In thus applying the word
+<i>hombre</i> to himself Pablo spoke a little doubtfully, as though he feared
+that I might question his right to it; yet did he roll it so relishingly
+under his tongue, and so well had he proved his manliness, that I
+suffered it to pass.</p>
+
+<p>In point of fact, the only member of our party who has accepted my just
+tribute of praise with entire equanimity has been El Sabio. It was
+Pablo's notion, of course, that El Sabio should hear what I had written
+about him. "Not the whole of it, you know, se&ntilde;or," the boy said,
+earnestly; "for some of what you have written&mdash;while I know that it is
+true, and therefore must be told&mdash;would hurt his tender heart. It was
+not his fault&mdash;the angel!&mdash;that he gave us so much trouble when we swung
+him across the ca&ntilde;on; and to tell him that there was even a thought of
+eating him, while we were in that dreadful valley where every one was
+dead, assuredly would turn him gray before his time. No; we will hide
+all such unpleasant parts of the book from him; but we will read to him
+what you have said concerning his beauty and his wisdom&mdash;and, surely,
+you might have said of those a great deal more; and also about his
+gallant fight with the priests, when, all alone, he slew so many of them
+with his heels. And it would have been fairer to El Sabio, se&ntilde;or," Pablo
+added, a little reproachfully, as we walked out together to the paddock
+in which the ass, grown to be very fat, was living a life of most royal
+ease, "had you told in the book how well he served us in bringing all
+the treasure, in many weary journeys, out through that dismal cave; and
+also how carefully he carried the Se&ntilde;or Rayburn down that steep
+mountain-side, and so to the little town beside the railway, and never
+hurt his wound."</p>
+
+<p>However, El Sabio did not seem to notice these omissions from my
+narrative, though he certainly did exhibit a most curious air of
+interest and understanding as I read to him those laudatory portions of
+it which Pablo desired that he should hear. According to Pablo's
+understanding of his language, he even thanked me for speaking well of
+him; for when the reading was ended he thrust his nose far forward, laid
+his long ears back upon his neck, planted his little legs firmly, and
+as he erected in triumph his scrag of a tail, he uttered a most
+thunderous bray. "And now, Wise One," Pablo said, tenderly, as he
+infolded the head of the ass in his arms and hugged it to his breast,
+"thou knowest that we not only love thee for thy goodness and thy
+wisdom, but that we also honor thee for thy noble deeds."</p>
+
+<p>Rayburn's fancy was mightily tickled by this performance in which El
+Sabio and Pablo and I had engaged&mdash;though Young evidently thought it but
+another proof of the addled state of my brains&mdash;when I told about it
+that evening as we all sat smoking comfortably in my library before the
+open fire. This was to be our last meeting for some time to come; for
+Rayburn was to start the next day for Idaho to look after some mining
+matters, and Young suddenly had decided that he would accompany him. In
+truth, Young was rather at a loss to know what to do with himself; for
+his plan for buying the Old Colony Railroad, in order to be in a
+position to discharge its superintendent, had been abandoned. "I'd like
+t' do it, of course," he said. "Bouncin' that chump th' same way that he
+bounced me would do me a lot o' good; but I've made up my mind it
+wouldn't be th' square thing t' do, considerin' that if he hadn't
+bounced me I'd still be foolin' round on top o' freight-cars, in all
+sorts o' weather, handlin' brakes. So I've let up on him, an' he can
+stay. What I want now is t' do some good with this all-fired big pile o'
+money that I've got. That's one reason why I'm goin' out with Rayburn t'
+Idaho. Right straight along from here t' Bois&eacute; City I mean t' set up
+drinks for every railroader I meet. That'll be doin' good, for sure."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="illus19" id="illus19"></a>
+<img src="images/illus19.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>IN THE LIBRARY BEFORE THE OPEN FIRE</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+
+<p>Rayburn and I laughed a little at this odd method for benefiting
+humanity that Young had got hold of; and then Rayburn's face grew grave
+as he said: "Well, we're doing a little good, I suppose, in putting that
+old church in Morelia in good shape. I'm glad you thought of that,
+Professor. I don't suppose that anything we could have done would have
+pleased the Padre more than to have that church, that he loved so much,
+made as handsome as money can make it all the way through."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Young added, "an' I guess th' Professor's head was level in
+havin' all th' new stuff that we've put in it made t' look like 't was
+about two hundred years old. I did kick at that at first, I'll allow.
+What I wanted t' do was t' build a first-class new church, with a
+rattlin' tall steeple, an' steam heat, an' electric lights, an' an organ
+big enough t' bust the roof off every time she was played. But th' Padre
+was as keen as th' Professor, a'most, for old-fashioned things; an' so I
+guess we've done that job just about as he'd 'a' done it himself. It
+makes me feel queer, though, puttin' up money on a Catholic church that
+way; an' when I was tellin' an old aunt o' mine, down t' Milton, about
+it, she just riz up an' rared. An' she didn't feel a bit better when I
+told her that if I thought it ud please th' Padre t' have me do it, I'd
+go smack off t' Rome an' shake hands with th' Pope. And I truly would do
+that very same thing," Young continued, earnestly, while his voice
+trembled a little, "for this side o' heaven I never expect t' meet
+anybody that's so near t' bein' a first-class angel as th' Padre was.
+An' when I think how he saved our mis'rable lives for us, as he surely
+did, by givin' away his own&mdash;that was worth more'n all of ours put
+together, an' ten times over&mdash;I don't care a continental what his
+religious politics was; an' I'll punch th' head of anybody who don't say
+that he was th' pluckiest an' th' best man that ever lived!"</p>
+
+<p>Pablo had caught the word Padre in Young's talk, and as the lad looked
+up from the corner in which he was sitting, I saw that his eyes were
+full of tears; Rayburn's eyes also had an odd glistening look about them
+as he turned away suddenly, and emptied the ashes from his pipe into the
+fire; and I know that I could not see very clearly just then, as very
+tender, yet very poignant memories surged suddenly into my heart.</p>
+
+<p>And when the others left me&mdash;as they did presently, for we could not
+fall again into commonplace talk&mdash;I bade Pablo be off to bed, and so sat
+there for a while alone. What I had planned to do that night was to
+revise an address that I was shortly to deliver before the Arch&aelig;ological
+Institute; but the pen that I had taken into my hand lay idle there,
+while my thoughts went backward through the channels of the past.</p>
+
+<p>In that still season of darkness I seemed to live again through all the
+time that Fray Antonio and I had been together&mdash;from the moment when I
+first caught sight of him, as he knelt before the crucifix in the
+sacristy, to my last sad look at the dead body whence his soul had sped
+back again to God.</p>
+
+<p>As my thoughts dwelt upon this most loving and most tender
+companionship, the like of which for perfectness I am confident was
+never known, and then upon the cruel violence that brought it to an end,
+so searching a pain went through my soul that I knew that either it must
+cease or I must die of it in a very little while. And then was borne in
+upon me the strong conviction&mdash;and so has it since been always, when
+thus my thoughts have been engaged&mdash;that because of my very love for
+Fray Antonio must I rejoice that he had died so savage a death;
+believing confidently that what he prayed for when first I found him in
+the Christian church of San Francisco was, in truth, that very crown of
+martyrdom that God granted to him when at last I lost him in the heathen
+city of Colhuacan. And with the pressing in upon me thus strangely of
+this strange thought, it seemed as though he himself said again to me,
+"I go to win the life, glorious and eternal, into which neither death
+nor sin nor sorrow evermore can come."</p>
+
+<p>THE END.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Aztec Treasure-House, by
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+</pre>
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+</body>
+</html>
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@@ -0,0 +1,11801 @@
+Project Gutenberg's The Aztec Treasure-House, by Thomas Allibone Janvier
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Aztec Treasure-House
+
+Author: Thomas Allibone Janvier
+
+Release Date: May 26, 2007 [EBook #21618]
+Last Updated: September 16, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AZTEC TREASURE-HOUSE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Geetu Melwani, Chuck Greif, Mary Meehan and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned
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+                        THE AZTEC TREASURE-HOUSE
+
+                       By Thomas Allibone Janvier
+
+
+
+
+Copyright, 1890, by Harper & Brothers.
+
+_All rights reserved._
+
+
+
+
+TO C. A. J.
+
+
+
+
+Departimiento y ha entre los enganos. Catales y ha que son buenos,
+e tales que malos, e buenos son aquellos que los omnes fazen a
+buena fe e a buena intencion.--ALONZO el SABIO, Setena Partida,
+Titulo xvi., Ley ii.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: The Dying Cacique.]
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+          PROLOGUE
+
+       I. FRAY ANTONIO
+
+      II. THE CACIQUE'S SECRET
+
+     III. THE MONK'S MANUSCRIPT
+
+      IV. MONTEZUMA'S MESSENGER
+
+       V. THE ENGINEER AND THE LOST-FREIGHT MAN
+
+      VI. THE KING'S SYMBOL
+
+     VII. THE FIGHT IN THE CANON
+
+    VIII. AFTER THE FIGHT
+
+      IX. THE CAVE OF THE DEAD
+
+       X. THE SWINGING STATUE
+
+      XI. THE SUBMERGED CITY
+
+     XII. IN THE VALLEY OF DEATH
+
+    XIII. UP THE CHAC-MOOL STAIR
+
+     XIV. THE HANGING CHAIN
+
+      XV. THE TEMPLE IN THE CLOUDS
+
+     XVI. AT THE BARRED PASS
+
+    XVII. OF OUR COMING INTO THE VALLY OF AZTLAN
+
+   XVIII. THE STRIKING OF A MATCH
+
+     XIX. THE SEEDS OF REVOLT
+
+      XX. THE PRIEST CAPTAIN'S SUMMONS
+
+     XXI. THE WALLED CITY OF CULHUACON
+
+    XXII. THE OUTBREAK OF REVOLUTION
+
+   XXIII. A RESCUE
+
+    XXIV. THE AFFAIR AT THE WATER-GATE
+
+     XXV. THE GOLD-MINERS OF HUITZILAN
+
+    XXVI. THE GATHERING FOR WAR
+
+   XXVII. AN OFFER OF TERMS
+
+  XXVIII. THE SURRENDER OF A LIFE
+
+    XXIX. THE ASSAULT IN THE NIGHT
+
+     XXX. THE FALL OF THE CITADEL
+
+    XXXI. DEFEAT
+
+   XXXII. EL SABIO'S DEFIANCE
+
+  XXXIII. IN THE AZTEC TREASURE-HOUSE
+
+   XXXIV. A MARTYRDOM
+
+    XXXV. THE TREASURE-CHAMBER
+
+   XXXVI. THE VENGEANCE OF THE GODS
+
+  XXXVII. THROUGH DARKNESS TO LIGHT
+
+ XXXVIII. KING CHALTZANTZIN'S TREASURE
+
+          EPILOGUE
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+
+THE DYING CACIQUE
+
+THE LETTER FROM THE DEAD
+
+PACKING IN THE CORRAL
+
+THE FIGHT IN THE CANON
+
+THE CAVE OF THE DEAD
+
+AFLOAT ON THE LAKE
+
+EL SABIO'S PREDICAMENT
+
+MAKING THE PEACE-SIGN
+
+THE FULFILMENT OF THE PROPHECY
+
+THE STRIKING OF A MATCH
+
+CHECKING YOUNG'S OUTBREAK
+
+THE LEAP FROM ABOVE THE WATER-GATE
+
+THE TLAHUICOS AND THEIR GUARDS
+
+IN THE GATE-WAY OF THE CITADEL
+
+THE LAST RALLY
+
+EL SABIO'S DEFIANCE
+
+FRAY ANTONIO'S APPEAL
+
+YOUNG'S STRUGGLE WITH THE PRIEST CAPTAIN
+
+IN THE LIBRARY BEFORE THE OPEN FIRE
+
+
+
+
+    _Who'd hear great marvels told--
+          Come listen now!
+    Who longs for hidden gold--
+          Come listen now!
+    Who joys in well-fought fights,
+    Who yearns for wondrous sights,
+    Who pants for strange delights--
+          Come listen now!_
+
+    _For here are marvels told
+          To listen to!
+    Here tales of hidden gold
+          To listen to!
+    Here gallant men wage fights,
+    Here pass most wondrous sights,
+    Here's that which ear delights
+          To listen to!_
+
+
+
+
+THE AZTEC TREASURE-HOUSE
+
+
+
+
+PROLOGUE.
+
+
+"God sends nuts to them who have no teeth:" which ancient Spanish
+proverb of contrariety comes strongly to mind as I set myself to this
+writing.
+
+By nature am I a studious, book-loving man, having a strong liking for
+quiet and orderliness. Yet in me also is a strain that urges me, even
+along ways which are both rough and dangerous, to get beyond
+book-knowledge, and to examine for myself the abstractions of thought
+and the concretions of men and things out of the consideration whereof
+books are made. And I hold that it is because I have thus sought for
+truth in its original sources, instead of resting content with what
+passes for truth, being detached fragments of fact which other men have
+found and have cut and polished to suit themselves, that I have gathered
+to myself more of it, and in its rude yet perfect native crystals, than
+has come into the possession of any other modern investigator. In making
+which strong assertion I am not moved by idle vanity, but by a just and
+reasonable conception of the intrinsic merit of my own achievement: as
+will be universally admitted when I publish the great work, now almost
+ready for the press, upon which, in preparatory study and in convincing
+discovery, I have been for the past ten years engaged. For I speak well
+within bounds when I declare that a complete revolution in all existing
+conceptions of American archaeology and ethnology will be wrought when
+_Pre-Columbian Conditions on the Continent of North America_, by
+Professor Thomas Palgrave, Ph.D. (Leipsic), is given to the world.
+
+Upon this work I say that I have been engaged for ten years. Rather
+should I say that I have been engaged upon it for forty years; for its
+germs were implanted in me when I was a child of but six years old.
+Before my intelligence at all could grasp the meaning of what I read, my
+imagination was fired by reading in the pages of Stephens of the wonders
+which that eminent explorer discovered in Yucatan; and my mind then was
+made up that I would follow in his footsteps, and in the end go far
+beyond him, until I should reveal the whole history of the marvellous
+race whose mighty works he found, but of whose genesis he could only
+feebly surmise. And this resolve of the child became the dominant
+purpose of the man. In my college life at Harvard, and in my university
+life at Leipsic, my studies were directed chiefly to this end.
+Especially did I devote myself to the acquisition of languages, and to
+gaining a sound knowledge of the principles of those departments of
+archaeology and ethnology which related to the great work that I had in
+view. Later, during the ten years that I occupied (as I believe usefully
+and acceptably) the Chair of Topical Linguistics in the University of
+Michigan, all the time that I properly could take from my professorial
+duties was given exclusively to the study of the languages of the
+indigenous races of Mexico, and to what little was to be found in books
+concerning their social organization and mode of life, and to the broad
+subject of Mexican antiquities. By correspondence I became acquainted
+with the most eminent Mexican archaeologists--the lamented Orozco y
+Berra, Icazbalceta, Chavero, and the philologists Pimentel and Penafiel;
+and I had the honor to know personally the American archaeologist
+Bandelier, the surpassing scientific value of whose researches among the
+primitive peoples of Mexico places his work above all praise. And by the
+study of the writings of these great scholars, and of all writings
+thereto cognate, my own knowledge steadily grew; until at last I felt
+myself strong enough to begin the investigations on my own account for
+which I had sought by all these years of patient preparation fittingly
+to pave the way.
+
+But inasmuch as my life until a short time since has been wholly that of
+a scholar, and wholly has been passed in quiet ways, I truly have had no
+teeth at all for the proper cracking of the nuts which have come to me
+in the course of the surprising adventures that I have now set myself to
+narrate. For in the course of these adventures (necessarily, yet sorely
+against my will) I have been thrust by force of circumstances into many
+imminent and prodigious perils; much time that I gladly would have
+devoted to peaceful, fruitful study I have been compelled to employ in
+rude and profitless (except that my life was saved by it) battling with
+savages; and--what most of all has pained me--many curious and
+interesting skulls that I gladly would have added entire to my
+collection of crania, I have been driven in self-defence to ruin
+irreparably with my own hands.
+
+All of which diversities of my likings and my happenings will appear in
+due order, as I tell in the following pages of the strange and wonderful
+things which befell me--in company with Rayburn and Young and Fray
+Antonio and the boy Pablo--in our search after and finding of the great
+treasure that was hidden, in a curiously secret place among the Mexican
+mountains more than a thousand years ago, by Chaltzantzin, the third of
+the Aztec kings.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+FRAY ANTONIO.
+
+
+My heart was light within me as I stood on the steamer's deck in the
+cool gray of an October morning and saw out across the dark green sea
+and the dusky, brownish stretch of coast country the snow-crowned peak
+of Orizaba glinting in the first rays of the rising sun. And presently,
+as the sun rose higher, all the tropic region of the coast and the brown
+walls of Vera Cruz and of its outpost fort of San Juan de Ulua were
+flooded with brilliant light--which sudden and glorious outburst of
+radiant splendor seemed to me to be charged with a bright promise of my
+own success.
+
+And still lighter was my heart, a week later, when I found myself
+established in the beautiful city of Morelia, and ready to begin
+actively the work for which I had been preparing myself--at first
+unconsciously, but for ten years past consciously and carefully--almost
+all my life long.
+
+Morelia, I had decided, was the best base for the operations that I was
+about to undertake. My main purpose was to search for the remnants of
+primitive civilization among the more isolated of the native Indian
+tribes; and out of the fragments thus found, pieced together with what
+more I could glean from the early ecclesiastical and civil records, to
+recreate, so far as this was possible, the fabric that was destroyed by
+the Spanish conquerors. Nowhere could my investigations be conducted to
+better advantage than in the State of Michoacan (of which State the city
+of Morelia is the capital) and in the adjacent State of Jalisco; for in
+this region tribes still exist which never have been reduced to more
+than nominal subjection, and which maintain to a great extent their
+primitive customs and their primitive faith, though curiously mingling
+with this latter many Christian observances. Indeed, the independence of
+the Indians of these parts is so notable that the proverb "Free as
+Jalisco" is current throughout Mexico. Moreover, Morelia is a city rich
+in ancient records. The archives of the Franciscan province, that has
+its centre here extend back to the year 1531; those of the Bishopric of
+Michoacan to the year 1538; and those of the Colegio de San Nicolas to
+the year 1540; while in the recently founded Museo Michoacano already
+has been collected a rich store of archaeological material. In a word,
+there was no place in all Mexico where my studies and my investigations
+could be pursued to such advantage as they could be pursued here.
+
+From a fellow-archaeologist in the City of Mexico I brought a letter of
+introduction to the director of the Museo, the learned Dr. Nicolas Leon;
+and so cordially was this letter worded, and so cordially was it
+received, that within the day of my coming into that strange city I
+found myself in the midst of friends. At once their hearts and their
+houses were opened to me, and they gave me with a warm enthusiasm the
+benefit of their knowledge and of their active assistance forwarding the
+work that I had in hand.
+
+In the quiet retirement of the Museo I opened to that one of its members
+to whom the director especially had commended me, Don Rafael Moreno, the
+purposes which I had in view, and the means by which I hoped to
+accomplish them. "Surely," I said, "among the free Indians in the
+mountains hereabouts much may be found--in customs, in tone of thought,
+in religion--that has remained unchanged since the time of the
+conquest."
+
+Don Rafael nodded. "Fray Antonio has said as much," he observed,
+thoughtfully.
+
+"And as your own distinguished countryman, Senor Orozco y Berra, has
+pointed out," I continued, "many dark places in primitive history may be
+made clear, many illusions may be dispelled, and many deeply
+interesting truths may be gathered by one who will go among these
+Indians, lending himself to their mode of life, and will note accurately
+what he thus learns from sources wholly original."
+
+"Fray Antonio has professed the same belief," Don Rafael answered. "But
+that his love is greater for the saving of heathen souls than for the
+advancement of antiquarian knowledge, he long ago would have done what
+you now propose to do. He has done much towards gathering a portion of
+the information that you seek, even as it is."
+
+"And who is this Fray Antonio, senor?"
+
+"He is the man who of all men can give you the wisest help in your
+present need. We see but little of him here at the Museo, though he is
+one of our most honored members, for his time is devoted so wholly to
+the godly work to which he has given himself that but little remains to
+him to use in other ways. He is a monk, vowed to the Rule of St.
+Francis. As you know, since the promulgation of the Laws of the Reform,
+monks are not permitted in our country to live in communities; but, with
+only a few exceptions, the conventual churches which have not been
+secularized still are administered by members of the religious orders to
+which they formerly belonged. Fray Antonio has the charge of the church
+of San Francisco--over by the market-place, you know--and virtually is a
+parish priest. He is a religious enthusiast. In God's service he gives
+himself no rest. The common people here, since his loving labors are
+among them while the pestilence of small-pox raged, reverently believe
+him to be a saint; and those of a higher class, who know what heroic
+work he did in that dreadful time, and who see how perfectly his life
+conforms to the principles which he professes, and how like is the
+spirit of holiness that animates him to that of the sainted men who
+founded the order to which he belongs, are disposed to hold a like
+opinion. Truly, it is by the especial grace of God that men like Fray
+Antonio are permitted at times to dwell upon this sinful earth."
+
+Don Rafael spoke with a depth of feeling and a reverence of tone that
+gave his strong words still greater strength and deeper meaning. After
+that moment's pause he resumed: "But that which is of most interest to
+you, senor, is the knowledge that Fray Antonio has gained of our native
+Indians during his ministrations among them. It is the dearest wish of
+his heart to carry to these heathen souls the saving grace of
+Christianity, and for the accomplishment of this good purpose he makes
+many journeys into the mountains; ministering in the chapels which his
+zeal has founded in the Indian towns, and striving earnestly by his
+preaching of God's word to bring these far-wandered sheep into the
+Christian fold. Very often his life has been in most imminent peril, for
+the idolatrous priests of the mountain tribes hate him with a most
+bitter hatred because of the inroads which his mild creed is making upon
+the cruel creed which they uphold. Yet is he careless of the danger to
+which he exposes himself; and there be those who believe, such is the
+temerity with which he manifests his zeal, that he rather seeks than
+shuns a martyr's crown."
+
+Again Don Rafael paused, and again was it evident that deep feelings
+moved him as he spoke of the holy life of this most holy man. "You will
+thus understand, senor," he went on, "that Fray Antonio of all men is
+best fitted by his knowledge of the ways of these mountain Indians to
+advise you touching your going among them and studying them. You cannot
+do better than confer with him at once. It is but a step to the church
+of San Francisco. Let us go."
+
+What Don Rafael had said had opened new horizons to me, and I was
+stirred by strange feelings as we passed out together from the shady
+silence of the Museo into the bright silence of the streets: for Morelia
+is a quiet city, wherein at all times is gentleness and rest. For
+priests in general, and for Mexican priests in particular, I had
+entertained always a profound contempt; but now, from an impartial
+source, I had heard of a Mexican priest whose life-springs seemed to be
+the soul-stirring impulses of the thirteenth century; who was devoted in
+soul and in body to the service of God and of his fellow-men; in whom,
+in a word, the seraphic spirit of St. Francis of Assisi seemed to live
+again. But by this way coming to such tangible evidence of the survival
+in the present time of forces which were born into the world six hundred
+years ago, my thoughts took a natural turn to my own especial interests;
+and, by perhaps not over-strong analogy, I reasoned that if this monk
+still lived so closely to the letter and to the spirit of the Rule that
+St. Francis, six centuries back, gave to his order, most reasonably
+might I hope to find still quick something of the life that was in full
+vigor in Mexico only a little more than half that many centuries ago.
+
+We turned off from the Calle Principal by the little old church of La
+Cruz, and passed onward across the market-place, where buying and
+selling went on languidly, and where a drowsy hum of talk made a
+rhythmic setting to a scene that seemed to my unaccustomed eyes less a
+bit of real life than a bit lifted bodily from an opera. Facing the
+market-place was the ancient church; and the change was a pleasant one,
+from the vivid sunlight and warmth of the streets to its cool, shadowy
+interior: where the only sign of life was a single old woman, her head
+muffled in her _rebozo_, praying her way along the Stations of the
+Cross. For more than two hundred and fifty years had prayer been made
+and praise been offered here; and as I thought of the many generations
+who here had ministered and worshipped--though evil hearts in plenty, no
+doubt, both within and without the chancel there had been--it seemed to
+me that some portion of the subtle essence of all the soul-longings for
+heavenly help and guidance that here had been breathed forth, by men and
+women truly struggling against the sinful forces at work in the world,
+had entered into the very fabric of that ancient church, and so had
+sanctified it.
+
+We crossed to the eastern end of the church, where was a low door-way,
+closed by a heavy wooden door that was studded with rough iron nails and
+ornamented with rudely finished iron-work; pushing which door open
+briskly, as one having the assured right of entry there, Don Rafael
+courteously stood aside and motioned to me to enter the sacristy.
+
+From the shadowy church I passed at a step into a small vaulted room
+brilliant with the sunlight that poured into it through a broad window
+that faced the south. Just where this flood of sunshine fell upon the
+flagged floor, rising from a base of stone steps built up in a pyramidal
+form, was a large cross of some dark wood, on which was the life-size
+figure of the crucified Christ; and there, on the bare stone pavement
+before this emblem of his faith, his face, on which the sunlight fell
+full, turned upward towards the holy image, and his arms raised in
+supplication, clad in his Franciscan habit, of which the hood had fallen
+back, knelt Fray Antonio; and upon his pale, holy face, that the rich
+sunlight glorified, was an expression so seraphic, so entranced, that it
+seemed as though to his fervent gaze the very gates of heaven must be
+open, and all the splendors and glories and majesties of paradise
+revealed.
+
+It is as I thus first saw Fray Antonio--verily a saint kneeling before
+the cross--that I strive to think of him always. Yet even when that
+other and darker, but surely more glorious, picture of him rises before
+my mind I am not disconsolate; for at such times the thought possesses
+me--coming to me clearly and vehemently, as though from a strongly
+impelled force without myself--that what he prayed for at the moment
+when I beheld him was that which God granted to him in the end.
+
+Some men being thus broken in upon while in the very act of communing
+with Heaven would have been distressed and ill at ease--as I assuredly
+was because I had so interrupted him. But to Fray Antonio, as I truly
+believe, communion with Heaven was so entirely a part of his daily life
+that our sudden entry in nowise ruffled him. After a moment, that he
+might recall his thoughts within himself and so to earth again, he arose
+from his knees, and with a grave, simple grace came forward to greet us.
+He was not more than eight-and-twenty years old, and he was slightly
+built and thin--not emaciated, but lean with the wholesome leanness of
+one who strove to keep his body in the careful order of a machine of
+which much work was required. His face still had in it the soft
+roundness and tenderness of youth, that accorded well with its
+expression of gracious sweetness; but there was a firmness about the
+fine, strong chin, and in the set of the delicate lips, that showed a
+reserve of masterful strength. And most of all did this strength shine
+forth from his eyes; which, truly, though at this first sight of him I
+did not perceive it fully, were the most wonderful eyes that ever I have
+seen. As I then beheld them I thought them black; but they really were a
+dark blue, and so were in keeping with his fair skin and hair. Yet that
+which gave them so strong an individuality was less their changing color
+than the marvellous way in which their expression changed with every
+change of feeling of the soul that animated them. When I first saw them,
+turned up towards heaven, they seemed to speak a heavenly language full
+of love; and when I saw them last, stern, but shining with the exultant
+light of joy triumphant, they fairly hurled the wrath of outraged Heaven
+against the conquered powers of hell. And I can give no adequate
+conception of the love that shone forth from them when pitying sympathy
+for human sorrow, or even for the pain which brute beasts suffered,
+touched that most tender heart for which they spoke in tones richer and
+fuller than the tones of words.
+
+Don Rafael, standing without the door that he had opened in order that I
+might precede him, did not perceive that we had interrupted Fray Antonio
+in his prayers; and began, therefore, in the lively manner natural to
+him, when I had been in due form presented as an American archaeologist
+come to Mexico to pursue my studies of its primitive inhabitants, to
+commend the undertaking that I had in hand, and to ask of Fray Antonio
+the aid in prosecuting it that he so well could give.
+
+Perhaps it was that Fray Antonio understood how wholly my heart already
+had gone out to him--assuredly, later, there was such close sympathy
+between us that our thoughts would go and come to each other without
+need for words--and so was disposed in some instinctive way to join his
+purposes with mine; but, be this as it may, before Don Rafael well could
+finish the explanation of my wishes, Fray Antonio had comprehended what
+I desired, and had promised to give me his aid.
+
+"The senor already has a book-knowledge of our native tongues. That is
+well. The speaking knowledge will come easily. He shall have the boy
+Pablo for his servant. A good boy is Pablo. With him he can talk in the
+Nahua dialect--which is the most important, for it is sprung most
+directly from the ancient stock. And I will arrange that the senor shall
+live for a time in the mountains--it will be a hard life, I fear--at
+Santa Maria and at San Andres, in which villages he can gain a
+mouth-mastery of both Otomi and Tarascan. A little time must be given to
+all this--some months, no doubt. But the senor, who already has studied
+through ten years, will understand the needfulness of this short
+discipline. To a true student study in itself is a delight--still more
+that study which makes the realization of a long-cherished purpose
+possible. The senor, I know, reads Spanish, since so perfectly he speaks
+it"--this with a gracious movement of the hands and a courteous
+inclination of the body that enhanced the value of the compliment--"but
+does the senor read with ease our ancient Spanish script?"
+
+"I have never attempted it," I answered. "But as I can read easily the
+old printed Spanish, I suppose," I added, a little airily, "that I shall
+have no great difficulty in reading the old script also."
+
+Fray Antonio smiled a little as he glanced at Don Rafael, who smiled
+also, and as he turned out his hands, answered: "Perhaps. But it is not
+quite the same as print, as the senor will know when he tries. But it
+makes no difference; for what is most interesting in our archives I
+shall be glad--and so also will be Don Rafael--to aid him in reading.
+
+"You must know, senor," he went on, dropping his formal mode of address
+as his interest in the subject augmented, and as his feeling towards me
+grew warmer, "that many precious documents are here preserved. So early
+as the year 1536 this western region was erected into a Custodia,
+distinct from the Province of the Santo Evangelio of Mexico; and from
+that time onward letters and reports relating to the work done by the
+missionaries of our order among the heathen have been here received. In
+truth, I doubt not that many historic treasures are hidden here. In
+modern times, during the last hundred years or more, but little thought
+has been given to the care of these old papers--which are so precious to
+such as Don Rafael and yourself because of their antiquarian value, and
+which are still more precious to me because they tell of the sowing
+among the heathen of the seed of God's own Word. It is probable that
+they have not been at all examined into since our learned brothers Pablo
+de Beaumont and Alonzo de la Rea were busy with the writing of their
+chronicles of this Province--and the labors of these brothers ended more
+than two hundred and fifty years ago. In the little time that I myself
+can give to such matters I already have found many manuscripts which
+cast new and curious light upon the strange people who dwelt here in
+Mexico before the Spaniards came. Some of these I will send for your
+examination, for they will prepare you for the work you have in
+contemplation by giving you useful knowledge of primitive modes of life
+and tones of faith and phases of thought. And while you are in the
+mountains, at Santa Maria and San Andres, I will make further searches
+in our archives, and what I find you shall see upon your return.
+
+"With your permission, senores, I must now go about my work. Don Rafael
+knows that I am much too ready to forget my work in talk of ancient
+matters. It is a weakness with me--this love for the study of
+antiquity--that I struggle against, but that seems rather to increase
+upon me than to be overcome. This afternoon, senor, I will send a few of
+the ancient manuscripts to you. And so--until we meet again."
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+THE CACIQUE'S SECRET.
+
+
+Fray Antonio punctually fulfilled his promise in regard to the
+manuscripts, and I had but to glance at them in order to understand the
+smile that he had interchanged with Don Rafael when I so airily had
+expressed my confidence in my ability to read them. To say that I more
+easily could read Hebrew is not to the purpose, for I can read Hebrew
+very well; but it is precisely to the purpose to say that I could not
+read them at all! What with the curious, involved formation of the
+several letters, the extraordinary abbreviations, the antique spelling,
+the strange forms of expression, and the use of obsolete words I could
+not make sense of so much as a single line. Yet when, being forced into
+inglorious surrender, I carried the manuscripts to the Museo, and
+appealed to Don Rafael for assistance, he read to me in fluent Spanish
+all that I had found so utterly incomprehensible. "It is only a knack,"
+he explained. "A little time and patience are required at first, but
+then all comes easily." But Don Rafael did here injustice to his own
+scholarship. More than a little time and patience have I since given to
+the study of ancient Spanish script, and I am even yet very far from
+being an expert in the reading of it.
+
+In regard to the other promise that Fray Antonio made me--that he would
+send me a servant who also would serve as a practical instructor in the
+Nahua, or Aztec, dialect--he was equally punctual. While I was taking,
+in my bedroom, my first breakfast of bread and coffee the morning
+following my visit to the church of San Francisco, I heard a faint sound
+of music; but whether it was loud music at a distance or very soft music
+near at hand I could not tell. Presently I perceived that the musician
+was feeling about among the notes for the sabre song from _La Grande
+Duchesse_--selections from which semi-obsolete opera, as I then
+remembered, had been played by the military band on the plaza the
+evening before. Gradually the playing grew more assured; until it ended
+in an accurate and spirited rendering of the air. With this triumph, the
+volume of the sound increased greatly; and from its tones I inferred
+that the instrument was a concertina, and that whoever played it was in
+the inner court-yard of the hotel. Suddenly, in the midst of the music,
+there sounded--and this sound unmistakably came from the hotel
+court-yard--the prodigious braying of an ass; and accompanying this came
+the soft sound of bare feet hurrying away down the passage from near my
+door.
+
+I opened the door and looked out, but the passage was empty. The gallery
+overlooked the court-yard, and stepping to the edge of the low stone
+railing, I beheld a sight that I never recall without a feeling of warm
+tenderness. Almost directly beneath me stood a small gray ass, a very
+delicately shaped and perfect little animal, with a coat of most
+extraordinary length and fuzziness, and with ears of a truly prodigious
+size. His head was raised, and his great ears were pricked forward in a
+fashion which indicated that he was most intently listening; and upon
+his face was an expression of such benevolent sweetness, joined to such
+thoughtfulness and meditative wisdom, that in my heart (which is very
+open to affection for his gentle kind) there sprung up in a moment a
+real love for him. Suddenly he lowered his head, and turned eagerly his
+regard towards the corner of the court-yard where descended the
+stair-way from the gallery on which I stood; and from this quarter came
+towards him a smiling, pleasant-faced Indian lad of eighteen or twenty
+years old, whose dress was a cotton shirt and cotton trousers, whose
+feet were bare, and on whose head was a battered hat of straw. And as
+the ass saw the boy, he strained at the cord that tethered him and gave
+another mighty bray.
+
+"Dost thou call me, Wise One?" said the boy, speaking in Spanish. "Truly
+this Senor Americano is a lazy senor, that he rises so late, and keeps
+us waiting for his coming so long. But patience, Wise One. The Padre
+says that he is a good gentleman, in whose service we shall be treated
+as though we were kings. No doubt I now can buy my rain-coat. And thou,
+Wise One--thou shalt have beans!"
+
+And being by this time come to the ass, the boy enfolded in his arms the
+creature's fuzzy head and gently stroked its preternaturally long ears.
+And the ass, for its part, responded to the caress by rubbing its head
+against the boy's breast and by most energetically twitching its scrag
+of a tail. Thus for a little time these friends manifested for each
+other their affection; and then the boy seated himself on the pavement
+beside the ass and drew forth from his pocket a large mouth-organ--on
+which he went to work with such a will that all the court-yard rang with
+the strains of Offenbach's music.
+
+It was plain from what he had said that this was the boy whom Fray
+Antonio had promised to send to me; and notwithstanding his
+uncomplimentary comments upon my laziness, I had taken already a strong
+liking to him. I waited until he had played through the sabre song
+again--to which, as it seemed to me, the ass listened with a slightly
+critical yet pleased attention--and then I hailed him.
+
+"The lazy Senor Americano is awake at last, Pablo," I called. "Come up
+hither, and we will talk about the buying of thy rain-coat, and about
+the buying of the Wise One's beans."
+
+The boy jumped up as though a spring had been let loose beneath him, and
+his shame and confusion were so great that I was sorry enough that I had
+made my little joke upon him.
+
+"It is all right, my child," I said, quickly, and with all the kindness
+that I could put into my tones. "Thou wert talking to the Wise One, not
+to me--and I have forgotten all that I heard. Thou art come from Fray
+Antonio?"
+
+"Yes, senor," he answered; and as he saw by my smiling that no harm had
+been done, he also smiled; and so honest and kindly was the lad's face
+that I liked him more and more.
+
+"Patience for yet a little longer, Wise One," he said, turning to the
+ass, who gravely wagged his ears in answer. And then the boy came up the
+stair to the gallery, and so we went to my room that I might have talk
+with him.
+
+It was not much that Pablo had to tell about himself. He was a
+Guadalajara lad, born in the Indian suburb of Mexicalcingo--as his
+musical taste might have told me had I known more of Mexico--who had
+drifted out into the world to seek his fortune. His capital was the
+ass--so wise an ass that he had named him El Sabio. "He knows each word
+that I speak to him, senor," said Pablo, earnestly. "And when he hears,
+even a long way off, the music that I make upon the little instrument,
+he knows that it is from me that the music comes, and calls to me. And he
+loves me, senor, as though he were my brother; and he knows that with
+the same tenderness I also love him. It was the good Padre who gave him
+to me. God rest and bless him always!" This pious wish, I inferred,
+related not to the ass but to Fray Antonio.
+
+"And how dost thou live, Pablo?" I asked.
+
+"By bringing water from the Spring of the Holy Children, senor. It is
+two leagues away, the Ojo de los Santos Ninos, and El Sabio and I make
+thither two journeys daily. We bring back each time four jars of water,
+which we sell here in the city--for it is very good, sweet water--at
+three _tlacos_ the jar. You see, I make a great deal of money,
+senor--three _reales_ a day! If it were not for one single thing, I
+should soon be rich."
+
+That riches could be acquired rapidly on a basis of about twenty-seven
+cents, in our currency, a day struck me as a novel notion. But I
+inquired, gravely: "And this one thing that hinders thee from getting
+rich, Pablo, what is it?"
+
+"It is that I eat so much, senor," Pablo answered, ruefully. "Truly it
+seems as though this belly of mine never could be filled. I try
+valiantly to eat little and so to save my money; but my belly cries out
+for more and yet more food--and so my money goes. Although I make so
+much, I can scarcely save a _medio_ in a whole week, when what El Sabio
+must have and what I must have is paid for. And I am trying so hard to
+save just now, for before the next rainy season comes I want to own a
+rain-coat. But for a good one I must pay seven _reales_. The price is
+vast."
+
+"What is a rain-coat, Pablo?"
+
+"The senor does not know? That is strange. It is a coat woven of palm
+leaves, so that all over one it is as a thatch that the rain cannot come
+through. What I was saying just now to El Sabio--" Pablo stopped
+suddenly, and turned aside from me in a shamefaced way, as he
+remembered what he also had said to El Sabio about my laziness.
+
+"--Was that out of the wages I am to pay thee thou canst save enough
+money to buy thy coat with," I said, quickly, wishing to rid him of his
+confusion. And then we fell to talking of what these wages should be,
+and of how he was to help me to gain a speaking knowledge of his native
+tongue--for so far we had spoken Spanish together--and of what in
+general would be his duties as my servant. That El Sabio could be
+anything but a part of the contract seemed never to cross Pablo's mind;
+and so presently our terms were concluded, and I found myself occupying
+the responsible relation of master to a mouth-organ playing boy and an
+extraordinarily wise ass. It was arranged that both of these dependants
+of mine should accompany me in my expedition to the Indian villages; and
+to clinch our bargain I gave Pablo the seven _reales_ wherewith to buy
+his rain-coat on the spot.
+
+I was a little surprised, two days later, when we started from Morelia
+on our journey into the mountains to the westward, to find that Pablo
+had not bought his much-desired garment; though, to be sure, as the
+rainy season still was a long way off, there was no need for it. He
+hesitated a little when I questioned him about it, and then, in a very
+apologetic tone, said: "Perhaps the senor will forgive me for doing so
+ill with his money. But indeed I could not help it. There is an old man,
+his name is Juan, senor, who has been very good to me many times. He has
+given me things to put into this wretchedly big belly of mine; and when
+I broke one of my jars he lent me the money to buy another with, and
+would take from me again only what the jar cost and no more. Just now
+this old man is sick--it is rheumatism, senor--and he has no money at
+all, and he and his wife have not much to eat, and I know what pain that
+is. And so--and so--Will the senor forgive me? I do not need the
+rain-coat now, the senor understands. And so I gave Juan the seven
+_reales_, which he will pay me when he gets well and works again; and
+should he die and not pay me--Does the senor know what I have been
+thinking? It is that rain-coats really are not very needful things,
+after all. Without them one gets wet, it is true; but then one soon gets
+dry again. But truly"--and there was a sudden catching in Pablo's throat
+that was very like a sob--"truly I did want one."
+
+When Pablo had told this little story I did not wonder at the esteem in
+which Fray Antonio held him, and from that time onward he had a very
+warm place in my heart. And I may say that but for his too great
+devotion to his mouth-organ--for that boy never could hear a new tune
+but that he needs must go at once to practising it upon his beloved
+"instrumentito" until he had mastered it--he was the best servant that
+man ever had. And within his gentle nature was a core of very gallant
+fearlessness. In the times of danger which we shared together later,
+excepting only Rayburn, not one of us stood face to face and foot to
+foot with death with a steadier or a calmer bravery; for in all his
+composition there did not seem to be one single fibre that could be made
+to thrill in unison with fear. Of his qualities as a servant I had a
+good trial during the two months that we were together in the
+mountains--in which time I got enough working knowledge of the Indian
+dialects to make effective the knowledge that I had gained from
+books--and I was amazed by the quickness that he manifested in
+apprehending and in supplying my wants and in understanding my ways.
+
+As to making any serious study of Indian customs--save only those of the
+most open and well-known sort--in this short time, I soon perceived that
+the case was quite hopeless. Coming from Fray Antonio, whose benevolent
+ministrations among them had won their friendship, the Indians treated
+me with a great respect and showed me every kindness. But I presently
+began to suspect, and this later grew to be conviction, that because my
+credentials came from a Christian priest I was thrust away all the more
+resolutely from knowledge of their inner life. What I then began to
+learn, and what I learned more fully later, convinced me that these
+Indians curiously veneered with Christian practices their native heathen
+faith; manifesting a certain superstitious reverence for the Christian
+rites and ceremonies, yet giving sincere worship only to their heathen
+gods. It was something to have arrived at this odd discovery, but it
+tended only to show me how difficult was the task that I had set myself
+of prying into the secrets of the Indians' inner life.
+
+Indeed, but for an accident, I should have returned to Morelia no wiser,
+practically, than when I left it; but by that turn of chance fortune
+most wonderfully favored me, and with far-reaching consequences. It was
+on the last afternoon of my stay in the village of Santa Maria; and the
+beginning of my good-luck was that I succeeded in walking out upon the
+mountain-side alone. My walk had a decided purpose in it, for each time
+that I had tried to go in this direction one or another of the Indians
+had been quickly upon my heels with some civil excuse about the danger
+of falling among the rocks for leading me another way. How I thus
+succeeded at last in escaping from so many watchful eyes I cannot say,
+but luck was with me, and I went on undisturbed. The sharply sloping
+mountain-side, very wild and rugged, was strewn with great fragments of
+rock which had fallen from the heights above, and which, lying there for
+ages beneath the trees, had come to be moss-grown and half hidden by
+bushes and fallen leaves. In the dim light that filtered through the
+branches, walking in so uncertain a place was attended with a good deal
+of danger; for not only was there a likelihood of falls leading to
+broken legs, but broken necks also were an easy possibility by the
+chance of a slip upon the mossy edge of one or another of the many
+ledges, followed by a spin through the air ending suddenly upon the
+jagged rocks below. Indeed, so ticklish did I find my way that I began
+to think that the Indians had spoken no more than the simple truth in
+warning me against such dangers, and that I had better turn again while
+light remained to bring me back in safety; and just as I had reached
+this wise conclusion my feet slid suddenly from under me on the very
+edge of one of the ledges, and over I went into the depth below.
+
+Fortunately I fell not more than a dozen feet or so, and my fall was
+broken by a friendly bed of leaves and moss. When I got to my feet
+again, in a moment, I found myself in a narrow cleft in the rocks, and I
+was surprised to see that through this cleft ran a well-worn path. All
+thought of the danger that I had just escaped from so narrowly was
+banished form my mind instantly as I made this discovery; and full of
+the exciting hope that I was about to find something which the Indians
+most earnestly desired to conceal, I went rapidly and easily onward in
+the direction that I had been pressing towards with so much difficulty
+along the rocky mountain-side. The course of this sunken path, I soon
+perceived, was partly natural and partly artificial. It went on through
+clefts such as the one that I had fallen into, and through devious ways
+where the fragments of fallen rock, some of them great masses weighing
+many tons, had been piled upon each other in most natural confusion, so
+as to leave a narrow passage in their depths. And all this had been done
+in a long-past time, for the rocks were thickly coated with moss; and in
+one place, where a watercourse crossed the path, were smoothed by water
+in a way that only centuries could have accomplished. So cleverly was
+the concealment effected, the way so narrow and so irregular, that I
+verily believe an army might have scoured that mountain-side and never
+found the path at all, save by such accident as had brought me into it.
+
+For half a mile or more I went on in the waning light, my heart
+throbbing with the excitement of it all, and so came out at last upon a
+vast jutting promontory of rock that was thrust forth from the
+mountain's face eastwardly. Here was an open space of an acre or more,
+in the centre of which was a low, altar-like structure of stone. At the
+end of the narrow path, being still within its shelter, I stopped to
+make a careful survey of the ground before me; for I realized that in
+what I was doing Death stood close at my elbow, and that, unless I acted
+warily, he surely would have me in his grasp. Coming out of the shadows
+of the woods and the deeper shadows of the sunken path to this wide open
+space, where the light of the brilliant sunset was reflected strongly
+from masses of rosy clouds over all the eastern sky, I could see
+clearly. In the midst of the opening, not far from the edge of the
+stupendous precipice, where the bare rock dropped sheer down a thousand
+feet or more, was a huge bowlder that had been cut and squared with
+ineffective tools into the rude semblance of a mighty altar. The
+well-worn path along which I had come told the rest of the story. Here
+was the temple, having for its roof the great arch of heaven, in which
+the Indians, whom the gentle Fray Antonio believed to be such good
+Christians, truly worshipped their true gods; even as here their fathers
+had worshipped before them in the very dawning of the ancient past.
+
+A tremor of joy went through me as I realized what I had found. Here was
+positive proof of what I had strongly but not surely hoped for. The
+Aztec faith truly was still a living faith; and it followed almost
+certainly that, could I but penetrate the mystery with which it was
+hedged about so carefully by them still faithful to it, I would find
+all that I sought--of living customs, of coherent traditions--wherewith
+to exhibit clearly to the world of the nineteenth century the wonderful
+social and religious structure that the Spaniards of the sixteenth
+century had blotted out, but had not destroyed. What my
+fellow-archaeologists had accomplished in Syria, in Egypt, in Greece, was
+nothing to what I could thus accomplish in Mexico. At the best, Smith,
+Rawlinson, Schliemann, had done no more than stir the dust above the
+surface of dead antiquity; but I was about to bring the past freshly and
+brightly into the very midst of the present, and to make antiquity once
+more alive!
+
+As I stood there in the dusk of the narrow pathway, while the joy that
+was in my heart swelled it almost to bursting, there came to my ears the
+low moaning of one in pain. The faint, uncertain sound seemed to come
+from the direction of the great stone altar. To discover myself in that
+place to any of the Indians, I knew would end my archaeological ambition
+very summarily; yet was I moved by a natural desire to aid whoever thus
+was hurting and suffering. I stood irresolute a moment, and then, as the
+moaning came to me again, I went out boldly into the open space, and
+crossed it to where the altar was. As I rounded the great stone I saw a
+very grievous sight: an old man lying upon the bare rock, a great gash
+in his forehead from which the blood had flowed down over his face and
+breast, making him a most ghastly object to look upon; and there was
+about him a certain limpness that told of many broken bones. He turned
+his head at the sound of my footsteps, but it was plain that the blood
+flowing into his eyes had blinded him, and that he could not see me. He
+made a feeble motion to clear his eyes, but dropped his partly raised
+arm suddenly and with a moan of pain. I recognized him at a glance. He
+was the Cacique, the chief, and also, as I had shrewdly guessed, the
+priest of the village--the very last person whom I would have desired to
+meet in that place.
+
+"Ah, thou art come to me at last, Benito!" he said, speaking in a low
+and broken voice. "I have been praying to our gods that they would send
+thee to me--for my death has come, and it is needful that the one secret
+still hidden from thee, my successor, should be told. I was on the
+altar's top, and thence I fell."
+
+I perceived in what the Cacique said that there was hope for me. He
+could not see me, and he evidently believed that I was the second chief
+of the village, Benito--an Indian who had talked much with me, and the
+tones of whose voice I knew well. Doubtless my clumsy attempt to
+simulate the Indian's speech would have been detected quickly under
+other circumstances, but the Cacique believed that no other man could
+have come to him in that place; and his whole body was wrung with
+torturing pains, and he was in the very article of death. And so it was,
+my prudence leading me to speak few and simple words, and my good-luck
+still standing by me, he never guessed whose hands in his last moments
+ministered to him.
+
+As I raised his head a little and rested it upon my knee, he spoke
+again, very feebly and brokenly: "On my breast is the bag of skin. In
+it is the Priest-Captain's token, and the paper that shows the way to
+where the stronghold of our race remains. Only with me abides this
+secret, for I am of the ancient house, as thou art also, whence sprung
+of old our priests and kings. Only when the sign that I have told thee
+of--but telling thee not its meaning--comes from heaven, is the token to
+be sent, and with it the call for aid. Once, as thou knowest, that sign
+came, and the messenger, our own ancestor, departed. But there was anger
+then against us among the gods, and they suffered not his message to be
+delivered, and he himself was slain. Yet was the token preserved to
+us, and yet again the sign from heaven will come. And then--thou
+knowest--" But here a shiver of pain went through him, and his speech
+gave place to agonizing moans. When he spoke again his words were but a
+whisper. "Lay me--in front of--the altar," he said. "Now is the end."
+
+"But the sign? What is it? And where is the stronghold?" I cried
+eagerly; forgetting in the intense excitement of this strange disclosure
+my need for reticence, and forgetting even to disguise my voice. But my
+imprudence cost me nothing. Even as I spoke another shiver went through
+the Cacique's body; and as there came from his lips, thereafter forever
+to be silent, a sound, half moan, half gasp, his soul went out from him,
+and he was at rest.
+
+When a little calmness had returned to me, I took from his breast the
+bag of skin--stained darkly where his blood had flowed upon it--and then
+tenderly and reverently lifted his poor mangled body and laid it before
+the altar. And so I came back along the hidden path, safely and
+unperceived, to the village: leaving the dead Cacique there in the
+solemn solitude of that great mountain-top, whereon the dusk of night
+was gathering, alone in death before the altar of his gods.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+THE MONK'S MANUSCRIPT.
+
+
+When Pablo and I started, the day following, upon our return to Morelia,
+the village of Santa Maria was overcast with mourning. The Cacique was
+dead, they told us; had fallen among the rocks on the mountain-side,
+being an old man and feeble, and so was killed. And I was expressly
+charged with a message to the good Padre, begging him to hasten to Santa
+Maria that the dead man might have Christian burial. I confess that I
+found this request, though I promised faithfully to comply with it,
+highly amusing; for I knew beyond the possibility of a doubt that if
+ever a man died a most earnest and devout heathen it was this same
+Cacique for whom Christian burial was sought; and I felt an assured
+conviction that when the services of the Church over him were ended--and
+whatever good was to be had for him from them secured--he would be
+buried fittingly with all the fulness of his own heathen rites. But this
+matter, lying in what I already perceived to be the very wide region
+between the avowed faith and the hidden faith of the Indians, was no
+concern of mine; yet I longed, as only a thoroughly earnest
+archaeologist could long, to be a witness of the funeral ceremony in
+which Fray Antonio most conspicuously would not take part. As this was
+hopelessly impossible--for only by very slow advances, if ever, could I
+reach again by considerate investigation the point that in a moment I
+had reached by chance--I came away from Santa Maria reluctantly, yet
+greatly elated by the discovery that I had made.
+
+So jealous was I in guarding the strange legacy that the Cacique had
+bequeathed to me that not until I was safe back in Morelia, in my room
+at the hotel, with the door locked behind me, did I venture to examine
+it. The bag, about six inches square, tightly sewed on all four of its
+sides, was made of snake-skin, and was provided with a loop of
+snake-skin so that it might be hung from the neck upon the breast like a
+scapulary. My hands trembled as I cut the delicate stitching of maguey
+fibre, and then drew forth a mass of several thicknesses of coarse
+gray-brown paper, also made of the maguey, such as the ancient Aztecs
+used. Being unfolded, I had before me a sheet nearly two feet square, on
+which was painted in dull colors a curious winding procession of figures
+and symbols. My knowledge of such matters being then but scant, I could
+tell only that this was a record, at once historical and geographical,
+of a tribal migration; and I saw at a glance that it was unlike either
+of the famous picture-writings which record the migration of the Aztecs
+from Culhuacan to the Valley of Mexico, and then about that valley until
+their final settlement in Tenochtitlan. I was reasonably confident,
+indeed, that this record differed from all existing codices; and I was
+filled with what I hope will be looked upon as a pardonable pride at
+having discovered, within three months of my coming to Mexico, this
+unique and inestimable treasure.
+
+My natural desire was to carry my precious codex at once to Don Rafael,
+that I might have the benefit of his superior knowledge in studying it
+(for he had continued very intelligently the investigation of Aztec
+picture-writing that was so well begun by the late Senor Ramirez), and
+also that I might enjoy his sympathetic enjoyment of my discovery. As I
+raised the bag, that I might replace in it the refolded paper--which I
+already saw heralded to the world as the Codex Palgravius, and
+reproduced in fac-simile in _Pre-Columbian Conditions on the Continent
+of North America_--some glittering object dropped out of it and fell
+with a jingling sound upon the stone floor. When I examined eagerly this
+fresh treasure I found that it was a disk of gold, about the size and
+thickness of a Mexican silver dollar, on which a curious figure was
+rudely engraved. The engraving obviously represented an Aztec
+name-device, the like of which, in the ancient picture-writings,
+distinguish one from another the several generations of a line of kings.
+This name-device was strange to me; but, as I have said, I had not at
+that time studied carefully the Aztec picture-writings, and there were
+many names of kings which I would not then have recognized. But that the
+gold disk was the token concerning the meaning of which the dying
+Cacique had given so strange a hint, I felt assured.
+
+Being still further gladdened by this fresh discovery, I carried my
+treasures at once to the Museo; and Don Rafael's enthusiasm over them
+was as hearty as I could desire. Being so deeply learned in such
+matters, he was able in the course of a single afternoon to arrive at
+much of the meaning of my codex; and his rendering of it showed that it
+possessed a very extraordinary historical value. In the Codex Boturini,
+as is well known, are several important lapses that neither that eminent
+scholar, nor any other archaeologist whose conclusions can be considered
+trustworthy, has been able to supply. All that reasonably can be
+imagined concerning these breaks is that the historian of the Aztec
+migration deliberately omitted certain facts from his pictured history.
+The astonishing discovery that Don Rafael made in regard to my codex was
+that it unquestionably supplied the facts concealed in one of the
+longest of these unaccountable blanks. This was not a mere guess on his
+part, but a demonstrable certainty. On a fac-simile of the Codex
+Boturini he bade me observe attentively the pictures which preceded and
+which followed the break in question; and then he showed me that these
+same pictures were the beginning and the ending of my own
+codex--obviously put there so that this secret record might be inserted
+accurately into the public record of the wanderings of the Aztec tribe.
+
+Further, the geographical facts set forth in the Codex Boturini having
+been very solidly established, it was easy to determine approximately
+the part of Mexico to which the beginning and the end of my codex
+referred. But the migration here recorded was a very long one, and all
+that Don Rafael could say with certainty concerning it was that it told
+of far journeyings into the west and north. He was much puzzled,
+moreover, by a picture that occurred about the middle of the codex, and
+that seemed to be intended to represent a walled city among mountains.
+To my mind this picture tallied well with what the dying Cacique had
+told me touching the hidden stronghold of his race. But Don Rafael
+attached very little importance to the Cacique's words; and on
+archaeological grounds maintained that a walled city was an impossibility
+in primitive Mexico--for while walls were built in plenty by the
+primitive Mexicans, and still are to be found in many places, no mention
+of a walled city is made by the early chroniclers, and of such a city
+there never has been found the slightest trace.
+
+In regard to the engraved disk of gold, Don Rafael said at once and
+positively that it represented a name-device which never had been
+figured in any known Aztec writing; and he was of the opinion--being led
+thereto by consideration of certain delicate peculiarities of the figure
+which were too subtle for my uninstructed apprehension to grasp--that
+the name here symbolized was that of a ruler who was both priest and
+king. That the piece of gold was found associated with picture-writing
+unquestionably belonging to the theocratic period lent additional color
+to this assumption. The sum of our conclusions, therefore, was that we
+had here the name-device of a priest-king who had ruled the Aztec tribe
+during some portion of the first migration. And, assuming that he had
+lived during the period to which my codex referred, and accepting the
+system of dates tentatively adopted by Senor Ramirez, we even fixed the
+ninth century of our era as the period in which he had lived and ruled.
+
+During two whole days Don Rafael and I worked together over these
+matters in the Museo; and it was not until our investigations were
+ended--so far, at least, as investigations could be said to be ended
+while yet no definite conclusions were reached--that my thoughts
+reverted to Fray Antonio, and to the requirement of courtesy that I
+should report to him the result of my course of study in the Indian
+tongues. It is but justice to myself to add that, knowing him to be gone
+to Santa Maria to attend to the Cacique's burial, I had temporarily
+dismissed this matter from my mind.
+
+But when I was come to the Church of San Francisco--carrying with me the
+Codex Palgravius and the engraved disk of gold, in both of which I knew
+that he would take a keen interest--I had no immediate opportunity of
+exhibiting to him my treasures.
+
+As I pushed open the sacristy door, when I had knocked upon it and he
+had called me to enter, he came towards me at once in excitement so
+eager that his face was all lit up by it; and almost before I could
+greet him he exclaimed: "You are most happily come, my friend. At this
+very moment I was about to send for you; for I have found that which
+will stir your heart even as it has stirred mine. Yet perhaps," and he
+spoke more gravely, "it will not stir your heart in the same way that
+mine is stirred by it--for if I can but find the key that will unlock
+the whole of the mystery that here partly is revealed, I see before me
+such opportunity to garner the Lord's vintage as comes but seldom to His
+servants in these later ages of the world."
+
+So strange was Fray Antonio's manner, and so wayward seemed his speech,
+that I was half inclined to think his religious enthusiasm fairly had
+landed him in religious madness; which thought must have found utterance
+in my look of doubtfulness, for he smiled kindly at me, and in a quieter
+tone went on:
+
+"My wits still are with me, Don Tomas; though I do not wonder at your
+thinking that I have lost them. Sit down here and listen to the story of
+my discovery; and when it is ended you will perceive that I very well
+may be excited by it and still be sane."
+
+Being assured by this calmer speech that Fray Antonio had not taken
+leave of his senses, I made a weak disclaimer, that he smilingly
+accepted, of my too clearly expressed doubts in that direction; and so
+seated myself to listen.
+
+"You know, senor," he began, "that common report has declared that
+beneath this Church of San Francisco is a secret passage that extends
+under the city and has its exit in the outlying meadow-lands. I may
+confide in you frankly that this passage does exist, and that I, in
+common with all members of my Order who have dwelt here, know precisely
+where its entrance is and where its outlet. These matters need not be
+exposed, for they are not essential to my purpose. But you must know
+that in the midst of this passage I found on the day preceding your
+return from the mountains a little room of which the door was so well
+concealed that my finding it was the merest accident. And in the room,
+with other things which need not here be named, I found a chest in which
+are certain ancient papers of which I have been long in search. In the
+archives are frequent references to these papers--they are of much
+importance to our Order--but as with all my search I never could
+discover them, I had decided in my mind that in one or another of the
+troublous periods that our Church has passed through they had been
+destroyed. It is plain to me now that in one of these periods of danger
+they were hidden in this safe place.
+
+"Some of these papers, dealing with mere matters of history, you will
+have pleasure in examining in due time. But that which I shall show you
+now, and which has so excited me that you not unnaturally thought that I
+had gone mad over it, has got among the rest, as I verily believe, by
+simple accident. Among the books and papers in the chest was a parchment
+case on which was written 'Mission of Santa Marta,' and the date '1531.'
+Within it were some loose sheets of paper on which were records of
+Indian baptisms, as is evident by the strange mixing of Christian and of
+heathen names. Plainly, this was the register of some mission station of
+our Order in that far-back time. But as I pried into the case more
+closely, I found, within a double fold of the parchment--yet not as
+though intentionally hidden, but rather as though there placed for
+temporary safety--a sealed letter directed to the blessed Fray Juan de
+Zumarraga, who was of our Order, and who, as you know, was the first
+bishop of our holy Church in this New Spain. As I drew forth the
+letter, the seal, that time had loosened, fell away and left it open in
+my hand. That this letter never until now has been read I am altogether
+confident, for the prodigy of which it tells would have made so great a
+stir that ample record of it would have been preserved. Nor is it
+difficult to account for the way in which it missed coming to the eye
+for which it was intended. In that early time many and many of our
+Order, going out to preach God's Word among the barbarians, came happily
+to that end which is the happiest end attainable in God's service: a
+blessed martyrdom." Fray Antonio's voice trembled with deep feeling as
+he spoke, and I remembered that Don Rafael had told me that this good
+brother, it was believed, himself longed for a death so glorious. "And
+being thus slain," Fray Antonio in a moment continued, "the mission
+stations which they had established were left desolate, with what they
+held--save such few things as might be cared for by the savage
+murderers--remaining there within them. In later times, as the
+conquering Spaniards overspread the land, many of these stations were
+found, with nothing to tell save nameless bones of those who had died
+there that God's will might be done.
+
+"It is my conjecture, therefore, that this parchment case was found--how
+many years after the death of him who owned it, who can tell?--in one of
+the many stations that the savages thus ravaged; that the soldiers, or
+whoever may have found it, brought it hither, the nearest important
+abiding-place of our Order; and that, being carelessly examined, it was
+carelessly thrown aside when found to contain, apparently, only the
+little record of the work which our dead brother accomplished before God
+granted him his crown of earthly martyrdom and so made quick his way to
+heaven. Had the letter ever reached that 'first hand' for which the
+writer says he waits to send it by, it assuredly would have come to the
+knowledge of the gold-loving Spanish conquerors, and armies would have
+gone forth to answer it. But our dead brother, having written it and
+placed it in this fold of the parchment for safety until the chance to
+send it southward should come, was cut off from life suddenly; and so,
+of the prodigious marvel of which knowledge had so strangely come to
+him, only this mute and hidden record remained."
+
+"But the letter itself?" I asked, with more energy than politeness.
+"What _is_ the story that it contains? What is this mystery? Tell me of
+it first, and then explain as much as you please afterwards."
+
+Fray Antonio smiled at me kindly. "Ah, you too are becoming excited," he
+said. "But, truly, it is not fair that I should thus have kept you
+waiting. Indeed, I am so full of it all that I forgot that as yet you
+know nothing. Come out with me into the court-yard, where the light is
+stronger--for the writing is very faint and pale--and I will read you
+this letter in which so wonderful a story is set forth."
+
+Together we passed out through a little door in the rear of the sacristy
+into what had been the inner and smaller cloister court-yard of the old
+convent--a lovely place in which a fountain set in a quaint stone basin
+sparkled, and where warm sunshine fell upon the rippling water and upon
+beds of sweet-smelling flowers. And here it was, standing among the
+flowers in the sunshine, beside the quaint fountain, that Fray Antonio
+read to me the letter--that in this strange fashion had come to us from
+a hand dead for much more than three centuries, and that yet brought to
+us two a vital message that wholly was to shape our destinies.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+MONTEZUMA'S MESSENGER.
+
+
+The letter was without date, but, being addressed to the Bishop
+Zumarraga, the phrase that occurred in it--"this New Spain, wherein,
+Very Reverend Father, you have labored in God's service this year and
+more past"--showed that 1530 was the year in which it was written. As to
+place, there practically was no clew at all. The writer referred
+repeatedly to "this mission of Santa Marta, in the Chichimeca
+country"--but the mission had perished utterly but a little while after
+it was founded; and at that period the term Chichimeca country was used
+by the Spaniards in speaking of any part of Mexico where wild Indians
+were.
+
+Being shorn of a portion of its pious verbiage, and somewhat modernized
+in style, the ancient Spanish of this letter contained in effect these
+English words:
+
+[Illustration: THE LETTER FROM THE DEAD.]
+
+     "VERY REVEREND FATHER,--This present letter will be sent
+     forward to you by the first hand by which it may be hence
+     transmitted; and in your wisdom, with God's grace also guiding you,
+     I doubt not that you will take measures for sending missionaries of
+     our Order to the great company of the heathen whose whereabouts I am
+     to disclose to you. And also, no doubt--keeping the matter secret
+     from the pestilent Oidores of the Audiencia--you will communicate
+     this strange matter through safe channels to our lord the King: that
+     with our missionaries an army may go forth, and that so the great
+     treasure of which I give tidings may be wrested from the heathen to
+     be used for God's glory and the enriching of our lord the King.
+
+     "Know, Very Reverend Father, that a month since, I being then
+     abroad from this mission of Santa Marta, preaching God's word in a
+     certain village of the Chichimecas that is five leagues to the
+     northward, was so strengthened by God's grace that many of the
+     heathen professed our holy faith and were baptized. And of these
+     was one who among that tribe was held a captive. Which captive, as
+     I found, was of the nation that dwelt in Tenochtitlan before our
+     great captain, Don Fernando Cortes, reduced that city to
+     submission. But little of earthly life remained to this poor
+     captive when I, unworthily but happily, opened to him the way to
+     life glorious and eternal; for in the fight that happened when he
+     was captured--of which fight he alone of all his companions had
+     survived--he was sorely wounded; and though in time his wounds had
+     healed he remained but a weakly man, and the service to which his
+     captors forced him was hard. So it was that I had but little more
+     than time to put him in the way leading to heaven before his spirit
+     gladly forsook its weary body and went thence from earth.
+
+     "That he truly was a convert to our holy faith I am well assured,
+     by the signs of a spirit meet for repentance which he showed in his
+     own person; and still more by his strong longing, most earnestly
+     expressed, that this same glorious faith of freedom should be
+     preached to a certain great company of his people, whereof he most
+     secretly told me, who still remain bound in the bondage of
+     idolatry. And it is what he told me of these, Very Reverend Father,
+     and of the marvellous hidden city wherein they dwell, and of the
+     mighty treasure which there they guard, that I desire now to bring
+     to your private knowledge, before it shall be known of by the
+     Oidores, and through you to our lord the King. Here now is the
+     whole of the mystery that he recited:
+
+     "In very ancient times, he said, his people came forth from seven
+     caves which are in the western region of this continent, and
+     wandered long in search of an abiding-place. And in the course of
+     ages it came to pass that a certain wise king ruled over them to
+     whom was given the gift of prophecy. Which king, by name
+     Chaltzantzin, foretold that in the later ages there should come an
+     army of fair and bearded men from the eastward, who would prevail
+     over the people of his race: slaying many, and making of the
+     remainder slaves. Being sorely troubled by thought of what he thus
+     foresaw, he set himself to provide a source of strength whereon his
+     descendants in that later time might draw in the hour of their
+     peril--and so save themselves from cruel death and from yet crueler
+     slavery. To which end, in a certain great valley that lies securely
+     hidden among the mountains of this continent, he caused to be built
+     a walled city; and this city he then peopled with the very bravest
+     and strongest of his race. And he made for those dwelling there a
+     perpetual law that commanded that all such as showed themselves
+     when come to maturity to be weak or malformed in body, or coward of
+     heart, then should be put to death; to the end that their natural
+     increase ever should be of the same stout stuff as themselves, and
+     also that there might be no lack of victims for the sacrifices
+     which are acceptable to their barbarous gods. And thus he provided
+     that in the time of need there should be here a strong army of
+     valiant warriors, ready to come forth to fight against the
+     fair-faced bearded men, and by conquering them to save safe the
+     land.
+
+     "And yet more provision did King Chaltzantzin make for the
+     strengthening and the saving of his race in the later ages. Within
+     this walled city of Culhuacan he caused to be builded a great
+     treasure-house, wherein he garnered such store of riches as never
+     was gathered together in one place since the beginning of the
+     world. And his order was that if even the power of the army which
+     should go forth from that city sufficed not to conquer the foreign
+     foemen, then should this vast treasure be used to buy his people's
+     ransom, that they might not perish nor be enslaved.
+
+     "Having set all which great matters in order, King Chaltzantzin
+     came forth from the Valley of Aztlan, leaving behind him the noble
+     colony that he had there founded; and so with his people wandered
+     vagrant--even as their gods had commanded that they should go until
+     by a sign from heaven they should be shown where was to be their
+     lasting home. And that the fulfilling of his purpose might be made
+     the more sure, he brought his people forth from that valley by most
+     perilous passes and through strait ways so that they might not
+     return thither; and that they who remained might not follow, he
+     closed the way behind him with mighty bars.
+
+     "In the fulness of time this wise king died, and others reigned in
+     his stead; and at last the ages of wandering of the Aztec tribe
+     were ended by the sign coming from heaven whereby they knew that
+     the Valley of Anahuac was to be their abiding home. There built
+     they the city of Tenochtitlan: which city the valiant captain, Don
+     Fernando Cortes, conquered this short time since--and by conquest
+     of it verified precisely the prophecy that King Chaltzantzin
+     uttered in very ancient times.
+
+     "But the captive Indian told me, further, that before the coming of
+     the Spaniards there was seen the sign of warning that King
+     Chaltzantzin had promised should tell when the danger that he had
+     so well prepared for should be near; which sign was the going out
+     of the sacred fire that the priests guarded on a certain high hill.
+     Meantime, all knowledge of their brethren hidden in the Valley of
+     Aztlan for their help in time of peril was lost to the Aztec tribe
+     in dim tradition; for the King had commanded, in order that his
+     people might not fall into weakness through trusting in the
+     strength of others for protection, that no open record of the
+     colony that he had founded should be preserved. Therefore was this
+     matter a secret known only to a few priests whose blood was of the
+     royal line; in whose keeping, also, was the token that King
+     Chaltzantzin had commanded should be sent to the walled city of
+     Culhuacan when its warriors were to be called forth, and a map
+     whereby the way thither was made plain. And so it was that,
+     when the sacred fire ceased burning, the priests were alert
+     for the threatened danger; and when the landing of the
+     Spaniards--'fair-faced and bearded men, coming from the
+     eastward'--was known to them, they warned their king, Montezuma,
+     that the prophecy was fulfilled, and that the time for sending for
+     the army and the treasure had come.
+
+     "For the bearer of this message was chosen a priest of the blood
+     royal, with whom went also a younger priest, his son. And with
+     these went a guard, whereof the captive Indian was one, that they
+     might be carried in safety through the region where the wild
+     Indians were. But the valor of the guard was useless, for the wild
+     Indians set upon them in such prodigious numbers--in a place not
+     far from where is this present mission of Santa Marta--that all of
+     the company, save only this single Indian who was wounded and made
+     captive, was overpowered and slain. Yet among the slain, the Indian
+     said, was not found the body of the priest's son; nor was there
+     found on the priest's body the token that he had been the bearer
+     of, nor the map that showed the way. For a time the Indian had
+     hoped that the younger priest had escaped out of the fight alive,
+     and had carried to them who dwelt in the walled city of Culhuacan
+     the message of summons; but as the years went onward and nothing
+     came of it, this hope had died within his heart.
+
+     "This, Very Reverend Father, is the strange story told me by this
+     Indian; who spoke with the urgent sincerity of one devout in the
+     Christian faith who knew by sensible perception that his death was
+     near at hand. Eagerly he begged that to these Gentiles, his
+     brethren by blood, might be sent in their secret fastnesses the
+     blessed Word whereby they would be delivered from the chains of
+     their idolatry into the freedom of Christian grace. And, surely,
+     the treasure that they ward very well may be wrested from these
+     heathen that it may be used in part in this land in God's service,
+     and that in part it may go to the just enriching of our lord the
+     King.
+
+     "Nor is the matter one that is difficult of accomplishment. For a
+     token which shall give us the right of entry into this walled city
+     of Culhuacan we need only the Word of God and a sufficient force of
+     men well armed with swords and matchlocks. Nor is it any bar to our
+     quest that the map showing the way thither has been lost. The
+     Indian told me that this way is so plainly marked that one who had
+     found it could not lose it again. For at spaces of not more than a
+     league or two apart, upon flat places of the rock convenient for
+     such purpose, was cut the same figure that the token of summons had
+     engraved upon it; and, with this, an arrow pointing towards where
+     the next carving would be found: and so these signs went onward,
+     the heathen priest had told him, even to the very entrance of the
+     Valley of Aztlan. And that this matter might be made sure to me, he
+     led me to a spot but a league to the westward of this mission of
+     Santa Marta and there showed me one of these signs, with the
+     pointing arrow carved also on the rock beside it--of all of which
+     the drawing here made is an indifferent good copy. And by that
+     guiding arrow we went onward to another like carving at a little
+     less than two leagues away to the northward. Therefore, Very
+     Reverend Father, I, of my own knowledge, am a witness to a part, at
+     least, of the truth of what that Indian told. And with all my heart
+     do I add mine own entreaty to his simple pleadings for the
+     salvation of the souls of his brethren; and also do I venture to
+     entreat that among those who go to carry the Word of God to this
+     hidden heathen host I may be one; so that I, though all unworthy of
+     such honor, shall have a part in rendering to God so glorious a
+     service.
+
+     "The more urgently do I ask this favor because here, in this
+     mission of Santa Marta, it is but too clear to me that I am
+     laboring in a barren field. Some hundreds of the heathen I have
+     indeed baptized; but among all these who have professed our
+     Christian faith scarce a score show outward and visible signs of a
+     true regeneration. Many, I am sadly sure, still practise in secret
+     their old idolatry--and find little more than mere amusement in the
+     rites of our most holy Church. When they tire of this novelty,
+     which, in the case of folk of such light natures no doubt will be
+     in a little while, they will return openly to their idolatry; and
+     it probably may happen that they then will sacrifice me to their
+     heathen gods. That, in one way or another, they do intend to kill
+     me, and that soon, I feel quite sure. I am but twenty-three years
+     old, Very Reverend Father; and that is an early time in life to end
+     it. No doubt, also, in killing me they will use torture. And I long
+     fervently to live, not only for the pleasure of it, but also that I
+     may do good service to God, and to our Father Saint Francis, by
+     saving many heathen souls. Therefore I beg that when the army
+     marches to the reduction of this hidden city that I may be one of
+     our brethren who will go with it, to hold by tender preaching of
+     God's goodness and mercy such heathen as may remain alive after our
+     soldiers shall have conquered that city with the sword.
+
+     "I commend you, Very Reverend Father, to the care of Our Lord in
+     all things, and pray that he may guard your most illustrious and
+     very reverend person, and protect you in all matters of your
+     temporal and spiritual estate. And I am the least worthy of your
+     servants,
+
+     FRANCISCO de los ANGELES."
+
+"Of a truth," said Fray Antonio, as he ceased reading, "this brother of
+mine adhered closely to the truth when he subscribed himself the least
+worthy of the bishop's servants. Were it not here in his own hand, I
+should refuse to believe that one of our Order at that time in New Spain
+had any thought of saving his own life when God's work was to be done."
+
+For myself, I must own that my heart was deeply touched by the very
+humanity of this poor Brother Francisco's cry for help that came up out
+of the dead depths of the past; and that was the more keen and pitiful
+because the cruel death at the hands of the barbarous Indians that he so
+dreaded assuredly had overtaken him. His could not have been a strong
+nature, and it was the weaker because of his youth; but, after all, it
+was the nature that God had given him, and there must have been a strain
+of strength in it, else he never would have braved the dangers which
+overcame him in the end. And he was "but twenty-three years old"!
+
+Yet when I sought to lead Fray Antonio's mind to such consideration of
+the matter he replied, sternly: "This weak brother failed in his duty.
+To him God gave an opportunity to die gloriously for the Faith; but,
+instead of accepting that noble reward joyfully, his strongest wish was
+that he might find a way by which he might escape alive. Had all
+professors of the Christian creed so conducted themselves, that creed
+long since would have perished from off the earth. _Semen est sanguis
+Christianorum_ is well said of Tertullian the Carthaginian, and, later,
+of the blessed Saint Jerome."
+
+As Fray Antonio thus spoke he so drew up his slight figure, and in his
+sweet voice was a ring of such commanding sternness, that he was for the
+moment transformed. Here was a man wholly different from the gentle
+scholar whom I had already learned to love. In the glimpse that I thus
+had of his underlying character I saw vivified again the spirit of the
+early Christian Church; and I understood, as I never had understood
+before, of what stuff they were made who heard pronounced upon them the
+sentence, "To the lions!" and joyfully accepted their cruel fate,
+defiant of what man might do to them because of the perfection of their
+faith in the merciful forgiveness and upholding steadfastness of their
+Christian God.
+
+But in a moment a look of sadness and regret came into Fray Antonio's
+face, and he added, sorrowfully: "God forgive me for thus judging my
+brother, who long since was judged! Who can say that when the hour of
+trial came he did not meet his death as bravely as any martyr of them
+all? And who can say," he went on, but speaking softly, as one communing
+with his own soul, "how I myself--But God gives strength." And then he
+ceased to speak aloud, but his lips moved silently as though in prayer.
+As I close my eyes I see him again as clearly as I saw him
+then--standing beside the old stone fountain, amid the flowers, in the
+gladness of the bright sunshine; in his eyes a strange, far-away look,
+as though the future for a moment had been opened to him; and on his
+strong, fine face a sternly resolute expression, which yet was softened
+by the traits which were so strong within him of holiness and gentleness
+and love. I cannot know what Fray Antonio prayed for, there in the old
+convent garden; but I can guess, and I am well persuaded that his prayer
+was heard. Truly, I think that it was something more than chance that
+led us thus at first to talk, not of the wonder that was in Brother
+Francisco's letter, but of Brother Francisco himself and of his end.
+
+And then the subject-matter in chief of the letter claimed our
+attention. In itself this was sufficiently marvellous; but what
+increased the marvel of it was the conviction, strong within us both,
+that if the hidden city of Culhuacan ever had existed at all it existed
+still. Our belief was so entirely logical that, assuming the truth of
+the story told by the Indian captive, it admitted nowhere of a doubt.
+That the city had been hidden for a long period, through at least
+several hundreds of years, from the Aztecs themselves, and that no
+knowledge of it had been conveyed to them by wild Indians who had come
+by chance upon the valley wherein it was, was evidence enough of the
+security of its concealment. There was nothing surprising, consequently,
+in the fact that the Spaniards had not discovered it when they first
+overran Mexico, nor that it had remained unknown to the Mexicans of
+modern times. As is well known, there are to this day prodigious areas
+in Mexico which remain utterly unexplored. In the region west of
+Tampico; in the north-western States of Sinaloa, Durango, and Sonora; or
+in the far southern States of Oajaca and Chiapas, a valley as great as
+that in which the City of Mexico now stands might lie utterly hidden and
+unknown. And if, as the Indian's narrative implied, this particular
+valley had been selected deliberately because it was so hidden and so
+inaccessible, and if the described precautions had been taken to isolate
+its inhabitants, it very well might have continued to be lost in its
+deep concealment through an almost infinite range of years. That it
+never had been found since the Spaniards came into Mexico we were
+absolutely certain, for the outcry over so great a wonder would have
+echoed throughout the whole of the civilized world. Finally, in the name
+of the city, Culhuacan, we had a substantial fact which connected the
+extraordinary story that had come to us so strangely with matters within
+our own knowledge. For this name not only is given in the Aztec
+traditions as that of the sacred spot in which their god Huitzilopochtli
+spoke to them, but survives until this present day in the name of the
+village that lies at the foot of the sacred mountain, in the Valley of
+Mexico, called by the Aztecs the Hill of Huitzachtla, and by the
+Spaniards the Hill of the Star--on which, at the end of each cycle of
+fifty-two years, the sacred fire was renewed. Surely it was no accident
+that had caused the name Culhuacan to be given to this village on this
+sacred spot; rather must it have been so named by the elect few to whom
+the secret was known as a perpetual reminder to them of the reserve of
+men and treasure upon which they could draw should danger threaten their
+country and their gods.
+
+"No doubt," said Fray Antonio, "what is here told of a secret record,
+known only to the priests, supplies one of the lapses in the pictured
+history of the Aztec migration; but as we know not which break in the
+history is thus filled in, we have no clew whatever as to the
+whereabouts of this hidden place. Nor have we any clew as to the
+whereabouts of the mission of Santa Marta, whence we might go onward,
+guided by the carvings upon the rocks, until we found at last the place
+we sought. The mission of Santa Marta, where my brother Francisco long
+ago ministered, might have been anywhere in all Mexico; and being so
+small a mission, and enduring for so short a period, it is not likely
+that any record of it anywhere has been preserved. Had we but the map
+and the token of which my brother writes, our way would be clear;
+without these guides it well may be a toilsome way and long. Yet do I
+know," Fray Antonio continued, earnestly, "that I shall find this hidden
+city. In my soul is a strong and glad conviction that God has called me
+to the most glorious work of carrying to the heathen dwelling there the
+message of His saving love. He has worked one miracle already to call me
+to this duty; in His own good time and way I doubt not that He will work
+another miracle by which I may be set in the way of its accomplishment."
+
+As Fray Antonio spoke of the map of the Aztec migration, a hope came
+into my heart that, as I considered it, seemed surely to be a certainty.
+In the excitement of listening to this strange letter--concerning which
+not the least strange matter was, that between the writing and the
+reading of it had passed three hundred and fifty years--I had forgotten
+my own discoveries, and that my purpose was to show him the pictured
+paper and the curious piece of gold. But as he spoke of the migration
+this matter was called to my mind suddenly; and then in an instant the
+conviction thrilled through me that the clew which would lead us to the
+hidden city was in my possession.
+
+"God already has worked that other miracle," I cried, joyfully. "Here is
+the token, and here is the map that shows the way!" and, so speaking, I
+opened the snake-skin bag that I had taken from the breast of the dead
+Cacique and drew forth its precious contents.
+
+For myself, I needed no additional proof that here was all that was
+needful to guide us to the hidden city. Yet was I glad that in so grave
+a matter we should have added to absolute conviction the weight of
+absolute proof. And this we had most clearly; for Fray Antonio, cooler
+than I, compared the drawing in the letter with the engraving upon the
+piece of gold, and found the two to be essentially identical, save that
+the engraving lacked the sign of the arrow pointing the way.
+
+"And now," I cried, enthusiastically, "for such discoveries in
+archaeology as the world has never known!"
+
+"And now," said Fray Antonio, speaking slowly and reverently, "for such
+glorious work in God's service as has been granted but rarely to man to
+do!"
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+THE ENGINEER AND THE LOST-FREIGHT MAN.
+
+
+That the weight of a strange destiny was pressing upon us, neither Fray
+Antonio nor I for a moment doubted. It was something more than chance,
+we believed, that had brought us together, and that thereafter, by such
+extraordinary means, had put into our hands, in places far asunder, yet
+at almost precisely the same moment, these two ancient papers; either of
+which, alone, would have been meaningless; but the two of which,
+together, pointed clearly the way to a discovery so wonderful that the
+like of it was not to be found in all the history of the world.
+
+At the moment that I comprehended how great an adventure was before me,
+and what honorable fame I was like to get out of it, I determined that I
+would keep the whole matter secret from my fellow-archaeologists until I
+could tell them, not what I intended doing, but what I actually had
+done--for I had no desire to divide with any one the honors that fairly
+would be mine when I published to the world the result of my
+investigation of this hidden community that had survived,
+uncontaminated, from prehistoric times. Having this strong desire within
+me, it was with great pleasure that I acceded to Fray Antonio's request
+that our project of discovery should not be published abroad. His motive
+for secrecy, as I presently perceived, was bred of the one single strain
+of human weakness that ever I found in him. Even as I was determined
+that no other archaeologist should share with me the honor of discovering
+this primitive community, so was Fray Antonio determined that to him
+alone should belong the glory of carrying into that region of dense
+heathen darkness the radiant splendor of the Christian faith. If this
+were sin on his part, it certainly was a sin that he shared with many
+saints long since in Paradise. Even the blessed Saint Francis himself,
+when, at the Council of Mats, he portioned out among his followers the
+heathen world that they might preach everywhere Christianity, reserved
+for himself Syria and Egypt; in the hope that in one or the other of
+those countries he might crown his labors by suffering a glorious
+martyrdom. And perhaps in this matter Fray Antonio was not unmindful of
+the example set him by the great founder of the Order to which he
+belonged.
+
+But while we were thus firmly decided to keep to ourselves the honors
+that so great an archaeological discovery and so great a Christian
+conquest must bring to us severally, we perceived that it would not be
+the part of prudence to essay our adventure without any companions at
+all. Some portion of the country through which we were to pass we knew
+to be frequented by very dangerous tribes of Indians, against the
+assaults of which two lonely men--neither of whom had any knowledge
+whatever of the art of war--could make but a poor stand. And even should
+we escape the wild Indians, we knew that we might get into many evil
+straits in which our lives might be ended, yet through which a larger
+company might pass in safety. And for my own part, I must confess that I
+had a strong desire to have with me some of my own countrymen. For the
+gallantry of the Mexicans, which gallantry has been proved a thousand
+times, I have the highest respect; yet is it a natural feeling among
+Anglo-Saxons that when it comes to facing dangers in which death looms
+largely, and especially when it comes to a few men against a company of
+savages, and standing back to back and fighting to the very last,
+Anglo-Saxon hearts are found to be the stanchest, and Anglo-Saxon backs
+to be the stoutest which can be thus ranged together. But in our own
+case I did not at all see whence such an Anglo-Saxon contingent was to
+be obtained.
+
+We had been talking over this matter of a fighting force one afternoon
+in Fray Antonio's sacristy--where our many colloquies were held, for we
+moved with a thoughtful deliberation in setting agoing our
+adventure--and we had come almost to the determination of organizing a
+little force of Otomi Indians, and calling upon two brave young
+gentlemen of Fray Antonio's acquaintance to join us as lieutenants.
+Although I was willing to adopt this plan, since no other was open to
+us, I was far from fancying it; both for the reason which I have already
+named, and also for the reason--and this Fray Antonio admitted was not
+without foundation in probability--that our young allies would be more
+than likely, by their indiscreet disclosures, to make our purpose fully
+known. Therefore, it was in no very pleasant frame of mind, our
+conference being ended, that I returned to my hotel.
+
+As I entered the hotel court-yard I heard the sound of Pablo's
+mouth-organ, and with this much laughter and some talk in English; and
+as I fairly caught sight of the merrymakers, I heard said, in most
+execrable Spanish, "Here's a _medio_ for another tune, my boy; and if
+you'll make the donkey dance again to it, I'll give you a _real_."
+
+That I might see what was going forward without interrupting it, I
+stepped behind one of the stone pillars that upheld the gallery; and for
+all that my mind was in no mood for laughter just then, I could not but
+fall to laughing at what I saw.
+
+Over on the far side of the court-yard, with Pablo and El Sabio, were
+two men whose type was so unmistakable that I should have known them for
+Americans had I met them in the moon. One was a tall, wiry fellow, with
+a vast reach of arm, and a depth of chest and width of shoulders which
+allowed what powerful engines those long arms of his were when he set
+them in motion. His face was nearly covered by a heavy black beard, and
+his projecting forehead and his resolute black eyes under it gave him a
+look of great energy and force. The other was short and thick-set, with
+a big round head stockily upheld on a thick neck, and with a
+good-humored face, which, being clean-shaven, was chiefly notable for
+the breadth and the squareness of the jaws. He had merry blue eyes, and
+his crown--he was holding his battered Derby hat in his hand--was as
+bare as a billiard ball. Below timber-line, as he himself expressed it,
+he had a brush of close-cut sandy-red hair. I had encountered both of
+these men when I first came to Morelia, and during two or three weeks I
+had seen a good deal of them, for we had met daily at our meals; and the
+more that I had seen of them the better was I disposed to like them. The
+tall man was Rayburn, a civil engineer in charge of construction on the
+advanced line of the new railway; the other was Young, the lost-freight
+agent of the railroad company--whose duty, for which his keen quickness
+peculiarly well fitted him, was that of looking up freight which had
+gone astray in transit. Both of those men had lived long in rough and
+dangerous regions, and both--as I then instinctively believed, and as I
+came later to know fully--were as true and as stanch and as brave as
+ever men could be.
+
+What they were laughing at, there in the court-yard, was an
+extraordinary performance in which the performers were Pablo and El
+Sabio. With a grin all over the parts of his face not engaged in the
+operation of his mouth-organ, Pablo was rendering on that instrument a
+highly Mexicanized version of one of the airs from _Pinafore_ that he
+had just acquired from hearing Young whistle it. To this music, with a
+most pained yet determined expression, the Wise One was lifting his feet
+and swaying his body and nodding his head in a sort of accompaniment,
+his movements being directed by the waving of Pablo's disengaged hand.
+The long ears of this unfortunate little donkey wagged in remonstrance
+against the unreasonable motions demanded of his unlucky legs, and every
+now and then he would twitch viciously his fuzzy scrap of a tail; but
+his master was inexorable, and it was not until Pablo's own desire to
+laugh became so strong that he no longer could play the mouth-organ that
+El Sabio was given rest. As he ended his dancing I must say that there
+was on El Sabio's face as fine an expression of contempt as the face of
+a donkey ever wore.
+
+"Hello, Professor!" Young called out, as he caught sight of me, "have
+you given up antiquities an' gone into th' circus business? This outfit
+that you've got here will make your fortune when you get it back into
+th' States. If you don't want to run it yourself, I'll run it for you
+on th' shares; an' I guess Rayburn'll be glad t' go along as clown. He'd
+make a good clown, Rayburn would. You see, we're both of us out of work,
+an' both lookin' for a job."
+
+"What do you mean by being out of work?" I asked, when I had shaken
+hands with them. "What's become of the railroad?"
+
+"Oh, th' railroad's got into one of its periodical bust-ups," Young
+answered. "A row among the bondholders, an' construction stopped, an'
+working expenses reduced, an' pretty much all hands bounced, from th'
+president down. I guess Rayburn an' I can stand th' racket, though, if
+th' company can. I've been wantin' t' get out of this d----d Greaser
+country for a good while, an' I guess now I've got my chance. I must
+say, though, I wish it had come a little less sudden, for I haven't
+anything in particular in sight over in God's country, an' Rayburn
+hasn't either. So if you want to start your circus we're ready for you
+right away. Where did you get that boy-an'-donkey outfit from, anyway?
+They're just daisies, both of 'em an' no mistake!"
+
+"I don't know that you can count on me for a clown, Professor," Rayburn
+said, "but I might go along as door-keeper, or something of that sort.
+But I don't believe that Young and I will need to go into the circus
+business. We are out of work, that's a fact; but the company has done
+the square thing by us--paid us up in full to the end of next month and
+fitted us out with passes to St. Louis. We're all right. Young is
+heading straight for home, but I rather think that I'll take a turn
+around the country and see what the civilized parts of it look like.
+Ever since I came down here, nearly, I've been at work in the wilds. I
+want to see some of the old temples and things too. You can put me up to
+that, Professor. Where's a good ruin to begin on?"
+
+From the moment that I laid eyes on these two men, as I came into the
+court-yard, my mind was made up that I would do my best to induce them
+to join with Fray Antonio and me in our search for the hidden city; and
+I had listened very gladly to what they told me, for it showed me that I
+should not have to ask them to abandon profitable work in order to join
+in our doubtful enterprise. So we talked lightly about the circus and
+other indifferent matters for a while; and then we had a lively supper
+together at La Soledad (which always seemed to me a very original name
+for a restaurant), and then I brought them to my room to smoke their
+cigars.
+
+It was while they were in the comfortable frame of mind that is begotten
+of a good meal and subsequent good tobacco--over there in Morelia we
+smoked the Tepic cigars, which are excellent--that I opened to them the
+great project that I had in hand. I told them frankly the whole story:
+of my strange adventure in the Indian village, of the paper and the gold
+token which the Cacique unwittingly had given me, of the letter that
+Fray Antonio had found, and of how our joint discoveries set us clearly
+in the way of finding an Aztec community that certainly had existed
+unchanged, save for such changes as had been developed within itself,
+since a time long anterior to the Spanish conquest of Mexico. I dwelt
+with enthusiasm, and I think forcibly, upon the inestimable gain to the
+science of archaeology that would result from the investigations that we
+intended to make; and I touched also upon the scientific value that
+would attach to a careful and accurate description of the effect
+produced upon this primitive community by Fray Antonio's preaching; for
+this would be, as I pointed out, the first occasion in the history of
+the world when a record would be made, from the stand-point of the
+unprejudiced ethnologist, of the reception accorded by a heathen people
+to the doctrine of Christianity. In a word, I presented the case most
+glowingly--so glowingly, in fact, that my own heart was quite fired by
+it--and ended by urging them earnestly to join us in a work that
+promised so greatly to increase the sum of human knowledge touching the
+most interesting subjects that can be presented to the consideration of
+the human mind. And I am pained to state that I discovered, when I
+finished my appeal, that Young was sound asleep!
+
+Rayburn did not go to sleep, and he did take a certain amount of
+interest in what I said, but I was discouraged by his very obvious
+failure to respond to my enthusiasm.
+
+"You see, Professor," he said, "the fact of the matter is that I can't
+spare the time. I might take a month or two, but you seem to think that
+a year is the least time in which any substantial results can he
+accomplished. I can't give a year, or anything like a year, to what, so
+far as I am concerned, will be sheer idleness. I've got a mother and
+sister at home on Cape Cod who depend on me for a living, and I must get
+to work again. You see, there is glory enough in all this, and glory
+that I should like to have a share in; but glory is a luxury that I
+can't afford. I've got to go to work at something that has money in it."
+
+The sound of Rayburn's voice had the effect on Young of waking him up.
+He listened, in a sleepily approving way, to Rayburn's practical
+comment, and then, giving a prodigious yawn, added, on his own account:
+"Yes, that's about the size of it. We're neither of us here for our
+health, Professor; what we're after is spot cash. If there was any money
+in your scheme I'd take a hand in it quick enough; but as there
+isn't--Well, not this evening, Professor; some other evening."
+
+"No money in it!" I answered. "Why, haven't I told you that there is
+stored in this hidden city the greatest treasure that ever was brought
+into one place since the world began?"
+
+"No, I'll be d----d if you have!" Young replied, with great energy and
+promptness. "Not a word, unless it was while I was asleep. What's he
+said about a treasure, Rayburn? I'm awake now, an' I'll keep awake if
+there's anything like that to be talked about."
+
+"You certainly haven't said anything about a treasure so far,
+Professor," Rayburn said. "I'd like to hear about it myself. If there is
+a treasure-hunting expedition mixed up with this scientific expedition
+of yours, that puts a new face on the whole matter. I can't afford the
+luxury of scientific investigation pure and simple, but if there is
+money in it too, that is quite another thing. So tell us about your
+prospect, Professor, and if the surface indications are good you can
+count on me to go in."
+
+I confess that I was a trifle disappointed upon finding how eagerly
+these young men sought information in regard to a matter that I
+considered so unimportant that I had forgotten even to mention it. But I
+reflected that, after all, the motive by which they were induced to join
+in our adventure was immaterial, while our need for the strength that
+their joining in it would give us was so pressing that upon gaining them
+for allies very likely depended our eventual success. Being moved by
+which considerations, I dilated upon the magnitude of the hidden
+treasure with such vehemence that presently their eyes were flashing,
+and the blood had so mounted into their brains that their very foreheads
+were ruddy and their breath came short. And I must confess that my own
+pulses beat quicker and harder as I talked on. Of this treasure I had
+not before thought at all, being so thoroughly taken up with the
+scientific side of the discovery that I hoped to accomplish; but now I
+was moved profoundly by thoughts of what I could do for the advancement
+of science had I practically limitless wealth at my command. And
+especially was I thrilled by the thought of the magnificent form in
+which my own magnificent discoveries could be given to the world.
+Compared with my _Pre-Columbian Conditions on the Continent of North
+America_, Lord Kingsborough's great work, both in form and in substance,
+would sink into hopeless insignificance. And in all that I said of the
+vastness of the hidden treasure I felt certain that I was keeping well
+within the bounds of truth, for I had the positive assurance that in the
+Aztec treasure-house in that hidden valley the ransom of a nation was
+stored.
+
+"Will you go with us?" I asked, when I had brought my glowing
+description to an end.
+
+"Well, I should smile, Professor," was Young's characteristic answer.
+
+"You can count me in now, and no mistake!" said Rayburn, and added, "By
+Jove, Palgrave, I mean to take a part of my share and buy the whole of
+Cape Cod!"
+
+And so the make-up of our party was decided upon. Fray Antonio joined it
+for the love of God; I joined it for the love of science; and Young and
+Rayburn joined it for the love of gold. In regard to the boy Pablo, he
+could not strictly be said to have joined it at all. He simply went
+along.
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+THE KING'S SYMBOL.
+
+
+Fray Antonio was well pleased when I told him of the stout contingent
+that I had secured; and when he had seen Rayburn and Young, and had
+talked with them--though his talk with Young did not amount to much, for
+Young's Spanish was abominable--he was as thoroughly satisfied as I was
+that for our purposes we could not possibly have found two better men.
+
+In the course of this conference we made short work of our preparations
+for departure. Rayburn's experience in fitting out engineering parties
+had given him precisely the knowledge required for putting our own
+little party promptly and effectively in the field; and in this matter,
+and in all practical matters connected with the expedition, he took the
+lead. He and Young already possessed the regulation frontier outfit of
+arms--a Winchester rifle and a big revolver--which they increased by
+another big revolver apiece; and I armed myself similarly with a pair of
+revolvers and a Winchester: concerning the use that I should make of
+which, in case need for using them arose, I had very grave doubts
+indeed. Fray Antonio declined to carry any arms at all; and after he had
+accidentally discharged one of my pistols, which he had picked up to
+examine, so that the ball went singing by my ear and actually cut
+through the brim of Young's hat, there was a general disposition to
+admit that the less this godly man had to do with carnal weapons the
+safer would it be for all the rest of us. Young's hat was a battered
+Derby, and about as unsuitable a hat for wear in Mexico as possibly
+could be found; but for some unknown reason he was very much attached to
+that hat, and he was so wroth over having a hole shot through it in that
+unprovoked sort of way that he manifested a decided coolness towards
+Fray Antonio for several days.
+
+In the matter of armament, the happiest member of our party was Pablo.
+He was a handy boy, and when he had demonstrated his ability to manage a
+revolver by doing some very creditable shooting with mine (at mark that
+I had stuck up in the corral, in order that I might gain ease in the use
+of this unknown weapon), I delighted him inexpressibly by buying him a
+pistol for his very own. I think that Pablo, upon becoming the possessor
+of that revolver, at once grew two inches taller. The way that he
+strutted as he wore it, and his eager thrusting forward of his left hip,
+so that this gallant piece of warlike furniture might be the most
+conspicuous part of him, were a joy to witness. For a time his
+mouth-organ was entirely neglected; and coming quietly into the corral
+one day, I found him engaged in exhibiting the revolver to El Sabio; who
+regarded it with a slightly bored expression that I do not think Pablo
+took in good part.
+
+Rayburn decided that our expedition could be made more effectively with
+a small force than with a large one. He argued that unless we took into
+the Indian country a really powerful body of men, we would be safer with
+a very few: for a few of us would feel keenly the necessity of keeping
+constantly on guard; could be more easily managed and held together in
+running away; and in case a fight was forced upon us we would fight more
+steadily because each of us would know surely that he could rely upon
+the support of all the rest. Which reasoning we perceived to be so sound
+that we promptly accepted it.
+
+Rayburn added to our company, therefore, only three men: two Otomi
+Indians of whom Fray Antonio gave a good account, and Dennis Kearney,
+who had served as axeman on the recently disbanded engineering corps.
+He was a merry soul, this Dennis, with a stock of Irish melodies in his
+head that would have made the fortune of an old-time minstrel. He and
+Pablo took to each other at once--though, since neither of them spoke a
+word of the other's language, music was their only channel of
+communication--and Pablo presently presented us with a rendering on his
+mouth-organ, from a strictly Mexican stand-point, of "Rory O'More" that
+quite took our breaths away. While Pablo played, Dennis would stand by
+with his head cocked on one side, and with an air of attention as
+closely critical as that which El Sabio himself exhibited; and when
+Pablo went wrong, as he invariably did in his attempted _bravura_
+passages, Dennis would stop him with a wave of his hand, and an "Aisy
+now, me darlint! That's good enough Mexican, but it ain't good Irish at
+all, at all," and then would show him what good Irish was by singing
+"Rory O'More" in a fashion which made the old stone arches ring with a
+volume of music that could have given odds to an entire brass band. Poor
+Dennis! Only the other day I heard an organ-grinder grinding forth "Rory
+O'More," and the memory of the last time I heard Dennis sing that song,
+and of what heroic stuff that merry-hearted rough fellow then showed
+himself to be made, came suddenly over me, and there was a choking in my
+throat, and my eyes were full of tears.
+
+Well, it was a good thing--or a bad thing, as you please to put it--that
+we could not see far into the future that morning when we packed our
+mules in the corral of the hotel, and set out upon the march that was
+to lead us through such perilous passages before we reached its end.
+
+[Illustration:  PACKING IN THE CORRAL]
+
+That I might fill to the brim the cup of Pablo's happiness--for my
+conscience pricked me a little that I suffered him to go with us--I had
+bought him the rain-coat of palm leaves for which his heart so long had
+pined. What with this and his revolver, and the delight of going upon a
+journey (for he had very fully developed that love of travel which is so
+strong in his race), his wits seemed to be completely addled with joy.
+He insisted upon putting on his absurd rain-coat at once; and he did so
+many foolish things that even El Sabio looked at him reproachfully--this
+was when he tried to place on that small donkey's back some of the heavy
+pack-stuff destined for the back of one of the big mules--and we got
+along much better with his room, as he presently enabled us to do, than
+we did with his company. When the time for starting came, we had quite a
+hunt for him; and we might not have found him at all had we not been
+guided by the sound of music to the sequestered spot to which he had
+retired in order to give vent to his pent-up feelings by playing on his
+mouth-organ "Pop goes the weasel"--an air that Young had been whistling
+that morning and that had mightily taken Pablo's fancy.
+
+We made rather an imposing cavalcade as we filed forth from the great
+gate of the hotel, and took our way along the Calle Nacional, the
+principal street of the city, towards the Garita del Poniente. Fray
+Antonio and I rode first; then came Rayburn and Young, followed by
+Dennis Kearney; then the two pack-mules, beside which walked the two
+Otomi Indians; and closing the procession came Pablo, wearing his
+rain-coat, with his revolver strapped outside of it, and riding El Sabio
+with a dignity that would have done honor to the Viceroy himself. Pablo
+certainly was in the nature of an anti-climax; but I would not have told
+him so for the world. Fray Antonio wore the habit of his Order, this
+privilege having been specially granted to him by the Governor of the
+State as a safeguard for all his expeditions among the Indians. It was
+understood, indeed, that he now was going forth on one of his missionary
+visits among the mountain tribes, and simply rode with us, so far as our
+ways should lie together, for greater security. I had announced that I
+was going among the Indians again in order to increase my knowledge of
+their manners and customs; and Rayburn--to whom the rest of the party
+was supposed to belong--had stated that he was taking the field in order
+to make a new reconnaissance along the line of the projected railway. It
+was in order to maintain these several fictions that we went out by the
+western gate, and that we continued for two days our march westward
+before turning to our true course.
+
+Of our progress during the ensuing fortnight it is not necessary that I
+should speak, for beyond the ordinary incidents of travel no adventures
+befell us. During this period we went forward steadily and rapidly; and
+at the end of it we had covered more than three hundred miles, and had
+come close to where--supposing our rendering of the Aztec map to be
+correct, and that we had rightly collated it with the dead monk's
+letter--the mission of Santa Marta had stood three centuries and a half
+before. There was no possibility that any trace of this mission would be
+found; but every rock that we came to was most eagerly scrutinized, for
+on any one of them might we find the King's symbol engraved.
+
+For two or three days we had been travelling through a region very wild
+and desolate. Far away along the western horizon rose a range of
+mountains whose bare peaks cut a jagged line along the sky. The country
+between us and these far-away mountains was made up of many parallel
+ranges of rocky hills; which ranges were separated by broad, shallow
+valleys, where cactus and sage-brush covered the dry ground thickly; and
+the only trees that broke this dreary monotony were pita-palms, the most
+dismal thing in all created nature to which the name of a tree ever has
+been given by man. There was no trail, and travelling through this
+tangle of briers was very difficult. All of Rayburn's skill, which long
+practice had developed to a high degree, was required to enable us to
+pick a way through so thorny a wilderness. At times the Indians with
+their _machetes_, and Dennis with his axe, had to cut a path for us; and
+despite all our care, our own hands were cut and torn, and the legs of
+our poor beasts were red with blood.
+
+The deadly dryness of this arid waste added to our discomfort. A strong
+dry wind blew steadily from the north, building up out of fine dust
+which was over all the surface of the baked ground little
+whirl-winds--_remolinos_, as the Mexicans call them--which went dancing
+down the valleys as though they were ghostly things; and occasionally,
+when one of these struck us, we were covered with a prickly dust that
+fairly burned our skins. What water we got was to be had only by digging
+in the _arroyos_ which traversed the centre of each valley
+longitudinally; and although this water always was muddy, and had a
+strongly alkaline taste, it is the only thing that I remember with
+pleasure in all that weary land. Of animal life there was nothing to be
+seen, save a-plenty of rattlesnakes; and a few great buzzards which
+wheeled above us from time to time as though with the intention of
+keeping track of us until we should fall down and die of thirst and
+weariness, and they should be able to feast upon us at their ease.
+
+At the end of the third day of this dreary travelling we had come close
+to the great western range of mountains, and our camp that night was
+made in the mouth of a little valley that opened from among the
+foot-hills. The night before we had made a dry camp, and for the whole
+of the twenty-four hours we had had but a pint of water apiece. Pablo, I
+am sure, had given half of his own scant allowance to El Sabio. The
+other animals--it was all that we could do for them--had only their
+dusty mouths and nostrils wiped out with a wet sponge. They were
+pitiable objects, with their bleeding legs, their haggard eyes, their
+out-hanging tongues, and their quivering flanks. As Fray Antonio
+unsaddled his horse I saw that there were tears in his eyes; but the
+rest of us, I fear, were too thoughtful of our own misery to feel much
+sorrow for the misery of our beasts.
+
+I suppose that a man must suffer the lack of it, as we then did, in
+order to know how precious a thing water is. And to give some notion of
+its preciousness to those who not only are free at any time to drink
+their fill of it, but even can fill bath-tubs with it, and feel the joy
+of it on their bare bodies whenever they are so minded, I will say that
+when a little digging gave us that night as much water as we wanted, our
+joy was far greater than it would have been had we there found the
+hidden city of which we were in search.
+
+Our well was sunk in the broad sandy bottom of the _arroyo_, in the
+midst of a narrow and delectably grassy valley between two foot-hills.
+And the abundance and the sweetness of the water, as well as the
+presence of grass, showed us that but a little way up this valley there
+must be an open stream. We drank, and our beasts drank, until all of our
+skins were nigh to bursting; and the abundance of water was so great
+that we even could wash the dust at last from our parched faces and
+necks and arms; and much like raw beef our skins looked when our washing
+was ended, and the stinging of them was as though we had been whipped
+with nettles. It was our intention now to leave the plains and to march
+along the edge of the foot-hills parallel with the main range, otherwise
+we should not have ventured thus to wash ourselves. In a region where
+alkali dust is in the air, washing is to be shunned; for each time that
+the skin is cleaned the new deposit of dust takes a deeper biting hold.
+
+It was rather that we might escape the misery of further travel on the
+arid plains than because we had any strong hopes of thus finding the way
+of which we were in search that we had decided to change our line of
+march. Young had begun openly to express his contempt for the Aztec map,
+and in the hearts of all of us had sprung up some doubts as to its
+trustworthiness as a guide. After all, it was not in the least a map in
+the true meaning of the word; and that it should show us rightly our way
+depended not only upon our having interpreted correctly its curious
+symbolism, but also upon the correctness of the interpretation that
+Mexican archaeologists had given to the map of the first Aztec
+migration--of which map, as we believed, our map was a reserved and
+secret part. If either interpretation were wrong, then we might be
+hundreds of miles distant from the region in which the way marked by
+gravings of the King's symbol should be sought.
+
+Four or five hours of daylight still remained to us after we had dug our
+well, and with the delicious water flowing into it had satisfied our
+thirst; but we had no intention of going farther that day. We had no
+need to hobble the animals, for they could be trusted to stay near the
+water-hole while they feasted on the grass, and we needed food and rest
+quite as much as they did. Young and Dennis together got us up a famous
+meal, and when it was ended we lighted our pipes and held a sort of
+council of war. That we might talk the more freely, in both English and
+Spanish, we drew away a little from where the two Otomi Indians and
+Pablo were stretched out upon the grass together; and we bade Dennis
+take a look around the shoulder of the first hill, so that we might know
+something of what our way would be like when we started in the morning;
+for we were not as yet ready that the minor members of the expedition
+should know the purpose that we had in mind. We had decided that when,
+by the finding of the course indicated by the gravings of the King's
+symbol, our quest fairly had a beginning, being no longer a matter of
+mere hope and conjecture, we then would give Dennis and Pablo and the
+two Indians some notion of what we intended doing; with the option of
+deciding for themselves whether or not they would have a part in it. And
+the thought never once occurred to our minds that circumstances might
+arise of such a nature that neither they nor we would have any choice in
+the matter at all.
+
+As we consulted together we had spread out before us a map of Mexico,
+and with this the map that the Cacique had given me, and a copy of the
+map showing the great Aztec march. Yet the more that we councilled the
+less could we come to any reasonable conclusion as to what was best for
+us to do. As nearly as we could tell from the strange guides that we
+needs must be led by, we had beaten thoroughly the region where once the
+mission of Santa Marta was; and not a trace of the gravings on the rocks
+had we found. To go over this region again, searching still more
+minutely, was too great an undertaking even to be thought of; and yet
+the only alternative to this painful course seemed to be that we should
+abandon our search altogether; in short, we were completely at sea.
+
+"What _I_ think," said Young, "is that that old dead monk, an' that old
+dead Cacique, have set up a job on us. They're both of 'em lyin' like
+fiddlers; that's what's th' matter with _them_. There ain't any hidden
+city, or hidden treasure, or hidden d----n anything; it's all a fraud
+from beginnin' t' end. I vote t' pull up stakes an' go home."
+
+A cool refreshing wind was beginning to sweep down to us from the
+mountains; but it was blowing only in puffs as yet, for the night would
+not be upon us for several hours. Borne faintly and fitfully upon this
+uncertain wind came to us the strains of "Rory O'More"; with which
+melody, as we inferred, Dennis was beguiling his solitude while he
+explored the route that we were to take the next day. Pablo, sitting
+comfortably on the grass, his back propped against the back of El Sabio,
+also caught the sound; and straightway began to play an accompaniment on
+his mouth-organ to Dennis's distant singing. The strains gradually grew
+louder, showing that Dennis was returning; but when they stopped
+suddenly we thought that he had only tired of the sound of his own
+voice, or, perhaps, did not think anything about the matter at all.
+
+But when a sound of hurried, irregular steps came down the wind to us,
+we all were on our feet in a moment and had our arms ready, for it was
+evident that Dennis was running from something; and the danger was
+likely to be a serious one, for running was not at all in Dennis's line.
+We wondered why he did not call out; but the explanation of his silence
+was plain enough, ten seconds later, as he came around the shoulder of
+the hill, staggered in among us, and fell on the grass at our feet--with
+the blood streaming from his mouth and nostrils, and with an arrow clear
+through his breast.
+
+"Indians!" he gasped, with an effort that brought a torrent of blood
+spurting from his mouth; and he added, faintly, "But I've bate 'em, th'
+divvils, in their hopes of a soorprise!"
+
+These triumphant words were the last that Dennis Kearney uttered on
+earth. As he spoke, a fresh outburst of blood came from his nostrils and
+mouth, a quiver went over him--and then he was dead. I do not believe
+that many men would have done what Dennis did: run a good quarter of a
+mile with an arrow through his lungs, and then die exulting because he
+had succeeded in warning the camp.
+
+Rayburn had the situation instantly in hand. "Get the packs and saddles
+on quick!" he cried. "The Indians 'll come around that hill and try to
+scoop us here in the open. They won't close in; they'll keep off, and
+just lie around for a week till we're played out, and then they'll step
+in and finish us; they'll do that, likely enough, anyway. But our one
+chance is to get to a place up the valley here, where they can tackle us
+only from in front. There's water up there, so we'll be all right, and
+we may be able to shoot enough of them to make the rest give it up, or
+they'll close in, and we'll have the comfort of getting the whole thing
+ended without any useless fooling over it."
+
+All the while that he spoke he was working away, and so were we all, at
+saddling and packing; and, luckily, the animals, although the water and
+the food and the rest had put new strength into them, still were too
+tired to give us the trouble that animals give at such times when they
+are fresh. In a surprisingly short time we were ready to start; and yet
+not a sign had we had, save the warning that Dennis had brought us, that
+there was an Indian within a hundred miles of us. Indeed, but for his
+dead body on the ground beside our camp-fire, we might have imagined
+that our scare was only a bad dream. That it was a very bad reality was
+shown just as the last pack went on, when one of our Otomi Indians gave
+a howl as an arrow went through his leg, and I felt a sharp little nip
+on my forehead where an arrow just grazed it, and there was that queer,
+faint whirring sound in the air that only a flight of a good many arrows
+together will produce.
+
+Rayburn took the body of poor Dennis before him on his own horse; he'd
+be d----d if the Indians should get Dennis yet, he said; and away we
+went up the sandy bed of the _arroyo_, driving the mules before us, and
+the Otomi Indians pelting along on a dead-run. The Indian who had been
+hit coolly broke the arrow off short, and then pulled it out through the
+wound.
+
+Suddenly we saw Young, who was riding a little ahead of the rest of us,
+half pull up his horse and look earnestly at a great shoulder of rock
+that jutted out from the mountain-side. "There's your King's symbol,
+and be d----d to it!" he shouted; and added, "What's the good of a
+King's symbol when we're all goin' to lose our hair?"
+
+He was under full head-way again in a moment. As we shot past the rock we
+all turned to look; and there, sure enough, was the long-sought-for
+sign.
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+THE FIGHT IN THE CANON.
+
+
+As we fled along the valley, and in a few moments heard the sound of the
+Indians pursuing us, my mind was chiefly occupied with considerations of
+the quality which we denominate fear. I perceived that this purely
+occasional passion had a very direct bearing upon my own especial
+science of archaeology. I reflected that had I been engaged in building a
+city at the moment when that irritating flight of arrows fell among
+us----the sting of one of which I still felt smarting upon my
+forehead----I should assuredly have ceased at once the building of that
+city, and should have moved rapidly away. And thus an excellently
+well-built city, that would have delighted archaeologists of the future,
+would have been lost to the world. Putting the matter yet more closely:
+here I had just found the sign for which I and my companions had been
+toilsomely searching for a considerable time; the sign which
+unquestionably would lead us to the most interesting archaeological
+discovery that ever had been made. And yet, instead of stopping to
+study this sign earnestly, that I might understand all the meaning of
+it, I was hastening away from it with all possible speed; and for no
+better reason than that certain barbarians, whose knowledge of
+archaeology was not even rudimentary, were pursuing me that they might
+take my life--an imperfectly expressed concept, by-the-way; for life can
+be taken only in the limited sense of depriving another of it; it cannot
+be taken in the full sense of deprivation and acquisition combined.
+These several reflections so stirred my bile against the Indians in
+pursuit of us that I began to have a curiously blood-thirsty longing for
+our actual battling with them to begin; for I was possessed by a most
+unscientific desire to balance our account by killing several of them.
+And I confess that this desire was increased as I looked at the dead
+body of poor Dennis, lying limply across the fore-shoulders of Rayburn's
+horse.
+
+It was with real satisfaction, therefore, that I obeyed Rayburn's order
+to halt, that we might make ready for the fight to begin. The valley up
+which we had been riding had narrowed by this time into a strait way
+shut in between high and nearly perpendicular walls; and the place that
+Rayburn had chosen for us to make our stand in was the mouth of a canon
+setting off from the valley nearly at right angles. The walls of this
+canon came almost together above, far overhanging their bases, so that
+assault from overhead was impossible; some fragments of fallen rock made
+a natural breastwork for us to fight behind; and a little stream of
+pure, sweet water flowed at our feet. Had this place been made for us
+expressly it could not better have suited our purposes; and finding it
+so opportunely put fresh heart into us. There was not, of course, a
+shadow of resemblance between the two, but, somehow, I fancied that the
+place where we stood resembled my old class-room at Ann Arbor; and I
+actually found myself repeating the opening sentence of the address that
+I delivered when I was formally inducted into the Chair of Topical
+Linguistics. I mention this fact not because it is of the slightest
+importance in this present narrative, but because I think that it well
+illustrates the tendency towards illogical association that is so
+curious a characteristic of the human mind.
+
+I was not able to observe this phenomenon attentively, for Rayburn
+hustled us all about so sharply that I had no available time just then
+for abstract thought. The mules and the horses and El Sabio were driven
+into the canon, and we were ranged behind the fragments of rock almost
+in a moment. Each man had his Winchester and revolvers in readiness, and
+a couple of cases of cartridges had been broken out from the packs and
+put where we all had easy access to them. While this work was going
+forward we could hear the Indians coming hotly up the valley, and we
+were barely ready for them when the foremost of their party came in
+sight.
+
+"Wait a little," said Rayburn, quietly. "They don't know which turn
+we've taken, and they'll probably get into a bunch to do some talking,
+and then we can whack away right into the flock."
+
+While we were thus making ready I could see that Fray Antonio was in
+great distress of mind. He was a very brave man, and I know that his
+strong desire was to fight with the rest of us. And yet, just as the
+Indians showed themselves, he deliberately turned his back upon them and
+walked away into the canon's depths. His very lips were white, and there
+were beads of sweat upon his brow, and I saw that his fingers twitched
+convulsively. I know what he wanted to do, and I saw what he did. If
+ever a man showed the high bravery of moral courage, Fray Antonio showed
+it then. Even Young, in whom I did not look for appreciation of bravery
+of that sort, said afterwards that it was the pluckiest thing he ever
+saw.
+
+As Rayburn had expected, the Indians halted--but keeping more under
+cover than he had counted upon--and held some sort of a council. But it
+did not seem, from what we could see of their gestures, to relate to the
+way that we might have taken so much as to the canon in which we
+actually were concealed. They pointed towards the mouth of the canon
+repeatedly, and it struck me that in their motions there was a curious
+indication of dread or awe. One old man was especially vehement in
+gestures of this unaccountable nature; and when at last the younger men
+in the council seemed to revolt against his orders, this man, and all
+the older men with him, retired down the valley whence they had come.
+
+[Illustration:  THE FIGHT IN THE CANON]
+
+The young men, left to themselves, hesitated for a moment, and then with
+a cry--as though for their own encouragement--came charging towards us
+in a body. As we got a full view of them we perceived with much
+satisfaction that their only arms were bows and arrows and long spears,
+and that there were not more than twenty men in the lot. And then
+Rayburn gave the order to fire. I confess that my hand so trembled as I
+pulled the trigger of my rifle that I was not at all surprised to find
+that the man whom I had fired at--a very tall, powerful young fellow,
+who seemed to be in command--was not hit; but a man just behind him
+dropped, and I had a queer feeling in my throat, and certain odd
+sensations in my stomach, as I realized that I had shot him. Indeed, I
+was so engrossed with meditations upon the curious ease with which a
+man's life is let out of him, that I quite forgot for some seconds to
+continue firing. The others, luckily, conducted themselves in a more
+practical manner; and the little whirlwind of balls which sped from the
+Winchesters made it wonderful, not that so many of the Indians fell dead
+or wounded, as that any of them remained alive and unhurt. But eight of
+them did survive their charge in the face of the storm of bullets that
+we pelted at them; and these--headed by the tall fellow, who seemed
+bullet-proof--came rushing at us over our breastwork of rocks, shouting
+and flourishing their long spears.
+
+I cannot say very accurately what happened during the next five minutes
+or so, for one of the Indians came directly at me, and before I could at
+all stop him--for I found that shooting at him with my revolver did him
+no harm at all; and this struck me as odd, for I had repeatedly hit the
+mark while practising in the corral--he had prodded his spear through
+the fleshy part of my left arm. It hurt severely. He had aimed his
+thrust, doubtless, at my heart, and he certainly would have penetrated
+that vital organ had I not at that moment slipped, and so disarranged
+his aim. He pulled the spear out of my arm, which action also gave me
+great pain, and his manner indicated that he was about to thrust it into
+some other part of me; which he surely could have done, for I was wholly
+at a loss as to what measures should be taken to assure my own safety.
+Indeed, I was very well convinced that my life was as good as ended, and
+a curious flash of thought went through me that I cannot coherently
+remember, but that was in the nature of a query as to whether or not in
+a future state the many scientific truths which as yet are but
+imperfectly understood will be wholly revealed to us.
+
+However, the opportunity that I confidently expected would be given to
+me in a moment to obtain an answer to this interesting question did not
+then occur. Just as the Indian was lunging at me--I can see his ugly
+face now, as I close my eyes and let my thoughts turn backward to that
+critical moment--there was a flash of some bright object before me, and
+then the Indian's entire head seemed to shut up suddenly, something like
+an opera-glass, and he went down to the ground like a stone. As I
+turned, I saw that my deliverance had come from Pablo, and even in that
+very exciting moment I observed with astonishment that the weapon with
+which he had slain the Indian was a great jagged sword--if the
+_maccuahuitl_ can be called a sword--such as the Aztecs used in ancient
+times. I could not then conveniently stop to question him whence he had
+obtained that very interesting weapon, for there was another Indian
+already close upon me; and I am pleased to say--for I do not wish the
+belief to go abroad that scientific men are worse than useless in
+practical emergencies--that, without assistance from Pablo or from
+anybody else, I managed to pick up my rifle, and with the heavy iron
+barrel of that weapon, used clubwise, I mashed the head of that Indian
+into a perfect pulp. I know positively that I mashed it into a pulp, for
+I tried afterwards to measure it, and found that for craniological
+purposes it was utterly valueless.
+
+Even had I required Pablo's aid in this encounter he could not possibly
+have given it to me, for he was himself just then very hotly engaged.
+Indeed, but for assistance that come to him from an unexpected quarter
+his life assuredly would have been lost. He was in the act of hauling
+back to strike at the fellow facing him, and he did not at all know that
+he was in imminent danger of a thrust in the back from a wounded wretch
+who, having struggled upon his knees, was using what little life was
+left in him to deliver yet another blow. Just at this critical instant
+it was that Fray Antonio dashed into the thick of the fighting, and
+covered Pablo's body with his own against this assault in the rear; so
+that, as the Indian struck, the knife only cut through the monk's habit
+and slightly scratched his arm, instead of making a hole between Pablo's
+shoulder-blades that would have let the life out of him. Young, who was
+close beside Pablo, saw what was going on, and checked it before further
+harm was done by turning quickly and shooting off the top of the wounded
+Indian's head; and then Fray Antonio retired out of the fighting in
+which, without himself striking a blow, he had taken so gallant a part.
+
+So far as I was concerned, the fight was at an end when I had so
+cleverly mashed the head of my second assailant. No more Indians came at
+me, and as I looked around I perceived that this was for the excellent
+reason that there were no more to come. Two were just advancing on
+Young; who had them covered with his revolver, and dropped them, one
+after the other, in less time than is required to tell about it. The
+only other survivor among the enemy--at least the only one able to keep
+his feet--was the tall young chief, and he and Rayburn were just
+finishing the last round of what probably was as fine a fight as ever
+was fought. They were well matched in size and in weight; and if the
+Indian was any stronger than Rayburn, I can only say that he must have
+been a most wonderfully strong man. They were fighting on even terms;
+for the Indian was armed only with a short club, that he held in his
+left hand--and this left-handed method made him all the more awkward to
+deal with--while Rayburn, having emptied his revolver, was using as a
+club its heavy barrel.
+
+As I caught sight of them, the Indian was in the act of springing
+forward and delivering a tremendous blow; but Rayburn most skilfully
+parried this blow by throwing out his rifle, still retained in his left
+hand, in such a manner and with such force that the Indian's arm--at
+the same time striking and being struck with the iron barrel--was broken
+just above the wrist. He gave a yell of pain, as he well might; but he
+was a plucky fellow, and instead of dropping his club he only shifted it
+to his right hand. He never had a chance to strike again with it; for in
+that same instant Rayburn swung his revolver at arm's-length through the
+air and brought it down on his head with a sound so muffled and so
+hollow that I can liken it only to the staving-in of the head of a full
+cask. For a moment, while Rayburn drew back to strike again, the
+Indian's body swayed heavily; and then all his muscles relaxed, and he
+fell heavily and limply to the ground--while his brains spurted out from
+the ghastly trench made by that mighty blow from back to front across
+the entire top of his skull.
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+AFTER THE FIGHT.
+
+
+Rayburn stood panting for a moment over the Indian's body; and then,
+having satisfied himself by a look around among our fallen enemies that
+every one of them was either dead or dying, he stooped down beside the
+stream to drink from it, and then to bathe an ugly gash in his forehead
+made by a spear thrust that luckily had glanced aside.
+
+Indeed, we all had wounds or bruises by which we were likely to
+remember our fight for a good many days to come. In addition to the cut
+on his forehead, Rayburn had an arm badly bruised by a crack from a
+club; Young had a cut in the calf of his leg that must have been made by
+one of the Indians after he had fallen wounded; Fray Antonio had the
+slight cut in his arm that he received in rescuing Pablo; a blow from a
+club on my shoulder had completely disabled my left arm, and my head was
+beginning to ache from the wound in my forehead where the arrow had
+nipped me; and Pablo, by a square knock-down blow on the head that
+tumbled him among the rocks, had a bad gash in his cheek and was bruised
+all over. And yet the very first thing that boy did when the fight was
+ended--being still dazed, no doubt, by the blow on his head--was to play
+a bit of "Rory O'More" on his mouth-organ in order to make sure that his
+beloved "instrumentito" had not been injured by his fall. The sound of
+this air gave my heart a wrench, as I thought of poor Dennis; whose
+gallant race with death assuredly had saved all of us from dying without
+a chance to strike a blow. And both of our Otomi Indians were dead too.
+
+But while we had suffered thus severely we had the satisfaction of
+knowing that we had inflicted a most signal punishment upon our enemies.
+Of the whole company that had attacked us--eighteen in number, as we
+found by counting their bodies--only two remained alive when the fight
+ended; and these two speedily relieved us of all responsibility
+concerning them by dying of their wounds. As Young tersely expressed
+it, we had "given the whole outfit a through bill of lading to Kingdom
+Come!"
+
+Notwithstanding the pain that I was in, the first thought that came to
+me after we had achieved peace (by the effective yet somewhat radical
+process of killing all of our enemies) was concerning the strange weapon
+with which Pablo had been fighting; and by his prompt use of which in my
+defence my life had been saved. He had laid it upon a rock--while
+testing the integrity of his mouth-organ--and as I now carefully
+examined it I found that my glimpse of it as Pablo had mashed the
+Indian's head had not deceived me. It truly was a maccuahuitl, the
+primitive Aztec sword, but very unlike any description of that weapon
+that I had ever seen. The maccuahuitl, as described by the Spaniards at
+the time of the conquest and as shown by the Aztec pictures of it
+preserved in various museums, was a wooden blade from three and a half
+to four feet long and from four to five inches wide. Along its two
+edges, like great saw teeth, fragments of obsidian, about three inches
+long and two inches wide, were inserted; and as these were keenly sharp
+the weapon was a most ferocious one. The sword that I held in my hand
+was identical in its essential features with this primitive design; but
+it was shorter, narrower, and thinner. What was still more extraordinary
+about it was that, while it seemed to be made of brass, it had the
+bright glitter of gold and the temper and the elasticity of steel. Being
+tested by bending, it instantly sprung straight again; and
+notwithstanding the vigorous use that Pablo had been making of it on the
+bones of several Indians, the thin edges of the projecting teeth were
+only nicked a little--as the edge of a steel sword would have been
+nicked under like circumstances--and not one of these teeth was bent out
+of place, as assuredly would have been the case had the metal been
+ordinary brass.
+
+Fray Antonio, by this time, had returned to us again--looking rather
+shamefaced because of the part that he had taken in the fight--and I
+eagerly showed him this strange weapon that had been so strangely found;
+for Pablo's account of it was simply that, just as his revolver was
+emptied upon the Indians charging towards us, when there was no time to
+reload, his eyes were caught by the glitter of the sword as it stuck in
+a cleft in a rock; whereupon he most gladly seized it--and instantly
+used it to good purpose upon the Indian who was so close to ending me with
+his spear, and subsequently contrived with it to send two more Indians
+to their account.
+
+Fray Antonio's knowledge of the matter having a wider practical range
+than mine, for he knew well the contents of the several Mexican museums
+in which specimens of the primitive weapons are preserved, I thought it
+possible that he might be able to match this curious maccuahuitl with an
+account of another like it which he somewhere had seen. That there was
+no record in the books of this weapon made of metal I knew very well.
+But Fray Antonio's surprise over it was greater than my own; and he
+certainly found more in it to please him than I did; for this metal
+maccuahuitl, supposing it to belong to ancient times, settled in his
+favor a controversy that for some time past we had been amicably but
+earnestly carrying on. I had adopted the ingenious theory of my friend
+Bandelier that the serrated edge of the Aztec sword was accidental;
+resulting from the breaking away in use of portions of what at first was
+a continuous edge of obsidian. Fray Antonio, on the other hand, had held
+firmly to the ordinarily accepted opinion that the sword was such as I
+have described above (I must confess regretfully) the primitive weapon
+to have been.
+
+My contention therefore was that the sword that Pablo had found was not
+an antique; and I fortified my position, as I considered impregnably, by
+the fact that while Aztecs, before the Spanish conquest, did make some
+slight use of copper and gold, they assuredly had no knowledge whatever
+of either brass or steel. And my natural irritation very well may be
+imagined, by any one familiar with controversies of this nature, when I
+add that Fray Antonio endeavored to cut the ground from under me by
+asserting that, inasmuch as the weapon obviously was not made of brass
+or steel, my argument was based upon false premises and consequently led
+to illogical conclusions. I am afraid that I showed a little temper on
+this occasion; for Fray Antonio manifested a persistence in his defence
+of what I regarded as his wholly untenable position that amounted to
+what I held to be downright pig-headedness. And so, for a considerable
+length of time, we stood there, among the bodies of the dead Indians,
+and first one of us and then the other handled the sword, and expressed
+with increasing warmth our views respecting it and each other; and we
+might have stood there much longer had not Young--with the best of
+intentions, no doubt, but in a way the certainly was not
+agreeable--taken upon himself to bring our controversy for the time
+being to an end.
+
+"I don't exactly know what you and the Padre are jawing about at such a
+rate, Professor," he struck in; "but as well as I can catch on, it's
+about things which happened three or four hundred years ago. I don't
+want to interrupt you, of course; but I do want the Padre--he knows
+something about surgery, as I saw the other day when he took that cactus
+thorn out of Pablo--to do something to plug up this hole in my leg. It's
+bleeding a good deal, and it hurts like the very devil. And I guess
+Rayburn'd be glad to have that slit in his forehead tied up too."
+
+To do Fray Antonio justice, he took this interruption in better part
+than I did; for I was deeply interested in the argument in which we were
+engaged, and wished to continue it. But when I explained what Young
+wanted, he turned to him at once, and very tenderly as well as very
+skilfully dressed his wound; and then bandaged the gash in Rayburn's
+forehead, and the cut in Pablo's cheek. Pablo decidedly objected to this
+bandaging, for it put a peremptory stop for a while to his playing on
+his mouth-organ. For me no surgery was required. Fray Antonio carefully
+felt my shoulder while he moved my arm--thereby hurting me most
+horribly--and as the result of his investigations he assured me that the
+bones were neither broken nor out of place.
+
+Rayburn also examined the maccuahuitl with much interest. "Of course it
+is not brass," he said, "and of course it cannot possibly be
+phosphor-bronze. But, if such a thing were a metallurgical possibility,
+I should say that it was gold--treated in some manner that gives it as
+great a hardness as bronze receives when treated with phosphorus, but
+with some chemical change wrought in its constitution that gives it also
+the tempered quality of steel. Nothing but gold, you see," he added,
+"could lie around out-of-doors this way and not get tarnished by
+oxidization."
+
+"What's the reason that it's not some queer thing belonging to the folks
+we're looking for?" Young asked; and his question expressed a thought
+that already had found a lodging in my own mind. For such good-luck as
+this would be I was quite willing to concede that Fray Antonio was right
+in his unpleasantly positive views in regard to the shape of the Aztec
+swords. And what Young said also put me sharply in mind of the graving
+on the rock of the King's symbol, that we had found only in the same
+moment to lose it again. To this matter I now adverted; and I said some
+very unpleasant things about the Indians who had prevented us from
+following the trail, that we had sought for so laboriously, when we did
+find it at last--and who still, for we doubted not that the main body
+was in wait for us lower down the valley, prevented us from returning to
+the spot where we had seen the sign and thence systematically continuing
+our search.
+
+"If I was you, Professor," said Young as I ceased speaking, "I wouldn't
+be so everlastin'ly down on these poor devils of Indians for what
+they've done. They killed Dennis, an' that's a pretty bad business; an'
+they got away with our two _mozos_, too; an' they've pretty well
+battered th' rest of us. But I take it that we've about evened things up
+by killin' eighteen of 'em--or six of their crowd dead for each one dead
+in ours. I guess we can call that part of th' business about square. But
+what I'm gettin' at is, if it hadn't been for the Indians we'd never
+have come up this valley; an' so we'd never have struck th' King's
+symbol trail at all."
+
+"But what good did it do us to find it, when we could not follow it?" I
+asked. "We cannot go back to examine the sign without risking our lives;
+and unless we do examine it we cannot know where the next one is, and so
+the trail is lost."
+
+"I've just been waitin'," said Young, "t' see if I was th' only man in
+this party that God-a-mighty'd given a pair of eyes to. I guess I am.
+Suppose you just get up, Professor, an' turn around, an' take a look at
+that place where there's a brown mark on th' side of th' rock; an'
+suppose th' rest of you look there too. If that isn't th' King's symbol,
+just as plain as th' noses in all your faces, I'll eat every dead Indian
+in this canon."
+
+And Young spoke the truth. Just above the cleft whence Pablo had taken
+the sword, graven so deeply in the rock that after all the weathering of
+centuries it still remained distinct and clear, was identically the same
+figure that Fray Francisco in the far past time had represented in his
+letter, and that was repeated also on the far more ancient piece of
+gold. Above it was cut an arrow that pointed directly up the canon.
+
+It was a good thing that something came to cheer us just then; for what
+with the death of Dennis and of our two poor Indians, and our own hurts,
+and the melancholy feeling that must oppress men always--save those of
+cruel and hardened natures--when a fight is ended in which they have
+spilled freely human blood, we all were oppressed sensibly by a
+consuming sadness.
+
+But here was cheer indeed. Not only had we surely found the trail at
+last, but we found it leading in precisely the direction that at that
+moment we desired to go. For us to return down the valley to the open
+country, we knew was full of most signal danger; for the Indians who so
+unaccountably had declined to take part in attacking us assuredly were
+lying in wait for us by the way. Our only chance to escape them was to
+strike into the mountains; and the sign that we now had gave promise
+that we should find some sort of a path along which we might go.
+Therefore it was with good heart that we set about getting as far into
+the depths of the canon as possible before night should be wholly upon
+us; trusting, in regard to possible pursuit, somewhat to the
+superstition of the Indians which so unaccountably yet so obviously had
+been aroused, and also to the wholesome dread that they must have of us
+upon finding that every one of their companions had been slain. The
+bodies of our poor Otomis we placed in a deep fissure in the rock, and
+there heaped stones upon them, while Fray Antonio said over them the
+briefer office; but the body of Dennis we carried with us, that we might
+give him a more tender and reverent burial in gratitude for his brave
+struggle to save our lives when he knew that his own life was lost. As
+for the eighteen dead Indians--who had invited the death that so
+promptly had come to them--we did not bother ourselves about them at
+all. We left them to the coyotes.
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+THE CAVE OF THE DEAD.
+
+
+Very dismal was our procession of faintly seen figures moving cautiously
+through that wild solitude. At its head went Rayburn, leading his horse,
+on which was Dennis's dead body; all of us, being bruised and cut and
+bleeding, walked slowly and painfully; and behind us, ghastly forms torn
+by bullets and crushed by blows, lay the slain Indians in all manner of
+unnatural attitudes, made yet more hideous and fantastical by the
+gathering gloom of night. Indeed, night now was so close upon us that
+had not the canon in which we were run east and west, we would have been
+for some time past in darkness. As it was, though shut off from the west
+by the great range of mountains, a faint light came down into its depths
+from the still bright eastern sky, where lingered ruddy reflections of
+the sunset: and so we could see to pick our way, along the edge of the
+little stream, among the rough masses of rock and trunks of trees which
+had fallen from above.
+
+Our march ended sooner than we had counted on. Before we had
+accomplished more than half a mile of this rough travelling, there
+loomed before us a wall of rock which shut in the end of the canon, and
+which rose as high and as sheer as did the canon's sides. Our hearts
+sank within us, for we perceived that we were in a cul-de-sac; whence
+escape was possible only along the way by which we had come--and so to
+return, with the Indians still in wait for us, was to walk straight into
+the jaws of death. And, further, if our course in this direction was cut
+off, it was evident that the King's symbol graved upon the rock at the
+entrance of the canon was a useless and misleading sign.
+
+In the hope that we might find a sharp turn, not to be perceived until
+we were close upon it, we pressed on through the dusk until we came to
+the very end of the canon, and the dark wall of rock that barred our way
+rose directly above our heads. And then we found, not a turn in the
+canon, but a narrow opening (through which came forth the little stream)
+into the body of the mountain itself. Yet we hesitated about entering
+this black gap--for who could tell what depths, unseen in that dense
+darkness, we might not plunge into headlong?
+
+Much dry pine wood, branches and whole trees, lay about us in the canon;
+and of this apt material Rayburn presently constructed a great torch.
+Lighting this in the open canon was not to be thought of, for while we
+felt tolerably certain that the main body of our enemies had not
+followed us, we could not be wholly certain that they were not close
+upon our heels and ready to open upon us with a volley of arrows and
+spears. Rayburn therefore struck a wax-match--with which excellent
+article of Mexican manufacture we were supplied plentifully--and with
+this to light his way, entered the narrow pass; and in his wake the rest
+of us followed. Almost in a moment the walls on each side of us spread
+out beyond the reach of the narrow circle of light, and we perceived
+that we were come into a cave. But before we could at all discern our
+surroundings the match was blown out by a sudden suck of wind setting in
+from the entrance, and we were in thick darkness. The air around us was
+so sweet and so fresh that we knew that the cave must be large, and with
+more than one opening--as, indeed, the suck of wind inward through the
+passage by which we entered clearly showed. While Rayburn struck another
+match, wherewith to light the torch, we all stood still in our places;
+and certain tremors went through our breasts because of the eeriness of
+our surroundings.
+
+[Illustration: THE CAVE OF THE DEAD]
+
+When the great torch blazed up, and threw everywhere save towards the
+high roof a flood of light, a real and rational fear took possession of
+us. The cave was nearly circular, and at its back, directly facing the
+entrance, was a roughly hewn mass of stone on which rested a huge stone
+figure--identical with the figures in the Mexican National Museum to
+which Le Plongeon, the discoverer of one of them, at Chichen-Itza, has
+given the name of Chac-Mool. But what filled us with dread was not this
+impassive stone image. Our alarm came from a much more natural cause,
+as we beheld, squatted on their haunches in long semicircular rows,
+facing the great stone idol, more than a hundred Indians. Truly,
+considering that our rifles were outside the cave and that we had with
+us only our revolvers, our momentary thrill of terror was highly
+natural.
+
+Yet it was only momentary. The Indians, undisturbed by our presence and
+by the sudden blaze of light, remained unmoved in silent worship of
+their god; and Rayburn, the first of us to recover equanimity, set all
+our fears to flight as he exclaimed: "These are not the fighting kind.
+Every man Jack of 'em is as dead as Julius Caesar. We've struck an Indian
+bone-yard."
+
+Here, then, was the reason why a part of the force that had attacked us
+had drawn off when we made our stand at the mouth of the canon that led
+to this home of the dead. Yet when, by the light of the torch, we
+examined our silent fellow-tenants of the cave, it did not seem that
+they had been placed there in recent times. Indeed, the more that Fray
+Antonio and I looked closely at their wrappings and noted the way in
+which their mummied forms had been ranged before this idol--that
+certainly belonged to a primitive time--the more were we inclined to
+believe that this weird sepulchre belonged to the very far back past.
+But for the moment it mattered not to us whence these dead forms came:
+the essential matter was that while we remained in the cave with them we
+were in absolute safety.
+
+"Well," said Young, when we had reached this comforting conclusion,
+"since it's a sure thing that we're all right here, I move that we make
+ourselves comfortable. Let's bring in th' stock, an' get th' packs off;
+an' then we'll build a fire an' eat another supper. Fightin' Indians is
+hungry work, an' I feel as if I hadn't had anything to eat for a
+week"--which suggestions were so reasonable that we at once proceeded to
+act upon them.
+
+It was hard work for us, wounded and sore and tired as we were, to
+unfasten the pack-cords; and still harder work to collect the wood for
+our fire. But we managed to accomplish it all at last; and most
+comforting and refreshing was our supper amid those extraordinary
+surroundings. There was even cheerfulness about our meal--and yet over
+in the shadows at the back of the cave, touched now and then by a
+brighter flash of firelight, lay before the heathen altar of old the
+body of our poor Dennis; and close beside us were the long rows of dead
+Indians. I sometimes have thought that it was strange that we then had
+any heart to eat at all, surrounded by so desolate a company. But there
+is that about killing one's fellow-creatures, and being in imminent
+peril of being killed one's self, I have found, that blunts for a while
+the souls of those who survive and makes them careless of death's awful
+mystery. As the fire crackled and blazed, giving out a plentiful warmth
+that in that chill place was most grateful to our aching bodies, our
+spirits seemed to brighten with its brightness; and when the rich smell
+of strong coffee mingled with the smell of stewing meats told that
+Young's cooking was nearly ended, we sniffed hungrily and eagerly; and
+when we actually fell to upon our meal I remember that we even laughed
+over it.
+
+Yet it is but just to Fray Antonio to say that his fine spirit did not
+fall to the level of grossness that ours were brought to by what, as it
+seems to me, was an instinctive gladness on the part of our fleshly
+bodies that, for a while longer, they would not return to the dust
+whereof they were made. Through our meal he sat gravely silent, yet with
+so sweet and so tender an expression upon his gentle face that in his
+silence there was no suggestion of reproof. And when our meal was ended,
+and we were for stretching out upon our blankets before the fire and
+smoking our pipes comfortably, he reminded us, with no touch of
+harshness in his voice, that a last duty was claimed of us by our dead
+companion.
+
+And, truly, the funeral ceremonies over Dennis in that strange place of
+burial made the most curious ending of a man that ever I saw. In the
+fine dry sand wherewith the cave was bedded, directly in front of the
+altar on which was the heathen idol, we dug his grave--toilsomely and
+with pain, for all of our bodies were hurt and sore. While we labored,
+two great torches flared upon the altar, propped against the idol; and
+long, flickering rays of light shot out to us across the mummied bodies
+of the dead Indians--striking across their gleaming teeth, so that they
+seemed to smile at us--from the huge blaze of the fire.
+
+From our stores Fray Antonio took out a little salt, and from the clear
+spring that bubbled up within the cave a cup of water, which elements
+he blessed and mingled as the rites of his Church prescribed; and with
+the water thus consecrated he sprinkled the body lying before the
+heathen altar, while his strong, sweet voice chanted the _De Profundis_
+so that all the cave rang with the rich melody of the holy strain, and
+our own breasts were thrilled by it. Gently we bore the body of poor
+Dennis from its resting-place before the altar to its last resting-place
+in the grave that we had dug there, while Fray Antonio said the
+_Miserere_; and as with our pack-ropes we lowered the body into the
+earth, the priest sang the _Benedictus_, with its promise of a better
+life to come; and then a prayer ended all, and we filled in the grave.
+
+"I'm Congregational, myself," Young said, when our work was finished;
+"at least I was brought up that way; an' I'm down on th' Scarlet Woman
+from first t' last. But I go in for lettin' folks believe what they've
+got a mind to; an' when it comes t' buryin' 'em it's only square t'
+give 'em th' sort of send-off that they'd really like. For a Catholic, I
+guess Dennis was a pretty good one; an' I must say I think it would 'a'
+done him good to see th' way we've given him a first-class funeral, just
+in th' shape he'd 'a' fixed things up for himself. But I guess what
+we've been at would have everlastin'ly shook up these dead fellows here,
+if they could have come t' life for about five minutes while it was
+goin' on!"
+
+There was an element of grim humor in this suggestion of Young's that
+tickled my fancy; and it was, indeed, allowing for the quaintness of his
+phrasing of it, but an expression of my own thoughts. But my reflection
+was upon the curious incongruity of it all, and upon the way in which
+religious faiths supplant each other; even as the different races of men
+who formulate them and believe in them supplant each other upon the face
+of the earth. Together in this same cave were now the dead of two faiths
+and two races. Who could tell what dead of other faiths and races yet
+unborn would lie here also before the end of time should come?
+
+When all was ended we were glad enough to lie down to give our battered
+bodies rest in sleep. We felt sure that no attack would be made upon us;
+yet we rolled some fragments of rock into the narrow entrance to the
+cave, arranging them in such a way that they would fall with a crash
+should any attempt be made to move them from outside. And, this
+precaution having been taken, we lay down upon our blankets thankfully,
+and never troubled ourselves to keep any watch at all.
+
+It was brilliantly light when we awoke, for the rays of the just-risen
+sun were striking strongly into the cave through its entrance-way; and
+much light came also through a crevice higher up, and through a great
+hole in the vastly high roof. Viewed in this clearer light, there was a
+horrible ghastliness about the mummies ranged in their orderly rows, and
+presided over by the coarsely carved, coarsely conceived stone figure
+that in life they had worshipped as their god. On this image the
+sunshine fell full, and we perceived that its position evidently had
+been chosen carefully, so that the very first ray of light from the
+rising sun would strike upon it. No doubt, in ancient times, this cave
+had been a temple as well as a place of sepulchre.
+
+We were well rested by our long and sound sleep; but the pain which was
+everywhere in our bodies, from our many bruises, and from our wounds,
+and from the aching stiffness of our muscles, made life for a time
+almost intolerable. Moreover, the languorous reaction following the
+undue exaltation that came of our battling and escape was upon us; so
+that our pain of body was accompanied by a most sombre and melancholy
+cast of mind. Yet, again, did the more balanced and delicate temperament
+of Fray Antonio shine out by contrast with our coarser make; for while
+he also suffered pains of the body, his mind was filled with a serene
+cheerfulness that found expression in kindly, comforting words, by which
+our flagging spirits were strengthened and upheld. There was in Fray
+Antonio's nature, surely, a fund of gentle lovingness the like of which
+I never knew in any other man.
+
+And, in truth, our plight was such that we stood in much need of
+comforting. Not only were we sick with our many hurts, but we were also
+prisoners. By the full light of day we examined carefully the cave, and
+found no outlet to it; and we examined carefully, also, the walls of the
+canon throughout its full length, and made sure that there was no path
+leading upward whereby a man could go. And escape down the valley was
+cut off, for the Indians--who knew, no doubt, the manner of place we
+were caught in--were on guard and watching for us; which fact came
+sharply to our knowledge with a half-dozen arrows that dropped among us
+as we went out a little way beyond the mouth of the canon to see if the
+way was open to us. Had we been whole, we might have made a dash and
+fought our way through; but even this poor plan was not possible when
+our bodies were stiff and sore. Our one comforting thought was that, as
+we had an abundance of provisions and an ample supply of water, we could
+hold out for so long a time that the Indians at last would get tired of
+waiting for us. If they ventured to attack us in the cave, we knew that
+we could defend ourselves against any number of them successfully. If
+they simply abandoned the siege, then we would be free without fighting
+at all. But it was dismal work waiting in that dismal place for one or
+the other of these two ends to come.
+
+And the fact that the King's symbol had proved a false guide also was a
+source of deep concern to us. By the full strength of daylight we again
+examined the graving at the entrance to the canon, and there was no
+mistaking the way in which the arrow pointed. And, what was even more
+perplexing and disheartening, we found the graving repeated at the
+entrance to the cave, and the arrow pointing directly towards the statue
+of Chac-Mool. It was impossible that this cave, with mummies only for
+inhabitants, could be the walled city wherein the reserve force of men
+and treasure had been hid; and yet here, obviously, was the end of the
+trail. Of this we convinced ourselves by searching the cave exhaustively
+for another outlet--even sounding the walls in the hope that we might
+find a passage that had been artificially concealed. As Rayburn tersely
+put it, we were no better than so many rats in a trap with terriers
+waiting for us outside.
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+THE SWINGING STATUE.
+
+
+Four more days went by very wearily. Our wounds were healing--for we all
+were in good condition as the result of our vigorous life in the open
+air--but they still kept us in constant pain, and so tended to increase
+our melancholy. Out in the valley, beyond the mouth of the canon, the
+Indians maintained their watchful guard. Rayburn tried the experiment of
+holding a hat and coat out on a pole, standing himself under cover of
+the rock, and in an instant a pair of arrows went through the dummy; and
+as one of these came from the right and the other from the left, it was
+evident that in both directions the valley was picketed.
+
+We were safe enough for the time being, of course. Even should the
+Indians overcome their superstitious dread and enter the canon--which
+was not probable, for they had not even ventured to remove their
+dead--they could not possibly make a successful attack upon us in the
+cave. Behind the breastwork that we had built in the narrow entrance,
+and armed with our repeating rifles and revolvers, we were absolutely
+secure.
+
+"It's not a bad thing that we're safe," said Young, "an' that we've got
+plenty of grub an' water, an' even lots of firewood; if we've got t' be
+shut up here we might as well be comfortable. But what I want is a
+through ticket for home. This treasure business has gone back on us th'
+worst kind. That old Fray Francisco had his eye shut up by th' tall talk
+of th' fellow who pretended to be converted; and th' Cacique just
+promiscuously lied. That's about the size of it. An' for bein' fools
+enough to swallow their stuff, here we are, as Rayburn says, like rats
+in a cage."
+
+There was so much probability in what Young said that I did not attempt
+to argue with him; yet was I convinced that in what Fray Francisco had
+written, and still more in what the dying Cacique had said to me, there
+was a substantial element of truth.
+
+Finding that nobody replied to him, for all of us were sore at heart and
+so disposed to silence, Young turned to the statue of Chac-Mool and
+proceeded to abuse it vigorously, on the ground that it was an
+idolatrous product of the Aztec race that was at the root of all our
+troubles. For, as he truly said, had there been no Aztecs to begin with,
+our departure on a wild-goose chase after an Aztec treasure-house would
+have been an impossibility. His attention having been thus fixed upon
+the idol, his habit of investigation got the better of his ill-will
+towards it, and he mounted the altar to examine it more
+closely--continuing the while to address it in language that was
+eminently unparliamentary.
+
+"A pretty-looking sort a specimen _you_ are!" he said, in a tone of
+vast contempt. "But you're about what I'd expect folks like that friend
+of th' Professor's, th' Cacique, t' worship. It takes a low sort of a
+heathen, even in his blindness, t' bow down to a stone like you--with
+your twisted head, an' your stubby legs, an' your little fryin'-pan over
+your stomach. Why, where I come from they wouldn't have you even for a
+stone settee in a park. No, you're not fit even t' sit on--unless,
+maybe, it's on th' flat top of your crooked head;" and by way of testing
+this possibility, Young seated himself on the head of Chac-Mool.
+
+And then a very extraordinary thing happened. The idol, and the great
+slab of stone on which it rested and of which it was a part, slowly
+moved; the head sinking, and the other end of the slab, on which the
+legs were carved, rising in the air! Young sprang up with a cry as he
+felt the stone sinking beneath him; and the figure, relieved of his
+weight, settled back into its former position with a slight jar. In a
+moment that the slab was in the air there had come from under it a gleam
+of light.
+
+In the excitement wrought by this strange accident our hurts were
+forgotten; and we eagerly clambered upon the altar to investigate the
+matter further, while hope and wonder thrilled our hearts.
+
+"Now, then, Young," said Rayburn, "try it again. It looks as though this
+idol wasn't all the blackguard things you've been calling it, by a long
+shot."
+
+"No, I'll be hanged if I'll try it again," Young answered. "Try it
+yourself, if you want to. How do I know what's goin' t' happen with a
+stone thing that goes tippin' around that way? I don't mind sayin' that
+I'm a good deal jolted, an' don't feel like foolin' with it any more.
+Try it yourself, if you want to, I say."
+
+"All right," Rayburn answered. "You and the Professor stand here where
+you can grab me if anything goes wrong. It looks to me as though there
+was a chance for us of some sort here, and I mean to see what it is."
+
+Young and I stood on each side of Rayburn and held him by the arms as he
+seated himself on the idol's head. Borne down by his weight, the head
+slowly sank, the whole fore-end of the stone slab falling away into the
+rock, and the after-end correspondingly rising and disclosing a squared
+opening, through which came a strong burst of light. When the head was
+down to the level of the rock, and the slab stood up at an angle of
+nearly fifty degrees, the movement ceased. Looking into the opening we
+saw a flight of a dozen stone steps. On the bottom step the sun shone
+brightly, and in our faces blew a draught of fresh, sweet air. On the
+rock, beside the stair-way was carved the King's symbol, with the arrow
+pointing downward.
+
+"Hurrah!" cried Young. "Here's a way out--an' it looks as if that old
+monk an' th' Cacique weren't such a pair of blasted liars after all!"
+
+Rayburn jumped up to have a look with the rest of us; but before he
+could see anything the statue had fallen into place again and the
+opening was closed. "No matter, we know how to work it, now," he said.
+"We must prop it up somehow; that's all. I want to have a look at this
+thing. There's some mighty good engineering shown in the way the centre
+of gravity of that stone has been calculated; and there's a good
+mechanism in the way it's hung. Here she goes again. Just chock it with
+a bit of rock when I swing it open."
+
+"Well, what I'm interested in," said Young, "is findin' out what sort of
+a place it'll get us into. It looks to me as if we might be goin' to
+strike the treasure right smack here."
+
+Much the same notion was in all of our heads by this time, and we were
+full of eagerness--the statue having been swung again, and propped in
+place with a fragment of rock--as we went down the little stair. But
+what we found was only a continuation of the canon--as though, by some
+curious freak of nature, the thin walls of rock enclosing the cave had
+been left thus in the very middle of it. Rayburn drew our attention to
+the fact that we were on the crest of a divide, for a spring that
+bubbled up here flowed away from us; and this also was a cheering sign
+that the canon had an outlet. How far away the outlet might be we could
+not tell; for the canon, half a mile or so from where we stood, bent
+sharply to the right. But being thus assured that a way of some sort out
+of our prison was open to us, we turned to examine the work of the
+skilled mechanics who in some far past time had set this swinging statue
+in its place. From below, the simple apparatus, that yet for its fitting
+required so high a grade of scientific knowledge, was plainly disclosed
+to us. Into the great slab of stone, presumably running through it from
+side to side, was set a round bar of metal--the same bright metal of
+which the sword was made--more than a foot in diameter; and this worked
+in two concave metal sockets in much the same manner that the sockets of
+a gun-carriage hold the trunnions of a gun. What struck Rayburn as
+especially remarkable was the trueness to a circle of both the sockets
+and the bar; both showing, as he declared, that they had been worked
+upon a lathe. And he was puzzled, as in the case of the sword, as to the
+composition of the metal that thus defied oxidization through long
+periods of time. "Gold is the only thing that fills the bill," he said;
+"but a bar of gold, even of that size, would bend double under such a
+strain. I'd give ten dollars for a chance to analyze it--for there's a
+bigger fortune in putting a metal like that on the market than there is
+in finding this treasure that we're hunting for: especially if it turns
+out that there isn't any treasure to find."
+
+"Now, don't you go t' runnin' down that treasure," Young struck in.
+"Just now treasure stock is up. Me an' that idol have just boomed th'
+market. I'm sorry I called Jack Mullins, or whatever his name is, such a
+lot of cuss-word names. I take 'em all back. He isn't just th' sort of
+an idol that I'd pick out t' worship myself, at least not as a steady
+thing; but there are good points about him--especially th' way he tips
+up. I always did like an idol that tipped up. He's done th' square thing
+by us in gettin' us out all right from th' worst sort of a hole; an' I
+guess th' best thing we can do is t' yank our traps out of that cave
+an' get started again. Why, for all we know, th' treasure may be right
+around that corner."
+
+There was no doubt as to the soundness of Young's suggestion in regard
+to resuming our march; but the very serious fact confronted us that we
+now must do our marching on foot. To get the horses and mules down
+through the narrow opening was simply impossible, and there was nothing
+for us but to leave them behind. Rayburn looked very grave over this
+phase of the matter, for leaving the mules meant also that we must leave
+the greater part of our ammunition and stores. That these things would
+be abundantly safe in the cave, for any length of time, was not to the
+purpose; the essential matter was that we would be deprived of them. It
+was hard, too, to think that our animals would fall into the hands of
+the Indians--for our only course with them must be to turn them loose in
+the canon, whence they certainly would go out in search of pasture into
+the valley, and so be captured; but it was still harder to think that we
+must go ourselves on foot and with a scant outfit of supplies.
+
+It was not very cheerfully, therefore, that we went back into the cave
+and began to sort out from our packs the articles which would be
+absolutely necessary to our preservation in the rough work among the
+mountains that probably was before us; and our shoulders already ached a
+little in anticipation of the heavy loads which they must bear.
+
+It was while we were thus engaged that Pablo begged that I would step
+aside with him for a moment that he might speak to my ear alone. I saw
+that there were tears upon his cheeks, and as he spoke he scarcely
+could restrain his sobs.
+
+"Senor," he said, "you know El Sabio?"
+
+"Surely, Pablo."
+
+"You know, senor, that he is a very small ass."
+
+"It is true."
+
+"And you know--you know, senor, how very tenderly we love each other.
+Since I came away from my father and my mother, in Guadalajara, and from
+my little brother and sister there, El Sabio is everything in the world
+to me, senor. I--I cannot leave him, senor. I should die if we were
+parted; and El Sabio would die also. And you say that you have perceived
+that he is a very small ass. Do not ask me to leave him, senor."
+
+"But we cannot take him with us, Pablo. What would you have?"
+
+"That is it, senor; truly, I think that we can take him with us. You
+see, he is so little; and it is quite wonderful through how small a
+place El Sabio can crawl. He can creep like a kitten, senor, and he can
+make himself into a very little bunch. And so I think that he can--if we
+help him, you know, senor--and speak to him so that he will not be
+alarmed, and will try to do his very best to make a small bunch of
+himself--I think that we can get him down through the hole, and so take
+him with us. But if we cannot, senor, then--you must forgive me,
+senor--I love him so very dearly, you know--then I will stay with him
+here. It would be better so than that El Sabio should think I no longer
+loved him. And he would think that, senor, were I to go with you and
+leave him here among these dreadful dead gentlemen alone."
+
+It had not occurred to any of us that El Sabio might be condensed
+sufficiently to go through the narrow way; but if he truly were the
+collapsable donkey that Pablo declared him to be, we had a good deal to
+be thankful for. He was a sturdy little creature, and his small back
+could bear easily twice as much as any two of ours. With his assistance
+we certainly would be able to carry with us all of our ammunition and
+arms--of which defensive stuff we could not well afford to spare the
+smallest part.
+
+And El Sabio, after Pablo had made a long explanation of the case to
+him, and had told him precisely what we expected him to do--to all of
+which he listened gravely and with an astonishing air of comprehending
+what was said to him--seemed to enter into the spirit of the situation,
+and to try his very best to meet its requirements. It is a puzzle to me
+to this day how El Sabio managed to shrink himself so that we got him
+through that narrow hole; but he certainly did manage it--and then went
+down the stone stair-way backward, as though he had been trained to be a
+trick donkey from his youth up. When the feat was accomplished, and he
+stood safely out in the canon, the expressions of love, and of
+congratulation upon his cleverness, which Pablo lavished upon him were
+enough to have turned completely a less serious-minded donkey's head.
+
+Such of our stores as we were compelled to leave behind us, including
+our saddles, and the pack-saddles, and all the heavier portion of our
+camp equipage, we heaped in one corner of the cave and piled rocks
+over; and then we turned our poor horses and the mules loose in the
+canon, feeling certain that their instinct would lead them out to the
+valley in search of food. It went to our hearts to know that these good
+beasts of ours were doomed to hard service under Indian masters to the
+end of their days.
+
+All being thus in readiness for our advance, we went down the stair-way
+beneath the swinging statue, and from beneath pulled out the piece of
+rock which propped up the great mass of stone. With a heavy jar it fell
+and closed the passage-way, and we prepared to start. Just then Fray
+Antonio remembered that he had left on a ledge in the cave--that we had
+used as a shelf for the storage of various small matters during our
+sojourn there--a little volume that he dearly loved: the _Meditations of
+Thomas a Kempis_. He was full of remorse for his forgetfulness, and did
+not ask that we should turn back to get his book for him; yet his
+distress over the loss of it was so evident that we had not the heart to
+go on.
+
+"It will take only ten minutes to go back," said Rayburn, and as he
+spoke he ran up the stair-way and set his shoulders to sway up the
+stone. In a moment he called: "Just come here, Young, and help, will
+you? It don't work as easily from this side." But even with Young's help
+the stone did not move. Then the rest of us joined these two, and all
+five of us together pushed with all our strength--and the stone did not
+yield by so much as the breadth of a hair! And then rather a queer look
+came into Rayburn's face, and he said: "I think that I understand what
+is the matter. The point of leverage falls beyond the edge of the hole.
+From where we have a chance to push, we are working against the whole
+weight of the stone. We might as well try to lift the mountain itself!"
+And then he added, "I guess we'd better give this thing up and start."
+
+Very curious feelings were in our breasts as we picked up our packs and
+set off along the canon; for we knew that by that way only could we go,
+and that, no matter what was ahead of us, our retreat was cut off.
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+THE SUBMERGED CITY.
+
+
+A sweet, warm wind blew in our faces as we set off along the canon; the
+sun shone joyously upon us, and there was that fresh, tingling quality
+in the air that is peculiar to regions high above the level of the sea.
+In spite of the fact that the way behind us was irrevocably barred, and
+that no matter what dangers were ahead of us we had no option but to
+face them, our spirits were strong within us, and we went blithely on
+our way. Young, who was in advance, began to whistle "Yankee Doodle";
+and presently, from the rear of our procession, where Pablo walked
+beside the heavily laden El Sabio, there broke forth a mouth-organ
+accompaniment to this spirited melody.
+
+The bed of the canon, through which a little stream ran, fell away
+before us along a slight down grade; which descent, since we found also
+a good foot-way beside the stream, made walking comparatively easy
+notwithstanding our heavy back-loads. Now and then our way would be
+barred by masses of rock fallen from above, and by whole trees blown
+down from their insecure roothold on the rocky cliffs; and twice we came
+to steep descents which would have given us trouble had we not brought
+along the ropes wherewith our packs had been bound. Shifting El Sabio
+down these places was our hardest task; but with the ropes, and the
+intelligent part that he took in the performance, we managed it
+successfully.
+
+So we went on for half a dozen miles or more through the windings of the
+canon, but keeping all the while a sharp lookout ahead--for in the mouth
+of this end of the canon, supposing it to open as at the other end upon
+a grassy valley, we well enough might come upon an Indian camp. And that
+we had come upon such a camp we felt quite sure when, late in the
+afternoon, Rayburn signalled us from his advanced position--he having
+gone to the head of the line in Young's place--to stand still until he
+should reconnoitre a little. Being thus halted, we unslung our rifles
+and loosed our pistols in their holsters, so that we might be ready in
+case fighting suddenly should begin; and Rayburn went on around a turn
+in the canon, and for a while we lost sight of him.
+
+Presently he returned and signalled us to join him, but to move
+cautiously. When we came up with him he led us to the bend in the canon,
+and there a broad view opened to us; for the canon suddenly widened
+into a great valley, that was everywhere, so far as we could see,
+surrounded by walls of rock almost perpendicular and vastly high. In the
+bottom of the valley was a broad expanse of delectably green
+meadow-land, broken here and there by groves of trees; and in the
+valley's middle part, reaching from side to side of it, was a lovely
+lake, whereof the blue was flecked by white reflections of certain
+little idly drifting clouds: the sight of all which greenness and fair
+water and broad range of sky--after being for so long a season pent up
+in rocky fastnesses and wandering over brown, sun-baked plains--fairly
+brought tears into my eyes because of its fresh and open loveliness. And
+in the tender feeling that thus stirred my heart, as I could see in the
+quick glance that he gave me, Fray Antonio also keenly sympathized; for
+his nature was very open at all times to such gentle influences.
+
+But Rayburn and Young, as was evident from their anxious looks, were
+thinking only of the dangers which this lovely valley might hold in
+store for us; for the shore of the lake nearest to us had many houses
+built upon it, and we could see faintly, for the width of the lake was
+nearly two miles, that there were other houses upon its farther shore.
+Standing hidden behind a rock, Rayburn examined the valley carefully
+through a field-glass for a long while.
+
+"I must say this place beats me," he said at last, as he put the glass
+down from his eyes. "There's no doubt about there being a town down
+there; but I can't make out a sign of a single living thing. And what
+is still queerer, the houses seem to go right down into the lake. If
+you'll take the glass, Professor, you'll see that a few of them, on this
+side, stand all right on dry ground; and then, farther down the sloping
+bank, are a lot in the water; and beyond these there seem to be some
+roofs just showing above the level of the lake. And as far as I can make
+out, things are just the same over on the far shore. It looks as if the
+lake had risen after the town was built."
+
+As I looked through the glass I saw that what Rayburn had said was true;
+and I observed with much interest that many of the houses were large,
+and that all seemed to be well built of stone. Their construction
+reminded me of the buildings which M. Charnay examined at Tula, and I
+was eager to get down to them and examine them closely. Young and Fray
+Antonio took the glass, in turn, and as none of us saw any signs of life
+in the valley, we decided to go on. And we were mightily stimulated in
+this resolve by finding, just at the end of the canon, where the sharp
+descent began, a graving of the King's symbol on the rock, with the
+arrow pointing directly down the steep path.
+
+"Here's a walled city, for sure," said Young; "and if this is where th'
+treasure-house is, we won't raise a row because th' folks have gone off
+an' left it. Just whoop up that burro of yours, Pablo, an' let's be
+gettin' along. It's a pity we had t' leave th' mules behind. If th'
+treasure's in silver, we can't get away with much of it with nothin' but
+El Sabio t' pack it on."
+
+Pablo did not understand this speech, of course, but he recognized his
+own name and the name of El Sabio, and Young's gestures helped out the
+meaning of his words. Therefore Pablo grinned, and "whooped up" El
+Sabio; and we all set off briskly down the steep decline.
+
+Presently we found our way much easier than we had been led to expect by
+its rough beginning. As we advanced along it there was ample evidence
+that the path had been graded and smoothed by the hand of man. In
+several places it was carried on a terrace supported by a well-laid
+retaining wall; a deep crevice was spanned by long slabs of stone, so
+placed as to form a bridge; and where it turned sharply around a high
+shoulder of rock, the face of the cliff had been quarried away. Yet that
+this all had been done in a very remote time was shown by the fragments
+of rock which had fallen into it here and there, and which were
+blackened by age. "The same fellow who set that statue in place probably
+was in charge here," was Rayburn's comment, "and he was a first-rate
+engineer. I wish I knew how he managed to swing those stone slabs over
+that crevice. There's no room there to set up a derrick, and it would
+puzzle me to set blocks like that without one."
+
+And Rayburn's admiration for the professional skill of this engineer of
+a long past age was still further excited when the path came fairly into
+the valley, and thence was carried downward along the gentle slope
+towards the lake, by a perfectly even two-per-cent. grade, over a broad
+way paved smoothly with squared blocks of stone. And Fray Antonio and I
+were much interested in this work also, for we both perceived the
+identity of its structure with the paved way that is found on the east
+coast of Yucatan, and that is continued on the island of Cozumel.
+
+By this paved avenue we entered the city--for, as we presently found, it
+was entitled to this more dignified name. The first houses that we came
+to were but small buildings enclosing a single room--such as are found,
+inhabited by working-people, on the outskirts of any Mexican city at the
+present day. They were silent and deserted; but they gave, at first
+sight, the impression of being but momentarily abandoned, for the
+belongings of their owners still remained in them as though the
+every-day affairs of life still went on within their walls. In the first
+that we entered we found an earthen pot still standing on a sort of
+fireplace, and beside the fireplace a little pile of charcoal. There was
+a fragment of bone in the pot, and beneath it were some scraps of
+charcoal which remained unconsumed. It was as though cooking had been
+going on here but an hour before. Rayburn even put his hand into the
+ashes to feel if they still were warm. But closer investigation gave us
+a juster notion of the long lapse of time that must have occurred since
+any fire had burned upon this hearth. In one corner of the room we found
+a pile of mats, but on touching these they crumbled into fragments in
+our hands; and the bone in the pot was so dry and so porous that it was
+light as cork.
+
+As in this first house that we examined, so was it in all of them. All,
+at the first glance, seemed to have been but a moment before deserted;
+but all had signs about them which showed that they had been abandoned
+for a very long time. In one we found a loom--in construction very like
+that which the Navajo Indians use at the present day--on which hung,
+partly completed, a sheer filament that once had been some sort of heavy
+woollen cloth. In another, a cotton garment was lying carelessly upon a
+shelf, as though but a moment before cast aside; yet, as I tried to pick
+it up, it crumbled between my fingers into a fine powder.
+
+Of humanity, the only sign that we found anywhere about this grim and
+desert place was the dried, shrivelled remnant of a woman that we came
+upon in an upper room of one of the larger houses farther on. She was
+lying upon a bed of mats, partly turned upon her side, and one arm was
+stretched out towards an earthen cup that stood just beyond her reach
+upon the floor. There was strong pathos in the action of the figure, for
+it told of the keen thirst of fever--of weakness so extreme that the
+inch or two between the hand and the cup was a gulf impassable--of a
+moaning struggle after the water so longed for--and then, at last, of
+death in that utter and desolate loneliness. And what added to the
+ghastliness of it all was that a thin ray of sunlight, coming through a
+crevice in the wall, struck upon the woman's teeth--whence the lips had
+dried away--and by its gleaming there made on her face a smile.
+
+As we came close to the lake, we perceived, as Rayburn already had
+discerned by the aid of the glass, that houses, partially submerged,
+actually rose from the water, and that houses of which only the roofs
+were visible were farther on. That this whole valley was the crater of
+an extinct volcano was sufficiently evident; and we could only surmise
+that in later times some fresh cataclysm of nature had poured suddenly
+into it a vast body of water, and so had submerged the city that had
+been builded here. Whatever had brought about the catastrophe, it
+evidently had come with a most appalling suddenness. Everywhere the
+condition of the houses showed how hastily they had been abandoned; and
+the wild hurry of flight was shown still more clearly in the case of the
+woman--whose surroundings gave evidence that she had been a person of
+consequence--deserted in her age or infirmity and left lonely to die.
+
+Young's face wore a melancholy expression as we stood upon the shore of
+the lake, and looked out across it towards the faintly seen western
+shore. "If this is th' place we're huntin' for," he said, "I guess our
+treasure stock is pretty badly watered, unless somebody's had th' sense
+t' keep th' treasure dry over on th' other side. We'd better move over
+there, I reckon, an' take a look for it, especially as we've got t' go
+that way anyhow in order t' get out. There ought t' be some sort of a
+path around th' lake, between th' edge of th' water and th' cliffs."
+
+But when we came to examine into this matter we found that there was no
+path at all. On each side of the valley the walls of rock rose directly
+from the water, sharp and sheer.
+
+"Well," said Rayburn, when we had finished our inspection, "we've got
+to get across somehow. I guess we'll have to sail in, the first thing
+to-morrow morning, and build a raft. These pine-trees down here by the
+water will cut easy and float well, and there's some comfort in that,
+anyway. But what I'm after right now is my supper."
+
+Pablo already had started a fire, having first unpacked El Sabio, that
+he might refresh himself by rolling on the soft, green grass and by
+eating his fill of it, and Young presently had some ham fried and some
+coffee boiled. We had counted upon having fresh meat for supper that
+night, for there was everything in the look of the valley to promise
+that we would find game there; but, so far, not a four-footed thing nor
+a bird had we seen, nor even signs of fish in the lake.
+
+In the morning we got out the axes and went to work at the building of
+the raft; and, notwithstanding what Rayburn had said in regard to the
+ease of cutting them, I must confess that for my part I found the
+cutting of pine-trees very wearying and painful. My hands were blistered
+by it, and the muscles of my back were made extremely sore by it for
+several days. Indeed, the construction of a raft big enough to float us
+all, and our heavy packs, and El Sabio, was a serious undertaking. We
+spent two days and a half over it, and I never in my life was more
+thankful for anything than I was when at last that wretched raft was
+done. As Young observed, as he regarded our finished work critically,
+there was no style about it--for it was only a lot of rough logs, of
+which the upper and lower layers ran fore and aft and the middle layer
+transversely, the whole bound together by our pack-ropes--but it was
+large enough for our purposes, and it was solid and strong.
+
+In the late afternoon we carried our belongings on board of it, and
+Pablo succeeded by dint of much entreaty in inducing El Sabio to board
+it also, and we pushed off from shore. For driving the clumsy thing
+forward we had made four rough paddles, which well enough served our
+purposes, for there was no current whatever in the lake and the air was
+still.
+
+[Illustration: AFLOAT ON THE LAKE]
+
+As we went onward we discovered how considerable the city was that here
+lay submerged. Through the perfectly clear water we could see to a great
+depth, and beneath us in every direction were paved streets, lined with
+houses well built of stone. Near the centre of the valley the size of
+the houses greatly increased, and the fashion of their building was more
+stately; and fronting upon a great open square in the very centre of the
+city was a building of such extraordinary size that we took it to be the
+palace of a king; but here the water was so deep that we could make out
+but faintly the looming far below us of its mighty walls. Never have I
+been more pained than I then was; for in that place I found myself close
+to making discoveries of surpassing archaeological value, and yet I was
+as completely cut off from them as though they had no existence.
+
+Just beyond the palace, as we went onward, our raft almost touched the
+roof of a noble building that stood upon the top of a vast pyramidal
+mound, the base of which we could see but dimly far down through the
+waters of the lake. This, evidently, had been the chief temple of the
+city; and as we passed over it and came to its eastern side, we had
+ghastly and certain proof of the terrible suddenness with which the city
+had been overwhelmed. On the broad terrace before the temple was the
+sacrificial stone, and upon this dark mass we saw distinctly the
+gleaming of human bones; and as we peered down into the water we
+perceived that all the terrace was strewn thickly with human bones also,
+showing that when the rush of water came many thousands of human beings
+had here perished miserably. For a little while, no doubt, all the
+surface of the water round about where we were had been dotted thickly
+with the bodies of the drowned which had floated upward; and then, one
+by one, they had sunk again to the place where death first found
+them--where their flesh wasted away from them until only their gleaming
+bones remained.
+
+I pictured to myself the dreadful scene that once had passed, down there
+below us, where now was only the calm serenity of ancient death: the
+great crowd collected to witness the sacrifice, and then the sudden
+coming of the waters--possibly so quickly that the victim, held down by
+the neck-yoke upon the sacrificial stone, was drowned ere there was time
+to slay him. This great mound would be the last of all to be covered,
+and the wretched people gathered there must have seen their city
+disappear beneath the waters before death came to them. No doubt they
+thought themselves safe in that high place, made sacred by the presence
+of their gods. And when the water did reach them, what a writhing and
+struggling there must have been for a little while; what a crushing of
+the weak by the strong in mad efforts to gain even a moment's safety
+upon some higher standing-place! And then, at last, the water rose
+triumphant in its swelling majesty over all--and beneath its placid
+surface were hid the silenced terrors of all that commotion of mortal
+agony, whereof the outcome was the peaceful and eternal calm of death.
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+IN THE VALLEY OF DEATH.
+
+
+As the raft approached the western shore of the lake we perceived
+beneath us no longer houses, but large walled enclosures which plainly
+had been gardens of pleasure--for gaunt trees, symmetrically planted in
+groves and beside stone-paved path-ways, yet stood in them; and seats of
+carved stone were placed in what once had been shaded nooks; and in many
+of the gardens were carved stone fountains of elegant design. Between
+the city and what once had been its charming suburb extended a broad
+paved way, like that which we had found upon the eastern shore; and this
+paved way was continued on the dry ground above the present level of the
+lake towards the cliffs westward. On the high western shore were a few
+houses, large and handsome, and having walled gardens around them,
+which evidently had belonged to persons of great wealth and consequence.
+
+In these we found shadowy remnants of a past magnificence. On many of
+the walls were hangings, once rich and heavy, that now were mere films
+of ghostly stuff held together by the many gold threads which had been
+woven into their fabric. Pottery, wrought into beautiful shapes, yet
+ornamented with designs that told of but half-redeemed barbarism, was
+scattered about everywhere, and scarcely a piece was broken. Some very
+handsome weapons we found also--swords and spears and knives--of the
+same curious metal as the sword which Pablo so opportunely had laid
+hands upon in the canon, but far more finely finished and more delicate
+in design. And of this same metal was made a great throne, as it seemed
+to us to be, that was in the largest room of the finest of all the
+houses; a house that we believed was once the pleasure palace of the
+king. The audience-chamber in which this throne stood was of finely
+wrought stone-work, whereof the whole surface was covered with
+low-reliefs of men and animals--scenes of battle, of council, and of the
+chase--surrounded by curious tracery of such orderly design that Fray
+Antonio agreed with me in the belief that it was some sort of
+hieroglyphic writing. But this matter is treated of so fully in my
+_Pre-Columbian Conditions on the Continent of North America_ that I need
+not enter upon discussion of it here.
+
+But in none of these houses, much to the disappointment of Rayburn and
+Young, did we find any scrap of the treasure for which they so
+earnestly longed. And, truly, if treasure remained in this wrecked city,
+it was less likely to be in these outlying country houses than in some
+strong building in the city's heart; and so beyond their reach in the
+depths of the lake. If this were indeed the walled city for which we
+were searching--as well it might be, for never was a city surrounded by
+grander walls than the mighty cliffs wherewith the valley was
+encompassed--our search was like to be a vain one so far as mere
+treasure was concerned; though I, for my part, felt myself well repaid
+for all that I had thus far suffered by the discovery of so much that
+was of archaeological value. In this purer pleasure Fray Antonio shared;
+yet was he also dissatisfied--for he had come with us that he might
+preach Christianity to living souls: and here were only the bones of
+countless dead.
+
+The paved way still led westward, and we followed it--for to the
+westward must be the valley's outlet. As it rose to a higher level the
+way widened; and on each side of it was a stone statue of the god
+Chac-Mool. As we came to these statues Young proceeded, in a most
+business-like way, and with no apparent appreciation of the queer figure
+that he cut, to sit down in turn on each of their heads. And he was
+mightily disappointed when he found that neither of them stirred.
+"They're not th' tippin' kind," he said, ruefully, as he got down from
+the head of the second one and looked at it with an expression of
+reproach.
+
+But his countenance brightened, when we had gone a little farther, as he
+caught sight of another and much larger statue of the god that was set
+in a great niche cut in the cliff at the end of the paved way. To
+prepare here the god's abiding-place very arduous labor had been
+undertaken. For a space fully one hundred feet high and as many broad
+the whole face of the cliff had been quarried into; making a deep recess
+that was rounded above, and that from beneath was approached by a long
+flight of steps cut from the solid rock. In the centre of the recess,
+upon the terraced space above the stairs, was a huge squared mass of
+stone, on which the great stone figure of Chac-Mool rested. The opening
+faced directly eastward, and as we approached it the stone figure was
+seen but indistinctly in the duskiness of the recess, over which, and
+far beyond which into the valley, fell the shadow of the mighty cliff.
+From in front of this great altar all the valley was open to us; and
+hence, before the lake swallowed it, every part of the city must have
+been clearly visible in ancient times. As we mounted the steps and
+approached the idol I observed that Pablo hung back a little; as though
+in the depths of his nature some chord had been touched, some ancient
+instinct in his blood aroused, that filled his soul with awe.
+
+Certainly there was no suggestion of awe in Young's demeanor towards the
+statue. With a monkey-like quickness, that I would not have given his
+stout legs and heavy body credit for, he climbed upon the altar and
+plumped himself down on the head of the figure almost in a moment. But
+again he was disappointed, for the idol did not stir. As we examined it
+closely we perceived that its fixedness was not unreasonable; for the
+figure, and the altar on which it rested, were one solid mass of rock
+that itself was a part of the cliff--left standing here when the niche
+around it was hollowed out. A very prodigious piece of stone-cutting all
+this was, and as I contemplated it I was filled with admiration of the
+skill of them who had achieved it. But Young came down from the idol
+moodily; and he said that the way these people had of playing tricks on
+travellers, by making Mullinses that didn't tip when they ought to tip,
+was quite of a piece with their putting their treasure where it couldn't
+be got at without a diving-bell.
+
+Behind the altar the niche was cut into the cliff so far that the depths
+of it in the waning daylight were dusky with heavy shadows; indeed, so
+dense were these that Young came near to breaking his bones by falling
+into a little hole in the floor, that was the less easily seen because
+it was hidden behind a jutting mass of rock. But he caught the rock in
+time to save himself from falling, and eagerly struck a wax-match that
+he might see if here were a passage-way for us. Descending into the rock
+was a stair-way, the steps whereof were smoothed as though many feet had
+trodden them; and down these steps he promptly went, holding the lighted
+match before him--these Mexican wax-matches are as good as tapers--and
+having with him the full box of matches should further light be
+required. A minute later we heard his voice calling to us, but where it
+came from we could not tell--for he had descended into the rock below
+us, and the sound that we heard seemed to come from the air above.
+While we listened we saw the gleam of the light in the darkness below,
+and then he came up the stair laughing.
+
+"Well, that's just th' boss trick," he said. "I guess th' old priests
+who used t' run this place would be everlastin'ly down on me if they
+knew that I'd tumbled to it. There's a hole right up into th' idol an'
+room inside of him for half a dozen men, an' there's a crack in his head
+that you can see out through while you're lettin' off prophecies an'
+that sort o' thing. Why, if you had a crowd t' work with who really
+believed in Jack Mullins, you could set 'em up for almost anything with
+a rig like that!"
+
+But this curious discovery, in which Fray Antonio and I were deeply
+interested, did not forward our immediate purpose, which was to find a
+way out of the valley. We still cherished a faint hope, indeed, that we
+might find the King's symbol with the arrow pointing the way onward, and
+so be assured that the city buried in the depths of the lake was not the
+city of which we were in search. But in any event the need for getting
+out of the valley pressed upon us; and that we might accomplish our
+deliverance from this shut-in place, we examined closely the whole
+circuit of the cliffs at the western end. Not an inch of this great
+expanse of rock, for as far up the wall as our eyes could see clearly,
+escaped our attentive observation; yet nowhere was there, even by bold
+climbing, a place where the cliff might be scaled, still less an open
+path. And so, having walked slowly along the bottom of the cliffs to
+the edge of the lake on the north, and there turned upon our steps and
+come slowly back again to where we started from, and having made a like
+double journey of inspection to and from the edge of the lake to the
+south, we came at last to our first point of departure, and rested
+before the statue of Chac-Mool, disconsolate.
+
+One discovery we had made in the course of our explorations which
+enabled us to understand how the fate that had overtaken the drowned
+city had fallen upon it. Close by the northern border of the valley we
+saw, high up above us, a vast rift more than a thousand feet wide in the
+face of the cliff; and below this the ground was torn into a deep wild
+channel, and everywhere huge fragments of rock were scattered over the
+ground. Here it was, then, that the water had poured in--bursting forth
+from a lake above--by which the city at one stroke had been overwhelmed.
+Some little notice, by the mighty roaring that must have accompanied so
+great a crash of rocks and so vast a rush of water, the dwellers in the
+city must have had; and the gleam of the pouring waters would have shown
+them the nature of the ruin that was upon them. There would have been
+time, before the water was waist-deep in the city streets, for them to
+make their way to the high mound on which their temple stood; and in the
+appalling horror of it all they might have clamored to their priests
+that a victim should be sacrificed to stay this terrible outburst of
+anger on the part of their gods. But it was more than likely that before
+the sacrifice could be completed they all--people, priests, and he who
+was to be sacrificed--perished together beneath the flood.
+
+"Why," said Young, "th' Mill River disaster wasn't anything to it, an'
+that was pretty bad. I was runnin' th' way-freight on th' Old Colony
+road when that happened, an' I took a day off an' went up an' had a look
+at it. But this just lays that little horror out cold. It's as big as
+lettin' loose on Boston the whole of Massachusetts Bay."
+
+That we should be prisoners in a place where death had wrought so
+swiftly such tremendous havoc was quite enough to fill our souls with a
+brooding melancholy. But in addition to the sombre thoughts which thus
+were forced upon us, bred of sorrow for the thousands who had here
+untimely perished, the gloomy dread of a more practical sort assailed us
+that we also in a little while would join the silent company of the
+thousands who had died here in a long past time. And the death that
+seemed to be in store for us was less merciful than that which had come
+to them. Theirs had been a short struggle, and then a gentle ending as
+the waters closed over them. But our ending was like to be a lingering
+one and miserable--by starvation.
+
+With the loss of our mules and horses we had been compelled to leave
+behind us the greater portion of our stores; and for our protection
+against savages, and in the belief that in the mountains we should meet
+with an abundance of game, we had left almost all of our provisions, and
+made our lading mainly of ammunition and arms. But in this valley, so
+smiling and so beautiful, there was no live thing except ourselves. Not
+a beast, not a bird had we seen since we entered it; and in the lake, as
+we found presently, there were no fish; the only sign that animal life
+ever had existed here was that dried and withered remnant of a woman
+that we had found in the deserted house, and the bones which we had seen
+gleaming below us in the lake. This was, in truth, as we came thus to
+call it, the Valley of Death.
+
+While we worked at building the raft we had not thought to be sparing in
+our eating--for building that raft was hungry work--and now that
+consideration of the matter was forced upon us, we found that we had
+with us food barely sufficient for three days. We could, of course, eat
+El Sabio--though such was our feeling towards that excellent animal that
+eating him would be almost like eating one of ourselves; and Pablo, we
+knew, would regard eating this dear friend of his as neither more nor
+less than sheer cannibalism. And even if we did eat El Sabio, the meat
+of his little body would but prolong our lives for a week, or possibly
+for two weeks more. And what then?
+
+Had there been room in our souls for yet more sorrow, we could have had
+it in the thought that in all that we had set out to do we had
+completely failed. If this Valley of Death were indeed the place that we
+had been seeking, little good came to us from finding it. Of the souls
+which Fray Antonio had come forth to save, here there were none. Of
+archaeological discovery, truly, I had something to make me glad; yet
+little compared to what was hidden beneath the waters; and even this
+little, since knowledge of what I had found soon must die with me, was
+of no avail. As for Rayburn and Young, the treasure which they sought
+might or might not be near at hand; but they certainly could no more
+come at it than, were it heaped up before them, they could carry it
+away. And most of all was my heart troubled by the fate that was like to
+overtake Pablo because of his love for me. Bitterly I blamed myself for
+permitting the boy to come with me; for I should have foreseen that a
+hundred chances might intervene to render impossible my intention to
+give him his free choice to go or to stay when the decisive
+turning-point in our adventure came. In point of fact, one of these
+chances had intervened; and the attack upon us that the Indians had
+made, and the closing of the passage in the rock behind us that rendered
+return impossible, had forced him to remain with us without voice of his
+own in the matter; and now would bring him, as it would bring the rest
+of us, to the most horrible death of which a man can die.
+
+Night was falling as we ended our search along the cliffs for a way of
+escape, and found none, and so came again in front of the great
+idol--where our packs had been left heaped up, and where the Wise One,
+happily unmindful of the fate that might soon be in store for him, was
+energetically cropping the rich grass. We built a fire, for the air in
+that deep valley, mingling with the mists rising from the lake, was damp
+and chill; and beside the fire we made our evening meal. There was no
+good in talking about what was so apparent to all of us; but Young, who
+was our cook, showed his appreciation of the situation practically by
+serving only half rations and by making our coffee very thin and poor.
+
+Silently we ate our short allowance of food; and thereafter we smoked
+our pipes with but little talk for seasoning, and that little of a
+melancholy sort. Of our own plight we did not speak at all, but in what
+we said there was constantly a reflection of the bitter sorrow with
+which all our hearts were charged. I remember that Young, who truly was
+as merry a man naturally as ever I knew, told us that night only of
+dreadful railroad accidents--of wrecks in which men lay crushed among
+the heaped-up cars, shrieking with the agony of their hurts; and then
+shrieking with dread, and with yet greater pain as the fire that seized
+upon the ruin around them came nearer and nearer until they fairly were
+roasted alive. And Rayburn told of a prospecting party besieged by
+Indians upon a mountain peak in Colorado; how, one by one, they slowly
+died in a raving horror of thirst until one man alone was left; and how
+this one man prolonged his life until rescue came by drinking the blood
+of his own body, and yet died in raging madness almost at the moment
+that he was saved.
+
+For myself, I had nothing to add to these horrors; yet such was my frame
+of mind that I found a certain bitter gladness in listening to the
+telling of them, and in tracing between them and our own case the
+ghastly parallel. In our talk, which wont on in English, Fray Antonio
+took no part; but he could follow well enough the meaning of it in our
+tones. On his face was an expression of tender melancholy that seemed to
+me to tell of sorrow for us rather than of dread of what might be in
+store for himself; and that this truly was his mood was shown when the
+others paused, sated and appalled by the horrors which they had conjured
+up, and he spoke at last.
+
+It was not a sermon that Fray Antonio gave us; but out of the abundant
+store of faith by which he himself was sustained he strove to comfort us
+with thoughts of better things than life can give. And with the promise
+of hope that he held out to us with the solemn authority that was vested
+in him by reason of the service to which he was vowed, he mingled a
+certain yearning for us, very moving, that came of the love and the
+tender gentleness that were in his own heart. And yet, though he knew
+that, excepting Pablo, we all were heretics according to his own creed,
+there was no word of doctrine in all of his discourse. Rather was what
+he said a simple setting forth of that primitive Christianity which has
+its beginning and its ending in a simple faith in an all-pervading,
+all-protecting love. And of this love, as it seemed to me, he himself
+was the human embodiment. Looking in his gentle face, which yet had such
+high courage, such noble resolution in it, I felt that in him the spirit
+of the saints and martyrs of long past ages lived again.
+
+With our souls soothed and strengthened by what Fray Antonio had spoken
+to us, we lay down at last to sleep; yet was it impossible for us to
+drive out from our hearts that natural sadness which men must feel who
+know that they have failed in a strong effort to accomplish a project
+very dear to them, and who know also that they are standing upon the
+very threshold of a most tormenting death.
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+UP THE CHAC-MOOL STAIR.
+
+
+We awoke the next morning at the very moment that the sun rose above the
+mountain peaks to the eastward; and our waking was due in part to the
+sunshine striking upon our faces, but more to the prodigious braying,
+that echoed thunderously from the cliffs around us, with which El Sabio
+welcomed the advent of the god of day.
+
+"It is a good sign, senor," said Pablo, "when El Sabio brays thus nobly
+at sunrise. He does not do it often, but when he does I know beyond a
+doubt that I am to have a lucky day."
+
+"An' I must say," Young struck in, "that for a man who expects t' have
+t' eat his boots in th' course of a day or two I'm feelin' this mornin'
+most uncommonly chipper myself. For one thing, I mean t' have another
+look around that idol. I'm not at all sure that he's not th' tippin'-up
+kind. Maybe we didn't put enough weight on him yesterday; or he may do
+his tippin' up from th' other end. Anyhow, I'm goin' t' have another
+whack at him as soon as I've eat my breakfast; an' that's a performance
+that won't take long t' get through with, considerin' how thunderin'
+little there is t' eat."
+
+Truly, the eating of our breakfast did not consume much time; and, so
+short did Young make our rations, I am not sure that we were not
+hungrier at the end of it than we were at its beginning. When we
+finished, the sun was still low in the east; and the bright rays struck
+full upon the statue of Chac-Mool, on the great stone altar, and into
+the depths of the niche that had been hollowed behind it in the face of
+the cliff. We observed that the idol was so placed that the very first
+rays of the sun, coming through a cleft between two great peaks to the
+eastward, shone brightly upon it, while yet all the rest of the valley
+save the cliff above the niche remained in shade.
+
+With the strong sunlight deeply penetrating it, the recess behind the
+altar no longer was filled with the black shadows that had obscured it
+on the previous afternoon; and even the hole into which Young so nearly
+had fallen was plainly visible. Taking advantage of the better light,
+the lost-freight agent--who certainly had found a fitting berth in that
+department of railway service, for such a man for hunting for things,
+and for finding them, I never came across--made a more careful
+examination of the deeper portion of the recess, and presently he gave a
+shout that told of a discovery.
+
+As we gathered around him he pointed in great excitement to a row of
+metal pegs, which were fixed in the rock one above the other,
+diagonally; and then to the point in the roof of the recess towards
+which these pegs tended. Even with the strong light that now aided us
+it was some time before I could make out among the black shadows of the
+roof a small opening; but the longer that I looked at it the more
+distinct it grew.
+
+"We've struck th' trail once more," Young cried. "We've struck it sure.
+It don't look promisin', but here it is--for if this ain't th' King's
+symbol carved right by th' first of these pegs, then you're all at
+liberty t' kick me right smack over th' top of that idol for a d----n
+fool! Hurrah!"
+
+Pablo could not understand what Young was saying, but it was easy to
+perceive from his gestures the nature of the happy discovery that he had
+made. In a tone in which deference and triumph were curiously blended,
+Pablo said to me: "Did I not tell you, senor, that a good thing always
+happens when El Sabio brays at the rising sun?"
+
+Before Pablo had ended this short but exultant deliverance, Young was
+half-way up to the roof of the cave, treading gingerly upon the metal
+bolts and testing each one before he trusted his weight to it. In a
+couple of minutes he reached the roof and disappeared through the hole;
+and almost instantly he called down to us: "We're solid--here's a
+regular staircase. Come along!"
+
+We followed him promptly enough; while our hearts thrilled, and all our
+bodies trembled, with the gladness that possessed us as we found this
+way opening to us from the valley wherein we had thought that surely we
+must die. In a little chamber, cut in the rock above the opening into
+which the ladder of bolts led us, Young was waiting for us; and from
+this chamber a spiral stair-way ascended that was dimly lighted by
+crevices cut from it out to the face of the cliff. With Young leading
+us, up this we went; at first rapidly, but, later, slowly and wearily,
+for it seemed as though the stair would never end. Yet though our bodies
+were heavy our spirits were very light; for we knew by the wearisome
+length of it that the stair must lead to the very top of the towering
+cliffs by which we had believed ourselves to be irrevocably shut in. And
+at last there was a gleaming of light above us; and this grew stronger
+and stronger until we came out with a shout of joy into the glad
+sunlight--and saw far below us the valley that we once more thought
+beautiful, now that it no longer held us fast.
+
+In the depth below us we could discern El Sabio, looking no bigger then
+a rabbit; and he must have caught the sound of our shouting with those
+long ears of his, for there came up to us faintly from him an answering
+bray.
+
+"It's pretty hard lines on that jackass," said Young, "leaving him
+behind down there. But he might be left in a worse place, after all."
+
+I could perceive that Pablo was stirred by uneasy thoughts of the
+separation that now so clearly must take place between him and his dear
+friend; and he looked wistfully along the path across the mountain to
+the westward--cut and smoothed so that it was an easy path to go on--and
+evidently thought how simple a matter it would be for El Sabio to travel
+on with us if only once he were up the stair. But he did not speak, and
+I hoped that he was nerving himself to bear manfully this sore trial.
+For the rest of us, we had but one thought: to get our packs up the
+stair-way as quickly as possible--and at its quickest this work would be
+slowly and painfully done--and then once more go forward. Just as we
+turned to descend again an eagle came sailing slowly towards
+us--evidently without fear of us--and Rayburn was so fortunate as to
+bring him down with a pistol-shot. We tossed him over the edge of the
+cliff; and a famous breakfast we made on him when we returned into the
+valley again. I can't say that I would have much stomach for so dirty a
+bird now, but I certainly did think that eagle most delicious eating
+then.
+
+The hearty meal that we made on him strengthened us mightily, and we
+went to work with a will at getting our traps up the stair. With our
+pack-ropes we hauled the various articles first into the little room at
+the stair-foot, and then toilsomely carried them to the heights above.
+Saving only that this work did not blister my hands, it was worse than
+the building of the raft had been; and all of us, using in climbing and
+in descending the stair certain muscles which normally are not brought
+often into play, found our legs so stiff and sore for the next day or
+two that walking gave us very lively pain.
+
+It was as this heavy work went slowly forward that Pablo said to me,
+speaking in an insinuating and deprecating tone: "Up a stair such as
+this is, senior, the Wise One would bound like a deer."
+
+I did not call in question Pablo's simile, for I knew that the boy's
+heart must be very sad. Laying my hand kindly upon his shoulder, I
+answered in a way to show that I was truly sorry for him: "The Wise One
+will lead a happy life, Pablo, in this beautiful valley--where nothing
+can do him harm, and where he will have an abundance of water and of
+rich fresh grass. Up the stair no doubt he could climb, for he knows
+wonderfully well how to use those dainty little feet of his; but even
+the Wise One could not climb up the ladder of metal bolts. Therefore
+must thou strengthen thy heart against the bitterness of this parting
+from him; for even if thou wouldst stay behind with him it is not
+possible--for thou canst not live, like the Wise One, on water and
+grass."
+
+"But he is so little and so light an ass, senor," Pablo urged, "that
+surely, all of us pulling together, we could pull him up by the ropes,
+even as the other things have been pulled up; surely, surely, senor,
+that would be an easy thing for four men to do--and I also can pull at
+the ropes, senor, almost as well as any man."
+
+It did not seem to me that even all of us pulling together could sway El
+Sabio up a hundred feet through the air; but Pablo was so pitiful in his
+entreaties, and seemed so resolutely bent upon remaining behind in the
+valley and dying there with his dear friend rather than go on without
+him, that I opened the matter to Rayburn and joined my plea to Pablo's
+that this curious effort should be made. And in addition to the
+sentimental reason for taking the ass with us, I pointed out to
+Rayburn--as, indeed, he understood without my telling him--how
+practically valuable El Sabio was to us in helping us to bear our heavy
+loads. Rayburn thought with me that the dead lift of so considerable a
+weight to such a height, without tackle of any sort to help us, was
+impossible. But Young, who had an inventive strain in his composition,
+was of the opinion that he could set up such rough tackle as would
+answer our purpose; upon understanding which, Pablo at once embraced El
+Sabio and danced for joy.
+
+Young was, I think, the handiest man I ever knew. He had a natural
+genius for mechanics; and in the many years of his railroad life he had
+gained a knowledge of all manner of expedients by which the work of
+complicated machinery could be accomplished by very simple means. "When
+you have a freight smash-up right in the middle of the section," he
+said, "with nobody to help you inside of forty miles, and the express
+due to come bouncing down on you inside of two hours, you've just _got_
+to get things out of the way whether you've got anything to do it with
+or not. If I had the equipment of a first-class freight-cab here I'd
+yank that burro up inside of twenty minutes; and if I don't do it,
+anyway, inside of two hours I'll promise to eat him."
+
+I did not translate the whole of this speech to Pablo, for talk even in
+fun about eating El Sabio was rather a delicate matter, considering how
+close a shave that worthy animal had had to being eaten in dead earnest;
+but I did tell him that the Senor Young felt sure that he could swing El
+Sabio up through the air to where the stair began. And with Pablo--who
+also could use his hands well--most willingly helping, Young contrived
+in a surprisingly short time to make a rough windlass, that was
+effective enough for the work to be done with it, and to pull it up bit
+by bit into the chamber in the rock and there fit it together over the
+hole. El Sabio, being brought into the recess behind the idol, regarded
+us all with a doubting expression that even Pablo's repeated assurances
+that we meant well by him could not change into a look of trustfulness.
+Pablo declared, however, that in his heart of hearts the Wise One knew
+that we all were his friends, and that even though we should hurt him a
+little he would understand that it was for his good. And the conduct of
+the ass during the exceedingly bad half-hour that he then went through
+seemed fully to bear out Pablo's words. Around his small body, with
+stays running forward around his neck and aft to his tail, we rigged
+looped ropes--which ropes were gathered together above his back and
+there made fast to the line that was pendent from the windlass above.
+From time to time, as this operation was going forward, El Sabio turned
+his head upon one shoulder or the other and gazed with a wistful
+expression at what we were doing to him; and the slow shake that he gave
+his head, whereby his great ears were set to wagging mournfully, as he
+finished each of these inspections, betrayed the grave wonder that was
+within him as to what it all could mean, together with a not unnatural
+apprehension of what might be its ultimate outcome.
+
+By a good chance, the effect upon the Wise One of finding the solid
+earth drop suddenly from beneath his feet--when at last all was in
+readiness, and Young and Rayburn began to hoist away at the
+windlass--was to render him quite rigid with terror; and there was a
+most agonized look upon his face as he went sailing up through the air.
+Pablo, standing below with me, that we might steady the ass with a
+guy-rope during his ascent, addressed to him all manner of tender and
+comforting words; but for once the Wise One seemed to be insensible to
+his master's voice. Neither with his eyes nor his ears did he respond;
+and he well enough might have been taken for a dead ass going
+heavenward, but for the sharp twitchings of his tail. And when at last
+he was safely within the upper chamber, he fairly fell down upon the
+rocky floor of it in sheer exhaustion begot of fright. It was not until
+we had passed up a bucket of water to him, whereof he drank the very
+last drop, and had been soothed by Pablo's fondling of him and by
+Pablo's gentle words, that his broken spirit revived. And so limp and
+weak was he that it was a long while before we could in conscience urge
+him to ascend the stair. When at last he set himself to this
+undertaking, he was far from accomplishing it in the bounding and
+deer-like manner that Pablo had promised for him; but he certainly did
+at last get to the top--which was all that was required of him--and
+there drank gratefully the bucketful of water that Pablo had carried up
+that great height for his comforting when his toilsome climbing should
+end. And Pablo went down into the valley once more that night in order
+to bring back to his friend a hearty supper of rich grass.
+
+[Illustration: EL SABIO'S PREDICAMENT]
+
+By the time that all this hard work was accomplished the day was nearly
+at an end; and even had there been light for us to see our way by we
+were too tired to go on--for every bone and muscle in our bodies was
+weary and sore. Therefore we made our camp for the night on the flat
+expanse of rock where the stair ended; and we were thankful that enough
+of the eagle remained to us for our supper--and, indeed, we made our
+breakfast on him also, for he was a prodigiously large bird. Very
+different were our feelings as we wrapped ourselves in our blankets and
+settled ourselves to sleep on that open mountain-top--with the path
+clear before us, and with the cheering hope in our hearts that among the
+mountains we should find a plenty of wild creatures suitable for
+food--from the dull despairing languor that had possessed us as we sank
+to sleep the night before. And with our joy was also a reverent
+thankfulness--that was more strongly stimulated by certain words which
+Fray Antonio spoke ere we lay down to rest--that our deliverance was
+accomplished from that death-stricken valley wherein we ourselves so
+surely had expected that we must die.
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+THE HANGING CHAIN.
+
+
+By the winding way which we followed along the mountain-top (and that
+this was the way we wished to follow the King's symbol and the pointing
+arrow plainly showed), we came presently close beside the rift in the
+cliffs through which the waters of the upper lake had been discharged
+upon the city in the valley below and so had buried it. And here we made
+a very surprising discovery--which was no less than that the great rift
+in the rocks through which the water had been let loose was not, as we
+had supposed, the result of some fierce convulsion of nature, but very
+plainly was the fiercer work of man. Along the face of the opening
+whence the water had poured forth the rock was grooved, showing that
+drill-holes had been made, close together, from the edge of the cliff
+backward to the lake that once had filled all the valley now lying bare
+and empty before us; and with the field-glass we could see that there
+was a like channelling of the rock upon the farther side of the break.
+And all doubt in our minds in regard to this matter was removed by our
+finding a vastly long drill--made of the bright, hard metal that we now
+were familiar with, yet could not at all understand its
+composition--lying close beside the chasm upon the bare rock.
+
+"There has been the devil's own work here!" said Rayburn, as he fully
+took in this extraordinary situation. "Whoever did this must have spent
+months over it, perhaps years, working with such tools as these. They
+evidently went at it systematically, with the deliberate intention of
+drowning the whole crowd down below. From an engineering stand-point I
+must say that it's a good piece of work. See how cleverly they've picked
+out this particular spot, where the wall of rock went down almost
+perpendicularly into the lake, and so got the full value of the thrust
+of the water when their cuts were finished. If I'm not mistaken, there
+was a third line of drill-holes sunk in the middle of the mass that they
+meant to cut loose. That's the way I should have done it: then there
+would have been a little giving in the centre that would have helped to
+loosen the sides. But what a lot of incarnate devils they must have been
+to go at such a job!"
+
+Truly, there was something chilling to the blood in the thought of the
+slow labor of them who had toiled here, day after day and month after
+month, until their ghastly purpose was accomplished, and they had slain
+a whole city without striking a single honest blow. Such vengeance upon
+an enemy as here was taken never had its equal for cold, malignant
+cruelty since the world began. Down in the valley below we had seen
+gleaming beneath the calm surface of the lake the bones of the thousands
+who had perished when this diabolical work was completed, and the waters
+bounded forth, shining and sparkling in the sunlight, on their mission
+of death. And whoever let them loose must have stood just where we now
+were standing; and at sight of what came of their long labor there must
+have been such joy as no hell could adequately punish in their black
+hearts.
+
+Our bodies shuddered as we turned and left the scene of this tremendous
+tragedy; that was the more appalling to us because of the profound
+mystery in which was buried everything related to it save the fact that
+it had been.
+
+For a long distance our way went onward beside the bare, deep valley
+that had been the basin of the lake, and so the thought of the horror
+which had been wrought so devilishly with its innocent waters lingered
+gloomily in our minds. Involuntarily we associated the unknown people of
+a long past time who had perpetrated this hideous wholesale murder with
+the people for whom we now were searching, and an uncertain dread filled
+our souls as to what might be our own fate should we end by finding what
+we sought. From the tender mercies of a race in which stealthy craft and
+cold, malignant cruelty evidently were such conspicuous characteristics,
+little was to be expected. Therefore, it was in a sombre mood, and with
+but little talk among us, that we went forward upon our way.
+
+The path that we followed showed the same care in the making of it that
+we had found in the path leading down from the canon into the valley
+where the drowned city was. Throughout the length of it, by carrying it
+skilfully along the windings of the mountain-sides, an equable, easy
+grade was maintained; where it led across open spaces the loose stones
+had been cleared away and stood heaped along each side of it; where it
+skirted precipices the solid rock had been cut out in order to give a
+wider and a surer foothold; and here and there in its course crevices
+which traversed it were bridged with great slabs of stone. Rayburn was
+lost in admiration of the engineering skill that was shown in its
+construction, and declared that a very little extra work put on it would
+fit it for the laying of a line of rails.
+
+The valley on our right, in which the lake had been, narrowed as we
+advanced; and as the path that we followed had a steadily rising grade
+(according to Rayburn's estimate, of a trifle more than three per
+cent.), the bottom of it fell away rapidly. As we reached what had been,
+as we found, the foot of the lake, we discovered fresh evidence of the
+enormous amount of labor that had been expended in order to make its
+waters an effective engine of destruction. Far in the depths beneath us,
+extending across the whole width of the valley--but here the valley had
+so narrowed that it was less a valley than a canon--we saw a high and
+vastly broad stone wall. It was then that we perceived fully the whole
+of the devilish design, and realized the years that must have been given
+to its execution. By the building of the wall the level of the lake had
+been raised fully three hundred feet, and so a head of water had been
+obtained strong enough to thrust out the mass of rock that had been
+loosened by drilling through its centre and at its sides. It would have
+been possible, also, for the rock that was to be broken away to be
+greatly thinned by quarrying its open face while the water was rising
+slowly after the great dam was built. Clearly, the whole work had been
+planned with a calm, diabolical ingenuity that assured with absolute
+certainty the accomplishment of the horrible purpose that those who
+labored at it had in view. It seemed impossible, but for the proof that
+we here had of it, that human hearts could have in them enough of purely
+devilish cruelty to spend years in thus working out to perfection so
+hideous a vengeance; and to me it seemed all the more dreadful because
+of the time that had passed since this most evil deed was done.
+Centuries had vanished, and the slayers--living out the few years of
+their lifetime--had perished from off the earth as utterly as had the
+slain; yet here the whole proof of the great crime that had been wrought
+lived on in enduring stone that was like to last until the very end of
+the world should come. Thus had these sinners left behind them, raised
+by their own hands, a monument telling of their sin; which sin had not
+even the redeeming quality of passionateness, but was slow and subtle
+and cruelly cold.
+
+We were glad to turn from sight of this place and press onward into the
+canon, for such the valley now had become; and we found in the dark
+shadows which enveloped us in this deep cleft between the mountains a
+sombreness in keeping with the feelings in our hearts. So high above us
+towered the cliffs that at their top they seemed almost to meet, showing
+between them only a narrow ribbon of bright blue sky, and below us the
+chasm went down sheer for a thousand feet; a gloomy depth that our eyes
+could not have penetrated had there not gleamed at the bottom of it the
+foam and sparkle of a little stream. Here the path was hewn almost
+continuously out of the solid rock; and we could see that a like path
+was cut in the rock on the other side. That so prodigious a piece of
+work should be thus duplicated seemed to us a very astonishing waste of
+energy; for even Young did not have much faith in his own suggestion
+that two prehistoric railway companies had secured rights of way along
+the opposite sides of the canon, and had begun the building there of
+rival lines.
+
+But the matter was explained, presently, by our finding that this other
+path was but a doubling of the path that we were on. As we rounded a
+turn in the canon we came suddenly to a broad natural ledge in the rock,
+over which hung a great projection of the cliff so that the sky above
+was hid from us. Here our path went off into the air, and began again on
+the other side of the vastly deep chasm, a good sixty feet away. "Rather
+long for a jump," was Rayburn's curt comment as we pulled up on the edge
+of the precipice and looked at each other blankly. Yet it was evident
+that those who had made with such great expense of toil and time these
+path-ways on the opposite sides of the canon had crossed in some way
+from the one to the other at this point, and the only surmise that
+seemed to fit the facts of the case was that there had been stretched
+across the chasm a swinging bridge of _lianas_--such as still are to be
+found spanning streams in the hot lands of Mexico--and that in the
+course of ages this had rotted entirely away. But as this bridge, if
+ever there had been one here, was absolutely gone, we found ourselves in
+as shrewdly strait a place as men well could be in. To go ahead was as
+clearly impossible as was the hopelessness of turning back upon our
+path. At the most, we could only return to the valley out of which we
+had climbed with such thankfulness; and rather than go back to die of
+starvation in that place, so beautiful and so desolate, there was not
+one of us but would have chosen to end all quickly by springing into
+the gulf above which we stood.
+
+But while we thus stood in dreary contemplation of the miserable
+prospect before us, Young, as his habit was, was spying about him
+sharply, and so spied out a way of deliverance for us. The announcement
+of his discovery was made in a very characteristic way.
+
+"You set up to be some punkins of an engineer, now don't you?" he said,
+addressing Rayburn. "But did you ever happen to hear of a bridge that
+was hung up at one end an' that was operated by swingin' it backward an'
+forward like a pendulum?"
+
+"No," Rayburn answered, promptly and decisively, "I never did."
+
+"So I thought," Young went on. "Well, you've admitted that in sev'ral
+things th' man who was in charge of construction on this line could have
+given you points, an' this swingin' bridge notion is one of 'em. I can't
+say that I think much of it. It wouldn't do in railroads, for sure; but
+there is a good deal to be said in favor of it when it helps folks out
+of such a hole as we're in now--an' if it still is in workin' order,
+that is just what it's going to do. There it is. Do you catch on?"
+
+We all looked in the direction in which Young pointed, for his gesture
+was so earnest that even Fray Antonio and Pablo caught the meaning of
+it, and so saw--pendent from a point far up on the overhang of rock, and
+but indistinctly showing in the shadow--a great chain that at its lower
+end was caught in a metal hook set in the face of the cliff at the
+extreme back of the ledge on which we stood. For my part, I did not at
+once catch the meaning of Young's words even when I saw the chain, but
+Rayburn understood it all in a moment.
+
+"By Jove!" he exclaimed, "that _is_ a notion! You grab the end of it and
+just swing across to the other side!"
+
+Young already had loosened the chain from the hook and was testing its
+strength by putting his weight on it. At the end of it was a crossbar
+big enough to get a good grip upon; and this, and the chain itself, were
+wrought of the bright, hard metal of which we had encountered so many
+specimens. The upper end was made fast high above us in the out-jut of
+rock, very nearly over the centre of the canon; so that no great force
+was required to carry whoever grasped the crossbar, and so swung out
+boldly, clear across the chasm to the ledge on the other side. But I
+confess that the thought of such a passage made me feel a little dizzy
+and sick; and never did I long to be safely back in my class-room at Ann
+Arbor as I did just then!
+
+"It seems t' be all right," said Young, "but I guess you may as well
+take a pull on it with me, Rayburn. There'd be no fun in havin' it fetch
+away when a man was about half across, an' we may as well make th' thing
+sure." And then, as the chain still held firm under the double strain,
+he added, "Well, here goes;" and, so speaking, took a running start and
+went swinging out over the abyss.
+
+My heart was in my mouth as he leaped forth and shot out from and far
+below us; but in a moment he rose along the curve that he was traversing
+and was safely landed on the other side. "It's a boss invention.
+Workin' it is just as easy as rollin' off a log," he called across to
+us; and to show how easily the passage was made, he instantly swung
+himself back again.
+
+Pablo had manifested signs of strong uneasiness while this talk and
+action were in progress, and in a very anxious tone he now inquired:
+"But how will it be with the Wise One, senor?"
+
+"Why, gettin' _him_ across will be as easy as open an' shut," Young
+answered, speaking in English to Rayburn and to me. "We'll just rig him
+in th' rope slings again, an' make him fast to th' chain, an' give him a
+good boost to start him, and over he'll go before he fairly knows he's
+started."
+
+But when we came to apply this brisk statement of the case practically,
+we found it by no means easy of execution. El Sabio grew restive as we
+arranged the slings of rope about his body, evidently remembering,
+fearfully, the strange journey that he had made in the air when we had
+rigged him in a like manner in order to trice him up to where the stair
+began; and he grew yet more restive as we fastened the rope slings to
+the end of the chain. Rayburn had crossed to the other side--passing the
+chain back by weighting it with a rock--and stood ready to receive El
+Sabio when he was swung across. But partly owing to a want of skill in
+our management of him, yet more to his own unruliness--for just as we
+started him, with a strong push, he clapped down his fore-feet upon the
+edge of the cliff and so checked his swing outward--he did not swing
+within reach of Rayburn's hands. And so he came back towards us again,
+and then out once more towards Rayburn; and so swung slowly and yet more
+slowly until at last he hung motionless over the very middle of the
+gulf, with nothing between him and the rocks below but a thousand feet
+of air. And then El Sabio began to kick with a vigor that set to
+rattling every link in the chain!
+
+Pablo was cast by this mischance into a veritable frenzy of fright; and
+we were most seriously frightened also--not only because the destruction
+of the poor ass was imminent, but because of the danger which menaced
+ourselves. Our party was divided, and should the chain give way, under
+stress of El Sabio's kicks and plunges, all possibility of our coming
+together again was at an end. Rayburn might leave us and go on; and so,
+perhaps, save his own life. But for the rest of us there would be no
+hope. Behind us was death by starvation. In front of us was this
+impassable gulf.
+
+From Pablo, who was quite wild with dreadful anticipations of the
+parting of the chain and the loss to him forever of his friend, least
+was to be expected in the strait wherein we were; yet it was from Pablo
+that our rescue came. With a quick apprehension of the needs of the
+case, he rove a running-knot in the end of one of the pack-ropes, and
+with a dexterous cast of this improvised lasso set the loop of it about
+El Sabio's neck as that unfortunate animal for a moment ceased his
+strugglings and hung still. And then we all strained on the rope
+together, and in a minute had El Sabio safely with us again; but in such
+a state of terror that pity for him wrung our hearts.
+
+But the limpness which the reaction from such deadly fear threw him into
+made handling him easy; and this time, when we launched him forth
+(taking the precaution, however, to fasten one end of a rope to the
+chain), he went sailing across the full width of the chasm, and Rayburn
+in a moment had him landed in safety. The instant that the chain was
+loosened Pablo hauled it back, and an instant later swung lightly across
+the canon, and straightway fell to fondling the terrified creature and
+comforting him with all manner of tender words. And he so piteously
+besought us to give El Sabio one good drink that we passed the water-keg
+and the bucket across, and permitted the poor ass to drink half of our
+stock of water without debate of the sacrifice. Indeed, this refreshment
+was so necessary to him that without it I doubt if he could have gone
+on.
+
+While El Sabio thus gathered courage and strength again, Young swung
+over to the other side, and we passed our stores across from ledge to
+ledge--having ropes made fast to the chain, and so steadying each load
+from the one side while we hauled from the other. This was easy work,
+and we quickly finished it. When it was ended I braced myself for the
+flying journey through the air across that gulf so deep that the bottom
+of it was lost in black shadows, through which the sparkling water
+faintly gleamed; and my heart so throbbed within me as I took the bar in
+my hands, with the knowledge that should I lose hold of it death waited
+for me below in those dark shadows, that my breath came irregularly and
+I heard a dismal ringing in my ears. Yet I had less to fear than either
+of the others who had crossed before me, for the ropes still were fast
+to the chain; and should I not swing far enough I would be helped to
+safety by my companions. But for shame, I should have made my body fast
+to the chain by a rope sling, and so have gone across as our stores had
+gone rather than as a man. But my pride forbade my surrender in this
+fashion to my fears; and it was a lucky thing for me that it did.
+
+Holding the bar in my hands, I ran briskly across the ledge, and, with a
+strong kick on the edge of the cliff to give me additional impetus, I
+went spinning out into space. For an age, as it seemed to me, I sank
+rapidly; while that horrible feeling possessed me--the like of which
+people subject to sea-sickness feel as the ship drops away beneath them
+into the trough of the sea--of falling away from my own stomach. And
+then, just as my strength seemed to be failing, and my hold on the bar
+loosing, I perceived that I was rising again; and this put a little
+fresh heart in me, and I tightened my grip on the bar. Ten seconds, no
+doubt, was the full extent of the time that my passage consumed; but it
+seemed to me then, and it seems to me still as I think of it, a long ten
+years. And a thrill of terror goes through me as I think also of how
+near I then came to a horrible death; for at the very moment that I
+reached the farther side of the canon there was a little tinkling sound
+in the air above me, and the bar that I held was twitched out of my
+hands, and then came a loud jingling of metal on rock, and as I turned
+quickly I saw a gleam of sunlight catch the great chain as it went
+twisting downward into the black gulf below.
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+THE TEMPLE IN THE CLOUDS.
+
+
+Doubtless the violent strain to which the chain had been subjected by El
+Sabio's kicking and plunging had loosened the fastenings, centuries old,
+which held it to the rock; for the chain had not broken, but had come
+away entire. I sank down on the rock as weak with terror as the poor ass
+had been; and like him I drank greedily of water, and panted for a
+while, and at last found my courage coming back to me.
+
+Yet my case was a happy one compared with that of Fray Antonio.
+Howsoever narrow my escape had been, the fact remained that I had come
+out from my encounter with Death safe and unharmed; but on Fray
+Antonio's shoulder we could but dread that Death already had laid his
+hand. And that he knew how close to him Death was standing we could see
+by a certain elate and confident air of courage in his bearing, and by
+the wonderful tenderness and sweetness of his smile. Truly, never did I
+know a man so ready at all times as this man was to lay down the life
+that God had given him; holding it but as a trust that might at any
+moment be called back to the source whence it came. Yet because it was a
+trust, meant to be put to useful purposes, Fray Antonio valued his life
+and cared for it. And at this time it was he himself who devised a plan
+by which it might be saved.
+
+The ropes which were fastened to the chain, being held stoutly on the
+one side by Fray Antonio and on the other by Young, fortunately had
+broken as the great weight of the chain suddenly had come upon them, and
+had broken so close to the knots which held them that nearly the whole
+of their length remained. The plan that the monk now devised for coming
+across to us--and a bold heart was required even to think of this daring
+enterprise--was that with the two ropes fastened about his body at one
+end, and held by all of us at the other, he should swing down into the
+chasm and far under the promontory of rock on which we stood, and then
+that we should haul him up to us. The great difficulty in the way of
+executing this plan was in getting the line across between us; its great
+danger lay in the probability--notwithstanding the depth of the recess
+beneath us--that he would be dashed against the rocks with such force as
+to kill him outright.
+
+But Young, who usually was ready for any emergency that might arise,
+roused out a ball of twine that was a part of our stores, and one end of
+this he made fast to a fragment of rock, and by a strong heave of it
+landed it safe on the other side; whereafter the rigging of the double
+rope across was an easy matter.
+
+Very carefully, testing the knots as he made them, Fray Antonio fastened
+the double line about his body, beneath his shoulders, and so stood
+ready on the edge of the chasm; while we four stood holding the line,
+with all our muscles braced for the strain that would come upon it as
+he swung downward. For a moment he paused, with his face turned upward
+while his lips moved. Then he waved his hand, and smiled as he called
+across to us, "It is as God wills!" and so dropped away from the ledge,
+and like a flash went down beyond our range of sight.
+
+We felt the jar on the ropes as his body struck against the face of the
+cliff far below us, and the reflex action as he swung out again, and
+thereafter the slower motion of the ropes as he swayed back and forth
+dangling over that black and awful chasm. And as the ropes settled into
+steadiness we drew him up towards us; yet dreaded, because of the dull
+weight of it, and because no assuring cry came up to us, that what we
+lifted was a corpse.
+
+And, in truth, as we raised the body of Fray Antonio over the edge of
+the cliff it seemed as though this dread were realized; for a great
+bloody gash was upon his temple, and his limbs were limp and lifeless,
+and his face was deathly pale. At sight of which there came into my
+heart a bursting pain, as though some one had stabbed me there; and
+there were tears in Young's eyes; and Rayburn gave vent to his sorrow in
+a great curse that was half a groan. As for Pablo, whom no danger could
+daunt, and who would bear without flinching any hurt of his own, this
+dreadful sight so moved him that he fainted dead away.
+
+Yet even in the moment that such deep sorrow seemed to be settling down
+upon us, Fray Antonio slightly moved his lips, and there came forth from
+them a low faint sigh--whereupon Young jumped up with a shout and
+relieved his mind by administering to Pablo a hearty kick, which he
+accompanied with the remark: "You infernal fool of a Greaser Indian,
+what do you mean by swoundin'? He ain't dead at all!"
+
+As tenderly as I could for the trembling of my hands, I washed away the
+blood from about the cut and bathed Fray Antonio's pale face, while
+Rayburn gave him a sup of whiskey from his flask. And then, presently,
+his eyes opened and energy came into his body once more. In a little
+while he was on his feet again, and as well as ever, save for the
+smarting of his cut, and in his head a dizziness and a dull throbbing
+pain. Just what had happened he could not tell. He knew that he had
+struck against the rock with his feet, as he had planned to do; but he
+must have swung around, when the force of the impact had been thus
+partly broken, and struck his head against some sharp projection, and so
+have been cut and stunned. But it made no great difference how his hurt
+had come to him, since it had not proved to be a deadly one; therefore
+we forbore to question him further concerning it, and sought by quiet
+talk, that led softly into silence, to take his thoughts away from the
+peril that he had been in. Indeed, we all were glad to rest quietly
+where we were for the night, for our bodies were tired and our nerves
+were racked and strained.
+
+We should have been most thankful for a big potful of coffee, but there
+was no wood with which we could make a fire. The best that we could do,
+and there was not much comfort in it, was to chew some coffee grains
+after we had made a supper upon one of our few remaining tins of meat;
+and then we rolled ourselves in our blankets and lay down upon the bare
+rock. And I must say that if anybody had asked me at that moment if
+archaeology was a study that paid for the trouble that it cost, I should
+have said most unhesitatingly that it was not.
+
+Even sleep, which I greatly needed, and for which I earnestly longed,
+did not come to me easily; for each time that I seemed to be dropping
+gently away into unconsciousness I would be roused by the feeling that I
+was holding fast to the chain again, and so was sliding down the long
+curve among the shadows, with the great walls of the canon towering
+infinitely above me, and with the black depth below. And in my sleep I
+made again the dreadful passage, and heard the clinking of the chain as
+it parted, and the rattle of it as it struck the rocks, and felt the
+grasp of Rayburn as he caught me, just as the bar was twitched out of my
+hands--and so woke to find Young shaking me, and to hear him say:
+"There's no earthly sense in your kickin' around that way, Professor;
+an', anyhow, it's time t' get up. It's just a wonder how these Mexican
+mornin's put life into a man. Why, there's a freshness in th' air that's
+goin' t' waste in this canon that's fit t' make a coffin stand right up
+on end an' dance a jig!"
+
+Even Fray Antonio, but for the soreness of his hurt, felt strong and
+well; and we ate another tin of meat--which was much less than we
+wanted to eat--and so started along the path hewn out of the side of the
+cliff; and what with the brightness and joyfulness of the morning, we
+certainly were in much higher spirits than was at all reasonable in the
+case of men who had had such close companionship with Death so short a
+time before, and who still stood a very fair chance of dying dismally of
+starvation. The knowledge that, by the falling of the chain, our retreat
+had been again cut off did not at all trouble us. Even could we have
+crossed the canon, and so have retraced our steps, we could have gone no
+farther than the valley of the lake; and we could as well die here as
+there. And we were stayed by the reasonable conviction that the path
+which we were travelling upon certainly would lead us out of the
+mountains at last--even if it did not lead us to the hidden city that we
+sought.
+
+For five or six miles we doubled on our course of the day before, going
+back along the canon and seeing the path that we had followed a little
+below us on the other side; then, by a very easy grade, our course began
+to ascend, and went on rising until the other path was so far below us
+that it ceased to be distinguishable. Thus we came to within a few
+hundred feet of the top of the cliffs, when a sudden turn to the left
+carried us into a narrow cleft in the rock. Here the path was very
+sharply inclined upward for a little way; and for the remainder of the
+distance to the top we ascended a long series of rudely cut steps, so
+steep that our legs fairly cracked under us as we neared the end of
+them.
+
+But we forgot our weariness as we came out upon the summit at last, and
+a great view of clouds and mountain peaks burst upon us; the like of
+which I never have seen approached save by the view out over the
+Gunnison country from the crest of the Marshall Pass. But here we saw
+all around us what there is seen only in one direction; for we were on a
+vastly high, square crest--very like that called the Gigante, which the
+traveller by the Mexican Central Railroad sees to the left as he nears
+Silao--and clouds and mountain peaks rose up about us on every side.
+
+But we did not long contemplate this heroic landscape, for a cloud,
+which almost enveloped us as we finished our ascent of the stair, was
+swept still farther away by the brisk wind then blowing; so that
+suddenly a vast building loomed largely through the flying vapor, and in
+a moment was clear and distinct before our eyes. To find upon this bare
+mountain-top, among cloud solitudes so profound as these, such
+overpowering evidence of the labor and strength of man, sent thrilling
+through our breasts a wonder that was akin to awe. It seemed unreal,
+impossible, that in such a place such work could be accomplished; and
+the very tangible reality of it made it seem to me one of those
+prodigies of man's creation which old stories tell of as having been
+wrought by a league with the devil and at the cost of a human soul.
+
+Had there been any signs at all of human life about this solemn and
+majestic building, or upon the mountain-top whereon it stood, the
+chilling hold that it took upon our imaginations would have been less
+strong. What wrought upon us was the deadly silence, and the absolute
+stillness of everything save the drifting clouds. It seemed to us as
+though we had come out from the living world and our own time into a
+dead region belonging to a long dead past; and I remembered with a
+shudder that we had entered this region through that gloomy cavern,
+where hundreds of the ancient dead were clustered in silent worship
+about the great silent idol carved in everlasting stone. It seemed as
+though some evil spell hung over us, that doomed us forever to wander in
+wild solitudes--which were the more appalling because constantly uprose
+before us tangible evidence of the strong current of eager human life
+that had pulsed through them in former times. Young but put into his own
+rough language the thought that was in all our hearts when he declared,
+with a great oath, that for the sake of getting safe out of this lonely
+hole he'd contract to fight Indians three days in every week for the
+rest of his life, and be glad to do it for the comfort of having
+somebody around who was alive.
+
+
+
+
+XVI.
+
+AT THE BARRED PASS.
+
+
+The whole top of the mountain, near a mile square, had been so levelled
+by nature that little remained to be done for its further smoothing by
+the hand of man. But the amount of work that had gone into the mere
+preparation for the building of the great temple was almost incredible.
+In the centre of the plateau a pyramidal mass of rock near a thousand
+feet square, of a piece with the mountain itself, had been so shaped and
+hewn that it rose in three great terraces to the square apex on which
+the temple stood. These terraces slanted upward, surrounding the pyramid
+by a continuously ascending way that had its beginning and its ending in
+the centre of the eastern front--so that, allowing for the diminishing
+size of the pyramid, the distance by this way from the bottom to the top
+of it was more than a mile and a half.
+
+"It just took a slow-goin', lazy heathen Greaser t' think out a thing
+like this," Young observed as we went up the path. "Now, if th'
+Congregationalists that I was brought up among had put a church on a
+place like this--an' they wouldn't have been likely t' be fools enough
+t' do anything of th' sort--they'd 'a' had a set of steps runnin' smack
+from th' bottom t' th' top, an' folks would have got up in no time. It's
+just th' Greaser fashion all over t' spend a hundred years or so in
+makin' a path five miles long around a hill about as high as th' Boston
+State-house, so's they can get up it easy an' save their wind. But I
+wish they'd put in drinkin' fountains along th' road. I'm as thirsty as
+a salt cod--an' there's so precious little water left in th' keg that
+I'm afraid t' begin at it for fear of suckin' it all up."
+
+"Drinking fountains?" Rayburn, who was a little in advance, called back
+to us. "Well, so they did. Come along and drink as much as you want to."
+
+"Cut that, Rayburn," Young answered. "I'm too dead in earnest about my
+being thirsty to stand any foolin'."
+
+"I'm not fooling"--we had caught up with him by this time--"look for
+yourself."
+
+To which Young's only reply was to spring forward eagerly and drink a
+long deep draught from a stone basin beside the path into which trickled
+a tiny stream from above. Finding water in this unlikely place was as
+great a surprise as it was a joy to us; for we all longed for it, yet
+dared not drink freely because our supply was nearly gone. It was
+touching to hear the long sigh of happiness that El Sabio gave when at
+last he lifted his dripping snout out of the basin; and then to see the
+look that he gave Pablo, as though to thank him for so blessedly
+plentiful a drink. In truth, the Wise One had not tasted a drop of water
+for nearly twenty-four hours--not since his perilous passage of the
+canon--and his throat, and his poor little inside generally, must have
+been very dry.
+
+When we came out on the top of the pyramid at last, which at that moment
+was wrapped in clouds almost as dense as London fog, we perceived the
+ingenious plan that had been adopted in order to secure water
+plentifully on this mountain-top. By careful scoring of the rock with
+many little channels, all leading to a cistern that seemed to be of
+great dimensions, the warm vapor of the clouds as it condensed into
+water on touching the chill stone surface was captured and safely stored
+away. And from the overflow of the cistern the fountain below was fed.
+
+But we did not stop to examine very carefully into this matter, so eager
+were we to press on to the temple close before us. This stood upon a
+terraced platform, cut from the living rock, and was a perfectly plain
+structure--with walls slightly receding inward as they rose, and wholly
+destitute of ornamentation. For its majestic effect it depended upon its
+great size and upon its admirable proportions; and being built of the
+dark rock of which the mountain was formed, and having about it much of
+the sombre feeling that characterizes Egyptian architecture, it had an
+air of great solemnity and gloom.
+
+In silence we ascended the short flight of steps that led to the broad,
+doorless entrance--the only opening through the massive walls--and so
+came into the vast shadowy hall that these great walls enclosed. From
+front to back of this hall extended many rows of stone pillars--like the
+single row found in the great chamber among the ruins of Mitla--and by
+these were upheld the huge slabs of stone of which the roof was made.
+Far away from where we stood, down at the end of a long vista of
+pillars, was a stone altar on which was carved in stone a colossal
+figure of the god Chac-Mool. Looking back through the open entrance, I
+saw a break in the mountain peaks to the eastward; and so perceived that
+the first rays of the rising sun must needs enter here and strike full
+upon the disk that was poised in the figure's hands. As Pablo caught
+sight of the great idol recumbent there, a momentary shudder went
+through him and he made certain motions with his hand before his eyes
+that were strange to me.
+
+As we drew near to the altar we found that in front of it was a
+sacrificial stone, still darkly stained where blood had flowed upon it;
+and beneath the stone neck-yoke, still resting there, was a withered
+remnant of human vertebrae. There was something very ghastly in
+finding--preserved by the very stone that had held him down while life
+was let out of him--this mere scrap of the last human victim who had
+perished here. As in the desolate valley, so also on this desolate
+mountain-top, the only proof that human life ever had been here was
+found in proof of human death.
+
+Save that our curiosity was gratified, and the blessing of the water
+which we found, our ascent of the great pyramid and our examination of
+the temple bore no fruit. Young, who still seemed to think that tilting
+up and disclosing secret passages was an attribute of all statues of the
+god Chac-Mool, was here again convinced that his generalization from a
+single case was not a sound one. In a serious way--that in itself would
+have been laughable but for the gloom of our surroundings--he climbed
+upon the altar and sat first on the head of the god, and then on his
+feet, and even tried the effect of seating himself upon the stone disk
+that the god upheld above his navel. But through all of these
+experiments the stone figure remained solidly immovable.
+
+"I guess there was only one o' that tippin' kind," Young said, at last,
+"an' he sort o' flocked by himself. Let's get out of here, anyway. If
+this ever was the Aztec bank that we're lookin' for, there must have
+been a prehistoric run on it that cleaned it out. They must have done
+that sort o' thing in old times, eh, Professor? But it don't make much
+difference to us now what they did or what they didn't; an' we'd better
+fill up with water an' get out--that is, if there is any way of gettin'
+out except along the way we came. There's no good in goin' back that
+way. It would be better t' settle down here an' starve comfortably
+without wearin' out shoe-leather doin' it. But I don't mean t' do that
+until I've had a look all around th' top of this god-forsaken mountain,
+an' made sure that there's only one way down."
+
+My own thoughts had been dwelling on the possibility that Young's words
+expressed; for at this definite point to which we had come, the path
+that we had come by very reasonably might end--so leaving us in this
+lonely region among the clouds to die slowly for lack of food. And there
+was a certain fitness in our having made our way so far among the dead
+only ourselves to die that added sombre fancies to our environment of
+sombre realities. Yet there was a heartiness in Young's resolutely
+expressed determination to search for a way out of our difficulties
+before at all yielding to them that insensibly cheered me. His words had
+a plucky ring to them; and bravery is as catching as is fear.
+
+Our empty water-kegs were at the bottom of the pyramid, and when we
+reached the fountain on our downward way we waited there while Pablo
+went on with El Sabio and fetched them up to us. There was at least
+solid comfort in knowing, as we went on downward with the kegs all
+filled, that, whatever other death might come to us, at least we could
+not die of thirst. At the bottom of the pyramid we left Fray Antonio and
+Pablo, with El Sabio and the packs, and the three of us set out to
+explore the three sides of the mountain-top that were unknown to us in
+search of a downward path. A heavy mass of clouds had drifted over the
+mountain again, so thick that at a rod away all was white mist around
+us; and the light was growing faint, for the day had come nearly to an
+end. Indeed, had we been upon the lower levels of the earth night would
+have been already upon us.
+
+Making my way along the edge of the precipice, where the plateau broke
+sheer off, was ticklish work; and half humorous, half melancholy
+thoughts went through my mind touching the absurdity of an ex-professor
+of Topical Linguistics in the University of Michigan being thus employed
+in path-hunting upon a lonely mountain-top in Mexico. Truly, adversity
+brings us strange bedfellows; but far stranger are the straits into
+which a man comes who takes up with the study of archaeology at
+first-hand. But my path-hunting was without result, for nowhere along
+the edge of the plateau was there a break fit for the descent of any
+creature save such as had wings. At the end of near an hour the clouds
+once more lifted; and then I saw Rayburn coming towards me, but with a
+serious look upon his face that told that he also had been unsuccessful
+in his search.
+
+"It has rather a bad look, Professor," he said, briefly, when I had told
+him that along all the face of the mountain that I had examined the rock
+went down sheer. He filled his pipe and lighted it, and we walked back
+to the base of the pyramid in silence, while he smoked. Young had not
+returned; but presently we heard a shout that had so hopeful a sound in
+it as to start us both to our feet and forth to meet him.
+
+"Have you found a way down?" Rayburn called, as he came nearer to us.
+
+"You bet I have," he called back; "and, what's more, I've seen somethin'
+to eat."
+
+"_Seen_ something!" Rayburn answered, as he joined us. "Why the dickens
+didn't you _get_ it?"
+
+"Well, because it was better'n a mile away from me. It looked like a
+mountain sheep, as well as I could make out; but there it was for sure;
+an' thinkin' how good that critter will taste roasted has given me a
+regular twistin' pain all through my empty inside! But th' point is that
+down on that side o' th' mountain there's game; I saw birds, too, but I
+couldn't make out what they were; an', somehow, it looks different down
+there. It don't look like these d--n dead places we've been prowlin'
+through for more'n a coon's age. It looks as if God remembered it, an'
+it was _alive_! Why, th' very smell that came up had somethin' good
+about it; an' there was a different taste to th' air. I tell you,
+Rayburn, I didn't know what a lonely an' mis'rable an' lost chump sort
+of a way I was in until I looked over there into that place where th'
+whole business ain't run by dead folks. An' what's more, Professor,
+that's the trail for us; for, right where it starts down, there's th'
+King's symbol an' th' arrow, all reg'lar, blazed on th' rock."
+
+"Is the trail good enough to make a start on now?" Rayburn asked; "we
+won't have more than half an hour more light, but I'd give a lot to get
+off this mountain before dark, and every foot down that we go we'll be
+that much warmer. We'd stand a pretty fair chance of freezing up here
+to-night without any fire."
+
+"Th' trail's all right for a good half-mile, anyway," Young answered;
+"an' I guess it's good all th' way. It's pretty much th' same as th' one
+we come up by, an' that's good enough, where it don't jump canons, t' go
+along in th' dark; but we must rustle if we mean t' do much by
+daylight."
+
+We were back at the pyramid by this time, and we found Fray Antonio very
+willing to be off with us that we might try to get well down the
+mountain before night set in; for at that great elevation the quick
+beating of his heart added very sensibly to the throbbing pain of his
+wound. Therefore we lost no time in getting our packs upon our backs,
+and upon the back of El Sabio, and briskly started downward; and the
+keen cold that came into the air, as the sun sunk away behind the
+mountain peaks at last, warned us that it was safer to take the risks of
+a descent almost in darkness than to stay for the night upon that bleak
+mountain-top without a fire.
+
+In twenty minutes we perceived a comforting change in the temperature;
+and at the end of an hour--during the last half of which we walked
+slowly and cautiously through the fast-thickening darkness--there was
+enough warmth in the air about us to make camping for the night
+endurable. But we still were at a great elevation, and the thin air was
+bitingly keen, and all the more so because of the scant meal that we
+had to comfort us and to put strength into us before we wrapped
+ourselves in our blankets for sleep.
+
+"What's a mis'rable two pounds of corned-beef among five of us," Young
+exclaimed, in a tone of angry contempt, "when every man in th' lot is
+hungry enough t' eat th' whole of it, an' th' tin box it comes in, an'
+then go huntin' for a square meal? An' t' think o' that sheep I saw! I
+say, Rayburn, did you ever eat a roast fore-shoulder of mutton, with
+onions an' potatoes baked under it, an' a thick gra--"
+
+"If you don't hold your jaw about things like that," Rayburn struck in,
+"I'll murder you!"--and there was such fierceness in his voice, and he
+truly was such a savage fellow when his anger was up, that Young was
+half frightened by his outburst, and so was silent. I must say that I
+wish that he had altogether held his tongue; for, somehow, the smell of
+mutton and onions and potatoes, all cooking together, was so strong in
+my nostrils, and this smell so set to yearning my very hollow inside,
+that it was a long while before I could sleep at all; and when I did
+sleep, it was to be pursued by dreams of painful hungriness which were
+but too surely founded in painful fact. Certainly, it was very
+indiscreet in Young, to say the least of it, to make a remark of that
+nature at that untoward time.
+
+However, that was the last day that we suffered for want of food. I was
+awakened in the very early morning by the sound of a rifle-shot, and
+sprang to my feet, brandishing my revolver, with a confused belief in
+my sleepy mind that we were attacked by Indians again; and, truly, my
+first feeling was one of pleasure at the thought of meeting, even in
+deadly combat, with men who were alive.
+
+"It's all right, Professor," Rayburn said. "We're not fighting anybody.
+But I've killed a mountain sheep, and if we only can get him we'll have
+a solid breakfast, even if we have to eat him raw. He was over on that
+point of rock, and he's tumbled down clear into the valley, and the
+sooner we get down there and hunt for him the better."
+
+In the bright light of the early morning we could see below us a glad
+little valley, in which trees and grass grew, and in the centre of which
+was a tiny lake. But what gave us most joy was seeing birds flying over
+the face of the water, and half a dozen mountain sheep scampering away
+at the sound of Rayburn's shot. Truly, the sight of these live creatures
+was the most cheery that ever came to my eyes; and as I beheld them, and
+realized that at last we had emerged from the dreary, death-stricken
+region in which as it seemed to me we had spent years, a great wave of
+happiness rolled in upon and filled my heart. As it was with me, so was
+it with the others: who gave sighs of gladness as thus they found
+themselves no longer wanderers among the chill shades of ancient death,
+but once more moving in the warm living world.
+
+The path, cut out along the mountain-side, went downward by a sharper
+grade than that by which we had ascended; and we descended it joyfully
+at a swinging trot, with a new life in us that made us break out into
+lively talk and laughter that set the echoes to ringing. And presently,
+in a very jerky fashion because of his rapid motion, Pablo piped away on
+his mouth-organ with "Yankee Doodle"--and this was the first time that
+he had had the heart to play upon his beloved "instrumentito" since our
+passage of the lake beneath which lay the city of the dead.
+
+In an hour we came fairly down into that bright and lovely valley, where
+was the sweet sound of birds calling to each other, and the glad sight
+of these live creatures flying through the air. As for the sheep that
+Rayburn had killed, he was knocked pretty well into a jelly by his
+half-mile or so of tumble down the mountain-side. But we were not
+disposed to be over-fastidious, and we quickly had his ribs roasting
+over a brisk fire: that yet was not so brisk as was our hunger, for we
+began to eat before the meat was much more than warmed through. When our
+ravening appetite was appeased a little, Young got out the coffee-pot
+and set to making coffee. And then, with meat well cooked and coffee in
+abundance, we made such a meal as can be made only by half-starved men
+who suddenly have come forth from the dark shadows of threatening death
+into the glad sunshine of safety. Of what further perils might be in
+store for us we neither cared nor thought. Our one strong feeling was
+the purely animal joy bred of deliverance from gloom and danger, and the
+packing of our bellies with hearty food.
+
+When, at last, our huge meal was ended, we settled back upon our
+blankets, and fell to smoking. Presently Rayburn gave a prodigious yawn
+and laid aside his pipe. "I think I'll take a nap," he said. I saw that
+Young already was nodding and that Pablo had sunk down into slumber;
+while El Sabio, who had come even closer to starving than we had come,
+most thankfully rummaged among the rich grass. My eyes were heavy, and I
+stretched myself out on my blankets, with the warm sunshine comforting
+my stiffened body, and presently sunk softly into delicious sleep.
+
+I partly woke a few minutes later, as Fray Antonio rose, thinking that
+we all were lost in slumber, and walked a little apart from us. He alone
+had made a meal in reasonable moderation, and I saw now that he had gone
+aside to pray. For a moment the thought stirred in me that I would join
+him in what I knew was his thanksgiving for our deliverance; but sleep
+had too strong a hold upon me, and my body slowly fell back upon the
+blankets and my eyes slowly closed, carrying into my slumber the sight
+on which they last had rested: the monk kneeling upon the grass beside a
+great gray rock, with clasped hands and face turned upward, pouring his
+soul out in grateful prayer.
+
+It was well on in the afternoon when we all woke again; and Young's
+first remark was that it must be about supper-time. Rayburn fell in with
+this notion promptly, and so did I myself--rather to my astonishment,
+for it seemed unreasonable that after such a stuffing I should desire to
+eat so soon again. But we did make a supper almost as hearty as our
+breakfast had been, and in a little while wrapped ourselves in our
+blankets, with our feet towards the heaped-up fire, and went off once
+more to sleep, and slept through until sunrise of the following day. In
+truth, the mental strain, bred of our gloomy surroundings and of the
+dread of starvation that had possessed us, had taxed our physical
+strength more severely than our mountain climbing and our lack of
+nourishment. The great amount of strong food that we ate, and our long
+slumber, showed nature's demand upon us that our waste of tissue should
+be made good.
+
+When we woke again on the second morning, we all were fresh and strong
+and eager to press onward. There was little left of the sheep to carry
+with us; but Rayburn shot half a dozen birds, some species of duck, as
+we skirted the lake in our passage across the valley, so there was no
+fear that we should lack for food. At its western end the valley
+narrowed into a canon. There was no choice of paths, for this was the
+sole outlet, and we were assured that we were on the right path by
+finding the King's symbol and the pointing arrow carved upon the rook.
+The canon descended very rapidly, and by noon we were so far below the
+level of the Mexican plateau that the air had a tropical warmth in it;
+and so warm was the night--for all the afternoon we continued to
+descend--that we had no need for blankets when we settled ourselves for
+sleep.
+
+Rayburn was of the opinion that we were close upon the Tierra Caliente,
+the hot lands of the coast; and when we resumed our march in the morning
+he went on in advance of the rest of us, that he might maintain a
+cautious outlook. If he were right in his conjecture as to our
+whereabouts, we might at any moment come upon hostile Indians. It was
+towards noon that he came softly back to us and bade us lay down our
+packs and advance silently with him, carrying only our arms. "There's
+something queer ahead; and I thought that I heard voices," he explained.
+"But there must be no shooting unless we are shot at. Some of these
+Indians are friendly, and we don't want to start a row with them if they
+are willing not to row with us."
+
+The canon was very narrow at this point, and high above us its walls
+drew so closely together that the shadows about us were deep. As we
+rounded a bend in it, the rock closed above our heads in a great arch,
+so that we were in a sort of natural tunnel; at the far end of which was
+a bright spot showing that a wide and sunny open space was beyond. But
+over this opening were bars which cut sharply against the light, as
+though a gigantic spider had spun there a massive web; and as we drew
+nearer to this curious barrier we saw beyond it a broad and glorious
+valley, rich with all manner of luxuriant tropical growth and flooded
+everywhere with the warm light of the sun.
+
+We approached the strange barrier cautiously, and our wonder at it was
+increased as we found that it was made of the bright metal of which we
+had found so many specimens; and still more we wondered as we found that
+the bars were fastened on the side from which we approached, so that we
+could remove them easily, while from the side of the valley they
+presented an impassable barrier. In strong excitement we drew out the
+metal pins which dropped into slots cut in the rock and so held the bars
+fast, and in a few minutes we had cleared the way for our advance. Just
+as we were making ready to pass through the opening we heard the sound
+of voices; and as we quickly drew back into the shadows two men sprang
+up suddenly before us, and cried in wonder as they saw that the lower
+bars across the opening were gone. Yet the expression upon their faces
+was not that of anger; rather did they seem to be stirred by a strong
+feeling of joy with which was also awe. Both men were accoutred in the
+fashion which the pictured records show was usual with the Aztec
+warriors, and one of them--as was indicated by his head-dress and by the
+metal corselet that he wore--was a chief; and they challenged us
+sharply, yet with gladness in their tones, in the Aztec tongue.
+
+So sudden and so ringing was this challenge, and so startling was the
+uprising of the men before us, that as we sprang back into the shadow we
+instinctively stood ready with our arms. But Fray Antonio, not having
+any intent to join in the fight, was cooler than the rest of us, and
+instantly perceived that fighting was not necessary. Therefore he it was
+who first spoke to these strangers; and his first word to them was,
+"Friends!"
+
+Then the watchmen, for such they seemed to be, spoke eagerly together
+for a moment, and pressed to the opening to look upon us; yet seeing us
+but dimly because of the dark shadows which surrounded us. Pablo was
+closest to them, and I marvelled to see how like them he was in look and
+in air. Him they first caught sight of, and as they saw him they both
+turned from the opening, and, as though calling to some one at a
+distance, gave both together a great glad shout. Instantly, at some
+little distance, the cry was repeated; and so again farther on and yet
+farther, with ever more voices joining in it; so that it swelled and
+strengthened into a great roar of rejoicing that seemed to sweep over
+the whole of the valley before us, and to fill it everywhere with
+tumultuous sounds of joy.
+
+As though the duty that they were charged with had been thus
+accomplished, the men turned again to us, and he of the higher rank,
+speaking the Aztec language, yet with turns and changes in that tongue
+which were strange to me, eagerly called to us:
+
+"Come forth to us! Come forth to us!" he cried. "Now is the prophecy of
+old fulfilled and the watch rewarded that our people have maintained
+from generation to generation through twenty cycles here at the grated
+way! Come forth to us, our brothers--who bring the promised message from
+our lord and king!"
+
+I turned to Fray Antonio as these words were spoken, and I saw in his
+face that which made me confident in my own glad conviction that here at
+last was the secret place for which so long, and through such perils, we
+had sought. Here indeed had we found the hidden people of whom the dying
+Cacique had spoken and of whom the monk's letter had told; the strong
+contingent of the ancient Aztec tribe that ages since the wise King
+Chaltzantzin had saved apart, that when their strength was needed they
+might come forth to ward their weaker brethren against conquest by a
+foreign foe. And the great happiness begotten of this glad discovery
+filled all my body with a throbbing joy.
+
+Yet as we went out through the opening that we had made between the
+bars, and the watchers saw us fairly in the sunlight, they sprang back
+as though in alarm. Rayburn met this demonstration promptly by making
+the peace-sign--raising aloft the right arm--that is common to all North
+American Indians; and after a moment of hesitation the chief answered to
+this in kind. So there was peace between us as we advanced; but it
+seemed to me that their regard of us now had in it more of wonder and
+less of awe.
+
+[Illustration: MAKING THE PEACE-SIGN]
+
+
+
+
+XVII.
+
+OF OUR COMING INTO THE VALLEY OF AZTLAN.
+
+
+So unexpectedly had we come upon these strangers, and so marvellous was
+the finding thus of the hidden tribe for which we had sought so long,
+that I could not but dread, as we advanced towards the Aztec warriors,
+lest I should wake suddenly and find that it all was a dream. And they,
+also, as it seemed to me, looked upon us doubtingly, and with somewhat
+of dread in their regard, as though uncertain whether we were beings
+from another world, or men of flesh and blood like themselves.
+
+Not until we were close upon them did further words--after that first
+challenge and answer--pass between us; and then the elder of the two,
+still making the peace-sign with his raised right hand, and speaking
+with a trembling in his voice, as though deep emotion moved him, called
+to us: "Have our brothers need of our strength? Bring ye the token that
+summons us to their aid?"
+
+I should have been glad just then for opportunity to consult with my
+companions as to what answer I should make to these questions, for I
+perceived that our position was a very critical one, and that even our
+lives might depend upon the wisdom of my reply. For a moment I waited in
+the hope that Fray Antonio would make answer; but as he remained silent,
+there was nothing for it but that I should take the hazard upon myself.
+Therefore, bringing forth the ancient piece of gold from the snake-skin
+bag--for so I had carried it constantly, even as the Cacique had done
+before me, and others before him, for more than three hundred years--I
+held it towards the man who had spoken, and said, firmly: "Here is the
+token of summons left behind him by Chaltzantzin; but we come not to
+call you forth to battle, but to bring tidings that the fate which that
+wise king and prophet foresaw for his people, long since was fulfilled.
+In the time appointed, the stranger foemen overcame and enslaved your
+brethren, bringing to pass that which Chaltzantzin foretold; and the
+message that then was sent to call you forth to their aid reached you
+not, because even the wisdom of Chaltzantzin was powerless against the
+will of the gods. Yet the gods desired not to destroy your brethren, but
+to punish them; and their punishment now is at an end. Once more are
+they free, and once more is their ruler a wise and valiant man of their
+own race. Therefore, the news which we bring you is not sorrowful, but
+glad."
+
+While I was thus speaking, the ringing cries which at the first alarm
+had sounded over all the valley grew louder and stronger; but as yet we
+saw only the two men who at the first had confronted us--for we were in
+a deep recess in the mountain, whence the ground dropped away in front,
+so that the immediate foreground was hid from us, and we saw only some
+distant meadows, and then a broad lake, and over this more meadows and a
+sweep of heavy timber, and back of all great mountains rising against
+the clear blue sky.
+
+But as my speech ended, and before those to whom it was addressed at all
+had digested the wonder of it, and so hesitated in their reply, a
+half-dozen men and a woman or two came in sight in the narrow way before
+us, panting after their rapid ascent of the acclivity; and the calls of
+others pressing up the slope behind them sounded loudly, and in a very
+little while a crowd of a hundred or more pressed about us, all gazing
+at us and questioning us with a most eager surprise. For the most part
+these seemed to be laborers from the near-by fields; for many of them
+carried agricultural implements, and their bare legs and arms were
+splashed with mud and were grimy of the soil. As for the look of them,
+save that the flowing garments of cotton cloth which the women wore were
+embroidered in a fanciful fashion, I could not have distinguished these
+people from the tallest and strongest of the Indians dwelling in the hot
+lands of the coast about Vera Cruz. The men, who wore only a cloth
+twisted about their loins, were as magnificent fellows as I ever saw.
+Every one of them was tall and straight, with broad shoulders and
+narrow hips, and the muscles of their arms and legs stood out like
+cords. From Pablo, who was an unusually tall and well-formed lad, they
+differed only in the color of their skins--which were decidedly darker
+than his, as was to be expected in the case of men dwelling in this
+tropical region at the level of the sea.
+
+Towards Pablo these people manifested a familiar curiosity quite unlike
+their reverential manner towards the rest of us, who so obviously were
+not of their own race. And Pablo was as much perplexed by their
+questions as they were by his answers; for never was a conversation
+carried on so hopelessly at cross-purposes. Our boy, being spoken to by
+folk who obviously were as entirely Mexicans as he was himself, and in a
+tongue that practically was that which he had been born to--for the
+Indians dwelling in the Guadalajara suburb of Mexicalcingo, being the
+direct descendants of a pure Aztec stock, speak the Nahua language very
+correctly--could not at all realize that he was at last among the
+ancient race for which we had searched so long. It was his belief that
+we had come out, in accordance with Rayburn's forecast, into the coast
+country, and that the people around him were the ordinary dwellers in
+the hot lands. And the Aztecs, knowing him to be one of themselves, no
+doubt believed that he knew of the purpose for which they had been left
+to dwell apart, and so plied him with questions concerning their
+brethren from whom through long ages they had been separated.
+
+As their talk went on, getting the more involved with every question
+and reply, a tendency towards ill-temper began to develop itself on each
+side; for Pablo considered that these people, who professed to be
+ignorant of so important a city as Guadalajara, were making game of him;
+and they were not less disposed to believe that he either was answering
+them falsely or that he was a fool. Fortunately, before any harm came of
+these misunderstandings, an interruption brought a temporary end to
+their talk.
+
+There was a stir among the crowd, and then an opening was made in it,
+through which came an elderly man wearing military trappings similar to,
+but much handsomer than those worn by the two warriors whom we had first
+encountered; and it was obvious, from the air of deference with which
+these saluted him, that he was their superior officer. In spite of the
+dignity of his demeanor it was evident that he was greatly excited by
+our advent, and his voice quivered and broke a little as he asked us who
+we were and whence we came. As I repeated what I had already told the
+guard, and showed the gold token, the expression upon his face was that
+of extreme perplexity. That the gold token gave us a strong claim upon
+his respect, almost upon his reverence, was apparent in his manner as I
+showed it to him; but the conditions under which it was presented
+obviously rendered him very uncertain as to what action was proper for
+him to take.
+
+When I had finished my statement, and had returned the token to its
+place in the snake-skin bag (for the wisdom of carefully retaining this
+potent talisman in our possession was evident), the officer turned to
+the two warriors, and they conversed for a while in low tones apart
+from us. Of their talk I could catch only a few words, but several times
+I heard repeated the name Itzacoatl, and frequent reference was made to
+the Twenty Lords. I gathered, too, that the name of the officer was
+Tizoc, and that the name of the elder of the two warriors, a swarthy
+man, was Ixtlilton. In the mean time, out of respect to the officer, the
+crowd had drawn away from us--being now swelled to very considerable
+numbers--but those composing it gazed at us in wonder, and among them
+was a steady murmur of low talk, like the buzzing of a hive of bees.
+
+When his conference with the warriors was ended, Tizoc approached us,
+and with him came a younger man, who carried a roll of paper in his
+hand. The face of the officer still wore a troubled, doubting
+expression, and these feelings were expressed also in the tones of his
+voice as he spoke to us. "For the coming of the token from our lord
+Chaltzantzin we who dwell in this Valley of Aztlan have waited through
+many ages," he said; "but the promise was given that the token should
+come to us from our brethren in the time of their need, and should be
+brought by those of our own race. But you tell us that the time of need
+long since is past, and ye who bring the token are of a race that is
+strange to us; and even this one among you who seems to be of our
+brethren speaks strangely of strange things. Had ye come in the way that
+long past was promised, there would have been no room for questioning
+your right of entry here nor your authority over us; and I, who am the
+Warden of the Pass--being in right succession from him whom our lord
+Chaltzantzin appointed to this high office--would have been the first to
+do you reverence and honor. But in this strange case that has arisen I
+hold it to be my duty to send news of your coming to the Priest Captain,
+Itzacoatl, that he and his Council of the Twenty Lords may decide what
+now is right to do. In this I mean no disrespect and no unkindness; and
+while we await the Priest Captain's orders I shall have the pleasure to
+offer you that rest and refreshment of which you stand in need."
+
+To this firm but courteous speech I was in the act of replying in fit
+terms of equal courtesy--for all that Tizoc had said was so reasonable
+that no exception could be taken to it--when an outburst on Young's part
+interrupted me.
+
+"Hold on there, young fellow!" he cried. "I'll be shot if I'm goin' t'
+stand bein' made a fool of that way! If you can't make a better likeness
+of me than that, you'd better shut up shop an' go out of th' business."
+
+I turned quickly, and saw Young standing beside Tizoc's attendant, and
+looking half angrily and half laughingly at the sheet of paper that he
+held in his hand. Fearful that some harm might come from Young's
+maladroitness, I joined them quickly; and only a strong sense of the
+gravity of our situation restrained me from laughing outright as I
+behold the cause of his wrath. For the secretary, as I now perceived him
+to be, had made sketches in color of each member of our party; and while
+they all did violence to our vanity, that of Young--with a bald head
+out of all proportion to the size of his body, and with most
+aggressively red hair--was so outrageous a caricature that there really
+was some justice in his resentment of it.
+
+But this was not a time when resentment could be safely manifested, and
+I hurriedly explained to Young that these pictures, no doubt, were to be
+transmitted as a part of the report that Tizoc was about to make to the
+King concerning us, and that he must find no fault with them.
+
+"He's goin' t' send that thing t' th' King an' say it's me, is he? No,
+he's not--not by a jugful! See here, Professor! here's a photograph that
+I had taken last spring in Boston. I meant t' give it to a girl before I
+came away, but she went back on me an' I didn't. It's not much of a
+photograph, but it don't look like a squash trimmed with red clover. If
+they want to send anything, let 'em send that." And before I could stop
+him, Young had taken the photograph out of his pocket-book and had
+handed it to the secretary, with the remark, "Just say t' him,
+Professor, that he is t' give that t' th' King, an' tell him t' tell th'
+King that Mr. Seth Young, of Boston, sends it with his compliments."
+
+After all, no harm came of this absurd performance, but rather good; for
+the secretary exhibited the photograph to Tizoc, and both of them, and
+the two warriors also, were lost in wonder at its marvellous likeness to
+the original, and evidently held us in increasingly great respect
+because we were the possessors of such an extraordinary work of art.
+Young was a good deal chagrined, however, because the picture of him
+that the secretary had drawn was forwarded as a part of Tizoc's
+despatches. He said that since he had set up a good likeness of himself,
+it wasn't the square thing to send the King a bad one.
+
+When the secretary, bearing the despatches, had departed, Tizoc
+requested us to accompany him to the near-by guard-house, where we could
+refresh ourselves by bathing, and where food and drink would be provided
+for us. This order, for such it was, we obeyed gladly; for we were both
+weary and hungry, and the prospect of what Young described as a good
+wash and a square meal after it, was very pleasing to us. A detachment
+of men from the guard-house, accoutred in the same handsome fashion as
+Ixtlilton and his companion, had arrived while the secretary's
+portrait-work was in progress; and I observed that all of these
+guardsmen (excepting only Ixtlilton, whose skin was dark,) were much
+lighter in color and more gracious in bearing than the men in the crowd
+around us. So marked, indeed, was this difference that they seemed
+scarcely to belong to the same race.
+
+As we moved away through the opening that the crowd made for us, with a
+platoon of guardsmen in advance, and another in our rear, Pablo touched
+my arm and was about to speak to me; but before his mouth could open
+there sounded suddenly from the hollow way in the mountain behind us a
+mighty bray. "Ah, the little angel!" Pablo cried. "Hearken to him,
+senor, calling to me." And so moved was Pablo by this evidence of El
+Sabio's affection that only my firm grasp upon his arm restrained him
+from attempting a dash through the guards to where the creature was
+penned in by the metal bars.
+
+Truly, there is no sound more terrifying to those who are strangers to
+it than the braying of an ass; therefore, I was not at all surprised
+that a very considerable part of the crowd incontinently took to its
+heels; and I needed no better evidence of the bravery of the guardsmen
+who composed our escort than the steadiness with which they faced about
+in readiness to meet whatever danger might come forth from the gap in
+the mountain in the wake of this great roaring. Yet what they saw there
+was only the mild face of the Wise One extended towards us through the
+opening in the bars.
+
+To Tizoc, who was standing beside me, and who had not displayed even the
+slightest tremor of alarm as the appalling noise had broken upon us, I
+explained that the roaring creature was not harmful, but gentle and
+biddable; and I begged that other of the bars might be removed, so that
+it might come forth and join us. That he acceded instantly to my request
+gave me a good opinion of his own faithfulness and honesty; for a man of
+a suspicious and crafty nature assuredly would have believed that my
+request was but a trap laid for his destruction; and thereupon the bars
+were removed. And the truth of my words was made manifest, as El Sabio
+came instantly to Pablo and received his caresses with every sign of
+gentleness and affection. But even Tizoc did not disguise his wonder
+upon beholding this strange beast, for the largest four-footed creature
+in all that valley, as he told me, was a little animal of the deer
+species, that was not much bigger than a hare. And when I bade Pablo
+mount upon El Sabio's back, the look of surprise in Tizoc's face changed
+suddenly to an expression of troubled doubt, in which was also alarm.
+Under his breath I heard him mutter, "Can it be that the prophecy will
+be fulfilled?" But whatever the cause of his inward disturbance was, he
+spoke not of it, but turned once more forward, and gave the order to
+march.
+
+[Illustration: THE FULFILMENT OF THE PROPHECY]
+
+The crowd, seeing that no harm was like to come to them, pressed forward
+once more, and gazed with open-mouthed wonder--and also, as it seemed to
+me, with awe--at the prodigious spectacle which Pablo, gravely riding
+upon the ass's back, presented to them. And so, with the guards before
+and behind us, we marched onward into the Valley of Aztlan.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+THE STRIKING OF A MATCH.
+
+
+As we emerged from the nook in the mountain-side the whole of the valley
+lay open before us, and never was a more lovely spot beheld by the eyes
+of man. A half-dozen leagues in front of us rose the great mountain wall
+which shut in its farther side, and about as far away to the right and
+to the left these walls swept around in vast curves and joined the
+cliffs through which we had come by the hollow way that tunnelled
+beneath them. A noble lake extended nearly the whole length of the
+valley, and covered near a third of its width, and so seemed less like a
+lake than like a calm and majestic river. From the water-side the land
+rose in broad terraces, broken by belts of timber and by many groups of
+smaller trees, which, because of the regularity of their growth, I took
+to be fruit plantations. All the open country seemed to be one vast
+garden, most carefully tended, and everywhere cut up by little canals,
+whence water for irrigation was drawn. Scattered everywhere about the
+valley were single houses embowered in trees, and from where we stood we
+could see also four or five little towns, which also were plentifully
+shaded. And on the lake many boats were passing, of which several were
+of a considerable size, and were fitted with curiously shaped sails. And
+all this exquisite tropical beauty of ample water and luxuriant foliage
+shone richly beneath the bright splendor of a deep blue tropical sky.
+
+Yet that which most strongly attracted our attention was not this
+charming display of the manifold excellencies of God's handiwork, but
+rather a wonderful manifestation of the handiwork of man. Over against
+us, on the far side of the lake, slantingwise from where we stood, rose
+a mass of buildings of such vastness and such majestic design that at
+the first glance we took it to be one of the square-topped mountains
+which are found not uncommonly in this portion of the world, and around
+the bases of which are sloping heaps of the fragments of rock which
+have broken away through countless ages from their weather-worn sides.
+Yet in a moment we perceived that what we saw was a walled city built
+upon a great promontory, that jutted out from the mountain-side; and in
+the same breath Fray Antonio and I called out together, "It is the city
+of Culhuacan!"
+
+As we uttered this name Tizoc turned towards us quickly, and with a
+startled, troubled look upon his face. "They are not of our race," he
+said, as though speaking his thoughts aloud; "yet the sacred name, that
+among us only a few know, is known to them!" and the troubled look upon
+his face deepened as we went onward.
+
+The way by which we descended was a narrow road carried zigzag down the
+cliff--for the pass by which we had entered the valley was fully six
+hundred feet above the level of the lake--and at short intervals along
+its course this road was defended by walls of very solid masonry,
+pierced with openings so narrow that only one man at a time could pass
+through them. That the walls were for defence was shown by the piles of
+metal bars on the inner side of each opening--the side towards the
+mountain--so arranged that in a moment they could be slipped into
+sockets in the stone-work, thus closing effectually the way.
+
+Perceiving that we regarded with surprise this curious system of
+fortification, Tizoc explained: "These are the barriers set up against
+the Tlahuicos, who, heeding not the order given of old by our lord
+Chaltzantzin, have striven many times to break forth from the
+valley--for among these men there are many of perverse natures and evil
+minds."
+
+In _tlahuico_ I recognized a Nahua word that means "men turned towards
+the earth," but what its meaning might be in the sense in which Tizoc
+employed it I did not know. I should have asked for further
+explanation--for the manner of this man was so frank and so friendly
+that it invited a cordial familiarity--but as I was about to speak we
+passed through the narrow opening in a wall of unusual height and
+strength, and so came into a charming garden, in the midst of which
+stood a large house well built of stone. For the making of this garden a
+natural nook on the side of the mountain had been enlarged by filling in
+along its outer edge against a great retaining-wall, built up from a
+depth of a hundred feet from the slope below; and on the farther side of
+the plateau thus created, where the path down into the valley went on
+again, were heavy defensive walls. Near this exit, also, was a long low
+building that I took to be a guard-house.
+
+The crowd that had followed behind us from the height above went on
+across the plateau, and out through the gate beside the guard-house--its
+members casting many curious looks at us as they departed--and the
+guardsmen who had formed our escort, at an order from Tizoc, went on to
+their quarters. But Tizoc led us across the garden to the large house
+that stood in the midst of it, and there, with a formal courtesy, bade
+us enter. This was his home, he said, and we were his welcome guests.
+
+The house was so like the houses ordinarily found in Mexico that we had
+no feeling of strangeness in entering it. It was built of stone neatly
+laid in cement; was but a single story in height, and enclosed a large
+central court, in the midst of which a fountain sparkled, surrounded by
+small trees and shrubs and beds of flowers. All of the rooms opened upon
+this central court, and in the outer wall the only opening was the
+narrow way by which we had entered--for the prompt closing of which
+there lay in readiness a pile of metal bars. The flat roof, also of
+stone, was reached by a stone stair-way from the court, and had about it
+a heavy stone parapet that was pierced with narrow slits through which
+javelins and arrows could be discharged. But these arrangements for
+defence did not by any means produce a gloomy effect, as they would had
+we encountered them in a country-house in our own part of the world--for
+similar defence arrangements are found in every hacienda in Mexico at
+the present day, and even I, though my stay in the country had been so
+short, already had become accustomed to them.
+
+A buzzing chatter of talk, in which women's voices predominated, ceased
+suddenly as we entered the court; and from the swaying and twitching of
+the curtains hanging in the front of the openings leading into several
+of the rooms, we inferred that we were undergoing a keen inspection. In
+response to a call from Tizoc, some men-servants came out from one of
+the rooms and received his order to prepare food for us; and he then led
+us to a large room in a corner of the court that was arranged very
+delightfully as a bath. Here was a great stone tank, twenty feet or so
+square, and with a slanting bottom, so that the depth of it ranged from
+two feet to nearly five, in which was fresh running water; and over the
+portion of the room that the tank occupied there was no roof but the
+bright blue sky. On the stone floor were beautifully woven mats, and
+towels of cotton cloth hung upon pegs driven into the walls, and in
+earthen bowls were fresh pieces of a saponaceous root that I have seen
+the like of in use among the Indians of New Mexico. It seemed to strike
+Tizoc as odd that we preferred to make use of the bath successively
+rather than all together; but he was too polite a man to interpose any
+objections to our eccentricities. Pablo only--coming last of all of
+us--had a companion in his bathing in the person of El Sabio; and the
+sleekness of that excellent animal, when Pablo had brushed carefully his
+long coat when his bath was ended, was a wonder to behold.
+
+Being thus refreshed, we heartily welcomed the excellent meal that was
+served to us in the cool shade of the veranda by which the court-yard
+was surrounded. Our eating was somewhat in the Roman fashion, for the
+table was a broad slab of stone, raised but a little from the ground,
+and around it we reclined upon mats, with cushions woven of rushes to
+lean upon. The food was excellent--a small animal of the deer species,
+but no larger than a hare, roasted whole; birds very like quails,
+delicately broiled; little cakes made of maize, which were rather like
+the hoe-cakes of our Southern negroes than _tortillas_; some sort of
+sweet marmalade; and a great abundance of oranges, mangoes, bananas, and
+other fruits common to the hot lands of Mexico; all of which fruits
+were much more delicate in flavor than Mexican fruits usually are; the
+result, as we found later, of the great care bestowed upon their
+culture. Only water was served with the meal, but at the end of it a
+small jar of some sort of potent liquor was brought, very cool, and with
+an excellent spicy taste, that Tizoc warned us must be taken but
+sparingly; and truly he was right, as I found from the warm and mellow
+feeling of benevolent friendliness that but half a cup of it infused
+into me. Tizoc himself did not follow very rigidly the advice that he
+had given us; and to this fact, probably, was due the exceeding
+frankness with which he subsequently spoke with us concerning grave
+matters, of which he surely would have been reticent had he been in a
+less genial mood.
+
+"Just ask th' Colonel if he minds my smokin' a pipe, won't you,
+Professor?" Young said, when our meal was ended; and as I myself wanted
+to smoke, and as I was sure that Rayburn did also, I made the request
+general. Tizoc, to my surprise--for I believed smoking to be common to
+all the indigenous races--evidently did not at all understand my
+meaning; but perceiving that I asked to have some favor granted, he
+courteously gave the permission that I desired. As we filled our pipes
+he watched us curiously; but when we drew out our matches and struck
+fire by what seemed to him but the turn of our hands, he started to his
+feet and manifested a strange excitement, in which there seemed to be
+less of alarm than of awe. His voice shook, and his whole person
+trembled, as he asked, "Are ye the children of Chac-Mool, the God of
+Fire, and therefore the chosen servants of Huitzilopochtli the
+Terrible, that ye thus can do what among us is done only by our Priest
+Captain Itzacoatl?"
+
+[Illustration: THE STRIKING OF A MATCH]
+
+Both Fray Antonio and I heard with delight this utterance, that in a
+moment settled the long-disputed question as to whether or not Chac-Mool
+was an idol, and settled it, also, in favor of the ingenious hypothesis
+presented by the learned Senor Chavero. The moment was not a favorable
+one, however, for pursuing the matter in its archaeological bearings, for
+all of our tact and skill just then were required to restore Tizoc to
+calmness. As well as this was possible in the language common to us--we
+suddenly realized how difficult it was to express in the Nahua tongue
+more than rudimentary concepts of the ideas that we sought to convey--we
+explained to him how matches were made; and illustrated our words by
+showing him how fire was induced by friction, even as the rubbing of two
+pieces of wood together produced fire also. This explanation was less
+exact than ingenious; but it was one that he could understand, and it
+had the effect of allaying his alarm sufficiently to permit him to
+resume his seat, when he at once drank off a whole bowlful of the
+strong, spicy liquor at a draught. Added to what he already had inside
+of him, this draught set his tongue to wagging in the free way that I
+have already referred to, and he grew bold enough to take a match in his
+hand. But even in his cups he manifested a certain reverence in his
+handling of it; and presently, from a little bag that was hung about his
+neck, he produced the burnt remnant of a match that he compared with it
+critically. "They are the same?" he asked, as he extended the whole
+match and the fragment together towards us that we might examine them.
+
+"They are the same," Fray Antonio answered. "Whence comes the one that
+you guard so carefully?"
+
+"From the Priest Captain--from Itzacoatl. With such things does he
+miraculously set burning the fire of sacrifice; but he does not speak of
+them lightly, as you do; he tells us that they are the handiwork of the
+Fire God, Chac-Mool; and when the fire of sacrifice is kindled he gives
+what remains of them as high rewards to those who have served well the
+State by brave acts or honorable deeds. This which I cherish was my
+reward for crushing a revolt among the Tlahuicos."
+
+Fray Antonio and I exchanged curious glances, for the conviction was
+forced upon us both that the Priest Captain of whom Tizoc spoke must
+either have invented friction matches, or that he must have some secret
+channel of communication with the outside world. In either case it was
+evident that he must be a man of unusual shrewdness; and it also was
+evident that his feeling towards us--since we also could perform a
+miracle that he obviously made use of as a means of manifesting his
+divine right to rule--must be that of strong hostility.
+
+To Rayburn and Young, who had observed wonderingly Tizoc's extraordinary
+conduct, I rapidly translated what he had said; and explained how
+serious our situation appeared in the light of this new development.
+
+"Well, it certainly _is_ cold weather for this Priest Captain fellow,"
+Young commented, "if we've got hold of his boss miracle; and I guess
+you're about right, Professor--he'll want t' take it out of our hides.
+Just poke up th' Colonel t' telling all he knows about this old dodger.
+Th' Colonel's got his tongue pretty well greased just now with his own
+prime old Bourbon--pass me that jar, Rayburn, I don't mind if I have
+another whack at it myself--and we may get something out of him that
+will be useful. Try it on, Professor, any way. Here's luck, gentlemen."
+
+That Young's tongue also was a little greased, as he put it, by this
+very agreeable beverage was quite evident; but his wits were sharpened
+rather than dulled by the drink, and his present suggestion evidently
+was a very good one. As for Tizoc, his disposition towards us obviously
+was most soft and friendly; and as his mind slowly absorbed the fact
+that, somehow or another, the Priest Captain had made a fool of him with
+a miracle that was not really a miracle at all, his choler rose in a
+manner most favorable to our purposes. Yet this very feeling of
+resentful anger--showing a growing irreverence of one to whom all the
+traditions of his people gave reverence second only to that due to the
+gods themselves--was startling evidence of the menace that our presence
+was to the theocratic ruler's temporal and spiritual power. Therefore it
+was with a keen curiosity that we listened--and Tizoc needed, to induce
+him to talk freely, but little of the poking-up that Young had
+suggested--to what was told us concerning the strange people among whom
+we had come by ways so perilous, and of their chieftain, the Priest
+Captain Itzacoatl--with whom, as no spirit of prophecy was needed to
+tell us, we were destined soon to engage in a conflict that must be
+fought out to the very death.
+
+
+
+
+XIX.
+
+THE SEEDS OF REVOLT.
+
+
+For the sake of brevity I shall summarize here the statement that Tizoc
+made to us, and for the sake of clearness I shall add to it some facts
+of minor importance which came to our knowledge later--thus at once
+exhibiting the whole of the troublous condition of affairs that stirred
+dangerously the people dwelling in the Valley of Aztlan at the time of
+our coming among them.
+
+At this period the political situation, as I may term it, was
+exceedingly critical. Three powerful factions were in existence; and
+peace was preserved only by the generally diffused belief that open
+revolt, on the part of either one, would be crushed instantly by a
+temporary coalition of the other two. The beginning of this unpleasantly
+volcanic condition of affairs dated back six cycles--that is to say, a
+little more than three hundred years--and was the direct result of a
+violation of the law set forth by the wise King Chaltzantzin when the
+colony was founded, by which it was ordained that all among the
+Aztlanecas who, on coming to maturity, were weaklings or cripples,
+should be put to death.
+
+Being once suggested, the repeal or the modification of this law found
+many advocates. Naturally, the change was urged most strongly by all
+those whose sons and daughters were sickly or malformed, and so were
+doomed to die in the very blossom of their years. It was urged by the
+nobles because the more astute among them perceived the possibility of
+so manipulating it that it would result in the creation of a
+distinctively servile class; and the priests urged it because they also
+perceived a way by which it might be made to provide more victims for
+sacrifice to the gods. And so it came to pass, through the influence of
+these diverse elements operating together towards a common end, that the
+law which Chaltzantzin had promulgated was set aside, and a law was made
+that embodied the provisions demanded by the nobles and the priests,
+whereby should be created a new social class; which class, because of
+the infirmities of those composing it, received the name of
+Tlahuicos--"men turned towards the earth." Thereafter, the sickly and
+the crippled were not slain upon reaching maturity, but then passed out
+from the class into which they were born and became servitors. And when
+the first cycle was ended after the making of this new law, and
+thenceforward every year, one in every ten among the Tlahuicos was taken
+by lot to be sacrificed to the gods--for the priests craftily had gained
+the barbarous concession that they demanded by placing the first
+fulfilment of it at a time so far in the future that all concerned in
+the granting of it would be dead in the course of nature before it
+became operative. Yet to the end that those of noble birth might be
+saved from the ignominy of servitude, it was provided that children
+which by reason of natural infirmity were doomed to become slaves, might
+be saved from that fate upon coming to maturity by being then
+surrendered by their parents to the priests for sacrifice. Other grace
+there was none. Excepting between death and slavery, there was no choice
+for the weak or the malformed.
+
+As time passed on, the Tlahuicos, marrying among themselves, had greatly
+increased in numbers; and so far from remaining a weakling race, they had
+become, by reason of their frugal mode of living and of the wholesome,
+hearty labor in which they constantly were engaged, exceptionally hale
+and strong; the weak and crippled among them being mainly those who each
+year, because of such infirmities, were added to their number from the
+higher ranks of the community. And thus was collected together material
+as dangerous as it was inflammable; for the fresh additions to the
+Tlahuicos kept constantly alive in the whole body a spirit of moody
+discontent, that time and again, at the season when the lots were cast
+by which one in every ten was doomed to death, was fanned into armed
+mutiny. These revolts ever had as their single object escape from the
+valley; which fact made evident enough the need for the elaborate system
+of defensive works by which the outlet of the valley was barred.
+
+From the Tlahuicos were drawn the house-servants of the rich; and by
+those of this wretched class who were stout of body all the heavy labor
+of the community was carried on--the tilling of the fields, the
+quarrying of stone, the building of houses and bridges and roads, the
+felling of timber, the carriage of all burdens, and the working of the
+great gold-mine, concerning which I shall hereafter have more to tell.
+And all of these people were held in absolute bondage, either as the
+serfs of individual owners or as the property of the State; for each
+year the new accessions to the class were sold publicly at an auction to
+whoever would bid the most for them; and those which none would buy,
+being too infirm to be useful as laborers, the State laid claim to--but
+only that they might be kept alive until such time as they should be
+needed by the priests for sacrifice.
+
+Yet out of this custom of sale, that on the face of it was harsh and
+barbarous, some slight mitigation of the cruelty of the system had come;
+for the practice had grown up of permitting parents to buy back their
+own children--nominally thereafter holding them as slaves--and so to
+save them at a single stroke from both death and servitude. One strong
+cause of the hatred of the Priest Captain Itzacoatl, Tizoc said (and we
+wondered then at the trembling in his voice, and at the evidently deep
+emotion that overcame him as he spoke), was that he had but lately
+forbidden the continuance of this practice, by which only the letter of
+the law was obeyed.
+
+Until the promulgation by the Priest Captain of this decree, the
+priesthood, the military aristocracy, and the mass of the army had
+constituted, politically, one single class. The civil government was
+vested in a body styled the Council of the Twenty Lords, the members of
+which originally had been chosen by Chaltzantzin, and from him had
+received authority, in perpetuity, to fill the vacancies which death
+would cause among them by selecting the wisest of each new generation to
+be Councillors. While the composition of this body was distinctively
+aristocratic--for its members were either military nobles or priests of
+a high grade--there was in it also an element of democracy; for both the
+priesthood and the army were recruited from all classes of society
+(saving only the servile class), and among the Twenty Lords there were
+always men who had risen from obscurity to distinction solely by their
+own merit. Over this body the Priest Captain presided; yet was his will
+superior to that of the Council, for he was the visible representative
+of the gods, and so centred in his own person their high authority and
+dreadful power.
+
+Until the time of Itzacoatl, each successive priest captain, in the long
+line that here had ruled, had exercised so discreetly his theocratic
+rights, and in all ways had shown such wisdom in his government, that no
+conflict had arisen between the temporal and the spiritual powers. And
+thus wisely had Itzacoatl governed in the early years of his reign. But
+as age stole upon him--and he now was a very old man--his rule had grown
+more and more tyrannical. He had drawn about him certain priests for
+intimate advisers, and these constantly led him to run counter to the
+will of the Twenty Lords, not only in matters about which divergent
+opinions reasonably might be held, but in matters wherein the will of
+the whole people was at one with the advice that the Council gave. Thus,
+gradually, two parties were built up within the State: that of the
+priests, which strongly seconded the disposition that Itzacoatl
+manifested to make the spiritual power absolutely supreme, and that of
+the nobles and people of the higher class, which sought to maintain the
+Council's ancient rights in matters temporal. In regard to these two
+factions, the affiliations of the army were so nicely balanced that
+neither side ventured to resort to open violence--for each dreaded that
+the other would turn the scale against it by invoking the aid of the
+servile class. Thus it was that the despised Tlahuicos actually held the
+balance of power. Yet of this fact, Tizoc declared--but I noticed that
+just here there was a curious hesitancy about his speech, as though he
+knew more than he was willing to disclose--the Tlahuicos were but dimly
+conscious; while they did know certainly that in the present state of
+affairs any attempt on their part to rise in mutiny would be met, as it
+had been met many times in the past, by all the forces of both factions
+of their superiors overwhelmingly united against them.
+
+But the bond that was stronger than all others in holding together this
+community, in which, beneath the surface, were working such potent
+elements of disintegration, was the loyal resolve pervading it to
+execute the mission to which its members were destined when they were
+set apart from the remainder of their race a thousand years before.
+Excepting only among the Tlahuicos--who, in the nature of things, could
+have no share in it--there had ever been among all classes a fervent
+longing for the summons that should call them forth to aid their
+brethren in the battling with a foreign foe that Chaltzantzin had
+prophesied. And by reason of this loyalty to a lofty purpose the open
+rupture that assuredly otherwise would have come had been thus far
+restrained. Honor forbade, Tizoc declared, that by falling to warring
+among themselves they should put in jeopardy their power to respond
+instantly to the summons that might at any instant come.
+
+It was therefore with a profound and solemn interest--for the grave
+import of it was plain to him--that Tizoc, having ended his own
+statement, questioned us as to the full meaning of the words which we
+had spoken when first we entered the valley: that the prophecy of
+Chaltzantzin long since had been fulfilled, and that now, having in its
+appointed time miscarried, the summons would never come.
+
+With awe, and in sorrowful silence, he listened as Fray Antonio and I
+told him how exactly the prophecy had been verified by the coming of the
+Spaniards, and by their conquest and enslavement of the Mexicans; yet
+was he cheered again as our narrative continued, and he learned of the
+brave fight for freedom that his brethren had made, and of the happy
+success that had crowned it in the end. Of the period between the
+achievement of independence and recent years we said but little--it is
+not a period of which those whose feeling towards the Mexicans is
+friendly have much desire to talk--contenting ourselves with
+emphasizing the fact that the race so long oppressed, having risen
+successfully against its oppressors, remained independent under a ruler
+of its own blood.
+
+To that part of our narrative in which we told how we had gained
+knowledge of the hidden city of Colhuacan, and possession of the token
+of summons, Tizoc gave but little heed. It was evident that his mind was
+engrossed with consideration of the more important matters of which we
+had told him, and of the direct bearing that they had upon the troubled
+condition of affairs in which his own people were involved. Seeing
+which, we left him to his own thoughts while we talked of these same
+matters among ourselves.
+
+Rayburn, in his quick, clear-headed way, grasped the situation promptly
+and accurately. "About the size of it is," he said, "that we've knocked
+the false work right from under everything that these folks have been
+building for the whole thousand years that they have been living here;
+and what they've built isn't strong enough to stand alone. As Young
+says, it's a cold day for the Priest Captain because we have got hold of
+his boss miracle; but it's still colder weather for him because the news
+that we have brought makes it all right for the crowd that wants to
+fight him to go right ahead and do it; and I guess they will do it, too,
+as soon as they get the fact fairly into their heads that there no
+longer is a chance of their being called off in the middle of their row.
+Unless I am very much mistaken, we shall see some pretty lively times in
+this valley inside of the next thirty days."
+
+"And unless _I'm_ mistaken," Young struck in, "th' Colonel here will be
+about th' first man t' take off his coat--that is, th' thing that I
+suppose he thinks is a coat--an' sail in. I don't know just what he's
+got against th' Priest Captain, except that he seems t' be a sort of
+pill on gen'ral principles, but I'm sure that he's down on him from th'
+word go. From what th' Colonel says, I judge that his crowd has a pretty
+good chance of comin' out on top--for th' other crowd seems t' be made
+up for th' most part of parsons; an' parsons, as a rule, haven't much
+fight in 'em. What we'd better do it t' tie t' th' Colonel, an' when
+we've helped him an' his friends t' wallop th' other fellows they'll be
+so much obliged to us that they'll let us bag all th' treasure we want
+an' clear out. An' that reminds me, Professor--we haven't heard anything
+about any treasure so far. Just ask th' Colonel if there really is one.
+If there isn't, I vote for pullin' out before th' row begins. It's as
+true of a fight as it is of a railroad--that runnin' it just for th'
+operatin' expenses don't pay."
+
+Tizoc answered my question on this head somewhat absently, for he
+evidently was debating within himself some very serious matter; but his
+answer was of a sort that Young found entirely satisfactory. In the
+heart of the city, he said, was the Treasure-house that Chaltzantzin had
+builded there; and within it the treasure remained that Chaltzantzin had
+stored away. What it consisted of, nor the value of it, he could not
+tell. The Treasure-house was also the Great Temple; and of the treasure
+only the Priest Captain had accurate knowledge. In the Treasure-house,
+Tizoc added, was stored the tribute that the people paid annually, and
+the metal that was taken from the great mine. This metal was the most
+precious of all their possessions, he said, for from it their arms were
+made, and also their tools for tilling the earth, and for working wood
+and stone. It had not always been of such value, for it naturally was
+too soft to serve these useful purposes; but at a remote period, until
+which time their implements had been made of stone, a wise man among
+them had discovered a way by which it could be hardened, and from that
+time onward the people dwelling in the valley had prospered greatly,
+because they thus were enabled to practise all manner of useful arts.
+
+"And what is this metal like?" I asked, with much interest, for my
+archaeological instinct instantly was aroused by hearing summed in these
+few words a matter of such momentous importance as the transition of a
+people to the age of metal from the age of stone.
+
+"It is like this," Tizoc answered, simply, disengaging as he spoke a
+heavy bracelet from his arm, "only this remains in its natural state of
+softness. To be of great value it first must be made hard."
+
+I had no doubt in my own mind as to what this metal was, but I knew that
+Rayburn, who was an excellent metallurgist, could pronounce upon it
+authoritatively.
+
+"Is this gold?" I asked, handing him the bracelet.
+
+"Certainly it is," he answered, in a moment--"and it seems to be
+entirely without alloy."
+
+"Then your guess about the bright, hard metal that has been such a
+puzzle to us," I continued, "was the right one; it is hardened gold:"
+and I repeated to him what Tizoc had told me.
+
+Rayburn was deeply interested. "Scientifically, this is a big thing,
+Professor," he said. "These fellows can give points to our
+metallurgists. But for our purposes, of course, what they've caught on
+to here has no practical value. Gold has got to come down a good deal,
+or phosphor-bronze has got to go up a good deal, before it will pay us
+to turn gold dollars into axle-bearings and cogs and pinions. But it's
+mighty interesting, all the same. Fusing with silicium would give a
+gold-silicide that might fill the bill for hardness; but I can't even
+make a guess as to how they do the tempering. Ask the Colonel what the
+whole process is, Professor. It will make a capital paper to read before
+the Institute of Mining Engineers at their next meeting."
+
+As I turned to Tizoc to ask this question, I perceived that his regard
+was fixed upon something on the other side of the court-yard, and in his
+look most tender love was blended with a deep melancholy. Following the
+direction of his gaze, I saw that its object was a beautiful boy, a lad
+of twelve or fourteen years old, who was half hidden behind some
+flowering shrubs, and from this cover was peering at us curiously.
+
+"It is my Maza--my little son," Tizoc said, as he turned and saw the
+direction in which I looked. And then he called to the boy to come to
+him. For a moment Maza hesitated, but when the call was repeated he came
+out from behind the screen of flowers and so towards us across the
+court-yard; and as he advanced I perceived that he was lame. In his face
+was the look of wistfulness which cripples so often have, and there was
+a rare sweetness and intelligence in the expression of his large brown
+eyes. In a moment I understood why it was that Tizoc resented so
+bitterly the abrogation by the Priest Captain of the custom that had
+permitted parents to buy back their crippled children, and so to save
+them from slavery; and a selfish feeling of gladness came into my heart
+as this light dawned upon me--for I knew that when we faced the danger
+that threatened us (a most real danger, for our coming into the valley
+was nothing less than a deadly blow at Itzacoatl's supremacy) we surely
+would find in Tizoc an ally and a friend.
+
+
+
+
+XX.
+
+THE PRIEST CAPTAIN'S SUMMONS.
+
+
+There was so much meaning in my look as I turned towards Tizoc that I
+had no need to speak; he knew that I had comprehended the situation, and
+so answered my look in words.
+
+"Do you wonder that I rejoice over your coming, and over the news which
+you bring? The will of the gods no longer is that we shall do the work
+for which our lord Chaltzantzin destined us; therefore are we free to
+set aside the custom that he decreed by which our weak ones are
+condemned to death, and with it the custom, yet more cruel, of our own
+devising, by which they are saved from death only that they may be made
+slaves. To my boy neither slavery nor death shall come. Through you the
+gods have spoken, and he is saved. And now also is fulfilled the
+prophecy that of ancient times was spoken, that with the coming into the
+Valley of Aztlan of a four-footed beast, bearing upon its back a man,
+the power of the Priest Captain should end."
+
+Much more, doubtless, Tizoc would have said to us, for an exalted
+emotion stirred him; but at that moment there was the sound of hurrying
+feet in the outer enclosure, and then Tizoc's secretary came through the
+narrow entrance into the court-yard, followed closely by a detachment of
+the guards. The secretary spoke hurriedly to his master, apart from us,
+and from his excited manner in speaking, and from the anxious look upon
+his master's face as he listened, we inferred that some very stirring
+matter was involved in the communication that he brought.
+
+For a few moments Tizoc stood in silence, his head bowed, as though
+engaged in earnest thought. Then he turned to us and spoke. "The Priest
+Captain has sent his order that you shall be brought before him," he
+said, "and that you must go hence without delay." And then he added,
+taking me aside and speaking in a low voice: "There is great commotion
+already in the city, for the soldiers have noised abroad the news which
+you bring. The Council of the Twenty Lords has been called together, and
+I am told that a messenger from the Council is on his way hither. That
+my order to take you to the city in such haste, and directly to the
+Priest Captain, is so stringent, I cannot but think is caused by his
+desire to get you hence before the messenger from the Council shall
+arrive. His purpose towards you surely is an evil one; but fear not--you
+bring a message of freedom and deliverance that has only to be published
+to raise around you a host of friends. And now we must go."
+
+In a few moments we had quitted Tizoc's house, passed out through the
+fortified gate-way in the heavy wall by which the little plateau on the
+mountain side was defended; and so, by a broad road that descended
+sharply, went downward towards the border of the lake. Our order of
+march was the same as that adopted in bringing us from the Barred Pass:
+before us and behind us were detachments of the guards, and Tizoc walked
+with us. In accordance with his desire, that he expressed to me in a
+cautious whisper, Pablo rode upon El Sabio's back. There was no need for
+him to explain his motive in making this suggestion. It was his purpose,
+evidently, to exhibit the fulfilment of the prophecy as conspicuously as
+possible, and so to prepare the ground for the sowing of the seeds of
+revolt.
+
+I had an opportunity now to tell Rayburn and Young of what Tizoc had
+been speaking at the moment when the summons from the Priest Captain
+came; and also of the strong personal reason that he had for protecting
+us, even to the extent of forwarding the outbreak of revolution, in his
+desire to save from death or slavery the son whom he so well loved.
+
+"I'm not at all surprised to hear that what we've told 'em is going to
+start a revolution," Rayburn said. "That's just the way I sized the
+matter up, you know, as soon as I got down to the first facts. If they'd
+had a decent sort of a fellow at the head of things, they might have
+worked along so as to take a fresh start without fighting over it. But
+this Priest Captain chap isn't that kind. He goes in for Boss management
+and machine politics, I should judge from what the Colonel says, as
+straight as if he was a New York alderman or the chairman of a State
+campaign committee in Ohio. No doubt he's got a pretty big crowd back of
+him; but that kind of a crowd don't amount to much in a fight, when
+there's any sort of a show for the other side to win. It sort of gets
+out of the way, and stands around with water on both shoulders, and
+then, when one side begins to get pretty well on top--it don't matter
+which--it says that that's the side it's been fighting with all along,
+and begins to kick the fellows that are down. Where our chance comes in
+is in having the respectable element, the solid men who pay taxes and
+have an interest in decent government, to tie to. They may not pay taxes
+here, but that's the kind I mean. And that kind, when it takes to
+fighting, fights hard. Then there must be a lot of fathers with crippled
+children, like the Colonel here, who are down on the Priest Captain the
+worst kind, and will be only too glad of a chance to go for him; and
+they can be counted on to stand in with us, and to fight harder than
+anybody. I'll admit, Professor, that we're in a pretty tight place; but
+it might be a good deal tighter, and I do honestly believe that we'll
+get out of it."
+
+"And so do I," said Young, "'specially now that I know that that burro
+of Pablo's is part of a prophecy. I always did think that there was
+style about El Sabio, any way, an' now I know what it comes from. When I
+was a boy, th' one thing that used t' keep me quiet in church was
+hearin' our minister read that story about Balaam and _his_ burro; but I
+never thought then that I'd actually ketch up with a live ass that was
+in the prophesyin' line of business for itself--or had prophecies made
+about it, which is pretty much the same thing. T' be sure, this prophecy
+don't come down t' dots quite as much as I'd like it to; but I s'pose
+that that's th' way with 'em always--eh, Professor? Th' prophets sort o'
+leave things at loose ends on purpose; so's they can run 'wild' on a
+clear track, without any bother about schedule time or connections."
+
+"Well, our burro lays over Balaam's," Rayburn struck in. "In that case
+it took the combined arguments of an ass and an angel to convince Balaam
+that he was off about his location, and was running his lines all wrong;
+but, unless we count in Pablo, El Sabio is playing a lone hand; and I'm
+sure that the Colonel's not fooling us about this prophecy business,
+either. It's rubbish, of course; but that don't matter, so long as the
+people here swallow it for the genuine thing. Just look at that old
+fellow there. He's tumbled to it, and he's regularly knocked out."
+
+We were close to the shore of the lake by this time, and as Rayburn
+spoke we were passing a small house, in front of which was gathered a
+group of Indians. In the midst of the group was a very old man, who
+with out-stretched arm was pointing towards Pablo and El Sabio, and who
+at the same time was talking to his companions in grave and earnest
+tones. There was a look of awe upon his age-worn face, and as we fairly
+came abreast of him he dropped upon his knees and raised his arms above
+his head, as though in supplication to some higher power. The action,
+truly, was a most impressive one; and even more strongly than we were
+affected by it did it affect those who were clustered around him. In a
+moment all in the group had fallen upon their knees and had raised their
+arms upward; and then a low moaning, that presently grew louder and more
+thrilling, broke forth among them as they gave vent to the feeling of
+awful dread that was in their hearts.
+
+"That's business, that is," Young said, in tones of great satisfaction.
+"Those fellows do believe in th' prophecy, for a fact; and if th' folks
+once get it fairly into their heads that th' time has come for their
+rascally Priest Captain t' have an upset, that's a good long start for
+our side towards upsettin' him. It was just everlastin'ly level-headed
+in th' Colonel t' make Pablo ride El Sabio, and so regularly cram th'
+thing down these critters' throats. I don't know how much of th'
+prophecy he believes himself, but he's workin' it for all it's worth,
+any way. There don't seem t' be any flies worth speakin' of on th'
+Colonel--eh, Professor? And I guess that anybody who wants t' get up
+earlier 'n th' mornin' than he does 'll have to make a start overnight."
+
+By this time the road that we followed had come down to the lake-level,
+and presently we reached the end of it, which was a well-built pier that
+extended out from the shelving shore into deep water. Here a boat was in
+waiting for us--a barge of near forty feet in length, with twenty men to
+row it, and carrying also a mast, stepped well forward, so rigged as to
+spread a sail that was a compromise between a lug and a lateen. There
+was some little talk between the officer in charge of the barge and
+Tizoc, and then the latter motioned us to go on board. The barge-master
+gave the order to the guard to follow us, as though the command of the
+party now had devolved upon him; and it seemed to us, from the close
+group that the guard made around us in the boat, and from the anxious
+looks which the barge-master cast upon us, that very strict orders must
+have been given concerning keeping us closely in ward. Under these
+circumstances, it caused us some little wonder that we were permitted to
+retain our arms, until the thought occurred to me that these people,
+having no knowledge of such things, did not at all realize that our
+rifles and revolvers were arms at all. To test which theory I drew one
+of my pistols--not violently, but as though this were something that I
+was doing for my own convenience--and so held it in my hands that the
+muzzle was pointed directly at the heart of the soldier who sat beside
+me; yet beyond the interest that its odd shape, and the strange metal
+that it was made of aroused in him, it was evident that the man regarded
+my action entirely without concern. I drew the attention of Rayburn and
+Young to what I was doing, and to how evident it was that fire-arms
+were unknown to this people; and in their ignorance we found much cause
+for satisfaction.
+
+[Illustration: CHECKING YOUNG'S OUTBREAK]
+
+"If they don't know enough to corral our guns," Young said, "we've got a
+pretty good-sized piece of dead-wood on 'em. Th' way things are goin',
+we may have a rumpus a'most any time, I s'pose; and if it does come to a
+rumpus, they'll be a badly struck lot when we open on 'em. Robinson
+Crusoe cleaned out a whole outfit of Indians with just an old flint-lock
+musket; and I should say that we'd simply paralyze this crowd when we
+all get goin' at once with our revolvers an' Winchesters. Isn't that
+your idea of it, Rayburn?"
+
+But Rayburn did not answer, for while Young was speaking he had taken
+out his field-glass and was examining the city, to within three or four
+miles of which we now were come. "Well, that _is_ a walled city, and no
+mistake!" he said, as he lowered the glass from his eyes. "Take a look,
+Professor. These people may be easy to fool when it comes to prophecies,
+but when it comes to engineering and architecture they're sound all the
+way through. Just look at the straightness of that wall running up the
+hill, and how exact the alignment is of the two parts above and below
+that ledge of rocks. They had to get that alignment, you know, by taking
+fore-sights and back-sights from the top of the ledge; and I must say
+that for people who haven't got far enough along in civilization to wear
+trousers, it's an uncommonly pretty piece of work."
+
+As I looked through the glass I was less impressed by this technical
+detail, involving the overcoming of engineering difficulties which I did
+not very thoroughly understand, than I was by the majestic effect
+produced by the city as a whole, in conjunction with the site on which
+it was reared. At this point the lake came close up to the vastly high
+cliffs by which the valley everywhere was girt in, and here jutted out
+from the cliff a great promontory of rock, whereof the highest part was
+fully two hundred feet above the lake-level. For the accommodation of
+the houses which everywhere were built upon it, the sloping face of this
+promontory had been cut into broad terraces, of which the facings were
+massive walls of stone; and the whole was enclosed by a wall of great
+height and enormous thickness that swept out in an immense semicircle
+from the face of the cliff, and thus shut in the terraced promontory and
+also a considerable area of level land at the base of it between the
+lowest terrace and the margin of the lake.
+
+On the highest terrace, crowning and dominating the whole, was a
+majestic building that seemed to be half temple and half fort--a square
+structure, resting solidly against the face of the cliff, and thence
+projecting a long way outward to where its facade was flanked by two
+low, heavy, square towers. Architecturally, this building, unlike any
+other of which I had knowledge in Mexico, saving only the temple that we
+had found upon the lonely mountain-top, was pervaded by a distinctly
+Egyptian sentiment. Its walls sloped inward from their bases, and no
+trivial nor fretful lines weakened the effect of their massive dignity;
+for the whole of the decoration upon them was a broad panelling that was
+gained by a combination of heavy pilasters and a heavy cornice; and with
+the exception of a central entrance, the front was unbroken by openings
+of any kind. Possessing these characteristics, the building had about it
+an air of solemnity that bordered closely upon gloom; and the obvious
+solidity of its construction was such that it seemed destined to last on
+through all coming ages in defiance of the assaults of time. There was
+no need for me to question Tizoc; for I knew that what I beheld before
+me, crowning with sombre grandeur this strange city, girded with such
+prodigious walls, was the Treasure-house that Chaltzantzin, the Aztec
+King, had builded in the dim dawning of a most ancient past.
+
+Young took his turn in looking through the glass, and as he handed it to
+Fray Antonio he said: "If at any time in th' course o' th' past few
+weeks, Professor, you've got th' notion from any o' my talk that I
+thought that dead friend o' yours, th' old monk, was a liar, I want t'
+take it all back; and I want t' take back all that I've said about that
+other dead friend o' yours, th' Cacique, havin' set up a job on us. It's
+clear enough now that both o' your friends played an entirely square
+game. They said that there was a walled city, an' there it is; they said
+that there was a big Treasure-house, an' there _that_ is. They were
+perfect gentlemen, Professor, and I want t' set myself right on th'
+record by sayin' so. If one of 'em hadn't been dead for more than three
+months, and if th' other one hadn't been dead for more than three
+hundred years, and if they both were here, I'd knuckle under and ask 'em
+t' take my hat."
+
+
+
+
+XXI.
+
+THE WALLED CITY OF CULHUACAN.
+
+
+Our use in turn of the field-glass was a mysterious performance that
+aroused keenly the barge-master's curiosity. I heard him ask Tizoc for
+an explanation of it; and Tizoc, who also was much interested, referred
+his question to me. Had I been dealing with Tizoc alone I should have
+tried to make the matter clear to him; but in the case of the
+barge-master, whose feeling towards us, I was convinced, was anything
+but friendly, I thought it wiser to be less frank. Therefore, covering
+the action with a negligent motion of my hand, I screwed the glasses
+close together, so that in looking through them there was to be seen
+only a mass of indistinct objects looming up in a blurred cloud of
+light, and so handed them to him. Naturally, neither he nor Tizoc
+arrived at any very satisfactory conclusion in regard to the real use of
+them; and from their talk it was evident that they conceived the
+ceremony in which we had engaged in turn so earnestly to be in the
+nature of a prayer to our gods. Fray Antonio was both shocked and pained
+by their taking this view of the matter, and was for making a true
+explanation to them; but at my urgent request he held his peace. Yet it
+was evident that he brooded over the matter in his mind, and so was led
+to earnest thoughts of the mission that had brought him hither into the
+Valley of Aztlan. Therefore was I not surprised--though I certainly was
+alarmed by the thought of what might be its consequences--when
+presently, in low and gentle tones, he began to speak to those about him
+of the free and glorious Christian faith, which in all ways was more
+excellent than the cruel idolatry in which they were bound. Naturally,
+he was not permitted long to speak in this strain, for the barge-master
+speedily ordered him in most peremptory tones to keep silence; which
+order doubtless would have been still more quickly given had not the
+officer been fairly surprised by Fray Antonio's temerity into momentary
+forgetfulness of the dangerous outcome of this gentle talk. And Fray
+Antonio, knowing the value of the word in season that is dropped to
+fructify in soil ready for it, did not attempt argument with the
+barge-master--by which the thoughts of those who listened would have
+been diverted from the hopeful promise of a better faith that he had
+offered to them--but obeyed the order meekly and so held his peace. That
+what he had spoken had taken hold upon the hearts of some at least among
+his hearers I was well assured by their grave look of thoughtfulness,
+and especially did Tizoc seem to be deeply moved; but--as I supposed for
+fear of the barge-master--there was no open comment upon what had
+passed.
+
+By this time, the barge being all the while urged rapidly forward by the
+steady strokes of the twenty oarsmen, the city rose so broadly and so
+openly before us that we could see the whole of it distinctly with our
+naked eyes. And what at this nearer view seemed most impressive about it
+was its gloominess; that was due not less to the prison-like effect of
+its heavily built houses and its massive walls than to the dull
+blackness of the stone whereof these same were made. Nowhere was there
+sparkle, or glitter, or bright color, or brightness of any sort to be
+seen; and it seemed to me, as I gazed upon this sombre stronghold, that
+dwelling always within it well enough might wear a man's heart out with
+a consuming melancholy begotten of its cold and cheerless tones.
+
+That it was indeed a stronghold was the more apparent to us the nearer
+that we came to it. The plan of it was that of a great fan, spread open
+upon the hillside, and extending also across the broad sweep of level
+land between the base of the promontory and the lake. The promontory had
+been so cut and shaped that its gentle slope had been transformed into
+six broad semicircular terraces, above the highest of which was a
+semicircular plateau of very considerable size, on which stood the
+Treasure-house, that also was the great temple. Along the face of each
+terrace, and around the face also of the plateau, a heavy defensive wall
+rose to a height of twenty feet or more; and from the base of the
+crowning plateau, thence accessible by a single broad flight of
+stairs--being led through openings in the rampart walls of the terraces,
+and down each terrace face by means of stair-ways--twelve streets
+descended, of which the central six ended at the water-side and the
+remainder against the great outer wall. It was this outer line of
+strong defence that gave the city--which otherwise would have
+corresponded curiously closely with the fortified city of Quetzaltepec,
+described by the Mexican chronicler Tezozomoc--its most distinctive
+characteristic. Such a vastly thick wall, for the great length of it, as
+this was I never have seen in any other place; and so solid was the
+building of it that it would have been proof against any ordinary train
+of siege artillery. For defence against a foe whose only missile weapons
+would be javelins and slings and bows, this great wall made the city
+absolutely impregnable. And that the protection that it gave might be
+still more complete--and also, as Tizoc explained to us, that in the
+case of siege the water supply might be assured, together with a supply
+of fish for food--the wall was carried out into the lake so far as to
+enclose a basin of more than four acres in extent; within which, should
+an enemy gain access to the valley, all the boats upon the lake could be
+brought together and held in safety. And finally, the one entrance to
+the city was by way of a tunnel-like canal cut in the wall thus rising
+from the water; the outer end of which canal was closed in ordinary
+times by a heavy grating, while in war time the inner end also could be
+closed by means of great metal bars.
+
+It was towards this entrance that the barge that carried us was heading.
+Presently we reached it, and the grating was raised for our admission by
+means of chains which were operated from the top of the wall. So low and
+so narrow was the passage that our heads were within a few inches of the
+huge slabs of stone of which its roof was formed; and the rowers had
+need to unstep the mast and then to lay their oars inboard, while they
+brought the barge through by pushing with their hands against the roof
+and sides. The canal was fully forty feet long, and thus the enormous
+thickness of the wall was made apparent to us. It truly was, as I
+observed to Rayburn, a work that well might be attributed to the
+Cyclops.
+
+"I never met a live Cyclop, Professor," Rayburn answered, "and I don't
+believe that these fellows ever did either; but it bothers me to know
+how they managed to do work like this without a steam-derrick. If we get
+out of here with whole skins and our hair on our heads, I hope it won't
+be until I've had a chance to talk to some of their engineers, and so
+get down to the facts."
+
+A moment later we emerged from the tunnel through the wall, and so
+entered the enclosed basin that extended along the whole of the city's
+front. Within the basin were lying many canoes, and also boats of a
+larger sort that carried oars and that were rigged with a sort of
+lug-sail; but these all kept away from us, even as all the boats which
+we had seen during our passage of the lake had given us a wide berth.
+That our barge--one of those employed exclusively in the Priest
+Captain's service--was thus shunned was due, as I found later, to the
+wholesome dread in which the special servitors of the temple and of its
+head universally were held; for these very frequently abused the
+authority acquired through their semi-sacerdotal functions by using it
+as a cloak to cover acts of purely personal oppression, while at all
+times they were feared as the executors of their master's wrath. There
+was, indeed (though I did not mention this fact to Fray Antonio), a
+curiously close resemblance between the officials of this class and the
+familiars of the Inquisition, both in the duties which they performed
+and in the fear and hatred which they everywhere inspired.
+
+But even dread of entanglement with the Priest Captain's servants could
+not restrain the curiosity of the crowd that pressed towards us on the
+broad pier upon which we disembarked. It was evident that this crowd was
+not made up of the common folk of the city, and also that it was moved
+by a purpose far higher than that of a mere idle longing to see
+something that was strange. From their dress, and still more from the
+beauty of their ornaments and the elegance of the arms which many of
+them carried, it was obvious that for the most part these men were
+citizens of the highest rank; and this fact was still further attested
+by the dignity of their demeanor and by the reverent age to which the
+majority of them had attained. So far from manifesting any vulgar
+excitement, the crowd maintained an absolute silence; and with this an
+exterior air of calm that was the more impressive because the eager,
+almost awe-struck expression upon every face showed how strong was the
+emotion that thus strongly was restrained. But when El Sabio, after much
+coaxing, crossed the gang-plank between the boat and the pier, and so
+came to where he could be seen of all plainly, there was a curious low
+sound in the air as though all at once every man in the crowd had
+heaved a sigh; and the sound swelled into a loud murmur as Pablo, in
+obedience to a quick order that I gave him in Spanish, briskly mounted
+upon the ass's back. In this murmur only one word was intelligible, and
+that I caught again and again: the prophecy!
+
+But Pablo was no more than fairly seated upon El Sabio's back than the
+officer in command of our guard took him roughly by the shoulders and
+snatched him thence to the ground again; which act led Tizoc and me to a
+quick exchange of startled glances, for it showed very plainly that the
+Priest Captain--to whom the messenger telling of our coming into the
+valley had been sent before any of these people had seen Pablo mounted
+upon El Sabio's back--had anticipated this sign of the fulfilment of the
+prophecy and had given orders to prevent it. Luckily, the celerity with
+which Pablo had executed my quick order to mount had saved the day for
+us; and even more than saved it, for as we passed through the crowd, on
+our way from the water-side into the city, I caught here and there
+fragments of comment upon what had just passed which showed that not
+only was the sign told of in the prophecy recognized, but that the
+effort on the part of the officer to neutralize it was understood.
+
+But before our going into the city there was a stirring conflict of
+authority concerning us between the temporal and the spiritual powers.
+We were no more than fairly landed, indeed, when an officer addressed
+the barge-master, who continued in charge of our party, and gave him a
+formal order to bring the strangers directly before the Council of the
+Twenty Lords. And to this the barge-master replied that he already was
+under orders to bring the prisoners, immediately upon their landing,
+before the Priest Captain--and there was something both curious and
+ominous, it struck me, in the marked manner in which the term
+"strangers" was employed by one of these men and the term "prisoners" by
+the other.
+
+At this juncture we had further proof of the foresight of the Priest
+Captain, and of the determined stand that he was prepared to make rather
+than to suffer the miscarriage of big plans. While the barge-master and
+the messenger from the Council still were engaged in hot talk as to
+which of the two conflicting orders should be recognised, there was the
+sound of tramping feet and of arms clanking; and then a body of fully
+one hundred soldiers came quickly from behind a house that was near by
+the water-side and swept down on a double-quick to where we were
+standing at the end of the pier. The crowd, jostled aside to make way
+for the passage of the soldiers, evidently regarded them with
+astonishment; and this astonishment rapidly changed to anger as the
+purpose that brought them thither was made plain. In a moment they had
+closed in around us, separating us from the Council's messenger and from
+Tizoc; the barge-master placed himself at the head of them, and in
+sharp, quick tones gave the order to march; and the whole force, with
+ourselves in the centre of it, went off the pier at a round pace, and
+thence along a street that led towards the city's heart. Evidently
+acting under orders, the men broke their platoons and closed in around
+us; and I was well convinced that this unsoldierly marching was adopted
+to the end that El Sabio might not be seen.
+
+Fray Antonio agreed with me that the Priest Captain was carrying matters
+with a dangerously high hand in thus opposing the will of the Council
+with armed force. This act of his, if Tizoc had correctly represented to
+us the excited condition of popular feeling, was quite sufficient in
+itself to stir into violent activity the slumbering fires of mutiny. But
+whether the revolt that we now believed must surely come would come in
+time to be of service to ourselves, we could not but look upon as a very
+open question.
+
+"If this old scoundrel is as sharp as he seems to be," Rayburn said,
+"and if he keeps things up in the way he's begun, it's about all day
+with us. His play should be to get rid of us as quick as he can manage
+it; and I should judge, from the cards that he's put down, that that's
+precisely the way he means to manage the game. It's not much comfort to
+us to know that after he's cleaned us out somebody else will rake his
+pile."
+
+As we talked, we went on rapidly through the city; and even the danger
+that we were in, and the excitement that attended this sudden shifting
+of our fortunes, could not prevent me from studying with a lively
+curiosity the many evidences of an advanced civilization that I beheld.
+The plan of the city, as I had discerned while we were approaching it,
+was that of a wide-open fan. From the Treasure-house, on the height in
+the centre, twelve broad streets radiated outward, of which three on the
+northern side and three on the southern ended against the great
+enclosing wall, and six came down through openings in the walls along
+the several terraces directly to the water-front. All of these streets
+were well paved with large smooth blocks of stone, and were led up the
+faces of the terraces by wide and easy stairs. The transverse streets
+were true semicircles, starting from and ending at the face of the
+cliff, and were carried along the outer edges of the terraces, just
+inside their facing walls. Rayburn was even more astonished than I was
+by the exactness with which these great semicircles were laid off; for
+he apprehended, as I did not, the difficulty attendant upon running a
+line in a true and regular curve. But I am not prepared to say that this
+work could not have been accomplished by mere rule of thumb. My friend
+Bandelier, in the course of his admirable analysis of the ruins at
+Mitla, has made clear to me how easy it is to attribute to scientific
+knowledge work that is the result only of manual skill. As I have
+pointed out in my discussion of this matter in my _Pre-Columbian
+Conditions on the Continent of North America_, the plateau at the top of
+this range of terraces easily might have been laid off in a true
+semicircle by the simple means of a pointed stick at the end of a long
+rope; and from the true line thus established the line of the terrace
+below it could have been had--and so on down to the lowest terrace of
+all.
+
+There could be no doubt, however, that engineering skill of a high
+order--howsoever crude might have been the actual method of its
+application--was exhibited both in the preparation of the site, and then
+in the city's building. On the site alone an almost incredible amount of
+labor had been expended; for the rocky promontory--that primitively, as
+the result showed, had been broken and irregular--had been so cut away
+in some places, and so filled in in others, and the whole of it had been
+so carefully trimmed and smoothed, that in the end it became a huge mass
+of rock-work, in the regularity of which there was not perceptible the
+smallest flaw. And in this preliminary work, as well as in the building
+of the houses afterwards, fragments of stone were used of such enormous
+size that the moving of them, Rayburn declared, would be wellnigh
+impossible even with the most powerful engineering appliances of our own
+time. Nor was the use of these huge pieces of stone confined to the
+foundations of the houses. Some of them were high above the ground;
+indeed, the very largest that we observed--the weight of which Rayburn
+estimated at not less than twenty tons--was a single block that made the
+entire top course of a high wall.
+
+All of the stone-work was well smoothed and squared; and while the
+exteriors of the houses were entirely plain, we could see through the
+open door-ways that the interiors of many of them were enriched with
+carvings. All were destitute of windows opening upon the street; and
+their dull, black walls, and the dull black of the stones with which the
+streets were paved, gave a dark and melancholy air to the city that
+oppressed us even more heavily when thus seen closely than it had when
+we beheld it from afar off. Yet the interior court-yards, so far as we
+could tell from the glimpses that we had of them through open door-ways,
+were bright with sunshine and gay with flowers; thus showing that the
+gloom of these dwellings did not extend beyond their outer walls. I
+observed with much interest that the provision for closing the entrances
+from the street was not swinging doors of wood, but either metal bars,
+such as we had seen in Tizoc's house, or else a metal grating, that was
+arranged like a portcullis to slide up and down in a groove; and I
+attributed the absence of wooden doors less to a desire for stronger
+barriers than to the comparative recentness of the acquisition of the
+knowledge of wood-working tools. Here, I thought, was a curious instance
+of development along the lines of greatest resistance; for in itself the
+invention and the making of a swinging door of wood was a much easier
+matter than was the invention and the making of these finely wrought
+sliding doors of hardened gold.
+
+As for Young, the sight of all this gold-work quite took his breath
+away. "It regularly jolts me, Professor," he said, "t' see th' genuine
+stuff, that's good t' make gold dollars out of, slung around this way. A
+front door of solid gold is a huckleberry above Jay Gould's biggest
+persimmon; an' as t' Solomon, these fellows just lay Solomon out
+cold--regularly down th' old man an' sit on him. Why, for just that one
+front door of th' big house ahead of us I'd sell out all my shares in
+this treasure-hunt, an' be glad t' do it. But I guess I'd have to hire
+Samson--who was in that line of business--t' carry it off for me. It
+must weigh a solid ton!"
+
+By this time we had mounted all of the terraces, and the house towards
+which Young pointed as he spoke was built directly beneath the crowning
+plateau on which the great temple stood. It was the largest and by far
+the most elegant house that we yet had seen, and the sliding grating of
+gold that closed the entrance was unusually heavy, and very beautifully
+wrought. Sentinels were stationed here, wearing the same uniform as that
+of the soldiers who formed our guard; and this further indication of the
+importance of the building gave us the impression that it was the
+dwelling of some great dignitary. Close by the portal we were halted,
+while the commander of our guard spoke through the grating to some one
+inside. A moment later the grating was slowly raised, and we were
+marched through the narrow entrance, and so along a short passage-way
+into a long, narrow chamber that obviously was a guard-room; for spears
+and javelins were ranged in orderly fashion upon racks, and swords and
+shields and bows and quivers of arrows were hung upon the walls. Here we
+were halted again; and while we stood silent together, wondering what
+might be in store for us in this place, we heard the heavy grating
+behind us close with a dull clang.
+
+
+
+
+XXII.
+
+THE OUTBREAK OF REVOLUTION.
+
+
+So dismal was this sound, and so many were the dismal possibilities that
+it suggested, that as I heard it a cold chill went down into my heart;
+and I was glad enough that we at once were led forth from the
+guard-room, and that in consideration of matters of immediate moment my
+mind was diverted from dwelling drearily upon a future that seemed full
+of gloom.
+
+For all the brilliant blaze of sunlight that brightened the large
+court-yard into which we were conducted, there was about it curious
+coldness and cheerlessness. As in the case of all the other houses which
+we had observed, the stone-work of the walls and of the pavement was a
+dull black; but here there were no flowers, nor bright-colored hangings
+over the inner doors, nor brightness of any sort or kind. The carving of
+the stone was extraordinarily rich, to be sure; but the bass-reliefs
+which covered the walls were wholly of a gloomy sort--being for the most
+part representations of the slaughter of men in sacrifice, and the
+tearing of hearts out--so that the eight of them made me shiver,
+notwithstanding the warmth of the sun. From the centre of the court-yard
+a broad stair-way ascended to the plateau above on which the temple
+stood; and this direct way of communicating with it led me to the
+conclusion that the building was a dependency of the temple, and that
+very likely the higher members of the priesthood were housed here.
+
+However, little time was given for looking around us, for our guard
+hurried us--El Sabio following close at Pablo's heels--across the
+court-yard to a door-way at its farther side, before which hung in heavy
+folds a curtain of some sort of thick black cloth. Across this entrance
+the guard was drawn up in orderly ranks behind us; and then the
+barge-master, who had preserved absolute silence towards us since our
+march through the city began, held aside the curtain and silently
+motioned to us to enter.
+
+From the bright sunshine we passed at a step into a chamber so shadowy
+that we involuntarily stopped on the threshold, in order that our eyes
+might become accustomed to the semi-darkness before we advanced. The
+only light that entered it came through two narrow slits in the thick
+wall above the portal that we had just passed; and the glimmer diffused
+by the thin rays thus admitted was in great part absorbed by the black
+draperies with which everywhere the room was hung. As our eyes adjusted
+themselves to these gloomy conditions we perceived that we were in a
+hall of great size; and presently we were able to distinguish objects
+clearly enough to see that at the far end of it was a raised dais,
+having a sort of throne upon it; but not until, being urged forward by
+the officer, we had traversed more than half the length of the hall did
+we discern upon the throne the shadowy figure of a man.
+
+Being come close to the dais, the officer halted us by a gesture; but no
+word was spoken, and for several minutes we stood in the semi-darkness
+of that strange place in absolute silence. For myself, I must confess
+that I was somewhat awed by my surroundings, and by the impassive
+silence and stillness that the dimly seen figure upon the throne
+maintained, and I am sure that Fray Antonio's imaginative nature was
+similarly impressed; as for Pablo, I distinctly heard his teeth
+chattering in the dark. But neither Rayburn nor Young, as the latter
+would have expressed it, awed easily, and it was Rayburn who presently
+spoke.
+
+"This fellow in the big chair would be a good hand at private
+theatricals. He's got a first-rate notion of stage effect. Hadn't I
+better stick a pin in him and wake him up?"
+
+"There's no good in stickin' pins into _him_," said Young, in a tone of
+great contempt. "What's the matter with him is, he's not real at
+all--he's stuffed!"
+
+There was something so absurdly incongruous in these comments that they
+acted instantly upon my overstrained nerves, and I burst into a laugh,
+in which the other two immediately joined. Evidently, this was not at
+all the effect that this carefully arranged reception was intended to
+have upon us; for the seated figure started suddenly and uttered an
+angry exclamation, and at the same time gave a quick order to the
+officer.
+
+"I take it all back," said Young; "he ain't stuffed. I guess he was only
+asleep."
+
+As Young spoke there was a slight rustle of draperies, and in a moment
+the curtains which had veiled four great windows in the four sides of
+the hall were pulled aside, and the darkness vanished in a sudden blaze
+of light. While we shaded our eyes for some seconds, Rayburn said, with
+great decision: "This settles it. He must have been in the show business
+all his life."
+
+But the man whom we now saw clearly did not look like a showman. He was
+a very old man, lean and shrivelled; his brown skin so wrinkled that his
+face looked like some sort of curiously withered nut. Yet there was a
+wonderful sinewiness about him, and a most extraordinary brightness in
+his eyes. His face was of the strong, heavy type that is found in the
+figures carved on the ruins in Yucatan; a much stronger type than I have
+observed anywhere among the Mexican Indians of the present day. His
+dress was a long, flowing robe of white cotton cloth, caught over his
+left shoulder with a broad gold clasp, and richly embroidered with
+shining green feathers; and shining green feathers were bound into his
+hair and rose above his head in a tall plume. His sandal-moccasins (for
+the covering of his feet was between these two) repeated the sacred
+combination of colors, green and white; and on his breast, falling from
+his neck, were several richly wrought gold chains. Even apart from his
+stately surroundings, his dress--and especially the shining green
+feathers which were so conspicuous a part of it--would have informed me
+that this man was a priest of very exalted rank; and the conditions of
+our presentation to him assured me that he was none other than the
+Priest Captain, Itzacoatl. And I may add that if ever a high dignitary
+of a heathen religion was in a rage, Itzacoatl was in a rage at that
+particular moment. Young's comment lacked reverence, but it was to the
+point: "Well, he _has_ got his back up, for sure!"
+
+With an alertness that was astonishing in one of his years, Itzacoatl
+rose quietly from the throne; and as he pointed to us with a commanding
+gesture, he asked, sharply, why we had been allowed to retain our arms,
+and ordered them to be taken away from us; which order troubled us
+greatly, and also occasioned us a very lively surprise. As for the
+barge-master, he evidently was vastly puzzled by it; for, according to
+his notions, we were not armed. He did not venture to reply, but his
+uncertainty was to the duty that was expected of him was apparent in his
+hopeless look of entire bewilderment. It seemed to me that for a moment
+the Priest Captain was slightly confused, as though he recognized the
+incongruity between his own knowledge in this matter and his officer's
+ignorance; and in explaining his order he took occasion to refer to the
+superior knowledge with which he was endowed by the gods. Fray Antonio
+and I glanced at each other doubtingly as he spoke, for this explanation
+struck us as being decidedly forced. The gods of the ancient Mexicans
+pre-eminently were war gods; but they certainly were not likely to have
+any very extended knowledge of Winchester rifles and self-cocking
+revolvers.
+
+However, when the officer comprehended what was required of him, he was
+prompt enough in his actions. Without any ceremony at all he laid hands
+on Young's rifle, that was hanging by its strap on his shoulder, and
+endeavored to take it away from him. This was a line of action that the
+Lost-freight Agent by no means was inclined to submit to. Without any
+assistance he unslung the rifle, cocked it as he jumped back half a
+dozen steps, and then raised it to his shoulder, with his finger on the
+trigger and the muzzle fairly levelled at the officer's heart. "Shall I
+down him?" he asked.
+
+"Don't shoot!" Rayburn cried, quickly; and in obedience to this order
+Young slowly dropped the rifle from his shoulder, yet held it ready for
+action in his hands. The perfect calmness of the officer through this
+exciting episode afforded the most convincing proof that fire-arms were
+wholly unknown to him. And the conduct of the Priest Captain afforded
+equally convincing proof that he not only understood the nature of
+fire-arms, but that he was very much afraid of them; for, at the moment
+that Young made his offensive demonstration, he very precipitately
+sheltered himself by crouching behind the throne.
+
+"Don't shoot!" Rayburn repeated. "We may have a chance to pull through
+if we don't rile these follows; but if we go killing any of them now
+it's all day with us, for sure. We'd better let 'em have our guns; but
+there's something mighty odd in their having found out all of a sudden
+what a gun is."
+
+Very reluctantly Young surrendered his rifle to the officer, who looked
+at it contemptuously, as though he considered it but a poor sort of
+weapon in case real fighting was to be done. In turn, the rest of us
+gave up our rifles also; and we were mightily pleased because the
+officer did not attempt to take our revolvers away from us. But in this
+our satisfaction was short-lived, for the Priest Captain quickly ordered
+the officer to relieve us of them, and of our cartridge-belts as well;
+nor was it until we had been thus entirely disarmed that he arose from
+his undignified position and resumed his seat upon the throne.
+
+While the disagreeable process of disarming us was going on I spoke to
+Fray Antonio of the curious possibilities suggested by the knowledge of
+fire-arms which the Priest Captain, alone among all the Aztlanecas, so
+obviously possessed; and he, in reply, bade me remember what Tizoc had
+told us of the use that Itzacoatl made of wax-matches in lighting the
+sacred fire. "Can it possibly be, then, that he is in communication with
+the outside world?" I exclaimed.
+
+As I uttered these words I glanced at Itzacoatl, and the expression on
+his face was that of one who listens intently, and who is greatly
+enraged by what he hears. At the same moment Rayburn cried: "That man
+understands Spanish. He is listening to you."
+
+Doubtless, some sort of an explanation would have followed this strange
+discovery, for that we had made it was very obvious, but at that moment
+a man--seemingly, from his dress, a priest of high rank--came into the
+hall hurriedly, and very earnestly delivered a communication to
+Itzacoatl in low, excited tones. That the substance of this
+communication was highly disagreeable to him was shown by his manner of
+receiving it; and for a moment he slightly hesitated, as though very
+grave consequences might attend upon the decision that he then made. But
+it was for a moment only that he stood in doubt. Then he called the
+barge-master to him, and gave some order in a low voice; and then,
+accompanied by the priest, went out rapidly from the hall.
+
+Evidently in obedience to the order that he had received, the
+barge-master bade us follow him, and so led us into the court-yard
+again. Young proposed, since we had only this one man to deal with, that
+we should make short work of him, and so get back our arms--which
+remained where he had placed them in a pile beside the throne. But
+Rayburn's more prudent counsel overcame this tempting proposition. As he
+pointed out, the promptness with which the curtains had been pulled back
+showed that attendants of some sort were close at hand; and, in addition
+to these, we knew that the guard of soldiers was just outside of the
+entrance to the hall. It was certain, therefore, that we could not
+regain our arms without immediately using them in very active fighting;
+and no matter how well we fought, under these conditions we must
+certainly be defeated in the end. All of which was so just and so
+reasonable that Young could not in anywise gainsay its propriety; but he
+was in a very ill humor at being restrained from the pleasure of having
+it out with them, as he grumblingly declared; and as we passed out into
+the court-yard he relieved his mind by swearing most vigorously.
+
+For my part, even the peril that we were in did not suffice to distract
+my mind from curious consideration of the strange state of affairs that
+existed among the folk dwelling in this hidden valley if our surmise in
+regard to the Priest Captain's knowledge of the outer matches, his
+acquaintance with fire-arms, and his knowledge of the Spanish tongue.
+The implication was unavoidable that this extraordinary man actually had
+a more or less complete knowledge of the powers and appliances of the
+nineteenth century, and that he was using his nineteenth century
+knowledge to maintain his supremacy over a people whose civilization was
+about on a par with that of European communities of a thousand years
+ago. From the stand-point of the ethnologist, a more interesting
+situation than the one time developed could not possibly be devised.
+What I most longed for was the establishment of such friendly relations
+with Itzacoatl that I could carry out a systematized series of
+scientific investigations among the Aztlanecas before the impending
+crash of discovery came; and my keenest regret at that moment was caused
+by the conviction that the incapacity of Itzacoatl to understand the
+value of scientific inquiry into such curious ethnologic facts would
+result in his mere vulgar killing of me, whereby a precious store of
+knowledge would be withheld from the world at large.
+
+As we came out into the court-yard we heard the sound of voices, which
+seemed to be raised in angry altercation, coming from the direction of
+the main entrance, with which there was also a slight clinking sound as
+of arms being got in readiness; and, much farther away, the sound
+seemingly coming from distant quarter of the city, the tapping of a
+drum. When we first had crossed the court-yard it had been entirely
+deserted; but now many priests and soldiers were standing in groups
+about it, and more were coming down the stair from the temple; and all
+of these men had a look of eager alertness, as though some decisive
+event were imminent in which they expected to have a part. But we had
+only a moment in which to observe all this, for we were hurried away
+towards the corner of the building that was most remote from the street,
+and here, before I well could understand what was being done with me, I
+was thrust so suddenly and so violently through a narrow door-way that I
+fell heavily upon the floor. Before I could regain my feet Young had
+tumbled down on top of me, and then the others tumbled on top of us
+both--they having been in the same rude fashion injected into the
+apartment; and while we thus were lying in a heap together--my own body,
+being undermost, having the breath wellnigh squeezed out of it--we heard
+the rattle of metal upon stone as the door-way was quickly closed with
+heavy bars.
+
+We struggled to our feet in wellnigh total darkness--for outside the
+bars a curtain had been dropped that shut off almost wholly the light of
+day--and I am confident that no one room ever contained two angrier
+people than Rayburn and Young were then; for their very strength and
+hardihood made them the more ragingly resent being thus tumbled about as
+though they were bales or boxes rather than men. Rayburn's language was
+not open to the charge of weakness; but the words in which Young gave
+vent to his feelings were so startlingly vigorous that even a Wyoming
+cow-boy would have been surprised by them; yet I must confess that at
+the moment--so greatly was my own anger aroused--I thought his
+observations exceedingly appropriate to the occasion that called them
+forth, and I even was disposed to envy him the command of a technical
+vocabulary that enabled him to express so adequately his righteous
+wrath. However, I was for once well pleased that Fray Antonio did not
+understand English.
+
+But our anger quickly was swallowed up in anxious grief as we
+discovered, when our eyes had become somewhat accustomed to the very
+faint light, that only we four were in the room together; and a great
+dread fell upon us because of the imminent peril to Pablo which this
+separation of him from the rest of us implied. Assuredly there was
+strong reason why he should be an especial object of Itzacoatl's fear
+and hatred. He and El Sabio together were the visible sign which told
+that the prophecy touching the Priest Captain's downfall was about to be
+fulfilled; and, more than this, Pablo's simple statement of the
+condition of affairs among the modern Mexicans--showing that the crisis
+in their fate that Chaltzantzin had foretold, and for which he had so
+well prepared, long since had come and gone--would be far more
+convincing to the masses of the Aztlanecas than would be any exhibition
+of these same facts that we could make to them; for we were aliens among
+them, while Pablo was of their own race and class. That we all were like
+to be done to death by this barbarous theocrat we did not for a moment
+doubt; but it was plain enough that every motive of self-interest must
+prompt him to put Pablo and the poor ass most summarily out of the way.
+And as the logic of these facts irresistibly presented itself in my mind
+a keen and heavy sorrow overcame me, for I could not shirk the
+conviction that, whoever might strike the blow that killed him, I myself
+was the cause of this poor boy's death. Fray Antonio could not see my
+face in that shadowy prison, yet his fine nature divined the pain that I
+suffered and the cause of it, and he sought to comfort me with his
+sympathy. He did not speak, but he came close beside me and tenderly
+laid his hand upon my shoulder; and his loving touch, telling of his
+sorrow for me and with me, did bring a little cheer into my heavy heart.
+
+Meanwhile the commotion outside increased greatly, and even through the
+thick folds of the curtain we could hear plainly the clanking of arms,
+and the heavy tread of men, and sharply given words of command. We
+pressed close to the bars and tried to push, the curtain aside that we
+might see out into the court-yard; but the bars were so near together
+that our hands would not pass between them, and we therefore could
+gather only from the sounds which we heard what was going on outside.
+But the sounds were unmistakable. There could be no doubt whatever that
+a vigorous assault upon the building was in progress, and those within
+it vigorously were defending it; and we knew that the cause of the
+fighting certainly must be ourselves. Already, it would seem, the
+prophecy of the Priest Captain's downfall was assuming a tangible
+reality; for this rising in arms against him could mean nothing less
+than that his high-handed refusal to permit us to be carried before the
+Council of the Twenty Lords had fairly brought matters to a crisis, and
+that the long-threatened revolution actually had been begun.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII.
+
+A RESCUE.
+
+
+That the two parties should be thus battling for possession of us gave
+us a gleam of hope for the saving of our lives. While we remained
+prisoners, in the ward of the Priest Captain, we knew that our death was
+inevitable; inasmuch as the witness which we bore against him, if
+suffered to be published, must of necessity bring his authority to an
+end. But should we pass into the ward of the Council, there was every
+reason why we should be cherished and protected; because, in their
+behalf, we would be witnesses to the justice of their rebellion against
+Itzacoatl's rule. Nor would this feeling of amity towards us be confined
+to the leaders of the revolt; for we had perceived the substantial
+nature of the reasons which Tizoc had given us in support of his
+assurance that the hope of deliverance from oppression which our coming
+brought would raise up around us a host of friends. Therefore we knew
+that upon the issue of the battling that we heard the sounds of so
+loudly, and yet that might as well have been a thousand miles away for
+all that we could see of it, our fate must depend.
+
+And knowing this, it was a hard trial of our nerves and tempers to be
+forced to remain there idle in the dark, without the chance to strike in
+our own behalf a single blow. Young strode backward and forward in such
+a fashion, and the mutterings beneath his breath were so like growls,
+that the likening of him to a wild beast in a cage, while trite, is
+strictly accurate. Rayburn, not less resolute, but more self-contained,
+pressed close against the bars and never stirred, save that now and then
+he cracked his thumbs and fingers together with such vigor that the
+sound was like a pistol-shot. And even I, who am not naturally of a
+blood-thirsty disposition, found the need of walking briskly about our
+prison in order to quiet a little my strong longing to be outside with a
+weapon in my hands wherewith I could crack some skulls open. Indeed,
+among us all, only Fray Antonio maintained an outward show of calm.
+
+Thus far, all the sounds which we had heard had come to us from the
+direction of the front of the house, whence we inferred that the fight
+was being waged, greatly to the disadvantage of the assailants, through
+the grating by which the entrance was closed. But suddenly there was an
+outcry of alarm close by us in the court-yard, and then the sound of
+hurrying feet there, and then a roar of shouting mingled with the fierce
+clash of arms--so that we knew that the assailants, either by beating in
+the grating or by scaling the roof, had got inside. They and the
+defenders were engaged, hand to hand, almost within arm's-length of us.
+We could hear loudly the yells with which every stroke was accompanied,
+and the clang of metal striking upon metal, and the dull, crushing sound
+of the blows which went home truly and carved through flesh and
+bone--and we could see no more of it all than if we were dreaming, and
+these sounds of savage warfare were but the imaginings of our brains!
+One man, being, as we supposed, pursued by another from the central part
+of the court-yard--where, as it seemed, the fight raged most hotly--made
+a stand just outside the curtain that overhung the bars whereby we were
+pent in; and we could hear him panting as he struck and parried there,
+and then the splitting of his flesh and the crash of his bones as a
+tremendous blow overcame his guard, and the soft, deep groan that he
+gave as his life left him. His body fell against the curtain and dragged
+it a little; and presently, as I stood there by the bars, I found that
+my feet were in a pool of blood.
+
+It was only a moment or two after this that the sounds of conflict very
+sensibly diminished, and we heard a rush made, and the confused tread of
+feet upon the stairs that led upward to the temple, and then came so
+jubilant a shouting that we knew that to one side or the other had come
+victory.
+
+"If th' Priest Captain's outfit's on top," Young said, grimly, "I guess
+we've about got t' th' end of a division; an' there's not much chance of
+our changin' engines an' keepin' on with th' run." To which figurative
+suggestion Rayburn gave an immediate grunt of assent.
+
+But at that very instant there was a lull in the tumult outside, and we
+heard a voice that I recognized as Tizoc's loudly calling to us; and to
+his hail, that carried such joyful meaning with it, I joyfully and
+loudly answered. To Rayburn and Young, of course, the call was
+unintelligible, nor did they recognize the voice of him who called; and
+they therefore were disposed to think, when I fell to shouting, that my
+brain was addled. However, they changed their views a minute or two
+later--the dead body resting against the curtain having been thrown
+aside, and the curtain itself torn down--when they saw Tizoc's friendly
+face outside the bars, and then saw the bars rapidly removed.
+
+"Colonel," said Young, very seriously, as we stepped forth thankfully
+once more into the sunshine, "you may not know what a brick is, but you
+are one. Shake!" and very much to Tizoc's astonishment, though he
+perceived that the act was meant to express great friendliness, Young
+most vigorously shook his hand. Under more favorable circumstances
+Tizoc, no doubt, would have asked for an explanation of this curious
+ceremony, but just then his whole mind was given to making good his
+retreat and so securing us against recapture. There was not a moment to
+lose, he said; throughout the city the priests everywhere were rallying
+forces to Itzacoatl's support, and at any instant we might be attacked.
+As he spoke he drew us away with him towards the street, where the main
+body of his men still remained--for only a small part of them had joined
+in scaling the roof, and so taking the enemy by surprise in the rear.
+
+"But what of Pablo, our young companion?" I asked, stopping short as I
+spoke.
+
+"My men are looking for him; they will find him in a moment; he surely
+is safe; he may be already outside. Come."
+
+The possibility that Pablo truly might be outside of the building was
+the only argument that could have induced us to leave it without him;
+and that possibility was so reasonable a one that we made no more delay.
+Indeed, we fully realized the necessity for promptness. From all parts
+of the city came a humming, angry sound, which assured us that
+everywhere the people were aroused; and Tizoc bade us arm ourselves with
+what weapons we could use most effectively among those which were
+scattered about the pavement of the court-yard, as we surely would have
+need of weapons soon. A sword was the only instrument of warfare of
+which I had knowledge--which knowledge was acquired during my German
+student days--and I took, therefore, one of the heavy maccuahuitls; and
+the others also, excepting Fray Antonio, similarly armed themselves,
+each with a sword that they found lying beside the dead hand that never
+would wield it more. It was as we obeyed Tizoc's order that we saw how
+fierce and how bloody the fight had been; for the court-yard was red
+with blood, like a slaughter-house, and over the stones everywhere dead
+bodies were lying, all cut and gashed with ghastly wounds. Excepting a
+few of Tizoc's men, who had bound up their hurts, and who staggered
+along with us, not a wounded man remained alive; whence we inferred that
+the fight had been waged on strictly barbarous principles, and that no
+quarter had been given. And of this we had proof; for as we passed
+through the guard-room we found there a moaning wretch, belonging to the
+Priest Captain's party, in whose chest was a great hole made by a
+spear-thrust--and at a sign from Tizoc one of our men stepped aside, and
+with a blow of his heavy sword coolly mashed in the wounded man's skull,
+and so finished him.
+
+The metal grating that closed the entrance had been raised by Tizoc's
+people from the inside, and we passed out beneath it to where the main
+body of his men was drawn up in readiness to march. But of Pablo and El
+Sabio there was no sign. Tizoc was not less distressed by the loss of
+the lad than we were, for he had counted upon the moral effect which the
+exhibition of Pablo and El Sabio most certainly would produce to aid
+powerfully in fomenting the spirit of revolt. When, therefore, we
+refused to go forward until further search had been made, he did not
+oppose us; but he told us plainly that further looking for him in that
+place was useless, for already every room in the building had been
+examined without the finding of a trace of him. There could be no doubt,
+he said, that when we had been made prisoners Pablo, and El Sabio with
+him, had been taken up the stair to the temple for greater security; in
+which place, if they were not both by this time dead, they still
+remained. Whereupon Young was for making an attack upon the temple
+instantly, and in this project Rayburn and I warmly seconded him; and
+even Fray Antonio said that this was a case in which he felt justified
+in using carnal weapons, since the fighting would be to rescue from
+among infidels a Christian soul.
+
+But Tizoc hurriedly explained to us the hopelessness, at that time, of
+such an assault. The success that had attended his bold rescue of us had
+been due to the suddenness of it; for the majority of the people in the
+city, including the large force of soldiery there, assuredly was on the
+Priest Captain's side. It was outside the city that the strength of the
+revolution must be gathered; and his orders were, when his rescue of us
+should be accomplished, to carry us safely out beyond the walls with all
+possible speed. Such of the Council of the Twenty Lords as had decided
+to take the chances of revolt--being all the members of that body save
+the five priests that had belonged to it--already had gone down to the
+water-side, together with the small force that they had gathered, that
+they might seize the water-gate and hold it until we should join them.
+Even now it was certain that in going down through the city we should
+have to fight our way, and each moment that we delayed our retreat
+increased our danger. Capturing the temple now was a sheer
+impossibility. Our only hope of saving Pablo's life lay in our getting
+away promptly, and so beginning the preparations that would lead to
+ultimate victory.
+
+All the while that Tizoc spoke he was edging us away towards the outer
+face of the terrace, where steps led downward; and when the men who had
+been searching the building once more for Pablo returned without him, he
+resolutely gave the order to march. To the arguments that he had
+advanced we were compelled to yield; but our hearts were heavy with
+sorrow for the boy whom we were leaving behind us, and little hope was
+in our breasts that we ever again should see him alive.
+
+The truth of Tizoc's words about the great danger that we ourselves were
+in became apparent as we crossed the terrace next below that on which
+our march began. Where the street passed through the rampart by a narrow
+portal, and so by a flight of stone steps descended to the next level,
+soldiers were clustered together with the evident intention of disputing
+the way with us. Their number was so much less than ours that we made
+short work of them; killing a few, and driving the remainder down the
+steps before us. But those who escaped ran on ahead of us to where the
+next rampart was, and there joined themselves to a much larger body that
+lay in wait for us. Here our work was less easy; for the force that
+confronted us was nearly our equal, and some resolute fighting was
+required before we could drive it before us and so pass on. Some of our
+men were killed there, and more of the enemy; and I got a trifling hurt
+in my arm from the point of a javelin, that, luckily, did little more
+than graze the skin. I do not think that I killed anybody there, but I
+remember very plainly the look of pain and of anger on the face of that
+fellow who poked his javelin at me when I gashed his arm, and broke the
+bone of it, with a blow from my sword. I was glad, at the moment, that I
+had succeeded in giving him a worse hurt than he had given me; and then
+the absurdity occurred to me of my thus fighting with a total stranger,
+against whom I had no personal ill-will; and I could not but feel sorrow
+for him as I thought of the long time that he must suffer severe pain
+and great inconvenience because I had chanced to strike him that blow.
+However, from the way in which they went cutting and slashing about
+them, it was evident that neither Rayburn nor Young were troubled with
+any compunctions of this nature. They were only too glad, apparently, to
+get a chance to whack away at any of the Priest Captain's
+representatives; and they made such use of their opportunity that the
+Aztlanecas fighting with us cried out in admiration of their prowess and
+their strength. Fray Antonio was more sorely tried than any of us during
+this passage, for I knew that his flesh greatly longed to take part in
+the fighting, and that only the strong spirit which was within him
+subdued the flesh and so held his hands.
+
+With a final rush we succeeded in forcing the enemy through the narrow
+opening in the rampart, and so down the steps beyond; but as we pursued
+them across the next terrace, keeping close at their heels so that they
+might not have time to form again, many of our wounded fell out from the
+ranks and dropped by the way--and we had left behind us a dozen or more
+of our dead on the ground where the fight had been.
+
+Our tactics of rapid pursuit of the force that we had defeated served us
+well at the next rampart; for the men whom we pursued and we ourselves
+came to it almost in one body, and thus threw into such confusion the
+fresh force that was waiting for us that, without any long fighting
+about it, we drove right through them and went on downward; and in the
+same dashing fashion we carried the rampart beyond. However, when those
+men whom we had pushed aside from our path so easily got over their
+surprise at being so lightly handled, they formed in our rear and came
+hurrying after us; the result of which was that as we approached the
+last of the ramparts that we had to pass through, where was gathered the
+largest body of men that we had yet encountered, we found ourselves
+fairly wedged in between two bodies of the enemy and outnumbered four to
+one. Here, too, the passage through the rampart had been closed by the
+metal bars that were in readiness for that purpose. Setting these in
+place was no real barrier to our passage, for, being intended to close
+the portal against assailants from below, the fastenings which held them
+were on the side nearest to us. But to remove them it was necessary that
+we should fight our way through the crowd--with no possibility of
+driving the enemy before us, as we had done upon the upper terraces,
+since here the way was closed. What we did was literally to cut a path
+through the throng; and over the men who fell dead or wounded beneath
+our blows we made our advance. There was a curious creeping, uneasy
+sensation in the region of my stomach as I trod thus on the bodies of
+wounded men who were not dead yet, and felt them moving, and heard their
+groaning; and I was conscious of a feeling of relief when a body that I
+trod upon did not squirm beneath my foot, and so by its stillness
+assured me that I was standing only on dead flesh that had no feeling in
+it.
+
+Very slowly did we go forward, for while the living barrier that we had
+to deal with was not at the outset more than twenty feet, or
+thereabouts, in thickness, hacking it down took us a tediously long
+time. While still we faced a dozen or more very desperate fighters, who
+held us off most resolutely from the metal bars which closed the way, a
+pang of dread and sorrow went through me as I perceived that Fray
+Antonio, who a moment before had been close beside me, had disappeared.
+That he might the better restrain his longing to take part in the
+fighting he had remained in the centre of our men; and it was hard to
+understand how, in that position, harm could have come to him, for
+missiles had no share in the work that was going forward, which was a
+fiery struggle hand to hand.
+
+As I looked for him in the throng--so far as I could do this and at the
+same time keep up my guard against the man whom at that moment I was
+fighting with--I saw some signs of uneasy movement among the enemy in
+advance of us, and several of them evidently made an effort to reach
+down as though to get at something that was on the ground; which effort
+was wholly futile, for they were wedged so tightly together by our
+pressure upon them that reaching downward was impossible. By a lucky
+blow, I just then finished the man with whom I was contending, and so
+had a moment's breathing spell; and at that instant I saw one of the
+enemy, whose back was ranged against the bars, rise up in the air as
+though a strong spring had been loosed beneath him, and then fall
+sidewise upon the heads and shoulders of his fellows. And then, in the
+place thus made vacant, the cowled head of Fray Antonio instantly
+appeared--whereby I guessed, what afterwards I knew certainly, that he
+had crawled along the ground through the press until he reached the
+place that he aimed at, and then had risen up beneath one of the enemy
+with such sudden violence that he fairly had sent the man spinning
+upward into the air. What his purpose was I saw in a moment, for no
+sooner did he stand upright than he had his hands upon the metal bars,
+and then I heard the clinking together of stone and metal as he lifted
+them bodily away.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV.
+
+THE AFFAIR AT THE WATER-GATE
+
+
+Rayburn gave a great roar of gladness as the clinking sound made him
+turn and he saw what was going forward; and Young and I joined him in
+lusty Anglo-Saxon cheering, while our allies, in the savage fashion
+natural to them, vented their joy in shrill yells. In the midst of which
+cheering and yelling we pushed forward so hotly that the enemy,
+disconcerted by this sudden shifting of fortune in our favor, and the
+men directly in front of us being most seriously incommoded by their
+comrade lying sprawled out and kicking upon their heads and shoulders,
+seemed suddenly to lose heart so completely that we had no difficulty
+in cutting them down. Even had they not been too closely wedged in to
+turn upon Fray Antonio, our strong dashing upon them would have
+compelled them to leave him unharmed in order to defend themselves; and
+so it was that, by the time we had cut a path to the portal, the monk
+had released the whole tier of bars from their fastenings, and the way
+was free.
+
+As we sprang down the steps--with Fray Antonio, once more in the guise
+of a non-combatant, safe in the midst of our company--we heard a great
+outcry from below, and saw a considerable body of men marching up
+towards us steadily from the water-side; but the alarm that sight of
+them gave us was only momentary, for their shouts, and the shouts of our
+men in answer, showed us that these were friends come to our support.
+However we had no great need of them, for those of the enemy whom we
+left alive behind us seemed suddenly to have grown sick of fighting, and
+made no attempt to follow after us down the stairs. Yet the coming of
+this supporting force, to be just in the matter, no doubt was the saving
+of us; for more than half of the men who had been with us when we
+started on our march down through the city had been slain by the way,
+and nearly all in our company were more or less disabled by wounds.
+Tizoc and Young and Rayburn had come through it all without as much as a
+scratch, and because of their extraordinary strength these three were
+almost as fresh as when the fighting began; but the rest of us were
+sorely weary, and our breathing was so heavy and so tremulous that each
+breath was like a long-drawn sob. Truly, then, we were glad to fall in
+in advance of the supporting column and so make our way, with a strong
+rear-guard for our protection, across the bit of level land that lay
+between us and the lake.
+
+At the water-side boats were in readiness for us, and here we found also
+the members of the Council who had ordered, and who were the recognized
+leaders of, the revolt. There was still more fighting ahead of us, for
+the necessity of sending back the relief party had prevented the seizing
+of the water-gate; and this was a matter that had to be attended to
+quickly, for we could see bodies of men coming down several of the
+streets in pursuit of us, and unless we escaped outside the wall before
+they overtook us there was a strong and dismal probability that our
+whole plan would fail. Therefore, we tumbled aboard the boats with all
+possible rapidity, and while the pursuing parties still were far in our
+rear we shoved off from the shore.
+
+Two minutes' quick rowing sufficed to carry our flotilla of boats across
+the basin, and so brought us to the long pier that extended landward
+from beside the water-gate, and from which an open stair-way ascended to
+the top of the wall. On the pier there was no one at all to oppose our
+landing; and the force on the wall was not likely to be a large one, for
+the outbreak had come so suddenly that there had been no time to
+increase the small detail maintained in this position in times of peace.
+Only a few of our men, therefore--thirty or forty, perhaps--were ordered
+out of the boats to the attack, of which the leader was Tizoc, and with
+which Rayburn and Young went as volunteers. I also would have joined the
+party; but Rayburn, knowing that I was slightly wounded, begged me to
+stay where I was; and Young, as he ran up the stairs, called back to me:
+"You just see that they keep steam up, Professor. We'll attend t' takin'
+off th' brakes."
+
+What went on above us, on top of the wall, we could not see; but the
+work done there was done quickly. There was a little shouting, a sound
+of arms clashing, and then four or five men--as though this were the
+easiest way of getting rid of them--were thrown over the parapet, and
+fell near us in the water. To these short shrift was given. As they came
+to the surface, our fellows instantly finished them with a spear-thrust
+or two. Then we heard the sound of a windlass creaking, and the clanking
+of chains; and as we looked through the opening in the wall we saw the
+grating that closed its farther end rise slowly until the way before us
+was free. Two of our boats already were in the passage, so that no time
+might be lost; and as these passed out into the lake, the others
+followed after them rapidly. One boat remained to bring off the
+attacking party, and we wondered a little because its coming was a good
+while delayed. But we wondered still more when it joined us at last, and
+we found that Tizoc and Young and Rayburn were not in it; indeed, at
+that moment I saw the three of them standing together on top of the
+wall. In answer to the shout that I gave, Rayburn leaned over the wall
+and motioned to me to keep silence; and so I knew that they had not been
+left behind through treachery, but were staying there because they had
+some plan against the enemy that they thus could execute. And for
+knowledge of what their plan was we did not have to wait long.
+
+As we lay on our oars, off the outer end of the water-gate, we could see
+through it into the basin that lay before the city, and in a very few
+minutes the pursuing boats of the enemy came into view. As they neared
+us, we saw standing in the bow of the leading boat the same officer who
+had commanded the guard that had brought us as prisoners before the
+Priest Captain; the man of whom I have spoken, for what his real title
+was I do not know, as the barge-master.
+
+He was calling to his men savagely to row faster; for our boats were so
+scattered that he only could see the one in which we happened to be, and
+he doubtless imagined that the others had gone forward, and that this
+one waited to carry off some of our men who yet remained on the wall. He
+evidently hoped to be able to cut us off from the rest of our party, and
+his eagerness had so communicated itself to his oarsmen that his boat
+led the others by nearly a hundred yards. So far as this one boat was
+concerned, we felt no alarm, for the moment that it came out through the
+wall our whole force was ready to dash upon it; yet we wondered why
+Tizoc permitted even a single boat to come out to the attack, when, by
+dropping the grating, they all could be penned in so effectually as to
+give us the advantage of a long start.
+
+As the boat neared the water-gate the barge-master went back from his
+place in the bow to the middle part of it, and there crouched down; and
+some soldiers who were standing crouched down also; and almost as the
+bow entered the low, narrow passage the oars were unshipped and taken
+aboard. So cleverly was the unshipping of the oars managed, and so good
+was the steering, that the boat shot into the passage under full speed,
+and so came nearly through it before losing head-way. And we who were
+nearest to it got our arms in readiness--for we were convinced that in
+another minute the barge-master would lay us aboard. But this was not
+destined to be, nor were the men in that boat destined ever to do any
+more fighting in this world.
+
+All this while Rayburn had stood close by the parapet, bending over it
+and intently watching the outside of the water-gate; above which the
+heavy metal grating had been hauled up, in the metal grooves that it ran
+in, almost to the top of the wall. At the moment that the bow of the
+boat showed outside the opening he raised his hand, as though signalling
+to Young and Tizoc behind him; and in that same instant we heard the
+shrieking of the windlass and the quick clanking of the unwinding
+chains, and saw the metal grating rushing down the face of the wall.
+With all the force generated by the fall from so great height of so
+ponderous a body, the grating came crashing into the boat just
+amidships, fairly dividing its heavy timbers and forcing the fragments
+of it, together with all the men that it carried, down into the water's
+depths. But the barge-master died by a quicker death than drowning. He
+still was crouched in the middle of the boat, and the sharp angle of the
+lower bar of the grating struck him just on the nape of his neck so
+keenly that his head was cut off and seemed of itself to spring forward
+and away from him; while the broad flat bar, coming down upon his bowed
+shoulders, crushed his body into a mere quivering mass of flesh.
+
+A great yell of delight went up from our boats as this brilliant stroke
+so brilliantly was delivered; and an answering cry of triumph--that was
+one-third a yell and two-thirds a cheer--came back from Tizoc and the
+others on top of the wall. However, they had no time to waste in
+shouting over their success, for the remaining boats of the enemy had
+come by this time to the pier inside the wall, and it seemed highly
+probable that in a minute or two more our three men would be prisoners.
+But for all their danger they coolly finished the work that they had in
+hand. As they explained to me afterwards, Rayburn stood at the head of
+the stair to hold the enemy in check should they come before the work
+was finished--and very strong as well as very brave men must the man
+have been who would have ventured to attack him as he occupied that
+position of overpowering advantage--while the other two cast off from
+the windlass the chains by which the water-gate was operated, and
+dropped them over the wall into the lake; and as the gate itself was
+jammed and wedged fast by the fragments of the boat, this throwing down
+of the chains made the raising of it a serious undertaking that well
+might require a day or more to accomplish.
+
+As the chains fell with a splash, and we comprehended the thoroughness
+of the work that these three were doing, our people burst forth into
+yells again; and a perfect roar went up from them when, the gate being
+closed and the apparatus for raising it being entirely disabled, Rayburn
+sprang from the outer edge of the parapet into the lake, and Tizoc and
+Young instantly followed him. In truth, a more gallant feat of arms had
+not been essayed, nor carried to a more triumphant conclusion, since the
+Roman gate was held by Horatius; and in my admiration of it I shouted
+until the muscles of my throat were strained and aching. Our boat
+already was near the wall--having pulled in that the soldiers aboard of
+it might spear such of the enemy as came up to the surface alive--and we
+had the three out of the water and safe among us in very short order;
+and then we pulled away towards the other boats with all possible
+speed--for the wall now was manned by the enemy, and they were beginning
+to make things unpleasantly hot for us with the heavy stones which they
+heaved over the parapet, that our boat might be sunk by them, and by a
+rapid discharge of darts. Luckily, none of the stones struck us, and
+because of the rapid way that we were making, only two of our men were
+struck with the darts. So, on the whole, we came out of this encounter
+very well; for these two men killed in our boat were all that we lost,
+while of the enemy at least forty were drowned or speared. However, we
+owed our light escape mainly to the fact that the enemy, having armed
+hurriedly, and expecting only to fight with us at close quarters, had
+with them neither bows nor slings--but for which fortunate fact it
+scarcely is possible that a single man in our boat would have come off
+alive.
+
+[Illustration: THE LEAP FROM ABOVE THE WATER-GATE]
+
+Dripping wet though they were, I fairly hugged Rayburn and Young when
+they were safe aboard with us, as did also Fray Antonio, whose daring
+spirit was mightily aroused by witnessing their splendid bravery. And in
+giving them hearty words of praise for what they had done--which yet
+fell far short of their deserts--I naturally likened them to the Roman
+hero. Indeed, I may say that the parallel that I there drew was an apt
+one, and in some of its turns was not devoid of grace.
+
+"I can't say, Professor," Young answered, when I had finished, "that I
+ever heard o' th' party you refer to, but if this Horace--what did you
+say his last name was?--pinched his fingers in th' drawbridge chains as
+damnably as I pinched mine in th' chains of that infernal grating, I'll
+bet a hat he was sorry that he hadn't run away!" And I truly believe
+that Young thought more about his pinched fingers than he did about the
+resolute bravery that he had shown in finishing his work upon the wall
+in the very face of the advancing enemy.
+
+Being once out of range of the darts, we pulled towards the other boats
+leisurely; for now we were entirely safe against pursuit, and were free
+to go upon the lake in whatsoever direction we pleased. That some
+positive line of action had been determined upon was evident, for the
+flotilla already was in motion as we came up in the rear of it--the boat
+containing the members of the Council leading--and the order was passed
+back to us that we should follow with the rest. From the direction in
+which we were heading, Tizoc inferred that we were bound for the only
+other considerable town in the valley, that which had grown up around
+the shafts leading to the great mine whence the Aztlanecas drew their
+supply of gold. There was a very grave look upon his face as he told us
+of our probable destination; and presently added that the population of
+this town--save the few freemen who were in charge of the workings, and
+the large guard of soldiers that always was maintained there--was made
+up wholly of Tlahuicos who had been selected from their fellows to be
+miners because of their exceptional hardiness and strength.
+
+It was among these men, he went on to tell us speaking in a low, guarded
+voice, that the most dangerous of the revolts of the Tlahuicos
+invariably had their origin; for the miners were fierce, half-savage
+creatures, naturally turbulent and rebellious, and were stirred
+constantly to resentful anger because of the life of crushing toil that
+they were condemned to lead. So dangerous were they that the only
+effective means of keeping them in subjection was to hold the major part
+of them continually prisoners underground in the mine, with a guard
+stationed at the mouth of each shaft under orders to kill instantly any
+man who attempted to come forth from the mine without authority. In
+order that their labor, a thing of positive value, might not be lost
+through their dying of being thus imprisoned in the bowels of the earth,
+they were divided into ten great companies, each one of which, in
+regular order, was employed in the surface work under the constant
+supervision of a strong guard. Yet even these stern measures were not
+wholly effective in preventing mutiny. Many times great revolts had
+broken out here that had set all the valley in an uproar, and that had
+been crushed only after pitched battles had been fought between the
+rebels and the entire military force of the state. The town was a
+veritable volcano, Tizoc declared; and because of the dread of it that
+universally obtained, by reason of the frequent outbursts there of
+lawless violence, it had received the name of Huitzilan: the Town of
+War.
+
+And there could be no doubt, he added--while the tones of his voice and
+the look upon his face showed how great he believed to be the risk
+involved in this line of policy--that in now directing our course
+towards the mining town the deliberate purpose of the Council was to
+incite these semi-savage, wholly desperate miners to join forces with us
+in our rising against the Priest Captain's power.
+
+
+
+
+XXV.
+
+THE GOLD-MINERS OF HUITZILAN.
+
+
+As we rounded a mountain spur that extended a long way out into the
+lake, a deep bay opened to us; which bay ran close in to the cliffs
+whereby the valley was surrounded, and was at no great distance from the
+Barred Pass, through which we had made our entry. At the foot of the
+bay, built partly upon the level land near the water-side, and partly
+upon the steep ascent beyond, was the town of Huitzilan--whereof the
+most curious feature that at first was noticeable was a tall chimney,
+whence thick black smoke was pouring forth, that rose above a stone
+building of great solidity and of a very considerable size.
+
+On archaeological grounds, the sight of this chimney greatly astonished
+me; and Rayburn, who was a very well-read man in all matters connected
+with his profession, was greatly astonished by it also; for the chimney
+obviously was a part of extensive reduction-works, and we both knew that
+such complete appliances for the smelting of metal, as seemed from this
+sign to exist here, were supposed to be the product of a high state of
+civilization in comparatively modern times. As for Young, he declared
+that the chimney gave him a regular jolt of homesickness; for, excepting
+that it was built of stone instead of brick, it might have been, for the
+look of it, transplanted hither directly from the region of the Back
+Bay. "I s'pose we'll be hearin' th' noon whistle next," he said,
+mournfully; and presently he added: "Do you know, Professor, I b'lieve
+I'm beginnin' t' see daylight in all this tall talk you say th' Colonel
+has been givin' us about th' 'rebellions,' as he calls 'em, that go on
+here. He don't mean t' close our eyes up, th' Colonel don't, for he's a
+first-class gentleman; but, bein' born an' bred a heathen, he don't know
+any better. What he's tryin' t' tell us about, an' can't, because he
+don't know th' English for it, is _strikes_. That's what's th' matter.
+Miners are bound t' go on strikes. It's their nature, an' they can't
+help it. That chimbly gives th' whole thing away. You just tell th'
+Colonel that we've got down t' th' hard-pan an' really know what he's
+been drivin' at. An' t' think of there bein' strikes in Mexico! I didn't
+b'lieve that a Greaser had backbone enough, or ambition enough, t'
+strike at anything!"
+
+However, as I had no great amount of faith in Young's theory, I did not
+attempt to translate to Tizoc what he had said to me; nor was there any
+opportunity for further talk at that time. Already the foremost boats of
+the flotilla had made a landing at a well-built pier that extended from
+the shore into deep water; and a minute or two later our boat also
+pulled in to the pier, and we disembarked. The general view of the town
+that I then had showed me that it was closely built over an area rather
+more than half a mile square; that the houses for the most part were
+mere hovels, of which the largest could not contain more than two small
+rooms; and that the few houses of a better sort were within the strong
+stone wall by which the reduction-works also were enclosed. At the pier
+where we landed a boat was in process of lading with bars of gold for
+transport to the Treasure-house in the city; and I thought that I never
+had seen anywhere more savage-looking fellows than the almost naked
+laborers by whom the work of lading was carried on. Physically these men
+were magnificent creatures--tall and well-shaped and vigorous, and the
+ease with which they handled the great bars of gold showed how enormous
+must be their strength. But so full of venomous hate were the sullen
+looks which they cast upon us, and so savage was the effect of their
+coarse, dishevelled hair falling down over and partly veiling their
+great glittering eyes, whence these angry glances were shot forth at us
+like poisoned darts, that I was thankful to see that, all told, there
+were not more than a dozen of them, and that three times as many heavily
+armed soldiers served as their guard. And looking at these creatures,
+who were truly less like men than dangerous wild beasts, I could not
+wonder at the grave concern which Tizoc had manifested at thought of the
+risk which we ran in taking them for allies. "It's as easy t' start
+'em," Young said, when he came to an understanding of the situation, "as
+'tis t' start a freight-train down a three per cent. grade. But what I
+want to know is, when we want 'em t' stop, how in th' h--ll are we ever
+goin' t' set th' brakes?"
+
+[Illustration: THE TLAHUICOS AND THEIR GUARDS]
+
+Yet, dangerous to ourselves though the use of it must be, our hopes of
+success rested mainly upon our ability to control and to employ
+effectively this savage material. Fortunately, it was not the whole of
+our reliance; and it was our intention to leaven this dangerous lump
+with the very considerable number of trained and trustworthy soldiers
+that we had available as the substantial nucleus of our fighting force,
+and also with the larger body of both slaves and freemen--not regularly
+drilled soldiers, to be sure, yet many of them trained in the ways of
+war--that we counted upon to join us from among the people at large.
+
+This outline of the plan of action that the Council had determined upon
+was exhibited to us by Tizoc during our passage down the lake; and I was
+glad to find that Rayburn--for whose judgment I had much respect in
+such matters--was disposed to think well of it.
+
+"If I expected to stay here, Professor, after the row was over," he
+said, "I mightn't be quite as well satisfied with this plan of theirs
+for running things. The war part of the programme is all right. They
+won't have any difficulty in getting their Tlahuicos to fight anything
+in the way of an army that the Priest Captain shows up with. Fighting is
+just what will please them more than anything else. Where the trouble is
+going to come in is when the fighting is over and they go in for
+reconstruction. It's one thing to make fighters out of this sort of
+stuff, but it's quite another thing to make respectable citizens out of
+it. That's where the hitch will be. But as we don't intend to settle
+down in this valley--unless we find that there's no way out of it--we
+needn't bother about that part of the performance at all. That's their
+funeral, not ours. So, for my part, the sooner they get their army in
+shape, and get the fighting part settled, the better I'll be satisfied."
+
+To do the members of the Council justice, they seemed to be even more
+eager than Rayburn was to forward the work that they had in hand. From
+the pier they went directly to the enclosure in the centre of the town,
+within which was the building ordinarily occupied by the commandant of
+the post and by the officials of the civil government; and in this
+place, Tizoc informed us, they intended immediately to organize the new
+government, and then to proceed with all possible despatch to make
+arrangements for placing an army in the field.
+
+In Tizoc's company, but more leisurely, we also went on to the
+Citadel--as we found the enclosure about the smelting-works was
+called--where comfortable quarters had been provided for us in the same
+building wherein the Council was housed. Here we waited, in somewhat
+strained idleness, while the Council carried on, in a chamber not far
+removed from us, its exciting work of destroying a government that had
+endured for more than a thousand years; and we were mightily surprised,
+knowing how prodigious was the change that then was being wrought in
+ancient institutions, by observing how quietly it all went on. The
+murmur of talk that came to us, unchecked by any intervening doors, had
+no sound of excitement or of anger or of violent emotion of any sort;
+and I could not but hold in admiration the calm, self-contained natures
+of these men who thus equably and rationally could deal with such vastly
+weighty affairs.
+
+While this great matter--which could end only in wild commotion and
+fierce battling--went forward in this quiet way, Tizoc opened to us
+much that was of curious interest touching the near-by gold-mine and
+they who mined the gold. Of the existence of the mine, he said, the
+Aztlanecas had remained ignorant for many generations after their coming
+into the valley; and for many more generations but little gold had been
+taken from it, because the metal was of no value to his people save for
+the making of ornaments. But when the process had been discovered by
+which this metal could be hardened, and so made serviceable for all
+manner of useful purposes--and this the more because, by the
+manufacture that then ensued of tools wherewith the rock could be easily
+worked, mining in a large way became possible--the development of the
+mine upon a great scale had been begun, and had been continued upon a
+constantly increasing scale from that time onward. All the earth beneath
+where we then were, he said, was honey-combed with passages which
+followed the several veins; and of these there seemed to be no end at
+all, for ever as each vein was exhausted another not less rich was
+found--and thus it seemed as though all the substructure of that great
+mountain range were one huge mass of gold.
+
+What the measures of weight were with which he estimated the annual
+output of the mine, I could not clearly understand, but the matter was
+made approximately plain to us by his statement that the daily product
+of the mine never was less than one of the great bars of gold that we
+had seen upon the pier in process of carriage to the Treasure-house; and
+that sometimes, when veins of extraordinary richness were encountered,
+even so much as four of these bars had been smelted from the ore that
+the mine yielded in a single day.
+
+"Those bars don't weigh an ounce less than two hundred pounds apiece,"
+Rayburn said, when I had translated to him what Tizoc had told me. "That
+makes the output of the mine not less than three tons a month, and, in a
+rough way, a ton of gold is worth just about half a million of dollars.
+If the Colonel isn't mixed in his figures, and if you've translated him
+straight, Professor, these fellows are taking out somewheres in the
+neighborhood of twenty millions a year."
+
+Young gave a long whistle. "Great Scott!" he exclaimed, "that just is an
+all-fired big pile of money t' be wasted on a lot of barelegged heathen
+critters like these, who don't know th' Ten Commandments by sight, an'
+who've never even heard of a cocktail! D' you know what I'm goin' t' do,
+Rayburn, when I realize on this investment? I'm goin' t' buy th' Old
+Colony Railroad, just for th' sake of bein' able t' bounce th'
+Superintendent. He bounced me after that freight smash-up--and it wasn't
+my fault that th' operator got mixed an' gave me th' wrong orders--and
+I'll give him a taste o' th' same kind. Won't it just paralyze him when
+he gets his orders t' quit, signed 'Seth Young, President,' an' finds
+out it's th' same old Seth Young who used t' run Thirty-two on th' Fall
+River division?"
+
+"Hadn't you better let him down easy by telegraphing him right now to
+begin to look out for a new place?" Rayburn asked. "We'll wait for you
+here, while you step over to the Western Union office"--which cool
+comment upon Young's enthusiastic discounting of a bright future brought
+the gloomy present so clearly before his mind that his castle-building
+ended suddenly, and he lapsed into silence.
+
+But great though our wonder was at the prodigious quantity of precious
+metal that this mine yielded in each year, and amazed though we were by
+thought of the vast store of treasure that the valley now must hold, I,
+for my part, felt a far deeper interest in what Tizoc went on to tell
+us concerning the men by whose toil the treasure had been accumulated.
+And, truly, so bitter and so dreary was the life of the Tlahuicos who
+were forced to labor here unceasingly, and through so long a period had
+they been thus cruelly dealt with, that it seemed to me there must rest
+upon all the Valley of Aztlan a heavy curse that only some signal act of
+expiation could remove. And the coincidence struck me as most curious
+that here among the Aztecs, wrought by themselves upon the men of their
+own race, should be found identically the same cruelties which the
+Spaniards practised upon the Indians whom they enslaved as miners in New
+Mexico: whereof came that fierce outburst of revolt two hundred years
+ago, when the Pueblos ravaged with sword and flame the whole valley of
+the Rio Grande from Taos to the Pass of the North.
+
+There was small ground for wonder that the Tlahuicos, thus crushed by
+over-heavy labor, and dealt with as though they were not men, but fierce
+and dangerous brutes, should cherish at all times in their breasts a
+sullen fire of mutiny; nor that on every occasion at all favorable to
+their purposes there should spring forth from the glowing embers of
+their hatred a vivid and consuming flame. Only by the strength and the
+vigilance of the guard that constantly was maintained over them was
+their tendency to rebellion held in check; and even the guards could not
+prevent frequent outbreaks--which ended only in the cruel slaughter of
+all concerned in them--so passionately eager was the longing of these
+desperate creatures for revenge.
+
+Only once, a vastly long while past, Tizoc said, had success attended an
+effort on the part of the Tlahuicos to release themselves from their
+cruel slavery, and that they then eluded the vigilance of their masters
+was due to their employment of strategy against force. The whole matter,
+he continued, was now but a half-remembered tradition, yet the main
+details of it were clear. In that far-back time a vein of extraordinary
+richness had been followed for a very long distance in the direction of
+the Barred Pass; and, as the event proved, the gallery was carried
+beyond the bars, passing far beneath them, and so went onward, steadily
+rising, until an outlet was had into the canon. That the secret of this
+outlet might be kept among the men who had opened it, these slew the
+guard that watched over them and thrust his body out into the canon,
+thus most effectually placing it beyond the reach of the search that
+would be made for it; and the opening that they had made they closed
+carefully, and continued a little way onward into the rock the gallery
+in which they were working: so that the superintendent of the mine might
+see clearly (what, indeed, was the truth) that the vein of ore had been
+followed to its end.
+
+Tizoc knew not how long a time passed before the Tlahuicos made use of
+the way of escape thus opened to them; but their flight could not have
+been taken hastily, because it included a very great number of them, and
+included also carrying with them large quantities of arms for warfare,
+and of useful household stores. He could say certainly no more than
+that when all their well-laid plan was ready to be executed, they rose
+against the soldiers which guarded them with such suddenness and brave
+violence that they succeeded in seizing and in holding the Citadel;
+which gave no chance for grave uneasiness, for the officers of the force
+thus for a moment driven off thought that because of their retiring
+within so narrow a place they speedily must surrender for dread of being
+starved there; and it was held to be but a sign of their still greater
+simplicity--since thus would there be more hungry mouths to fill--that
+they carried their women and children with them into the stronghold
+where they lay besieged.
+
+But so strange was the desolate silence that hung over the place into
+which so great a multitude had retired, that the besiegers presently
+were moved by it to a wonder wherein was a strong feeling of awe; and
+still greater was the marvel that they had to ponder upon when, at last,
+meeting with no opposition, they broke in the grating that barred the
+entrance to the Citadel, and found within the enclosure not one single
+living soul! And so cleverly had the fugitives closed the way behind
+them that a long while passed before it was known certainly what had
+become of this living host that, as it seemed, in a moment had vanished
+from off the face of the earth. More than half a lifetime went by
+without the shedding of light upon this mystery; and it seemed as though
+a ghost had risen when one day a very aged man came forth from that
+long-abandoned passage in the mine and surrendered himself to the first
+of the guards whom he encountered--and then told that he was a priest
+whom the fleeing rebels had carried captive with them, and whom they had
+held a prisoner through all these many years. And he told also how the
+rebels had made their home in a certain fair valley that was shut in and
+hidden among the mountains; and how that they had built a great
+city--resting fearless in the conviction that they were safe from harm.
+By the heavy toil that had been needful to open anew the way into the
+mine from the canon, the little remnant of strength in this old man's
+body had been exhausted; and presently, having told his story, he died.
+
+Then it was that the Priest Captain and the Council who ruled in that
+ancient time, having assured themselves by the sending out of spies that
+all which the old man had told them was true, planned to bring upon the
+rebels a very terrible vengeance; which was to drown them all in their
+city by letting loose upon them the waters of a mighty lake. And this
+plan, though its accomplishment was not arrived at until two full cycles
+had passed away, so mighty was the labor that it involved, at last was
+executed: and in one single day every living creature in all that valley
+was overwhelmed by the flood let loose into it; and where so great a
+mass of teeming life had been there remained thereafter only the
+desolate silence and stillness of universal death.
+
+It was with long-drawn breaths that Fray Antonio and I listened to
+Tizoc's telling of this tradition, which in many ways was far more real
+to us than it possibly could be to him; for we but lately had passed
+through that death-stricken valley--and ourselves had been like to die
+there--and every feature of the scene, that he could but vaguely
+describe to us, we had clearly in our minds. And thus we came to know
+the full meaning of the great catastrophe whereof we had seen the
+outworking, both in the destruction wrought by it and the way of its
+accomplishment, but of which we had divined no more concerning its cause
+than that in some way it must have resulted from a slowly worked-out
+vengeance prompted by a most malignant hate.
+
+
+
+
+XXVI.
+
+THE GATHERING FOR WAR.
+
+
+Although the whole of the discussion of their plan of revolt was carried
+on by the Council with so calm a gravity, there was enough of energy and
+of quick movement when their deliberations came to an end; and we
+augured well of the result because they thus had delayed their action
+until their plan for making it effective had been fully matured. The
+whole of that first day in Huitzilan, and much of the following night
+also, was given to arranging clearly what must be done in order to set
+up a temporary government and to get an army together; and how well this
+preliminary work was accomplished was shown by the precision and
+celerity with which the plans then made were executed during the
+immediately ensuing days.
+
+During this period we had ample time to look around us; and, being now
+upon a most friendly footing with the strange people among whom we thus
+strangely found ourselves, we were heartily aided--so far as this was
+possible because of the exigencies of that stirring time--in
+investigating the manner of their lives. The material then was obtained
+for my chapter on the "House Life and Domestic Customs of the Aztecs";
+and the knowledge which Rayburn gathered (also embodied in his own
+paper, that attracted so much attention when read before the American
+Institute of Mining Engineers) he has permitted me to use in my chapter
+on "Mining and Metal-working among the Aztecs"; which two chapters are
+among the most note worthy _Pre-Columbian Conditions on the Continent of
+North America_. Rayburn, indeed, was lost in wonder as he came to
+understand how far scientific investigation had been carried among this
+isolated people, and how well they had learned to apply their scientific
+knowledge to their practical affairs. In many matters, to be sure, they
+fell far behind the remainder of the civilized world; but a large part
+of the useful knowledge that has been gained by study under civilized
+conditions elsewhere we found here also as the fruit of independent
+discovery. In many cases the discovery was identical in every respect
+with our own. Thus, their process (the adding of hydrochloric acid to a
+neutral solution of auric-chloride) for producing from gold a rich
+purple stain, that was employed in the coloring of hard-wood and bone,
+was precisely that which Boyle mentioned in 1663; and, as nearly as I
+could determine the date, it was about that very time that they, also,
+first effected this combination. In the matter of hardening gold, and
+thereafter giving it all the qualities of tempered steel, they had made
+a step that was distinctly in advance of anything which our
+metallurgists had accomplished; and I am strongly inclined to the belief
+that--at least among the priests--knowledge had been gained of a process
+quite unlike that known to us for producing a gold fulminate. I was not
+so fortunate as to gain more knowledge of this matter than could be
+learned from hearsay, but from several sources I heard of the splitting
+asunder of a certain great rock by the Priest Captain--which wonder was
+accompanied by a thunderous noise and a gleam of flame and a bursting
+forth of smoke--whereby he was considered to have proved that the aid of
+the gods was at his command. But to my mind, and also to Rayburn's, the
+proof was, rather, that he had at his command--in some way that as yet
+our chemists have not fathomed--the aid of a gold fulminate that could
+be controlled in use as readily as we control gunpowder. That this
+agent, whatever it might be, was not easily available, was indicated by
+the fact that the Priest Captain never had given more than this single
+exhibition of the wonders which he could accomplish with it; and that it
+then had served his purpose well was shown by the obvious awe with which
+all who told me of it spoke of the dreadful havoc that thus visibly was
+wrought by what they termed the thunder of the gods.
+
+Indeed, a very serious difficulty that the leaders of the revolution had
+to overcome was the unwillingness on the part of the people at large to
+defy the power of their spiritual chief; which feeling among the upper
+classes was mainly because disobedience to the Priest Captain was, in
+effect, heresy; while among the lower classes there was joined to a like
+horror of heresy a very lively dread of the punishment, both temporal
+and spiritual, that the Priest Captain could bring upon them because of
+his intimate relations with the supernatural beings by which the forces
+of the world were controlled.
+
+Yet out of this condition of affairs arose an opportunity that Fray
+Antonio was not slow to make the most of. Our coming into the valley
+with news of the outside world that directly controverted the Priest
+Captain's claim to infallibility gave a great shock to the religious
+faith of the community, and so induced a willingness to listen to the
+preaching of a new and purer creed. And on the part of those of the
+Council who were organizing the revolution--among whom religion seemed
+to be regarded less as a vital fact than as a matter of political
+expediency--there was a strong disposition to encourage the spread of
+doctrines which obviously, by weakening the Priest Captain's hold upon
+the people, would increase their own strength. Therefore, Fray Antonio
+found himself free to preach to this heathen multitude the glorious
+Christian faith; and that he was granted this most rare and signal
+opportunity, the like of which was not given even to the blessed Saint
+Francis himself, so filled and exalted his soul with a radiantly joyful
+thankfulness that he was as one transformed. And his holy enthusiasm,
+that thus made every fibre of his being vibrate with a grateful
+gladness, gave him also so eloquent a command of beseeching language
+that it was a living wonder to perceive how his inspired words
+penetrated into the minds, darkened by superstitious doctrines, of those
+to whom he spoke, and so sunk into their hearts and brought the restful
+happiness of the faith Christian to those who had known only the
+restless terror of idolatry throughout all their lives. Like a pure
+flame, the doctrine that he preached ran through that host of the
+heathen, burning out from among them the impure creed whereby their
+souls had been held in a most cruel and desolate bondage, and giving in
+the place thereof the tender comfort of a saving Christian grace.
+
+Yet the very fervor of Fray Antonio's preaching, and the strong hold
+that the gentle doctrine which he set forth took upon the hearts of the
+multitude, tended also to stir up against him a lively enmity among
+those who, refusing to hearken to him, remained steadfast in the ancient
+faith. Many such there were among us at that time in Huitzilan; but
+because of the firm grasp that Fray Antonio had upon so many hearts, and
+also because of the countenance which the Council gave him, these did
+not venture to assail either him or his doctrine openly; yet, as I noted
+at times the evil glances which they shot forth at him--which surely
+would have killed him could he thus have been slain--I was filled with
+dread that hate so malignant as here was shown must surely find
+expression in a direct attempt upon his life. Fortunately, there no
+longer were any priests among us. Of these there had been a
+considerable number in Huitzilan upon our first coming there, but
+silently, one by one, they had disappeared--going, as we well knew, to
+join themselves to the force which the Priest Captain was gathering
+against the time when the issue between us would be settled by the
+arbitration of arms. And those who went from our camp to his must have
+carried with them news of the peril that menaced the ancient faith
+through the new faith that Fray Antonio preached so zealously in such
+burning words; for of his knowledge of what Fray Antonio was doing, and
+of his dread of what might therefrom result, we presently had proof in a
+way that filled our hearts with a very dismal fear.
+
+All the while that this curious, and to me most interesting, conflict
+between a primitive and a highly developed religion went on, the more
+practical work went on also of establishing a new government and of
+organizing an army whereby it might be maintained. So far as the setting
+up of a government was concerned, the matter was comparatively easy; for
+the majority of the Council had come out with us from Culhuacan, and
+these had but to adapt to the requirements of the new situation the
+governmental machinery that already was established and at their
+command. And they were surprised pleasurably by finding how readily this
+transformation was effected; for among the higher classes--from which
+classes the officials of the government exclusively were drawn--the
+feeling of hatred against the Priest Captain, begotten of his many acts
+of cruelty and oppression, was so strong that the opportunity now
+offered to turn against him was seized upon most gladly. In every town
+throughout the valley the emissaries of the Council were warmly
+welcomed; and presently the new government was established everywhere
+save in the capital city and in certain villages upon the lake border
+lying close beneath its walls.
+
+The work of organizing an army, however, was a more difficult matter;
+for very serious obstacles, both moral and material, had to be overcome
+before we of the revolutionary faction could place an effective fighting
+force in the field. Of what I may term regular troops, that is to say,
+thoroughly drilled and disciplined soldiers, we could count upon but
+few; for, practically, the whole body of the army had remained faithful
+to the Priest Captain and was with him in Culhuacan. For the most part,
+also, the regular troops scattered through the garrisons of the various
+towns had betaken themselves immediately to Culhuacan upon the
+acknowledgment by the civil officers of these towns of the authority of
+the new government; and at the same time had departed with them nearly
+all the priests, and such few persons of the upper classes as desired
+the maintenance of the ancient order of things. The result of which
+general movement at least gave us the advantage of carrying on
+unmolested our own work of concentrating and organizing; and, so far,
+was a positive service to us.
+
+As the nucleus of our army we had the corps that Tizoc commanded, the
+highly organized body of troops charged with the important duty of
+guarding the Barred Pass; and we had also the few hundreds of men who
+had come out with us from Culhuacan. From these sources we were able to
+draw officers to command the irregular force, largely made up of
+Tlahuicos, that the Council rapidly got together; while for the
+organizing of the main body of our troops, the savages who worked in the
+mine, the bold stroke was made of mingling them with the men who, until
+then, had been their most relentless enemies--the soldiers who had
+served as their guards. That it was possible to put in operation this
+daring plan was due, I think, in great part to the fact that both guards
+and miners were led to accept the extraordinary fellowship that it
+created by a genuine shock of surprise; and before they had at all
+recovered from their astonishment their interests became identical,
+through their common need of defending themselves against a common
+enemy. And, further, I am well convinced that the Tlahuicos had been in
+part prepared, before our coming into the valley, to join in the revolt
+that under any circumstances could not have been much longer delayed. In
+regard to this matter, Tizoc persistently evaded my questions; but I
+remembered very distinctly his curious hesitancy when he had told me of
+the effective part that the servile class could be made to take in the
+event of a rebellion; and I perceived many evidences of a secret
+understanding between him and certain of the miners during the time that
+the gathering for war was going on in Huitzilan. Therefore, I inferred
+that the seeds of revolt which germinated so readily had been long since
+sown.
+
+Of all the disabilities under which we then labored, the most serious
+was the lack of an adequate supply of arms. The great arsenal of the
+Aztlanecas was in Culhuacan; and thus nearly the whole of the supply of
+munitions of war in the valley was in the Priest Captain's hands.
+Fortunately, the shipment of hardened gold that we had intercepted--by
+landing at the pier whence in a few hours it would have been despatched
+to the Treasure-house--gave us a good supply of raw material out of
+which spear-heads, and the heads of darts, and swords could be made; and
+night and day the forges blazed in Huitzilan while the manufacture of
+these weapons went on. Of bows and arrows it was not possible to make
+many in that short time, but of slings there was no difficulty in making
+enough to supply our entire force--and among these people, who are
+wonderfully skilful in the use of it, the sling is a most deadly
+implement of war. We lacked time, also, to make any large number of
+shields, and our deficiency in this respect was regarded by Tizoc, and
+by all the military officers who were with us, as a most serious matter;
+for not only would our men without shields be the more easily slain in
+battle, but their fighting value would be lessened by their
+consciousness that they were without this piece of furniture that all
+savage races hold to be so necessary in war.
+
+However, of defensive armor we had a good supply, for it chanced that in
+the Citadel there was a great store of cotton cloth, suitable for making
+long kirtles of many thicknesses of cloth quilted together; which
+kirtles were arrow proof, and well protected a man from his neck
+downward almost to his knees. Young was disposed to think but lightly of
+this curious armor, but when Tizoc, to convince him of its utility,
+demonstrated its power to resist a well-pointed arrow shot at very short
+range he was forced to confess its entire applicability to the purpose
+for which it was designed.
+
+"Tell th' Colonel that I give in, an' think it a first-rate notion,
+Professor," he said. "But if you can get it into his head, an' I'm
+afraid you can't, just tell him that when this barelegged army of ours
+gets fitted out with those little night-shirts they'll look for all th'
+world like a lot o' fellows who've scrambled out of a hotel that's
+caught fire in th' middle o' th' night. All that'll be wanted t' make
+th' thing perfect 'll be a couple o' steam fire-engines, an' a crowd
+with all their clothes on, an' a line of policemen. I guess it's goin'
+t' be one o' th' funniest lookin' armies that was ever seen outside of a
+lunatic asylum. What I'd like to do, Professor, instead o' tryin' t' do
+any fightin' with it, is just t' take th' whole outfit back t' th'
+States an' make a show of it. I'd get Benito Nichols t' go in with
+me--he's a first-class man, Benito is, an' he's a boss hand as a show
+manager--an' we'd call it 'Th' Aztec Warrior Army an' Circus
+Combination,' an' we'd just rake in th' dollars quicker'n we could count
+'em. That makes me think o' that show we were talkin' about makin' with
+Pablo an' his burro." Young's voice changed as he spoke, and there was a
+huskiness in it as he added: "I s'pose by this time there ain't much
+left for show-makin' purposes of either of 'em. No, I guess I'll stay
+around an' take a hand in any fightin' that's goin' on; for I'd pretty
+near be willin' t' be killed right away after it myself for th' chance
+t' square things with that old devil for killin' our boy. He was a good
+boy, Professor, an'--How this devilish dust does get into my eyes an'
+make 'em water." With which highly irrelevant remark--for there was no
+dust blowing just then--Young suddenly ceased speaking and walked away.
+
+This was the only time that we spoke of Pablo while we lay at Huitzilan,
+for talk about the boy only increased the bitter sorrow for him that was
+in all our hearts. As for my own heart, it was wellnigh broken as I
+thought that but for me his gentle life would still be flowing on
+smoothly--as I had found it flowing when, in an evil hour, I joined his
+fortunes with mine, and so had brought him to so untimely and to so
+cruel a death. And I, too, longed for the fighting to begin that I might
+avenge him; for the accomplishment of which vengeance I was not merely
+in part, but altogether ready to yield up my own life.
+
+Indeed, excepting only Fray Antonio, who saw in warfare only the
+wickedness and the cruelty of it, we all were most eager for our
+inaction to end, and for the battling to begin that would give us
+opportunity to let the life out of some of those by whom Pablo had been
+slain. It was with delight, therefore, that we noted the rapidity with
+which the preparations for the impending campaign were carried forward,
+and saw how each day the disorderly host that had been gathered at
+Huitzilan was changing from a confused mass of good fighting material
+into a body fairly well adapted to the needs of war. It was, in truth,
+astonishing to us--for we could not well comprehend how essentially
+warlike were the instincts of this people, and how quick, therefore,
+they must be in military matters--to observe the promptness that was
+shown in getting our army in readiness for the field. And with our
+astonishment came also a comforting conviction that the force that could
+be so quickly, and, as it seemed, so effectively organized, must surely
+hold well together, and fight well together, when the hour for fighting
+came.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII.
+
+AN OFFER OF TERMS.
+
+
+During the time that our various preparations thus went forward we had
+no direct news from the stronghold of the enemy; yet many vague rumors
+reached us of the army that was being set in order there to take the
+field against us. On the other hand, the constant departure from among
+us of those who were loyal to the ancient government kept the Priest
+Captain well informed of all that was in progress in our camp. No effort
+was made by the Council to prevent these departures, for all of our
+plans were working so well, and our forces were increasing so
+prodigiously, that it was to our advantage that the enemy should have
+news of our rapidly augmenting strength; and especially was it hoped
+that the news thus carried to the city might incline many there who
+wavered in their allegiance to take open part with us--or, at the least,
+to refuse to take part against us--and that in this way there might be
+stirred up a very dangerous spirit of mutiny within the enemy's lines.
+
+The plan of campaign that the Council had adopted struck me as being an
+exceedingly prudent one. This was that we should not attempt an attack
+upon the city--for, indeed, to assail such fortifications without
+artillery would have been utterly hopeless--but should wait until the
+enemy came out to assail us, and then meet him on our own chosen ground.
+In every way this plan was in our favor. It most obviously was to our
+advantage to delay as long as possible the battle that was inevitable,
+and that, when it did come, must decide the fate of the rebellion
+finally. Every day that this was deferred was a substantial gain to us,
+in that the organization of our army was thereby rendered the more
+complete, and also in that the effective hold of the new government upon
+the people throughout the valley was thereby strengthened. On the side
+of the enemy, delay would produce no corresponding gain, rather would it
+tend to weaken the hold of the Priest Captain upon those who remained
+faithful to him; and, being shut up with his whole army and a multitude
+of non-combatants within those great stone walls, a very terrible foe,
+against which stone walls are no defence, presently would attack him in
+the shape of hunger. Therefore we had only to wait--maintaining the
+while a vigilant patrol of guard-boats on the lake, so that no fresh
+supplies might reach the garrison in the city--in the sure conviction
+that our foe would of his own accord come forth to give us battle, and
+that we then would have the advantage of standing wholly on the
+defensive until some happy turn of chance should so favor us that we
+would risk nothing in making an assault.
+
+It was a very fortunate thing for us that matters stood in this way; for
+wellnigh the whole of the trained army of the Aztlanecas was with the
+Priest Captain, and against this well-disciplined body of men our own
+hastily assembled and imperfectly organized army would have made but a
+poor showing had we met on equal terms. Even under the existing
+circumstances, so favorable in many ways to our success, Tizoc and the
+other military officers who were with us did not at all disguise their
+anxiety as to what might be the outcome of the battle so soon to be
+fought; and especially did they dread some well-planned stealthy
+movement of the enemy, by which our camp might be suddenly set upon and
+fairly carried before our own untrained forces could be rallied from the
+bewilderment and confusion into which they would be thrown by the shock
+of such surprise.
+
+Rayburn, who had seen a good deal of Indian fighting in his time, fully
+shared in this feeling of anxiety. "Indian fights, you see," he said,
+"are not like any other kind of fights. The side that wins has got to do
+it with a whoop and a hurrah. Indians haven't got any staying power in
+them. They can't hold out against anybody who stands up against them
+squarely, and won't be scared by a howling rush into running away.
+That's the reason why our little bit of an army at home is strong enough
+to police our whole Indian frontier. A single troop of our boys--if the
+fighting's square, and they haven't been corralled in an ambush--can
+stand off a whole tribe; and they can do it because they just get their
+backs together and won't give in. What bothers me about the fight that
+we're going to have is that the regulars are on the other side. Of
+course, being Indians too, regulars like these don't amount to much; but
+they are bound to be a long chalk better than this rowdy crowd of ours.
+We've got a pretty fair chance to win, because we're in a strong
+position, and because our people mean to wait until the other fellows
+come at 'em; but I tell you what it is, if ever they manage to get
+inside here, or if ever we go outside after them--that is, while they're
+fresh and full of fight--it's bound to be all day with us. These miners,
+and the rest of this Tlahuico outfit, will fight like wild-cats as long
+as they're on top, but every bit of fight will go right out of them the
+minute they find that they're beginning to get underneath. That's the
+Indian way. I'm trying hard to believe that our crowd will whip the
+other crowd; but I must say, Professor, that I'm not betting on it."
+
+"Well, I'm bettin' on it, and bettin' on it high," said Young. "I don't
+pretend t' know as much about this sort o' thing as Rayburn does; but I
+do think I know a live devil when I see one--an' these miners are about
+as lively an' about as devilly as anything that ever broke loose from
+hell. They're just as full o' th' wickedest sort o' fight as they can
+stick in their ugly skins, an' they're just sick for a chance t' let it
+get out of 'em. All we've got t' do is t' worry th' other crowd for a
+while by lettin' 'em monkey around tryin' t' bag us; an' then, when
+they've been pretty well shot off, an' are gettin' tired, just make a
+rush for 'em an' scoop 'em in. Regulars or no regulars, these miners 'll
+go through 'em like a limited express; an' the' first thing th' Priest
+Captain knows we'll have walloped him right smack out o' th' baggy
+things he wears on his feet an' thinks are boots. That's th' size of it,
+Rayburn. That's what's goin' t' happen right here--an' don't you forget
+it! An' then, if there's any way out o' this d--n valley, we'll load up
+with dollars an' pull out for home."
+
+For my own part, I was not disposed to be either so doubtful as Rayburn
+or so sanguine as Young. In what each of them said there was much truth,
+and my inference from such of the facts in the case as were within my
+knowledge and my comprehension was that the chances for and against our
+success were very evenly divided. Had I listened only to the promptings
+of my hopes, I should have entertained no doubt whatever touching the
+certainty of our victory; for I was at that time so elated by the
+knowledge that I had acquired, and that each day was increased by the
+acquisition of new and most precious facts, whereby a flood of light was
+let in upon what hitherto had been hopelessly dark places in Aztec
+archaeology, that I was disposed to believe as firmly as ever did the
+first Napoleon in the assured ascendency of my lucky star. However, I
+did not wholly permit my wits to be run away with by the joy begotten of
+my truly wonderful discoveries; and I strove even to contemplate calmly
+the possibility that I might myself be slain in the battle that was so
+close upon us; and that thus the exceedingly valuable information which
+I had acquired would be lost to the world, and to myself would be lost
+the honorable fame due me for having gathered it. Yet I regret to
+state--for until that time I had entertained unreservedly the belief
+that I truly was a philosopher--my attempt at calm contemplation of this
+dismal and far from improbable combination of evil circumstances had no
+other effect upon me than to throw me into a most violent rage. It
+seemed to me so stupidly unreasonable that some mere common brute of an
+Indian, by the crude process of splitting my skull open, might deprive
+me, and through me the scientific world, of the priceless knowledge that
+with much effort I had stored within my brain.
+
+But all thought of my own fortunes, and of this possible sudden cutting
+of my life-strings, presently was thrust aside by the inroad of another
+matter that was of far more serious moment to me, inasmuch as there was
+involved in it a menace against the life of one of my companions; and,
+indeed, this matter was one which startled our whole camp, for it was
+nothing less than a formal offer on the part of the Priest Captain to
+condone the rebellion, and to compromise with the rebels, on certain far
+from exacting terms.
+
+The envoy sent to treat with us came in a manner befitting his dignity
+and the importance of his mission, having a considerable retinue with
+him in his barge, and being himself a grave and dignified man well
+advanced in years. Two of our guard-boats accompanied his barge across
+the lake, and he alone was permitted to land in Huitzilan. Being led
+before the Council, he delivered himself briefly of his message, and
+added to it neither argument nor comment of his own. The Priest Captain,
+he said, desiring to avoid the shedding of blood among brethren, was
+willing to forgive the wrong already committed, and was willing even to
+concede in part the demands made by the rebels, in consideration of the
+acceptance by those now in arms against him of certain very easy terms.
+For his part, he would yield in so far as to restore the custom of
+permitting parents to buy back their own children, and so to save them
+from being sacrificed or from becoming slaves; and he would withdraw
+also his claim to the exercise of certain rights (which need not here be
+specified) in civil matters, to which a counter-claim was set up by the
+Council. In return for these concessions, he demanded that the army
+raised by the rebels should be immediately disbanded; that order should
+be restored in Huitzilan by returning the miners to their work, and the
+Tlahuicos generally to their masters throughout the valley; and that the
+arms which had been manufactured should be turned over to the keeper of
+the arsenal in Culhuacan. The final demand made by the Priest Captain
+related to ourselves; and the Council was given to understand that upon
+its punctual and exact fulfilment the whole of the negotiation must
+depend. Young and Rayburn and I, the envoy said, must be thrust out
+through the Barred Pass, whence we came, and there left to shift for
+ourselves; Fray Antonio must be without delay surrendered--that the
+dreadful sin that he had committed by preaching vile doctrines,
+subversive of the true faith, might be punished in so signal a manner
+that the gods whom he had outraged would be appeased.
+
+Both Fray Antonio and I were present in the Council chamber when the
+envoy delivered his message; and when this final demand was
+made--hearing which made me grow sick and faint, so keen was the pang of
+sorrow that it caused me--I turned towards him quickly, expecting that
+he also would feel the hurt of the blow which through him, because of my
+great love for him, had stricken me so grievously. But so far from being
+at all cast down by the knowledge thus rudely conveyed that a very cruel
+death menaced him, there was upon his face a look of such joyful
+elation, of such rejoicing triumph, that it seemed as though the very
+greatest happiness that life could hold for him had been thrust suddenly
+within his grasp.
+
+Within the Council, and outside of it also, when the terms which the
+envoy offered were spread abroad, there was at once aroused a very hot
+antagonism between contending factions in regard to the wisdom of
+placing trust in the Priest Captain's promises, and to the justice of
+yielding to his demands. So far as the Council was concerned, its
+members having no especial regard for our welfare now that we had served
+their purpose, the slaying of Fray Antonio, and the expulsion from the
+valley of the rest of us, were trifling matters which well enough might
+be conceded if thereby peace might be secured. The matter of importance
+that this body had to consider was how far the Priest Captain could be
+trusted to fulfil promises made to rebels in arms, when these same
+rebels voluntarily had submitted to disarmament and were at his mercy;
+and on this essential point the whole debate that followed turned. The
+faction that favored disarmament insisted that such yielding was not
+surrender, inasmuch as the Priest Captain had conceded all that the
+rebels had asked; while those of the faction that favored war rested
+their case on the ground that the promises of concession were made only
+to be broken, and that this sudden willingness on the part of the Priest
+Captain to grant what he had heretofore so persistently refused was
+proof that he recognized the hopelessness of his position, and so was
+seeking to retain by craft the power that he no longer could hold by
+force. These latter, therefore, urged that his false promises should not
+be heeded; and that the matter at issue should be settled surely and
+finally by carrying to a triumphant conclusion the war, for the waging
+of which all needful preparations had been made.
+
+The debate upon this matter continued throughout the whole day without
+any conclusion being arrived at, and we listened to it--Fray Antonio and
+I translating to the others--with a very earnest interest, inasmuch as
+the outcome of it all might be the instant slaying of one of us, and for
+the rest of us an imprisonment in wild fastnesses among bleak mountains
+for what was like to be the whole remainder of our lives. When night
+came, and the Council, being still unresolved, broke off its session
+until the day following, we came back to our quarters and there talked
+over the situation, and not cheerfully, among ourselves.
+
+"Even if these fellows understood algebra," said Rayburn, "I don't see
+how they could get an answer to the problem that they're trying to work.
+All the _x_'s that ever were made are not enough to represent an unknown
+quantity like the Priest Captain; and it simply is not in the conditions
+of the case that they possibly can know what allowance to make for the
+factor of error. For the last three hours, as far as I can make out,
+they've just been talking in a circle, and going over and over the same
+ground. The size of the business is that half of them believe the Priest
+Captain is telling the truth, and the other half believe that he is
+lying. This is a matter of conviction; it is not a thing that they can
+argue about. As far as I can see, there is nothing to prevent them from
+keeping on talking without getting anywhere for the next twenty years."
+
+"Well, all I can say," said Young, "is that if they'll put me in th'
+cab, an' let me run their train for 'em, I'll get it up this grade in no
+time; an' what's more, I'll just take it down th' other side o' th'
+divide a-kitin'! What's th' matter with th' Priest Captain, an' only
+half of 'em have th' sense t' see 't, is that he's just solidly lyin'.
+He's been lyin' to 'em from away back, I reckon; an' he's lyin' to 'em
+now; an' he'll keep on lyin' to 'em right smack along till he gets t'
+th' end of his run. If they're fools enough t' believe him they're bound
+t' get left th' worst kind. They've got him in a hole now, an' he knows
+it--an' that's more'n they do, t' judge from th' way they're goin' on.
+I did have some respect for that Council. So far, they've managed things
+first-rate. They've run in advance o' their schedule right along, an'
+they've kep' up a rattlin' head o' steam with mighty d----n bad coal.
+But if they really mean t' draw their fires, just when they ought t' put
+on th' forced draught an' let her go for all she's worth, I must say I
+haven't any more use for 'em. Seein' 'em shilly-shallyin' around like
+they're doin' now, when they ought t' be takin' their coats off an'
+sailin' in, just makes me sick!"
+
+Fray Antonio--whose habit of quiet was such that he rarely sought to
+take part in the talks that we had in English among ourselves--somewhat
+surprised me by asking me to translate to him what Young and Rayburn had
+been saying; and when he had heard it all he was silent for a while, and
+evidently was engaged in earnest thought. At last, speaking very
+gravely, he asked us if we greatly feared being thrust out from the
+valley in case the Council decided to accept the Priest Captain's terms;
+and without giving us a chance to answer, he bade us remember that we
+had not at all explored the last valley that we had passed through
+before we entered the canon that ended at the Barred Pass, and that from
+it there well might be some outlet through which we could return to the
+civilized world; and even were we forced to end our days in it, he
+continued, speaking quickly and urgently, a much worse fate might come
+to us; for the valley was a bright and beautiful one, as we had seen,
+and had in it an abundant supply of food. Would living there, he asked,
+be any worse for us than living where we then were--where we were
+equally shut in? And even supposing that the war ended in victory for
+us, and that our allies gave us entire freedom of action, what more
+could we do than end our days in the Valley of Aztlan, or else go back
+to that other valley and search for an outlet thence whereby we could
+get into an open way among the mountains, and so once more to our homes?
+And then, still denying us opportunity to answer, he went on to speak of
+the pain and misery and despairing sorrow that the threatened war would
+bring; and then, more gently, of the duty that pressed upon us of
+averting this calamity, that was also a crime, even though to do so we
+must sacrifice hopes and wishes very dear to our hearts.
+
+"What th' dickens is th' Padre drivin' at, anyway?" Young exclaimed; "I
+don't ketch on at all."
+
+"No more do I," said Rayburn. "It's a first-rate sermon that he's giving
+us, but I don't see where he means the moral of it to fetch up."
+
+For myself, so closely were Fray Antonio and I bound together by bonds
+of sympathy, I saw but too plainly what he meant should be the outcome
+of his discourse; and I was not surprised, therefore--though hearing
+thus plainly expressed in words what I had been dreading, sent a dull,
+cold pain into the very depths of my heart--when he unfolded to us the
+whole of the plan that he had been forming within his mind. What he said
+was said very simply, and with a loving sorrow for the pain that might
+come to us through shaping our actions in accordance with his strong
+desire; and this desire was: that, of our own free-will, we should
+retire from the valley by the way that we came thither, and so leave the
+Council free to accept unhesitatingly the Priest Captain's terms.
+
+"And what of yourself?" I asked; for I felt within me a strong
+conviction that for himself he had in view a very different fate.
+
+He hesitated for a moment before answering me, and his color changed a
+little; and then an unwonted ruddiness gave animation to his face, and a
+light of glad and strong resolve shone in his eyes as he replied, in a
+voice that was very low, and at the same time very clear and firm: "I
+shall go to the Priest Captain, in Culhuacan!"
+
+"And so go to your death," I said, speaking brokenly, for the pain that
+his words caused me went through me like a knife-thrust.
+
+"Say, rather," Fray Antonio answered, "that I go to win the life,
+glorious and eternal, into which neither death nor sin nor sorrow
+evermore can come!"
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII.
+
+THE SURRENDER OF A LIFE.
+
+
+Knowing as I did Fray Antonio's resolute nature, and understanding far
+more clearly than it was possible for the others to understand the
+heroic impulses which stirred within him, I took no part in the attempt
+that they then made to oppose the purpose which he had declared. But
+when they somewhat shifted their position--perceiving how hopeless was
+their effort to shake by argument his firm resolve--and sought to win
+him to their way of thinking by consenting to leave the valley if only
+he would accompany them, then I most earnestly joined my entreaties to
+theirs. But no more by entreaty than by argument was Fray Antonio to be
+moved.
+
+And, in truth, there was a logical consistency in what he urged in
+answer to us that, much though we might resent it, we yet were compelled
+to respect. He had come with us, he said, for the single purpose of
+preaching the saving grace of Christianity to heathen souls which
+otherwise would perish utterly in their idolatry. And this was not a
+matter wherein he had any right of election, but was a solemn duty that
+the vows by which he was bound compelled him to fulfil. He was not free,
+therefore, as we were free, to consider side issues relating to his
+personal well-being or to mere expediency; his sole endeavor must be to
+accomplish by the most efficient means the duty wherewith he was
+charged. It was evident, he urged, that should there be war in the
+valley the chance for the further spread of Christian doctrine would he
+scant; for the seed that he had sown, and that already was well rooted
+in many hearts, would die quickly and be utterly lost in the foul growth
+of evil passions which would spring up rankly amid this bloody strife.
+But if the war could be averted, not only would these people be spared
+the misery that war must bring upon them, and the crime also of slaying
+each other, but their hearts would remain open to the gentle doctrine
+that he had taught; and his willingness--should such sacrifice be
+necessary--to yield his life that peace might be preserved, would force
+upon them strongly the conviction, tending thus to their own
+strengthening, of his faithful trust in the creed which he avowed. And
+it well might happen, he said, that such grace would be given him that
+even within the very stronghold of the heathen faith he might win souls
+to the purer faith which it was his glorious privilege to preach and
+still remain unharmed; in proof of which possibility he cited the case
+of the blessed St. Januarius, whom the lions refused to devour. But
+whatever might be the outcome of thus yielding himself into the Priest
+Captain's hands, his duty was so clear, he declared firmly, that no
+evasion of it was possible. And what he purposed doing, he said,
+finally, was but what countless of his brethren had done in the course
+of the six centuries since the founding in Assisi of the Order to which
+they and he belonged--and precisely was it what was done by the glorious
+proto-martyr of Mexico, San Felipe de Jesus, who boldly carried the
+Christian faith among the heathen, and so died for that faith upon the
+cross in Japan.
+
+Rayburn was far from willing to yield to this line of argument; yet he
+understood it, as I did also, and perceived that it was the only logical
+outcome of the only premises which Fray Antonio would recognize. Young,
+on the other hand, did not in the least understand it, and Fray
+Antonio's reasoning simply threw him into a rage.
+
+"It's all d----n nonsense," he said, "for th' Padre t' talk about his
+duty towards a set o' critters like th' Priest Captain's crowd. What's
+th' life o' that whole outfit worth compared t' one life like his? He
+might just as well sit down an' chop his own head off as go in among
+those fellows; an' he knows it, too. I never heard o' th' man he's
+talkin' about who didn't get eat up by th' lions--somebody in th' show
+business, I s'pose--but if he thinks there'll he anything worth speakin'
+of left of him two hours after he gets back into that city, he's makin'
+a pretty d--n big mistake. Oh, I say, Professor, we've _got_ t' stop
+this. Th' Padre's off his head, that's all there is to it; an' we've got
+t' look after him till he braces up an' gets sensible again. I'll do
+anything reasonable that he wants, but I'll be d----d if I'm goin' t'
+stand by doin' nothin' while he cuts his own throat!"
+
+Young was quite ready, I am sure, to resort to the radical measure of
+clapping Fray Antonio into a strait-jacket; and had the opportunity
+arisen for bringing their difference of opinion to a practical issue I
+am confident that we should have witnessed an exceedingly curious
+conflict, in which heroic self-devotion would have struggled with a
+rough but very honest love. And that Fray Antonio anticipated such a
+conflict was shown by his taking effective measures to render it
+impossible. During the remainder of that day he steadfastly refused to
+discuss the matter further; not harshly, but by shifting away into other
+channels our earnest talk. Only at night, before we lay down to sleep,
+of his own motion he turned once more to the matter; and when he briefly
+had exhibited to us again the motives which urged him forward upon a
+way so perilous, he begged that we would not think ill of his insisting
+upon traversing our wishes, but that once more we would clasp hands with
+him in sign of our forgiveness and continued love.
+
+So tender was the mood that came upon us with his gentle words that none
+of us well could answer him; and this he understood as in turn we took
+his hand and strove to utter that which was in our hearts, and only
+could say huskily a word or two, of which the meaning was conveyed for
+the most part by the sorrow and the longing that were in our tones.
+Young's natural instincts were wholly opposed to any display of the
+softer emotions, and for shame of the weakness that in this case he
+could not help but show, his face and neck flushed red, and he declared
+that he had the toothache. And then, as a vent for his overwrought
+feelings--of all things in the world--he fell to cursing the
+Superintendent of the Old Colony Railroad: on the ground that but for
+this functionary, who most unjustifiably had discharged him, he never
+would have come to Mexico at all!
+
+For my own part, I was well convinced that Fray Antonio meant then to
+say good-bye to us; and for a long while, as I lay awake that night, my
+thoughts went backward over the time that we had been companions
+together, and so dwelt upon the faithfulness of his friendship, and upon
+his gallant bearing in all times of peril, and upon the pure and perfect
+holiness which characterized his every act and word. Into the future I
+dared not let my thoughts wander, for I could foresee no outcome to the
+purpose which he had planned so resolutely but a dreary sorrow that
+would rest heavily upon me through all the remainder of my days. And at
+last, worn out by my own grief, I fell into a troubled sleep.
+
+The faint gray light of early morning shone dimly in the room as Rayburn
+awakened me by shaking my arm; and the first words which he spoke to me
+were, "The Padre is not here!"
+
+As I roused myself fully, and sat up and looked into his face, I saw by
+the look that he gave me how fully he shared the dread that was in my
+heart. Young still was sleeping, and we waited to rouse him until we
+should make sure that what we feared must be the truth really was true.
+Together we went out quietly into the court-yard and so to the main
+entrance of the building, where a guard was stationed. But this man was
+asleep; and when I wakened him, and questioned him as to whether the
+monk had gone forth, he could give me no answer. Therefore we went on to
+the gate of the Citadel--which gate, being a vastly heavy grating,
+raised and lowered by chains, was not usually closed even at night--in
+the hope that there we might gain some certain knowledge. And here also
+we found all of the half-dozen men on guard slumbering, saving only one
+man, who seemed to have been aroused by the sound of our footsteps, and
+who raised himself on one elbow and looked at us with a sleepy
+curiosity.
+
+[Illustration: IN THE GATE-WAY OF THE CITADEL]
+
+Even the urgency of the quest that we were upon did not suffice to
+distract our attention from the peril that we all were in because of the
+slumbering of these sentries. "If this is a specimen of the way all the
+watches are kept," Rayburn said, angrily, "we stand a pretty good chance
+of being murdered in our beds. It all comes of trying to make soldiers
+out of savages. These Tlahuicos will fight well enough, I never doubted
+that, but to put such men on guard is simple idiocy. They have been
+slaves all their lives, and they haven't the least notion in the world
+of personal responsibility. It's a lucky thing that we have found out
+their methods, for I shall give the Colonel a talking to about putting
+on guard some of his own men who can be trusted. It's clear that these
+fellows cannot tell us anything. We'd better keep on down to the
+landing; if the Padre has gone"--there was a sudden break in Rayburn's
+voice as he said these words--"it's pretty certain that he has gone by
+water, and we may come across somebody down there who happened to be
+awake and saw him start."
+
+There were slight signs of wakefulness beginning to show themselves as
+we went down towards the water-side; a few doors already were open; here
+and there thin threads of smoke curled upward through the still air;
+around a fountain a half-dozen women were clustered, drawing water in
+great earthen pots, and chattering together softly in half-drowsy talk.
+At the pier, however, we found some people who really were wide-awake:
+fishermen just returned with a boat-load of fish that they had caught in
+the lake. And these, when I questioned them, in a moment resolved all of
+our troubled doubts into a sad certainty. Only an hour before, as they
+lay out on the lake, a canoe had passed them paddled by a single
+Indian, and in the canoe they had plainly recognized Fray Antonio. It
+was impossible that they should be mistaken, they declared, for the
+habit which the monk wore made him very plainly recognizable; and they
+had observed him with a particular care, for they had been greatly
+surprised by perceiving that the canoe was heading directly for "the
+great city"--by which name all save the priests were accustomed to speak
+of Culhuacan.
+
+Neither Rayburn nor I spoke, as we walked back together through the town
+to the Citadel. Our hearts were altogether too full for words. Even I,
+who had been in part prepared for Fray Antonio's departure by the tenor
+of his speech with us the night before, had not anticipated his going
+from us so suddenly to what surely must be his death; and to Rayburn his
+departure came with the startling force of a heavy and unexpected blow.
+Young was awake when we returned, and was in much anxiety concerning us;
+for our custom at all times was to hold closely together, and he knew
+that something out of the common must have happened to make us break
+through this very necessary rule; and his fears were further aroused
+when he perceived the sad gravity of our faces, and that Fray Antonio
+was not in our company. Yet, though thus prepared to learn that evil of
+some sort had overtaken us, he was not at all prepared to learn how
+great that evil was. When, therefore, we told him of what we had
+discovered, which gave absolute assurance that Fray Antonio had carried
+out his purpose of surrendering himself into the Priest Captain's hands,
+Young stared at us for a moment in a dazed sort of way, as though by no
+means grasping the meaning which our words conveyed. And then the whole
+meaning of them seemed to come to him suddenly, and he burst forth into
+such a raving volley of curses that it seemed as though he were fairly
+maddened by his ungoverned rage.
+
+I envied Young, as I am sure Rayburn did also, the relief that must come
+to him with this rough but frank and natural expression of his bitter
+grief. For ourselves, we stood sad and silent, yet with our hearts
+almost breaking within us, as we thought how small was the chance that
+ever in this world should we see the face of Fray Antonio again.
+
+
+
+
+XXIX.
+
+THE ASSAULT IN THE NIGHT.
+
+
+Neither the Council, in its irresolute parleyings, nor Fray Antonio, in
+his resolute action, had at all considered certain factors which they
+themselves had interjected into the problem that they then were dealing
+with from such widely different stand-points and in such widely
+different ways. The Council, at a stroke, had transformed the Tlahuicos
+into soldiers, and had given the promise that in reward for their
+faithfulness and valor these slaves thenceforward should be freemen.
+Fray Antonio had preached to all those assembled at Huitzilan a creed
+that had taken strong hold upon many hearts, and that especially had
+won the hearts of those of the long-oppressed servile class--to whom its
+doctrine of equality seemed to hold out an absolute assurance that their
+life of slavery was at an end.
+
+When, therefore, the terms which the Priest Captain offered were spread
+abroad through the town, and through the camp close beside the town in
+which the army lay--being there in readiness instantly to occupy the
+Citadel should the enemy appear--a very lively anger was aroused because
+such terms should even be listened to. For what the Priest Captain
+demanded was that the apostle of the new religion should be relinquished
+to him to be slain as a sacrifice to the Aztec gods, and that once more
+the Tlahuicos should be thrust back into slavery; while what he
+conceded--in that it affected only the higher classes--made the lot of
+the Tlahuicos but the more unjustly cruel and hard to bear.
+
+And those who resented the delay on the part of the Council in sending
+back the Priest Captain's envoy with a sharp denial, presently went on
+from hot words to violent deeds; being directly led from mutinous talk
+to mutinous action by the knowledge that the Council had so far accepted
+the offered terms as to send Fray Antonio to the great city to be
+slain--for not one among them could be led for a moment to believe, so
+impossible from their stand-point did such an act appear, that the monk
+truly had gone thither of his own free-will.
+
+Practically, the whole army was involved in the movement that then took
+place; for even its officers, while not of the servile class, dreaded
+the punishment that their revolt might bring upon them, and so
+preferred to take the chances of the war rather than to yield themselves
+to be dealt with as the Priest Captain might dispose. Therefore it was,
+on the day that Fray Antonio departed from us, that all the soldiers
+together marched in from their camp and massed themselves compactly
+about the Council Chamber within the Citadel, and then with loud cries
+demanded that the envoy should be sent back to the great city with an
+absolute refusal of the offered terms. Thus was there created a
+rebellion within a rebellion; and one that the Council was powerless to
+put down, for the reason that practically the whole of the force which
+it had created to serve against the enemy was now risen against its own
+authority with a most masterful strength.
+
+In the case that thus was presented there was no opportunity to
+temporize. The fierce, wild creatures of whom soldiers suddenly had been
+made stood there before the Council Chamber, shouting and waving their
+spears angrily and clashing together their arms. And so they continued,
+without one moment of quiet, until their will was obeyed. Through the
+savage and tumultuous throng the envoy was led forth--his looks showing
+plainly his very natural expectation that his life would be let out of
+him amid that ferocious company--and so down to the water-side; and
+thence was sent back again to Culhuacan with the firm assurance--which
+message of defiance the soldiers themselves dictated--that the terms
+offered by the Priest Captain would be accepted only when all the
+Tlahuicos then risen together in arms against him had been slain!
+
+"Bully for th' Tlahuicos!" cried Young, as I translated to him these
+ringing words. "Just tell 'em, Professor, that I've volunteered for
+three years or th' war, an' that they can count on me t' keep up a full
+head o' steam as long as there's any fightin' t' be done. Accordin' t'
+my notions, now that th' Padre's over there in th' city--t' say nothin'
+o' what we owe 'em on Pablo's account--th' row can't begin one minute
+too soon. These Tlahuicos are th' boys for me! Didn't I tell you that
+nobody could stop 'em when they once got fairly started? They're a tough
+lot; but they're just everlastin' rustlers--an' their style suits me
+right now all th' way down t' th' ground floor!"
+
+The sharp excitement attendant upon this vigorous action gave place, as
+the day wore on, to a dull heavy pain as our thoughts dwelt upon the
+fate that Fray Antonio had gone forth to meet, and upon our present
+powerlessness to defend him in any way against it. Although the envoy
+had been sent back, and war was now resolutely determined upon, the
+situation remained unchanged in so far as concerned the necessity
+of our waiting for the Priest Captain to take the initiative. To
+attack that great walled city was so hopeless a task that even the
+Tlahuicos--flushed though they were by their victory over the
+Council--did not venture to propose it; for they knew, as we all did,
+that our only chance of carrying the enemy's stronghold lay in first
+defeating its garrison in a battle in the open field. Yet this dull
+inaction of waiting was a scarce of grave danger to us, in that it
+tended to wear out the spirits of our men and to make them still more
+careless of their guard. What Rayburn and I had seen that morning had
+shown how little trust could be placed in them, in so far as the
+soldierly attribute of watchfulness was concerned; and Tizoc, with whom
+we conferred in regard to this important matter, had little to say that
+we found comforting. Being himself a thorough soldier, he perceived the
+danger to which the unsoldierly lack of vigilance on the part of the
+Tlahuicos exposed our camp; but the situation was such that he was
+powerless to take effective measures for our protection. The few regular
+troops in our little army were not enough to do sentry duty everywhere,
+and the best that could be done would be to dispose them at the points
+most open to attack--"And then trust to luck," Rayburn put in, rather
+bitterly, "that the enemy will be polite enough to try to surprise only
+the part of the camp where the sentries are awake!"
+
+Partly that we might see for ourselves how our pickets were disposed,
+but more that by action of any sort we might divert our thoughts from
+the sorrow that was gnawing at our hearts, we walked out together in the
+late afternoon to the rocky heights of the promontory that on the
+western side of the town extended far into the lake. From a military
+stand-point this position was of great importance to us, inasmuch as
+bowmen or slingmen gaining access to it could command a considerable
+part of the town, and even could annoy very seriously the garrison of
+the Citadel; and it also was of value to us as a place of lookout whence
+an attacking party coming by way of the lake from the city could be
+perceived while yet it was a long way off.
+
+We were surprised, therefore, when we had come well out upon the
+promontory, that no sentinel challenged us; but our surprise vanished a
+moment or two later as we perceived one of our men curled up comfortably
+against a sunny rock and apparently sound asleep. However, as we got
+close to the man it was clear to us that his sleep was one that he never
+would waken from, for a pool of blood stained the rock beside him, and
+an arrow was shot fairly through his heart. We made but a short stop
+beside this fellow--who plainly had been shot in his sleep, and so
+deserved the fate that had overtaken him--and then went forward
+anxiously that we might see how the other sentinels stationed hereabouts
+had fared. The result of our quest was as bad as it could be; for in one
+place or another among the rocks we found all five of the men who had
+been posted upon the promontory, and all of them were dead. Three more
+of them certainly had been shot while asleep or wholly off their guard,
+as was shown by the easy attitudes in which we found them sitting or
+lying among the rocks. The fifth had not been instantly killed; as we
+inferred from finding a broken arrow sticking in his left arm, and some
+signs of a struggle about where he lay, and a great split in his skull,
+as from a sword stroke, that finally had let the life out of him. It
+struck us as strange that this man had not aroused the camp with his
+shouts; but his post was at the extreme end of the promontory, so that
+he must have called very loudly in order to be heard; and it was
+possible that in the suddenness of his danger he never thought to call
+at all. However, the important matter, so far as we were concerned, was
+that these five sentinels had been slain close beside the town and in
+broad daylight, and that but for the chance of our coming out upon the
+promontory the most important of our outposts would have remained
+unguarded until the night relief should have come on. It was Rayburn's
+theory that the plan of the enemy was to place his own men on the vacant
+posts--trusting to the reasonable certainty that in the dusk of evening
+one naked Indian would look much like another--and so despatch the
+relief, one by one, as the guard was changed.
+
+Of those of the enemy who had accomplished this piece of work so
+skilfully we could see no sign--unless it were a boat that we dimly saw
+a long way off on the lake, and that presently wholly disappeared in a
+bank of haze; and despite the hot sunshine basking upon us a chill went
+through me at thought of the stealthy daring and truly devilish cunning
+of the men who thus could do their evil work in the full light of day,
+and close to the encampment of an army, and yet could get safely away
+without leaving a trace of their presence save the dead bodies of their
+foes.
+
+Having made sure by carefully searching among the rocks throughout the
+length of the promontory that none of the enemy was hidden there, we
+hastened back to the town to tell what we had come upon, and to provide
+for mounting fresh sentinels in the place of those who had been relieved
+by death. We had expected that the news which we brought would stir up a
+great commotion; and we were not a little troubled, therefore, knowing
+how serious the matter was in its exhibition of the carelessness of our
+guards, by finding that only Tizoc and a few other tried soldiers were
+more than lightly discomposed by what we had to tell. The general
+feeling seemed to be--inasmuch as our lucky discovery had dispelled the
+danger--that there was no need to worry about a calamity which had not
+occurred; and what after all was the most essential consideration--the
+constant danger that threatened us by reason of the criminal laxity of
+the watch maintained by our pickets--practically was lost sight of.
+Apparently neither the Council nor the higher officers of the army had
+the power to remedy this dangerous condition of affairs. At no time had
+any very strong authority been exercised over the Tlahuicos--for all the
+orders which until now had been given to them had been directed only
+towards urging them along a way that they were glad enough to follow of
+their own accord--and since their assertion of their will that morning,
+what little control had restrained their waywardness seemed to have been
+wholly lost.
+
+However, as there was a chance in it of fighting, and as fighting was
+what they longed for earnestly, our unruly soldiers were willing enough
+that a strong detachment should be placed in ambush on the promontory,
+to the end that the force which the enemy probably would land there that
+night might be summarily dealt with. And the better to carry out our
+plan of a counter-surprise the dead sentinels were left where we found
+them. Tizoc was given the command of the ambushed force, and he
+willingly granted our request that we might accompany him; which
+request was prompted by the desire that we fully shared with the
+Tlahuicos to get at close quarters with the enemy, and also by the
+conviction that in Tizoc's company--though in his company we were like
+to have hot fighting and plenty of it--we would have better chances of
+safety than anywhere else in all our camp.
+
+For this expedition we put on for the first time our armor of quilted
+cotton cloth; and the look of these garments certainly did justify
+Young's comments upon them. "It's a pity we can't get photographed now,"
+he said, "so's t' send our likenesses in this rig home t' our folks.
+You'd just jolt the Cap Cod folks, Rayburn, with that pair o' telegraph
+poles you call your legs stickin' out from under th' tails o' that thing
+that looks like a cross between a badly made frock-coat and an
+undersized night-shirt. And I guess your college boys 'd be jolted, too,
+Professor, if they could get a squint at you. And I s'pose that if some
+o' th' hands on th' Old Colony happened t' ketch up with me dressed this
+way they'd think I'd gone crazy. But I haven't got anything t' say
+against these little night-shirts except about their looks. When you get
+right down t' th' hard-pan with 'em, they're a first-rate thing."
+
+For three American citizens, belonging to the nineteenth century, we
+certainly presented a strange appearance, and appeared also in very
+strange company, as we marched out from the town late that afternoon
+with Tizoc and his men. Each of us carried half a dozen darts, and
+strapped around our waists, outside our cotton-cloth armor, we each wore
+a maccahuitl--the heavy sword with a jagged double edge that we knew
+from experience was an excellent weapon when wielded by a strong hand.
+Indeed, Young and I carried the darts rather to satisfy Tizoc than
+because we expected to make any very effective use of them, and all of
+our reliance both for assault and defence was upon what we could do with
+our swords at close quarters. Rayburn, however, had been practising
+dart-throwing very diligently, and as he naturally was an
+extraordinarily dextrous man he had made rapid progress in this savage
+art. The soldiers in our company, naked creatures, lithe and sinewy,
+were armed for the most part with spears and slings; and the officers
+wore each a sword and carried each a handful of darts. As we all stepped
+out briskly together I could not but think how amazed would be the
+President of the University of Michigan, and my fellow-members of the
+Faculty of that institution of learning, should they happen to encounter
+me in that barbarous company, and arrayed in that most barbarous garb!
+
+[Illustration: THE LAST RALLY]
+
+It was a little before sunset when we reached the place that Tizoc had
+selected for our ambush upon the promontory; and an hour later, just as
+the shadows of evening were beginning to fall, one of our lookout men
+reported that a large boat--of which the oars must be muffled, for no
+sound came from it--was pulling around a point just beyond where we lay.
+There was a little stir among our men when this news was received, and a
+shifting and arranging of weapons, so that all might be in readiness
+when the moment for opening the ambush came; but we had a picked force
+with us, each man of which fully understood how necessary was silence
+to the success of our plans, and the quick thrill of movement was so
+guarded that it scarcely ruffled the deep stillness of the night.
+
+But the moments lengthened out into minutes, and the minutes slowly
+slipped by until a full hour had passed, and the thick darkness of
+tropical night was upon us, and still there was no sign of a foe. Tizoc
+grew uneasy, for it was evident that we were in error in our conception
+of the enemy's plan. Had he intend-to mount his own men as sentinels in
+place of our men whom he had slain, and then get save possession of the
+promontory by killing the relief as it came on, we should have been long
+since engaged with him; but here the night was wearing on, and,
+excepting only the boat that our scouts had seen, there had been nothing
+to show that the attack which we had expected so confidently was
+anything more than a creation of our own fears. Yet our only course was
+to remain where we were until morning; for some accident might have
+delayed the attack, and the necessity of holding the promontory was so
+urgent that we could not take the risk of withdrawing our force.
+
+It was weary work sitting there in the darkness, after all the weariness
+of so exciting a day, and as the hours dragged on I found myself now and
+then sinking into a doze, for which I reproached myself; yet also
+excused myself by the reflection that I did not at all profess to have
+either the training or the instincts of a soldier, but had been brought
+up, as a man of peace and as a scholar, in accordance with the sound
+principle that night rationally is the time set apart for sleep. It was
+from a most agreeable nap--in which I was dreaming pleasantly of my old
+life in Ann Arbor--that I was roused suddenly by Rayburn's quick grip
+upon my shoulder, and by his sharp whisper, "What's that?"
+
+In an instant I was thoroughly awake, and as I bent forward and listened
+intently I heard very distinctly a faint cry of alarm, that seemed to
+come from a long way off. Tizoc, I perceived--for he had risen to his
+feet--also was most eagerly listening; and I heard a slight sound of
+movement and of arms clinking as our men roused themselves, showing that
+they also had heard that warning cry.
+
+But in a moment there was no need to strain our ears to catch the sounds
+which came to us. The cry that a single throat had uttered was taken up
+by a thousand; and so grew into a dull, distant roar, that pierced the
+black and sullen stillness of the night. And with this came also the
+higher notes of savage yells, and then we heard the clash of arms--which
+evidence that fighting was going on, no less than the direction whence,
+as we now perceived clearly, the sounds came, assured us that while we
+had maintained our watchful guard on the promontory the enemy had
+surprised our camp.
+
+Rayburn sprang up with a growl like that of a savage beast. "By G----d!"
+he cried, "they meant us to do just what we've done, and we've walked
+into their trap like so many d----n fools!"
+
+
+
+
+XXX.
+
+THE FALL OF THE CITADEL.
+
+
+Tizoc, I was glad to see, had his men well under his command, as was
+shown by the orderly manner in which they waited, despite their eager
+impatience to be off, until he gave the command to march. And hard
+marching we found it, as we floundered about that rough, rocky place,
+tripping and stumbling, and now and then hearing a crash in the darkness
+as one of our men went down. But, somehow or other, we certainly managed
+to get over the ground very rapidly; and all the while the sounds of the
+fight that was raging hotly struck with a constantly increasing
+clearness upon our ears.
+
+The whole width of the town lay between our camp and the foot of the
+rugged path that led down from the promontory; but when we were fairly
+in the streets, and no longer had rough rocks to stumble over in the
+darkness, we went forward at a very slashing pace. And we were further
+helped now by the fact that day was breaking, so that we could see
+clearly where we were going; and we had also within us that feeling of
+cheer and encouragement that ever is given to man by the return of the
+sun. In but a few minutes more, in that tropical region, a flood of
+daylight would be about us; and Tizoc's hope was that when the horror of
+darkness, ever appalling to barbarians, should be lifted, and when our
+coming should afford a firm centre to rally around, our army might
+regain the courage and steadiness which it had lost in the terror and
+bewilderment of a night surprise.
+
+But he quickly found that this hope was doomed to disappointment. Only a
+little beyond the gate of the Citadel we came upon a flying body of
+Tlahuicos--though no pursuers were in sight beyond them--and these were
+so completely demoralized that they took our company for a detachment of
+the enemy, and with wild cries fled away from us down a side street and
+so disappeared. "What do you think of your friends now?" Rayburn asked
+Young, grimly. But Young's only answer was to curse the vanished
+Tlahuicos for cowards.
+
+A moment later the whole street in front of us was filled with a howling
+mob of our men, and these came surging towards us with the evident
+intention of seeking safety in the Citadel. Tizoc saw at a glance the
+hopelessness of trying to rally a rout like this until the terrified
+creatures, fleeing like sheep from a pack of wolves, had been given rest
+for a while in some safe place where their courage might return to them.
+Being once within the Citadel they would be for a time wholly out of
+danger; for even should the enemy try to set scaling-ladders in place,
+and so break in upon us there, it would be an easy matter for a few
+determined men to hold the walls until some sort of order had been
+restored among our broken forces. Tizoc therefore promptly wheeled our
+little force aside into an open space, and so made a way for the
+struggling crowd to sweep past us. We noted, as the stream of
+terror-stricken men flowed by, that their officers were not with them;
+from which Tizoc drew the hopeful augury that the officers, being all
+trained soldiers, had drawn together into a rear-guard that sought to
+cover this wild retreat. And presently we found that Tizoc was right in
+his inference, for soon the crowd began very perceptibly to grow
+thinner, and the sound of loud cries and the rattle and clashing of arms
+rang out above the tumult, and then there came around a turn in the
+street, a little beyond where we had halted, a compact body of men who
+were falling back slowly, and who were laying about them most valiantly
+with their swords. Our party gave a yell, by way of putting fresh heart
+into these gallant fellows, and Tizoc quickly disposed our company in
+such a manner that the retreating force fell back through our midst; and
+then we promptly closed in, and so took the fighting to ourselves.
+
+I cannot tell very clearly how our retreat to the Citadel was managed,
+nor even of my own part in it; for fighting is but rough, wild work,
+which defies all attempts at scientific accuracy in describing it--and
+for the reason, I fancy, that it engenders a wholly unscientific frame
+of mind. Reduced to its lowest terms, fighting is mere barbarity; a most
+illogical method of settling some disputed question by brute force
+instead of by the refined reasoning processes of the intelligent human
+mind; and by the anger that it inevitably begets, the habit of accurate
+observation, out of which alone can come accurate description, is
+hopelessly confused. Therefore I can say only that foot by foot we
+yielded the ground to the enemy that pressed upon us; that wild shouts
+rang out--in which I myself joined, though why I should have shouted I
+am sure I do not know--together with the sharp rattle of clashing
+swords; and that through the roar of this outburst of fierce sounds
+there ran an undertone of groans and sobs from the poor wretches who had
+fallen wounded to the ground. The one thing that I remember clearly is a
+set-to with swords that I had with a big fellow, just as we had come
+close to the Citadel, that ended in a way (that would have surprised him
+mightily had he lived long enough to comprehend it) by my finishing him
+by means of a stop-thrust followed by a beautiful draw-cut that was a
+famous stroke with my old sabre-master at Leipsic. And I well remember
+thinking, at the moment that I made this stroke--and so saved my life by
+it, for the fellow was pressing me very closely--how happy it would have
+made the old Rittmeister could he have seen me deliver it.
+
+As we made a rush for the gate of the Citadel, that we might get inside
+this place of safety and drop the grating before the enemy could follow
+us, we were surprised by finding many of our own men lying dead about
+the entrance; and what was far worse for us, we found that unskilled
+hands had been at work with the machinery whereby the gate was lowered
+and by their bungling had managed to start it downward in such a way
+that it had jammed in the grooves. What actually had happened there, as
+we knew afterwards, was that the first of the cowardly wretches who had
+entered the Citadel had tried to drop the gate in the faces of their
+companions and so secure their own safety; whence a fight among
+themselves had sprung up, in course of which many of them very
+deservedly were slain, and, most unhappily for us, their frantic efforts
+to lower the gate had resulted in thus disabling it.
+
+We had a moment of breathing space before the enemy came up with us, and
+in this time Rayburn and Young and I had a grip of each other's hands,
+in which, without any words over it, we said good-bye to each other; for
+we neither of us for one moment doubted that our last hour had come.
+Tizoc stood a little distance from us, as steady and as gallant in his
+bearing as ever I saw a man; but that he also counted surely upon dying
+there was shown by the glance of grave friendliness that he gave us, and
+by his making the gesture that among his people is significant of
+farewell. Then we ranged ourselves across the gate-way, holding our
+swords in hand firmly, and Rayburn, who had caught up a javelin, stood
+with it poised above his shoulder in readiness to discharge it as the
+enemy came on. The sight of his splendid figure towering defiantly in
+that heroic attitude set my mind to running upon the Homeric legend of
+the glorious battling of the Greeks before the gates of Troy, and of
+Hector uplifting the rock; and I was very angry with Young, whose
+disposition to seize upon the whimsical side of everything was the most
+irrepressible that ever I came across, when he exclaimed: "I'll bet you
+five dollars, Rayburn, that when you throw that clothes-prop you don't
+hit th' man you fire at!"
+
+But Rayburn did hit his man, straight in the heart too, a moment later,
+as the enemy with a wild yell charged us; and then, with his back set
+well against the wall, he fell to work most gallantly with his sword.
+
+From the very beginning of it we knew that our fighting was utterly
+hopeless; for all of our company together did not number fifty men, and
+we were confronting there a whole army. Up the street, as far as we
+could see, the troops of the enemy were solidly massed; and for every
+man whom we struck down twenty were ready to spring forward, fresh and
+vigorous, to exhaust still further the strength that rapidly was leaving
+us. That we fought on was due not to our valor but to our desperation;
+and also--at least such was my own feeling--to a swelling rage that made
+us long to kill as many as possible of these savages before we ourselves
+died beneath their blows. Death, we knew, was the best thing that could
+happen to us; for it would save us from the worse fate, that surely
+would come to us should we be captured, of being turned over to the
+priests, that they might torture us before their heathen altars, and in
+the end tear our still quivering hearts out. And that the wish of our
+enemies--according to the Aztec custom--was rather to capture us than to
+kill us was shown by the way in which they fought; for all their effort
+was to disable us, and so to take us alive; nor did they seem to have
+any great care, if only this purpose could be accomplished, how many of
+themselves were slain.
+
+Sometimes in my dreams the wild commotion of that most desperate combat
+comes back to me. I see again before me the crowd of half-naked men,
+curving in a semicircle measured by the length of my sword, their faces
+distorted by the passionate anger that stirred their souls; and I see
+one fierce face after another lose out of it the look of life, yet not
+the look of hate, as my sword crunches into the vitals of the body to
+which it belongs; and I hear the wild din around me, and the yells of
+rage and of pain, and my feet tread in slippery pools of blood, and my
+body aches with weariness, and sharp thrills of agony dart through the
+strained muscles of my right arm--yet still I fight on, and on. And,
+truly, all this seems more real to me now in my sleep than it did to me
+then in its reality; for a dull weight of most desolate hopelessness
+settled down upon me as I fought out to the end that most hopeless
+battle--so that my spirit shared in the numbness of my body, and I cut
+and parried and gave men their death-blows with the stolid energy of a
+mere death-dealing machine.
+
+It had been from the first no more than a question of minutes how long
+this unequal fight would last; and when I heard a great yell from the
+enemy, and perceived a flood of soldiers swirling inward through the
+gate-way just beyond the fellows whom I was dealing with, I knew that
+Tizoc's men had been beaten down or slain, and that the end was very
+near at hand. As I glanced across the shoulders of the man whom I just
+then put forever on the list of the non-combatants, I saw what seemed to
+be an eddy in the midst of the crowd that was rushing into the Citadel;
+and in the thick of the tightly knotted group that thus choked the
+narrow way I saw Tizoc still laying about him with his sword. He was a
+very ghastly object, for a cut on his head had loosened a piece of his
+scalp, that hung down over his forehead and waved and trembled there
+like a draggled plume; his face was bathed in blood from this horrid
+wound, and his armor of cotton cloth was soaked with the blood that had
+run down upon it from the cut in his head, and also from a wound in his
+neck. In the moment that I had free sight of him he made as fine a
+sword-stroke as ever I saw, wherewith he fairly severed from its body
+the head of one of his assailants; and at the very same instant, while
+that head still was spinning in the air, a man directly behind him
+forced back the pressing crowd by main strength and so gained a free
+space in which to swing his sword. I shouted to Tizoc to warn him of the
+danger, and he half turned to ward against it; but before he could turn
+wholly around the blow had fallen, splitting his whole head open from
+the crown to the very chin. And in the midst of the fierce yell of
+triumph that went up as this cowardly stroke was delivered there passed
+from earth the soul of as brave and as true a man as earth has ever
+known.
+
+A dizziness came over me as I saw Tizoc fall, and saw in the same moment
+the wild rush forward of the enemy over his dead body into the Citadel;
+and so I suppose that what with this dizziness and my great weariness I
+must have dropped my guard. I faintly remember hearing a shout of
+warning from Young, who was close beside me, which shout mingled with
+the shrieks of those inside the Citadel whom the enemy everywhere were
+cutting down, and the great roar of victory that went up from all the
+army, both within and without the Citadel, rising tempestuously in
+mighty waves of sound: and then a crash like that of a thunder-bolt
+burst directly upon my head, and a sickening pain shot through me, and I
+seemed to be falling through untold depths into vast gloomy chasms (so
+that I thought I was dropping once more into the hollow darkness of the
+canon), and there was a very dreadful surging and roaring and ringing in
+my ears; and then all this horror of evil sounds grew fainter, and I
+felt myself slipping quickly into the awful stillness and blackness that
+I surely thought must be the entrance-way to death. And with this
+thought a numb sort of gladness came over me, for in death there was
+promise of restfulness and peace.
+
+
+
+
+XXXI.
+
+DEFEAT.
+
+
+After all, the life that I thought was lost, and had but little sorrow
+for the losing of it, slowly came back to me again. For a good while
+before I recovered consciousness fully, I understood a little of what
+was going on around me by sounds which, no doubt, were loud and ringing,
+yet which seemed to me to come faintly from a long way off. They plainly
+were the sounds of fighting--of weapons rattling together, of shouts and
+yells and death-cries--but I did not associate them with our present
+battling, but thought that we still were in the canon, and were still
+fighting those wild Indians by whom poor Dennis was slain. And I knew
+that I had been hurt badly; for in my head was a throbbing pain so keen
+that it seemed like to split my skull open, and my stomach was stirred
+by most distressing qualms, and my weakness was such that I could not
+ease the sore muscles of my body by moving by so much as a
+hair's-breadth from the cramped position in which I lay.
+
+It seemed to me a vastly long while that I remained in this dreary
+condition of half-consciousness, with no certain knowledge of anything
+save the pain that I suffered; and then I felt some one touch me, and a
+hand laid upon my heart; and this touch so far roused me that I heaved a
+long sigh and slowly opened my eyes. For a moment I did not know the
+face that I saw bending over me; nor was this wonderful, for in place of
+its usual ruddiness was a death-like pallor, that was the more marked by
+contrast with the blood that trickled down over it from a great gash
+across the brow whereby the bone was laid bare. But there was no
+mistaking the voice that called out: "He's alive, Rayburn!" and added,
+"I don't see what right he's got t' be alive, either, after a crack like
+that. I guess studyin' antiquities must everlastin'ly harden an' thicken
+a man's skull!"
+
+"Studying engineering doesn't harden a man's leg, anyway," I heard
+Rayburn answer. "That cut pretty near took mine off. But now that we've
+stopped the bleeding I guess I'm all right. I think I can work over to
+you on my hands and knees and help you with the Professor. Now that I
+know he's alive I seem to be a lot more alive myself."
+
+"Just you stay where you are," Young called back, sharply. "If you move
+you'll start that bandage an' I'll have t' tie you up all over again.
+I'll attend t' th' Professor." And then Young bent over me, and, with a
+tenderness that I never would have thought his rough hands capable of,
+set himself to bandaging my wounded head. But the best thing that he did
+for me was to give me a draught of water from a gourd that had been
+slung about the neck of one of the soldiers lying dead there; which
+draught, with the comfort that the cool wet bandage about my head gave
+me, brought back to me so much of my strength that I was able presently
+to sit up and look around.
+
+Truly, a more ghastly sight than that which my eyes then rested upon I
+never saw. The gate-way of the Citadel was a very shambles. Piles of
+dead men lay all around me; and the prodigious number of the enemy lying
+slain there testified with a mute eloquence to the desperate fashion in
+which our handful of men had fought. Over the rough pavement, down the
+slope towards the lake, there flowed a stream of bright red blood that
+in places shone a brilliant vermilion where it was touched by the
+glintings of the sun. Among the dead I did not see Tizoc's body, and for
+this I was glad. Half a dozen of the enemy stood by us as a guard; but
+these suffered us to minister to each other, evidently feeling that no
+great amount of caution was necessary in dealing with three badly
+wounded men. Indeed, these guards, in their way, manifested a kindly
+feeling for us; for when they perceived that our gourd of water was
+empty one of them picked up another full gourd from amid the dead and
+handed it to us. From inside the Citadel there still came a tumult of
+fierce sounds which gave proof that though the battle--if it could be
+called a battle--was ended the work of killing still was going on; but
+these sounds sensibly diminished while we lay there waiting to know what
+fate would come to us, and we concluded, therefore, that there remained
+no more rebels to be slain.
+
+Rayburn was seated upon the ground at no great distance from me, his
+back propped against the wall. As he saw that I was looking towards him,
+and had again my wits about me, he greeted me with a very melancholy
+smile. "It's been a pretty cold day for us, Professor," he said, "and
+there's no great comfort in knowing that it's partly our own fault that
+these fellows have laid us out. I didn't give them credit for such good
+tactics; and even with the bad watch that we kept I don't see how they
+managed to get their men round on the other side of our camp. Well, it
+must please them to know how straight we walked into the trap that they
+set for us, like the pack of fools that we were."
+
+"You won't ketch me joinin' in any more Indian revolutions, anyway,"
+Young put in. "I did think I could bet on those Tlahuicos, an' they've
+just gone back on us th' worst kind. Do you feel strong enough,
+Professor, to tie th' ends o' this rag?" He had been binding up the cut
+in his forehead, and now he got down on his hands and knees in front of
+me, and bent his head down within easy reach of my hands; and my
+strength had so far returned to me that without being very tired after
+it I was able to make the ends of the bandage fast. The blow on his head
+had glanced from the skull, luckily; but it had been heavy enough to
+stun him for some minutes after he received it--and his falling as
+though dead had been the means, no doubt, of saving his life, even as in
+the same manner my life had been saved. Rayburn's wound was a worse one
+than either Young's or mine, for a great gash in his thigh had wellnigh
+cut his leg off, and until, with Young's help, he had improvised a
+tourniquet, from a bowstring and a broken fragment of a javelin, he had
+been in great danger of bleeding to death.
+
+For more than an hour we were suffered to lie in the gate-way; while the
+work went on of slaying the wretched Tlahuicos, and then of marshalling
+the more important personages who had been reserved alive as prisoners,
+and, finally, of restoring order in the victorious ranks. At the end of
+this time an officer with a squad of men came to where we were lying,
+and roughly ordered us to rise, to the end that we also might be placed
+among the prisoners. Young and I had so far recovered our strength that
+we managed to scramble on our feet with no great difficulty; though in
+my case this exertion, which made the blood flow more briskly in my
+veins, suddenly increased so greatly the pain in my head as to bring
+upon me for a little while a dizziness that compelled me to lean against
+the wall for support. In Rayburn's case standing was quite out of the
+question; and I shortly told the officer in what manner he was wounded,
+and that to make him rise and walk assuredly would start the bandage on
+his leg, and so lead to his quickly bleeding to death. Thereupon the
+officer gave an order to some of his men to fetch a stretcher such as
+their own wounded were carried in; yet at the same time he said to me:
+"This companion of yours is a brave man; and but for my orders, I would
+loosen the bandage with my own hands, and so let him die without further
+pain;" which speech, notwithstanding the obviously kind intention of it,
+I did not translate to Rayburn at that time.
+
+While we waited for the stretcher to be brought, the soldiers fastened
+about Young's neck and about mine heavy wooden collars, which set well
+out over our shoulders and were not unlike great ruffs. I confess that
+for my own part my professional interest in this curious piece of gear
+entirely overcame my repugnance to wearing it, for I instantly
+recognized it as the cuauh-cozatl, with which, as the ancient records
+tell us, the Aztecs were accustomed to secure their prisoners of war.
+But Young, who could not be expected to share in my delight at seeing
+actually alive, and ourselves made party to it, a custom that was
+supposed to have been extinguished to more than three centuries, grew
+exceedingly indignant at having thus placed about his neck what he
+coarsely described as "an overgrown d----n goose-yoke." Nor was I at all
+successful in my attempt to soothe him by telling him that the
+discomfort to which we were subjected was a very trifling matter in
+comparison with the gain to the science of archeology that flowed from
+this positive identification of an exceedingly interesting historical
+fact.
+
+"Oh, come off, Professor," he growled. "What th' d----l do I care for
+historical facts, or for historical lies either?--an' they're all about
+th' same thing. What I want t' do is t' punch th' head o' th' fellow who
+put this thing on me, an' I can't. They'll be hangin' me up by my heels
+an' stickin' a corn-cob in my mouth next, I s'pose, an' makin' a regular
+stuck-pig out o' me; an' then likely enough you'll try t' make me
+believe that _that_ proves something or other that nobody but you thinks
+ever happened, an' so want me t' feel pleased about it. Antiquities be
+d----d! I've had as much of' em as I want, an' more too!"
+
+While the collars were being placed about our necks, and while Rayburn
+was being lifted upon the stretcher which the soldiers had brought, we
+heard from within the Citadel the sound of drums tapping, and then the
+measured tread of soldiers marching; and as we looked through the
+gate-way we saw that the troops had been formed in regular order and
+were moving towards us. At the head of the column were the
+prisoners--numbering three or four hundred, and all wearing wooden
+collars about their necks--covered on both flanks by a strong line of
+guards. They were ranged in order of their dignity, the unlucky members
+of the Council coming first, and after them the other officers of that
+short-lived government; then the military officers, and in the rear a
+few private soldiers. The fact that no Tlahuicos were among the
+prisoners led me to conclude that such of these as had not been slain
+had been held under guard until they might be returned to their owners
+or set again to toiling hopelessly in the mine.
+
+The importance that in the estimation of our captors attached to
+ourselves was shown by their placing us at the very head of the column,
+in advance even of the members of the Council; and this was a compliment
+that we willingly enough would have declined, for such honorable
+consideration, according to the customs of this people, meant surely
+that we were reserved for a very exemplary fate. But we were in no
+position to raise objections of any sort just then, and we therefore
+fell into the place assigned to us and tried as well as we could to show
+a bold front as we went downward towards the lake.
+
+Only a few terrified women and children, who fled away as we advanced,
+were in sight as we passed through the streets of the town; and from
+many of the hovels came the moans of poor wounded wretches who had
+crawled to their miserable homes to die in them; and from others came
+the lamentations of women over their dead; and in nooks and corners,
+whither with their last strength they had dragged themselves, we saw men
+lying dead in pools of their own blood. But down by the water-side there
+were live men in plenty, soldiers and oarsmen, and the pier was crowded
+with them; while out beyond the pier the whole bay was swarming with
+the boats in which the enemy's forces had stolen down upon us in the
+darkness from Culhuacan; making their landing, as we now learned, just
+beyond the town in a bay that ran up close to where our army was
+encamped. And this scene of bustling activity in the bright sunshine
+made a joyous and brilliant picture; that was all the brighter because
+of its setting in that sunlit bay, opening out between beaches of
+golden-yellow sand upon the broad expanse of restful water which fell
+away in gleaming splendor into a bank of soft gray haze.
+
+But the picture was still more stirring that we saw as we looked
+landward, when the barge that we were put aboard of pulled out from the
+pier and our rowers lay on their oars, and so waited while the work of
+embarkation went on. Right in front of us was the broad central street
+of the town; and the whole length of this, from the pier to the Citadel,
+was filled with a solidly massed body of soldiers that came down the
+steep descent slowly, and halting often, to the boats which were in
+waiting to bear them away. Barbarians though they were, these soldiers
+made a gallant showing. In front of each regiment was borne its feather
+standard, and in the midst of each company was its rallying flag of
+brightly painted cotton cloth. The higher officers wore wooden casques,
+carved and painted in the semblance of the heads of ferocious beasts;
+the cotton-cloth armor of all the officers was decked with a great
+variety of strange devices, wrought in very lively hues, and similarly
+strong hues were used in the decoration of the universally-carried light
+round shields. And all this brilliant color, the more vivid because of
+its background of bare brown skins, was flecked with a thousand
+glittering points of light where the sunshine sparkled on swords and on
+spear-heads of hardened gold.
+
+"Its not much wonder that those fellows got away with us," Rayburn said,
+as he watched the orderly manner in which the disciplined ranks moved
+out upon the pier and stepped briskly into the boats at the word of
+command. "They're as fine a lot of fighters as I ever saw anywhere. Just
+look how steadily they stand at a halt, and how sharply they obey
+orders, and how well set up they are! I must say I don't see what the
+Colonel could have been thinking about when he said that we had a
+fighting chance against an army like that. Well, he's paid for his
+mistake about as much as a man can pay for anything. It breaks me all up
+to think that the Colonel is dead. He was good all the way through. And
+I wonder what will become of that little lame boy of his now? They'll
+make a Tlahuico of him, I suppose. By Jove! what a mess we've made of
+this whole business from first to last!"
+
+My heart was too heavy for me to answer Rayburn save by a nod; for while
+he spoke the thought came home to me very bitterly that upon me rested
+the responsibility of the black misfortune in which he and Young were
+involved; and with this came also a great burst of sorrow as I thought
+how still more closely at my door lay Pablo's death--for Rayburn and
+Young at least had come into my plans with a reasonable understanding of
+the danger to which they exposed themselves; but Pablo, having no such
+knowledge, had followed me unquestioningly because of his loving trust
+that I would hold him safe from harm. My sorrow concerning Fray Antonio
+was keen enough, Heaven knows; but in his case I had the solace of
+knowing surely that he had come to his death not because of my urging,
+but in pursuance of his own strong desire. There was a little comfort in
+the thought that even one of these four lost lives could not be charged
+to my account; and yet this reflection seemed only to make my sorrow
+heavier as I thought of the woful weight of my responsibility for the
+other three.
+
+For nearly two hours we lay there in the bay while the embarkation of
+the prisoners and the troops went on--our boat moving farther out from
+the pier from time to time as the double line of boats behind it
+lengthened. In that sheltered place there was little wind blowing, and
+the blazing heat of the sun beating down upon my wounded head gave me so
+sharp a pain that I gladly would have died to be rid of it; and I could
+see, from the drawn look of their faces, that Young and Rayburn were
+suffering not less keenly. We were thankful enough, therefore, when at
+last the embarkation was completed--more than half of the army remaining
+in Huitzilan to restore order there--and we pulled out from the bay into
+the open waters of the lake and were comforted by the light breeze,
+which yet brought with it a delicious refreshment, that was blowing
+there.
+
+All the bright beauty of that lovely lake was around us, having for its
+background the green meadows and the darker green of the forests
+hanging above them on the upward slopes, and beyond all the towering
+height of the cliffs, which shaded in their colorings from delicate gray
+to dark brown, and were touched here and there by patches of black
+shadow where some great cleft opened; and yet all that we then thought
+of was that across those blue waters, which gleamed golden in the
+sunlight, we were going swiftly to a cruel death, and that the cliffs,
+whereof the beauty was hateful to us, irrevocably shut us in. Which
+gloomy feelings pressed upon us throughout that dismal passage, while
+all our oarsmen pulled stoutly together, and we went gliding onward over
+the sunlit waters towards the evil fate that we knew was waiting for us
+within the dark walls whereby was encircled the city of Culhuacan.
+
+
+
+
+XXXII.
+
+EL SABIO'S DEFIANCE.
+
+
+While yet we were a long way off from the city, we heard faintly the
+yells of triumph with which the watchers above the water-gate gave
+notice to those within the walls of the return of the victorious army;
+and from all the boats of our flotilla there went up a shrill chorus of
+answering yells. Our barge was the first to pass through the water-gate,
+out from which we had come so gallantly so short a time before, and
+thence went onward across the basin to the very pier that we had
+started from with such high hopes to gather the forces for the rebellion
+that had come to so sorry an end.
+
+All the water-side was black with the crowd that had gathered to watch
+our landing; but, considering that these people were there to welcome a
+victorious army, it seemed to me that they were strangely still and
+dull. There was, to be sure, no lack of yelling, but it came for the
+most part from a company of priests clustered on the pier where we
+landed, and from the soldiers and oarsmen in the boats--not from the
+townsfolk at large. And when we were marched upward through the
+city--following the same street that we had fought our way along when
+last we traversed it--I saw in the crowd so many sullen and dejected
+faces that it seemed to me there still was in that city a good deal of
+material for the making of another mutiny.
+
+This time we were not taken to the house in which we had met the Priest
+Captain, and whence we had been delivered from imprisonment by Tizoc's
+gallant rescue of us; but, passing a little beyond this house, we were
+led up a broad stair-way to the plateau which crowned the city, and on
+which stood the great Treasure-house that also was the temple in which
+the Aztlanecas housed their most venerated gods. And I confess that my
+delight at seeing closely this building, that until then I had beheld
+only from afar off, for a time completely overcame the dread and sorrow
+that had oppressed me; and the very strongest desire that stirred within
+me just then was for a tape-measure and a pair of compasses and a steel
+square, together with the opportunity to fall to work with these several
+instruments upon those mighty walls. Indeed, I almost had forgotten that
+I was a prisoner, and was like to die soon a very dreadful death, when a
+groan that poor Rayburn gave--wrung from him by the pain that he
+suffered in being carried up the stairs--recalled me suddenly to a
+realizing sense of our situation, and so pressed home upon me the sad
+conviction that the science of archaeology would gain nothing of all that
+I might see or learn during the little while that I should remain alive.
+
+The outer facing of the plateau, like that of the terraces below it, was
+a prodigiously heavy wall of squared stones set in cement; and for a
+coping this wall had great stones carved in the similitude of serpents'
+heads, with mouths wide open, that instantly recalled to my mind the
+like enclosure that the Spaniards found surrounding the principal temple
+in the city of Tenochtitlan--and I had a sudden strong longing that my
+friend Bandelier might be with me at that moment to see how precisely
+his very ingenious speculations concerning the snake-wall about the
+great Teocalli were here confirmed.
+
+Through a portal formed of two huge blocks of stone carved to represent
+two serpents coiled upon themselves, the heads meeting above in a sort
+of arch (not a true arch, for each of these serpents was a monolith, and
+was supported wholly on its own base), we entered the large enclosure
+before the temple. I was surprised to find--for of such a thing among
+the ancient Aztecs there is no record--that in the centre of the
+enclosure the rock had been hewn away in such a fashion as to create a
+vast amphitheatre; and that this was the place where sacrifice was
+offered by the priests was shown by the blood-stained altar in the
+centre of it, to which fragments of flesh also adhered, whence was
+wafted up to us a dreadful stench that instantly racked us with queasy
+qualms. Save directly in front of the entrance to the temple, where was
+a great stone balcony with a smaller balcony below it, all the sides of
+the amphitheatre were cut in steps, which made, also, benches where the
+multitude could sit at their ease and behold the bloody work going on in
+the pit below them; and so enormous was this rock-hewn cavity that fully
+forty thousand people could at once be seated there. Under the balcony
+there was visible the entrance to a dark tunnel-like passage, that
+evidently communicated with the temple, and a smaller passage, not large
+enough for a man to pass through, slanted downward to where it opened on
+the terrace below; which last was to drain the blood away, and also to
+free the amphitheatre from water in the season of rains.
+
+We held our noses as we skirted this shocking place, and we were glad
+enough when we got beyond it and came to the entrance to the temple--a
+very noble portal, severely simple, and because of its simplicity the
+more majestic, in which, as in the whole of the facade, was manifest the
+grave and sombre Egyptian feeling that I had before observed. Through
+this we passed into the shadowy interior, lighted by only a few narrow
+slits cut in the enormously thick walls, where the lofty roof was
+upheld by a wilderness of columns which opened before us seemingly
+endless vistas where an eternal twilight reigned. Of interior decoration
+there was nothing save a broad and simple panelling upon the walls, and
+the great pillars were mere round monoliths without either bases or
+capitals.
+
+As we entered this, to them, most sacred place a hush fell upon our
+escort, and even I felt something of that reverent awe that is inspired
+by any building which has been sanctified by the worship of multitudes
+within it through countless years. But that Young did not at all share
+this feeling with me was made manifest by his observing, after taking a
+long look around him: "Well, this wouldn't answer for a Congregational
+church, anyway. There ain't a pew in th' whole place, an' here in broad
+daylight you couldn't see a hymn-book if you tried. I wonder what they'd
+say, Professor, to a bid for puttin' in a dynamo for 'em an' lightin'
+this dark old hole with electricity? An' it 'u'd take off a lot o' this
+chill an' dampness if they'd have a steam-heater put in at th' same
+time. It's enough t' give all hands rheumatism th' way cold creeps
+strike up your legs." But at this point Young's observations were cut
+short peremptorily by the hand that one of the guards laid across his
+mouth; which hint that it was desirable for him to keep silence was
+quite unmistakable.
+
+This decided repression of Young's chattering, no doubt, was the more
+vigorous because we now were approaching the farther end of the temple,
+where loomed before us amid the shadows a great idol, set upon an
+altar-like throne. This figure, fully ten feet high, was a strange
+medley of grotesque and hideous carvings that yet in its entirety was
+like a man; and so cruel and so ferocious was the general air of it that
+it well might inspire a very lively terror in simple souls. The most
+striking feature of the figure was a dismal skull, that was outheld from
+the region of the waist by two great hands placed there arbitrarily and
+without any relation to the figure's arms; and for a crest--repeating
+the motive of the gate-way--it had two serpents' heads, the bodies
+pertaining to which were twisted and involved about the whole mass. For
+eyes this evil thing had large and gleaming green stones--being, in
+truth, emeralds, though I did not at that time recognize them as
+such--and golden serpents, very beautifully wrought, were twisted about
+it, and a collar of golden hearts was hung around its neck over a sort
+of apron of shining green feathers; and feathers of a like sort rose
+above the heads of the serpents in a thick plume; and over every part of
+the figure were scattered glittering objects--emeralds, and disks of
+gold, and scraps of mother-o'-pearl, and fragments of obsidian--whence
+shone through the heavy shadows faint, shimmering points of light. In
+one of its out-stretched hands the figure held a bow, and in the other a
+bunch of arrows; but even without these unmistakable attributes I should
+have known from the skull and from the serpents' heads that this fierce
+and hideous idol represented the god Huitzilopochtli: the first
+divinity, and throughout the whole time that their bloody religion
+endured, the principal divinity, that the ancient Mexicans adored.
+Young did not venture to speak aloud again, but he turned to me with a
+long sigh and whispered, earnestly, "That certainly is, Professor, the
+very d----dest thing I ever saw!"
+
+As I knew, it was in keeping with the Aztec customs that prisoners taken
+in war thus should be brought first of all before the god
+Huitzilopochtli, that they and their captors together might do him
+reverence; therefore, I was not surprised when a priest came forth from
+behind the altar and bade us prostrate ourselves in adoration of the
+idol. As this order was given, all the Aztlanecas with us bowed
+themselves to the floor; but Young, who did not understand the order,
+and I, who felt my gorge rising at the thought of thus humbling myself,
+remained erect. However, we did not continue through many seconds in
+that position; for a couple of soldiers instantly laid hands upon each
+of us, and by shoving our shoulders sharply forward, and at the same
+moment kicking our legs from under us, they summarily laid us face
+downward at full length upon the floor. As for Rayburn, they seemed to
+be satisfied with his recumbent position upon the stretcher; at any
+rate, they suffered him to remain as he was.
+
+While I lay prone, quivering with rage at the double indignity of being
+thus roughly handled, and of being compelled even in form to worship a
+disgusting idol, I heard an odd little pattering upon the stone floor,
+and then something cold and clammy was thrust against my hand, and at
+the same instant I heard close beside me a curious snuffling noise; and
+while a glad doubt, that I scarce ventured to give way to, was rising
+within me, the clammy thing was taken away from my hand, and there
+straightway rang out through the gloomy silence of the temple a
+thunderous braying that seemed fairly to shake the walls. There was no
+mistaking the voice of the friend who with this triumphant blast
+welcomed me; and as I heard it there came into my heart a sudden glow of
+hope that Pablo, and that even Fray Antonio also, might still be alive.
+And this hope was destined to be immediately and most joyfully realized,
+for as we rose to our feet again I saw the lad standing, with El Sabio
+beside him, not a dozen feet away from me; and a little beyond them was
+the monk, his face all lighted up with a bright look of happiness and
+love. And seeing these three once more standing alive and well before me
+was the most amazing and also the very gladdest sight that ever met my
+eyes.
+
+It was a sore trial to me that I could not immediately hold converse
+with Pablo and with Fray Antonio, and so come to know through what
+adventures they had passed, and by what miracles their lives had been
+saved; but the ceremony in which our captors were engaged was but half
+completed, and the better to assure our orderly conduct during its
+continuance we were kept asunder in the procession that then was
+formed--the object of which procession, as my knowledge of the Aztec
+customs led me rightly to infer, was that the ceremonial of triumph
+might be ended by leading us thrice around the sacrificial stone. And in
+truth I dreaded less the fate which this leading us about the altar of
+sacrifice implied was in store for us than I did the close association,
+made necessary by the ceremony, with the direful stench which that vile
+altar exhaled.
+
+At the edge of the amphitheatre, where already the evil odor was almost
+overpowering, the soldiers who had charge of us relinquished us--as it
+seemed to me, most thankfully--to a company of the temple priests;
+whereof the chief was a round, fat little man, whose shortness of legs
+very obviously was accompanied by a corresponding shortness of wind. He
+was, in truth, a most hopelessly undignified little personage; yet he
+did his best to assume a look of dignity as he waddled down the steps in
+advance of us, and he manfully endeavored to conceal the difficulties
+encountered by his short fat legs in the course of this descent. And I
+was glad enough that we had his absurd performances to distract our
+minds a little from the dismalness of our surroundings, and especially
+from the queasiness that again beset our stomachs as our noses were
+assailed more and more violently by that most evil smell. The priests, I
+observed, had cotton stuffed in their nostrils; but for us there was
+nothing for it but to hold our noses tightly with our hands.
+
+El Sabio, who had a most generous and broadly open nose, and who was not
+blest with hands to hold it fast with, grew restive as the first whiff
+struck him; which resulted less, I suppose, from the intrinsic vileness
+of the smell than from the fact that he, in common with all peace-loving
+animals, had aroused in him an instinctive terror by the odor of blood.
+Pablo's voice, and Pablo's touch, possibly might have soothed and
+quieted him; but the efforts which the priests who were leading him made
+to restrain him only served the more to terrify him, and so to increase
+his violence. And the priests, who now for a considerable time had seen
+him daily, and had known him only as the most gentle and biddable of
+creatures, were mightily astonished, and evidently were terrified, by
+this sudden outbreak of a fierce temper that most reasonably took them
+entirely by surprise. Partly by pulling at the rope that they had about
+his neck, and partly by such pushes as they dared to give him while he
+was momentarily at rest, they succeeded in forcing him down the steps;
+and so at last into the large circular space at the bottom of the
+amphitheatre, in the midst of which stood the stone of sacrifice and
+where the smell of blood was overpoweringly strong. But by the time that
+this victory was won El Sabio had ceased to be a quiet orderly donkey,
+accustomed to conform to the usages of human society, and had become a
+veritable crazy creature, inflamed by the madness of fear and rage.
+
+[Illustration: EL SABIO'S DEFIANCE]
+
+By some miracle--a very happy miracle for those whom the poor ass most
+naturally regarded as his tormentors--El Sabio's nimble heels had until
+this moment lashed the air harmlessly; but just as the last step
+downward was accomplished he let out both of his hind-legs together, and
+with such precision that both of his hoofs struck a remarkably tall
+priest who had taken a very active part in persecuting him. The blow was
+landed fairly on the tall priest's stomach, and instantly the two long
+halves of that priest shut together like a jack-knife, and he fell to
+the ground with a gasp that told how thoroughly the wind was knocked out
+of him. Doubtless this outburst of violence served but to increase El
+Sabio's terror, for he straightway gave so strong a plunge that he
+fairly broke away from the men who were holding him; and then he bent
+all his energies to working such destruction as never was worked by one
+single ass since the very beginning of the world!
+
+Fortunately for our own safety--for El Sabio was in no condition to
+discriminate between friends and foes--we still were at some distance
+from the bottom of the amphitheatre when this outbreak occurred; the
+greater part of the priests having preceded us, and El Sabio having been
+led in the van of the prisoners. It was wholly upon the priests,
+therefore, that his mad rage was expended, and the way that he "got in
+his work," as Young expressed it, on these enemies of his and ours was a
+joyful wonder to behold. Being closely penned in--for the way whence
+they had entered the amphitheatre was barred by the crowd of which we
+were a part, and the entrance to the subterranean passage leading to the
+temple was closed--the priests had no chance to escape from the furious
+creature save by clambering up the smooth wall, fully eight feet high,
+by which was enclosed the circular space that immediately surrounded the
+altar. Even an agile man, going at it quietly, would have found a little
+difficulty in executing this gymnastic feat, that required for its
+accomplishment sheer lifting of the body until a leg could be thrown
+over the top of the wall; and as these priests, for the most part, had
+grown fat and sluggish in their sacred calling, they were wellnigh
+incapacitated from performing it. Furthermore, El Sabio manifested what
+had the appearance of being a most diabolical ingenuity--yet that, no
+doubt, was no more than chance--in delivering flying kicks against the
+legs of these dangling creatures; wherefrom such keen pain resulted that
+they instantly let loose their hold, and came tumbling to the ground.
+
+So far as we were concerned--our sympathies being wholly on the side of
+the ass--this astonishing spectacle remained a broad farce until the
+very end; but it presently became to the men engaged in it a very
+serious tragedy. As he made his wild charges, El Sabio galloped backward
+and forward again and again over the bodies of his prostrate enemies; in
+the course of which gallopings his sharp little hoofs cut their naked
+flesh savagely, and now and then, when he happened to land a kick fairly
+against a man's body, we could see, from the sinking in of the fellow's
+ribs and the gush of blood that burst from his nostrils, that the ass
+had delivered a death-blow.
+
+As for the noise that attended this most extraordinary performance,
+words can but faintly describe it. From the men directly engaged with El
+Sabio came yells of fear and shouts for assistance and cries of anger,
+beneath all of which was a dull undertone of groans; the crowd around us
+and higher up behind us gave vent to a shrill roar of shouts and yells
+that seemed to be partly in the nature of advice, and partly the result
+of that instinct which prompts all barbarians to yell whenever anybody
+else yells, on general principles. Pablo interpolated a most despairing
+note in the way of beseeching cries of "B-u-r-r-r-o! B-u-r-r-r-o!"
+whereby he sought to allay El Sabio's frenzy, and so to save him from
+the direful fate that well might be expected to overtake him in
+recompense of his direful deeds; and Young fairly tossed his battered
+Derby hat up into the air as he shouted: "Go it, El Sabio! Give it to
+'em, my boy! Ten t' one against th' fat priest! Three cheers for th'
+jackass! Hip-hip-hurrah!" In short, it seemed as though Bedlam had
+broken loose among us, and as though all of us together were going mad.
+
+What with dodging behind his fellows, and keeping clear of El Sabio's
+frantic charges by the display of an agility that I would not have given
+him credit for, the little fat priest managed to preserve his small
+round body unharmed until all of his companions had either escaped over
+the wall or had been, as Young put it, knocked out by El Sabio's heels.
+Once or twice he had made a dash for the passage-way in which we were
+standing, but the lower end of this was choked with the dozen or more
+badly wounded wretches who had crawled thither in their efforts to
+escape; and these the priests in front of us, being but cowardly
+creatures, had made no effort to succor or to lift away, for the reason
+that so long as this barrier remained they themselves were safe from El
+Sabio's fury.
+
+Having, therefore, no longer any one to hide behind, the fat little
+priest evidently realized that his only hope of salvation lay in making
+an effort, truly heroic in one of his height and girth and woful
+shortness of wind, to clamber up the face of the wall; and to this
+wellnigh impossible task he most resolutely set himself. It was only by
+jumping that he was able to get a grip over the top of the wall; yet
+when this grip was gained he could get no farther on his way to
+deliverance, and so he hung dangling there, his face to the wall,
+jerking his short fat legs about spasmodically, and wasting in most
+piercing yells what little there was in him of wind.
+
+It did really seem as though El Sabio's action in these premises was
+dictated by reason, for when he saw the priest in this wholly
+unprotected position he deliberately took his stand at precisely the
+point behind the little man where all of his kicking power could be most
+effectively used. There was a momentary hush as El Sabio thus placed
+himself, for every one perceived how very open was the priest to
+assault; and at the same time it was apparent that while El Sabio's
+kicks assuredly would be exceedingly painful, they were not likely to
+inflict upon the priest, while he remained in that attitude, a deadly
+wound. In an instant the two small heels flashed through the air, and
+there was heard a dull, soft sound--such as might come from the striking
+of an over-ripe melon with a heavy club--and with this burst forth a
+most piercing shriek of pain. Yet the little priest, knowing that his
+life depended upon it, most gallantly retained his hold. Again El Sabio
+kicked, and again a piercing shriek sounded; and one hand loosened for a
+moment and then clutched fast again. But when El Sabio kicked for the
+third time human nature was too weak to resist further against brute
+violence. With a yell that fairly cracked our ears the priest let go
+his hold and fell downward and backward; and at that same instant El
+Sabio delivered a final kick that struck fairly on the head of the
+falling man and battered in his skull.
+
+As for El Sabio, it seemed as though he himself were like to die in the
+very moment of his victory; for with a sort of groan that, coming from a
+brute beast, was most pitiful to listen to, the poor terrified creature,
+utterly exhausted by his fright and his outlay of energy in furious
+violence, sank down panting by the side of the man whom he had slain.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII.
+
+IN THE AZTEC TREASURE-HOUSE.
+
+
+Even with El Sabio reduced to this condition of complete quiescence, the
+Aztlanecas, soldiers as well as priests, still were terribly afraid of
+him; being firmly convinced, as was not at all unnatural, that for the
+time being there was embodied in him a devil of a most dangerous sort.
+Therefore they were but too glad to yield to Pablo's burning eagerness
+to get to the poor ass; and when he called for aid to carry the
+exhausted creature out from the amphitheatre, and so away from among the
+dead and wounded and from the dreadful smell of blood, Young and I
+promptly were pushed forward and ordered to perform this piece of work
+that even the bravest of them shrunk from undertaking.
+
+However, there was no real peril in it, for El Sabio was so weak that he
+could not even stand, and still less was he strong enough to kick
+anybody. Lifting him in this dull, limp state, and carrying him up the
+steep steps, was heavy work for us, wounded and weary as we were; but
+with Pablo's help we managed it, and so got him up from the depths of
+the amphitheatre to its windward side--where a fresh sweet breeze that
+was blowing, and some water that a soldier brought when Pablo called for
+it, in a little while put new life into him. Why the ass was not made to
+pay the penalty of his sins, by being there and then killed, at first
+was a good deal of a puzzle to me; but presently, from the talk that
+went on about us while Pablo ministered to him, and while the wounded
+lying around the altar were being cared for, and the dead borne away, I
+gathered that no one dared to kill him for fear of being himself
+possessed by the devil that needs must enter another body upon being
+thus set free. And as this seemed to be a view of the case that was
+worth encouraging, I very gravely told one of the priests that I myself
+had seen a man all in an instant go raving mad upon slaying one of these
+creatures and so letting the devil loose from him. As this story was
+circulated among the crowd I was glad to perceive that the dread of El
+Sabio obviously greatly increased.
+
+As a result of the untoward outbreak that had occurred, no attempt was
+made to complete the ceremonial of triumph. Indeed, the victory now lay
+so decidedly with El Sabio that there was but little to triumph over.
+Therefore we presently were herded together by a party of soldiers--who
+took good care that Pablo should lead the ass, and that Young and I
+should walk directly behind him as a protection against any further
+uplifting of his heels--and so we all were marched once more into the
+temple. This time we did not stop in front of the great idol, but went
+on beyond it towards a portal in the rear of the building that opened on
+an inner court; on the farther side of which court, as we knew from the
+description of the place that Tizoc had given us, was the
+Treasure-house, in which was stored not only the treasure placed there
+in long past ages by King Chaltzantzin, but also the treasure belonging
+to the State and to the temple that had been accumulated in later times.
+
+At the entrance to the court-yard, where the way was closed by a metal
+grating over which a heavy curtain hung, the soldiers formally
+relinquished us into the charge of a company of priests; and then the
+curtain was drawn aside and the grating was raised, and we passed out
+into the bright sunlight--and saw close before us the place which for so
+long a time had so largely filled our thoughts. It was a building of no
+great size, being but a single story high, and was dwarfed by the vastly
+stupendous cliffs which so far overtopped it that they seemed to extend
+upward to the very sky; but it was most massively constructed, and the
+actual available space within it was far greater than was indicated by
+the relatively small dimensions of its exterior walls. When we entered
+the building, through a narrow opening protected by a metal grating, the
+chamber into which we came was of so considerable a size that a part of
+it, we perceived, must extend actually into the cliff; and that the work
+of quarrying out the living rock had been carried still farther was
+shown by an opening at its rear end that evidently gave access to some
+hollow depth beyond.
+
+It was towards this inner recess that our guards led us. Here another
+grating was raised that we might pass, and we went onward through a
+narrow passage cut in the rock, along the sides of which were many
+openings giving access to small cell-like rooms. Nor was this place, as
+we had expected to find it, wholly dark; for narrow slits had been cut
+through the rock out to the face of the cliff, through which came so
+much light that we could see about us very well. And but for that
+blessed light, faint though it was, I doubt not that we should have gone
+mad there; and even with the light to cheer and to comfort us I felt a
+black despair settling down upon me at the thought of being thus
+imprisoned within the very bowels of the mountain, with no possibility
+of other release than being taken thence to die.
+
+At the extreme end of the passage the rock had been hollowed away
+smoothly and carefully so as to form a chamber nearly thirty feet square
+and at least twenty feet high, whereof all the walls were covered with
+plates of gold which overlapped each other in the manner of fishes'
+scales; and advantage had been taken of some wide crevice or deep
+depression in the cliff above to open in the roof of this chamber a
+small aperture, whence a pale light entered in long fine rays which
+gleamed through the shadows, and gleamed again more faintly in
+reflections from the golden walls. In this oratory--for such it
+evidently was--stood a statue, smaller than that in the temple yet still
+more magnificently arrayed, of the god Huitzilopochtli; before which
+odious image we were thrown upon our faces by our guards. When this
+ceremony was ended we were led forth once more into the passage, and so
+into two of the little cells which had been meagrely prepared for us by
+tossing into each of them a bundle of mats; and there our guards left us
+to shift for ourselves--shutting the grating behind them with a sharp
+ringing of metal on stone that echoed dismally through the rock-hewn
+chambers wherein we were held fast.
+
+For a while we stood in melancholy silence about the stretcher on which
+poor Rayburn lay; and very pale and worn he looked after his great loss
+of blood and heavy fatigue and the pain and excitement of the last few
+hours. Pablo had taken up his quarters with El Sabio in a cell on the
+opposite side of the passage--for within the limits of our prison we
+were left to arrange ourselves as we pleased--and we could hear him
+talking to the ass in a fashion that at any other time we should have
+laughed at; for by turns he upbraided him for his rash acts, and
+complimented him upon his bravery, and expressed dread of the punishment
+that might be visited upon him, and told him of his very tender
+love--all of which, so far as we could judge, El Sabio took in equally
+good part.
+
+"There ain't no good in standin' 'round here doin' nothin'," Young said,
+at last. "This don't look like much of a place t' break out of, but we
+may as well see how things are, anyway. Th' Padre'd better take a
+squint at Rayburn's busted leg an' set th' bandages straight; an' while
+he's attendin' t' that, me an' you, Professor, can do a little
+prospectin'. This is th' Treasure-house, for sure, an' it'll be some
+satisfaction t' see what it amounts to. I'll bet a hat there ain't
+anything worth havin' in th' whole place, after all."
+
+I was glad enough to have any occupation that would change even a little
+the sad current of my thoughts, and I therefore very willingly acted on
+Young's suggestion--after first making sure that Fray Antonio had no
+need of help in his work of dressing Rayburn's wound--and together we
+set about this curious exploration; that had in it a strong charm for
+me, notwithstanding my heavy sorrow, because of the possibility that it
+opened of finding curious traces of a new community so far advanced in
+civilization as was that which the King Chaltzantzin had brought with
+him into this valley a thousand years ago. Here, unquestionably, was the
+oldest deposit of the belongings of any of the primitive dwellers upon
+the American continent; and I trembled a little with excitement at the
+thought of what archaeological treasures I here might find--and then I
+heaved suddenly a long sigh as I remembered how useless in my present
+case would be even the most brilliant of discoveries.
+
+As for Young's bet of a hat that there was no treasure here worth
+having, he would have lost it, had it been accepted, at the very first
+of the rooms which we examined; for the whole of this room, a cube of
+about ten feet, was packed full of bars of hardened gold from the mine
+at Huitzilan. And so was the next room, and the next, until we had found
+five rooms thus filled. But all the remaining rooms were entirely empty,
+and of the treasure set aside in long past ages by King Chaltzantzin
+there was no sign. Yet here, truly, was stored wealth the like of which
+the richest monarch in the world could not match for greatness; and as
+Young beheld before him such enormous riches his face grew ruddy, an
+eager light came into his eyes, the muscles of his throat worked
+convulsively, and his breathing was labored and short--until I
+demolished all his fine fancies at a blow by saying: "Much good this
+treasure is to us, when there isn't a ghost of a chance that either of
+us ever will get out of this valley alive!" As I uttered these bitter
+words his look of animation left him, and for some moments he was
+silent; and when at last he spoke, it was in a tone of calm though
+melancholy conviction, and with a most dispassionate air.
+
+"I shall be obliged t' you, Professor, really obliged t' you," he said,
+"if you'll just kick me for a blasted fool. Ever since that night in
+Morelia when you told me an' Rayburn about this treasure I've regularly
+had it on my brain. Through all these months I've been thinkin' about it
+when I was awake an' dreamin' about it when I was asleep. An' it's true
+for a fact, Professor, that never until this blessed minute, when we've
+really struck it, has th' notion come into my fool head that when we did
+ketch up with it the folks it rightly b'longed to might want t' keep it
+for theirselves! Yes, just kick me, please. Just kick me for a forlorn,
+mis'rable, blasted fool!"
+
+I was not disposed to laugh at Young's words; rather was I disposed to
+weep over them. For they brought freshly and strongly to my mind the
+fact that I was responsible for alluring him, by the hope of acquiring
+great riches quickly, into this accursed valley, where in a little while
+he would be most barbarously done to death. And I knew too that I was
+responsible for the like fate that must overtake Rayburn, and that in
+regard to Pablo my guilt was greatest of all. It was a comfort to me,
+truly, that not one of these ever by look or word reproached me for thus
+so wofully misleading them; and yet, in a certain way, their very
+forbearance but added to my pain.
+
+Therefore was I a little gladdened, when we returned again to the
+others, to find that Fray Antonio was speaking to Rayburn, with a grave,
+calm hopefulness, of those spiritual realities which are higher and
+better than material realities, and without steadfast trust in which,
+most of us, in the course of this sorrowful thing that we call life,
+assuredly would go mad in sheer despair. And listening to this
+comforting discourse, which was not checked by our return, did much to
+strengthen me to bear my heavy load of vain regret. Presently Fray
+Antonio shifted his ground--for he had the wisdom to speak but shortly
+on these grave topics, yet using always pregnant words which sank down
+into men's hearts and germinated there--and told us of what had befallen
+him since he had stolen away from us that night in Huitzilan.
+
+In truth, he had but little to tell, for his adventures had been of a
+very simple kind. Upon his arrival in the canoe at the water-gate he
+had been at once recognized and admitted, and had been carried directly
+to the building in which, on our first coming into the city, we all had
+been confined. And there he had been imprisoned until he was led up to
+the temple to take part in the triumph that El Sabio's violence so
+seriously had marred, and so once more was in our company. Of the Priest
+Captain he had seen nothing at all; nor had any answer come back to him
+from that dignitary to his urgent plea that, inasmuch as he had thus
+surrendered himself, his companions--that is, ourselves--should be
+suffered to leave the valley in peace; which silence on the part of the
+Priest Captain was not surprising, however, in view of the brave
+defiance in words sent by the Tlahuicos, who afterwards were such
+cowards in deeds.
+
+In fact, during the brief time of his imprisonment Fray Antonio had not
+spoken to a soul save the man who brought him drink and food. Yet his
+talk with this man, scant though it had been, had filled him with the
+hope that, could he only hold free converse with the people at large,
+even as he had done at Huitzilan, the purpose that he had in mind in
+coming into the valley would be fulfilled. Although a priest of the
+temple, his jailer had listened with a most earnest and hearty attention
+to the expounding of Christian doctrine that was opened to him, and had
+shown a very cheering willingness to recognize the shortcomings of his
+own idolatrous belief as compared with the principles of this purer and
+nobler faith. And he had told Fray Antonio that many of his companions
+in the service of the temple, having heard somewhat of the new creed
+from those who had tome up from Huitzilan, were eager to know more
+concerning it; so that it would seem, Fray Antonio declared, as though
+there were a harvest there ready to be reaped to Christianity by his
+hand. The case was such, he thought, that could he but speak publicly to
+the multitude, and especially could there but be vouchsafed from Heaven
+some sign by which the verity of his words might be established, he yet
+would win to the glorious Christian faith this whole community, that,
+through no fault of its own, until that time had remained lost in
+heathen sin.
+
+Rayburn and I exchanged glances as Fray Antonio spoke of aid being given
+him in his work by a sign from Heaven, for to our notions the time of
+miracles was a long while past. But Fray Antonio, as we knew (for once
+or twice we three had spoken together of this matter), did not at all
+hold with us in believing that miracle-working had come to an end; and
+indeed his faith was entirely logical; for, as he himself put it, those
+who believed that miracles ever had been wrought for the advancement of
+Christianity could not reasonably draw a line at any year since the
+Christian Church was founded, and say that in that year miracles ceased
+to be. In this matter, as in many others, the resemblance between Fray
+Antonio and the founder of his Order, Saint Francis of Assisi, was very
+strong.
+
+Pablo's experience as a prisoner had been of a far more trying sort; for
+the priests had sought earnestly, he said, by most stringent means, to
+pervert him from Christianity to their own faith. When we had been so
+rudely separated that day, after our interview with the Priest Captain,
+he, and El Sabio with him, had been hurried up the stairs to the temple,
+and thence to the Treasure-house; and there, though not in the part of
+it in which we then were, he had been ever since confined. Strong
+measures certainly had been taken to make a heathen of him. He had been
+starved for a while, and he had been deprived of water, and he had been
+cruelly scourged, and very harrowing presentments had been made to him
+of the death that he must die should he much longer refuse to yield.
+That the lad had remained firm in his faith, he told us, sobbing a
+little at memory of his hardships, was because of the sorrow that he
+knew his yielding would bring upon Fray Antonio and upon me; which
+certainly was not the reason that Fray Antonio most would have approved,
+but it did not in the least detract from the steady courage that he had
+shown in holding out firmly under pressure that would have made many a
+man succumb. In all the time that so many cruelties had been practised
+upon him, only one man had shown him kindness--an old man, who seemed to
+be in charge of the archives that the Treasure-house contained, who
+twice had risked his own life by secretly giving him water and food. But
+he never had been separated from El Sabio, Pablo said joyfully, in
+conclusion, nor had his mouth-organ been taken away from him; and these
+blessings had done much to lessen the misery that he was compelled to
+bear.
+
+When, in our turn, Rayburn and Young and I had told of the far more
+stirring adventures that we had passed through, and of our high hopes
+seemingly so well founded that had suffered so dismal a downfall, we all
+of us wisely refrained from speculating at all upon the future; instead
+of which profitless and painful topic we strove to speak cheerfully of
+indifferent matters; and this we did not only that we might the better
+keep our hearts up, but that we might not excite Rayburn, who already
+was in a dangerously feverish condition by reason of his wound. But,
+though we spoke not of it, we none of us doubted what our fate would be;
+nor did we imagine that the death that surely awaited us would be long
+delayed.
+
+It was a source of wonder to us, therefore, that day after day went by
+without bringing the end that we so confidently expected. From the man
+who brought us our food we could learn nothing; but this was not from
+ill-will on his part, but because he himself knew nothing of the Priest
+Captain's plans. This man, though a priest, was not unkindly disposed
+towards us, and he even listened to the words which Fray Antonio
+addressed to him touching Christian doctrine; but while he
+listened--being made of a sterner stuff than the priest who previously
+had been Fray Antonio's jailer--he gave no sign of assent. The only
+other person whom we had a chance to speak with, and this but rarely,
+was the old man who had shown kindness to Pablo, the guardian of the
+archives--who, by right of his official position, had free access to
+that portion of the Treasure-house from which the second grating cut us
+off. At the grating he and I had some very interesting conversations
+together upon archaeological matters; but Fray Antonio took but little
+interest in him when he found how slight was the impression made upon
+him by the most serious of doctrinal talk. In truth, this old
+fellow--wherefore my own heart warmed to him--was wholly given to the
+study of antiquities; and so full was his mind of this delightful
+subject that there was no room left in it for thoughts about religions
+of any sort. He was entirely catholic in this matter, for his unconcern
+respecting Christianity was neither more marked nor less marked than was
+his unconcern toward his own avowed faith.
+
+Many curious things this old man told me touching the history of his
+people; and he showed me, also, the manner in which their annals were
+kept--an obvious evolution from the picture-writing of the Aztecs that
+had advanced to a stage closely resembling the cross between ideaographs
+and an alphabet that the Coreans use--all of which I have dealt with
+exhaustively in my larger work. And he told me also, with a wonder that
+did not seem uncalled for, that several times in each year the Priest
+Captain retired to the very place in which we then were imprisoned, and
+remained there sometimes for as much as a whole month cut off from his
+people, without food or drink, while he communed with the gods.
+
+But what seemed strange to me, and also bitterly disheartening, was that
+this old man, notwithstanding the office that he held and his hungry
+love for ancient things, could tell me nothing of the treasure that King
+Chaltzantzin had stored away. He knew of this treasure, he said, only
+as a vague tradition; and although, at one time or another, he had
+explored every chamber in the Treasure-house, he never had found of this
+ancient deposit the smallest trace; for which excellent reason he had
+concluded that if ever there had been such a treasure it long since had
+been dispersed. No doubt--considering how useless to me, beyond the mere
+gratification of my own curiosity, would have been its discovery--my
+regret at this abrupt ending of my hopes was most unreasonable; but I
+confess that, so far as I myself was concerned, the very keenest pang of
+sorrow that I suffered through all that sorrowful time was when I thus
+learned that the archaeological search that I had entered upon so
+hopefully, and that I had so laboriously prosecuted, had been but a
+fool's errand from first to last.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV.
+
+A MARTYRDOM.
+
+
+Heavily and wearily the days dragged on as we lay in that dismal prison
+hewn from the mountain's heart; and as they slowly vanished there stole
+upon us a new sorrow, that was deeper and more searching than the
+doubting dread by which we were beset touching the cruel ending of our
+lives.
+
+Rayburn's wound--a very savage cut in the thigh, made by the jagged edge
+of a maccahuitl--from the first had been a dangerous one; and the danger
+had been aggravated by inflammation that had followed that long, hot
+journey across the lake, and by the rough handling that his bearers had
+given him, and by the excitement that had attended El Sabio's fiery
+outburst beside the sacrificial stone. Even Fray Antonio's skill in
+surgery, without which he assuredly would have quickly died, only barely
+sufficed to keep him alive while the fever was upon him; and when at
+last the fever left him, the little strength remaining to him grew less
+with every passing day. It was pathetic to see this man, who until then
+had been the very embodiment of rugged vigor, so worn with suffering
+that without Fray Antonio's tender assistance he scarce could move; and
+still more pathetic was it to hear him moaning in his pain, and uttering
+heart-sick longings for sunlight and fresh air, for need of which, Fray
+Antonio affirmed, he was dying there quite as much as because of his
+wound. Indeed, the chill chamber in the rock where he was lying was no
+fit place even for a well man at that time to dwell in; for the season
+of rains had come, and all the nights were cold and damp, while through
+the afternoons and in the night-time, during which portions of the day
+the rain fell in torrents, the whole mountain was shaken by the
+tremendous peals of thunder which roared and crashed about its crest.
+
+It was after one of poor Rayburn's pitiable outbreaks of weak moaning
+that Young led me away into the oratory, with the evident intention of
+delivering himself of some matter that pressed heavily upon his mind.
+
+"See here, Professor, I just _can't_ stand this any longer," he said,
+when we were alone. "I'm goin' t' send word t' th' Priest Captain t'
+ask him if finishin' me off in short order won't make him willin' t' let
+Rayburn out o' this damp hole into some place where he can be
+comfortable, an' where in th' mornin's he can get some sun an' air.
+Rayburn won't mind bein' squarely killed after he's healthy again. He
+ain't th' kind t' be afraid of anything when he's feelin' all right. But
+it's just infernal cruelty t' kill him this way--it wouldn't be fair to
+a dog. So I'm goin' t' try what I can do. It's nothin' much t' do, any
+way--only runnin' a little ahead o' th' schedule, that's all."
+
+Oddly enough, something of a like purpose had been for some time past
+slowly forming in my own mind--though what I intended to do would have,
+I hoped, still better consequences; for my notion was to urge that for
+the pleasure that could be had from killing me, my companions should be
+given such freedom as was to be found in that rock-bound region beyond
+the Barred Pass. Therefore, when Young thus brought up the matter openly
+between us, I told him of my own intention; and with some emphasis I
+advised him that inasmuch as I first had thought of it, to me belonged
+the right to carry this project into execution; and especially was this
+right mine, I urged, because but for me neither he nor any of the rest
+of us--saving only, possibly, Fray Antonio--ever would have come into
+that valley at all. Thereupon we fell to wrangling somewhat hotly; for
+Young was a most pig-headed man when his mind was set upon anything, and
+his notions of argument even at the best of times were of the loosest
+kind.
+
+How our talk might have ended I cannot tell, for each of us most
+resolutely was determined to have his own way; but it actually did end
+because of an interruption by which we presently learned that a will
+finer and stronger than either of ours had been acting, while we had
+been only thinking, in a fashion that cut the ground completely from
+under us both. And all that followed within the next hour or two came
+upon us with so startling a suddenness that it seemed less like reality
+than like a terrible dream.
+
+The first intimation that we had that anything was upon us out of the
+common run of our drearily dull prison life was hearing a creaking noise
+that we knew must be caused by the raising of the grating that shut us
+in; and as we hurried out from the oratory into the long passage-way we
+saw a company of soldiers coming towards us, at the head of which was a
+priest. Fray Antonio and Pablo, startled as we had been by the sound
+caused by the opening of the grating and the tramp of feet, also had
+come out into the passage; but while Pablo evidently was wondering, even
+as we were wondering, what might be the purpose that these men had come
+to execute, the look upon the monk's face was of expectation rather than
+of surprise. And without waiting for the others to speak, he asked,
+eagerly: "Is it to be?"
+
+"It is to be," the priest answered; and it seemed to me that there was
+sorrow in the look that went with his words, and sorrow also in the tone
+of his voice; and that this man truly was sorrowful because of the
+message that he brought I doubt not, for he was the priest who had been
+jailer to Fray Antonio, and whose mind had seemed so open to receive the
+doctrine that Fray Antonio taught.
+
+But there was only joy in the bearing of the monk as his question thus
+was answered; and there was a ringing gladness in his voice as he
+replied--being most careful first to draw us away from the room in which
+Rayburn was lying--to our looks of wondering inquiry. "The Priest
+Captain has granted my request," he said, and added quickly: "Do not
+sorrow for me, my friends. Dying for the Faith is the most glorious
+ending that life can have; and happier still is he to whom, with this
+rare privilege, is given also that of dying that those whom he loves may
+yet be saved alive. The Priest Captain has promised that when I have
+paid this little debt of life you whom I love so greatly shall go
+free--"
+
+"Don't you believe him! He's a blasted liar from the word go!" Young
+struck in, clean forgetting, in the passionate sorrow that was rising in
+his breast, that what Fray Antonio so plainly had in mind to do he
+himself had been most strongly bent upon doing but a moment before. But
+Young spoke in English, and without heeding him Fray Antonio went on:
+"You two, and the boy, surely will live; and perhaps life may be given
+also to our friend. He is in God's hands. And then, until----"
+
+But further speech was not permitted to him. Two soldiers stepped
+forward and grasped his arms, yet first suffering him for a moment to
+clasp hands with us, and so led him towards the open grating; and behind
+him Young and I and Pablo were conducted in a like fashion by the
+guards. As we passed the room in which Rayburn lay we heard him moaning
+faintly; and so weak was he that it seemed to me a very likely thing for
+us to find him dead there upon our return--if, indeed, we ever returned
+at all.
+
+As we passed out into the inner court of the temple, where the sum shone
+joyously--for the day still was young, and the rain-clouds had but begun
+to gather about the mountain peaks--we heard a murmur in the air like
+the distant sound of bees buzzing; and as we entered the rear portal of
+the temple this sound grew louder, yet still was soft and blurred. In
+the temple, Fray Antonio was separated from us, being led towards the
+inner entrance of that subterranean passage which opened into the pit of
+the amphitheatre; and as we went onward to the great portal in the
+temple's front we cast towards him sorrowful looks, in which all the
+bitter pain that was in our hearts was concentrated, but had in answer
+from him, as he walked with elate bearing between his guards, only looks
+of most joyful hope in which was also a very tender love.
+
+The noise that at first had seemed to us like bees buzzing grew louder
+as we advanced, until, when we came out upon the open space before the
+temple, it swelled into a mighty roar. And there the cause of it was
+plain to us; for before us lay the great amphitheatre crowded with a
+seething multitude, and all the thousands gathered there were uttering
+savage cries of delight at thought of the savage spectacle that now in a
+few moments would gladden their fierce hearts. In the midst of this
+tumult we were hurried into a sort of balcony, heavily built of stone,
+that hung upon the slope of the amphitheatre; just behind and above
+which was a much larger balcony of richly wrought stone-work that was
+covered by a canopy of colored stuffs, and that had in its midst a sort
+of throne. And at sight of us a great shout went up, that in a moment
+died away into a hush of silence as the Priest Captain, with a company
+of priests about him, entered the balcony behind us and took his seat
+upon the throne.
+
+But in another instant the shouting burst forth again as Fray Antonio
+came out from the passage that opened beneath us, and in a moment was
+lifted bodily by his guards and placed upon the Stone of Sacrifice in
+plain view of all. I wondered as I saw that only soldiers accompanied
+him, and that there was no sign of the coming of the priests by whom the
+sacrifice would be made. But my wonder ceased, and the burning pain that
+then consumed me was a little lessened, as there came forth from the
+underground passage, guarded by four soldiers, a very tall, strong
+Indian, whose muscles stood out in great knots upon his lithe body and
+legs and arms, and immediately following him six others no less
+powerful--for then I knew that Fray Antonio was not to die the cruel and
+bloody death of a sacrificial victim, but was to have, in accordance
+with the Aztec custom, such chance of life as was to be found in
+fighting these seven men in turn and receiving his freedom when he had
+slain them all. Yet as I looked at the slim figure of the monk, and then
+at these burly giants ready to be pitted against him, I knew that but
+one result could issue from that unequal combat; and a sudden dizziness
+came upon me, and for a moment all around me was dark. Nor was this
+momentary darkness wholly imaginary; for just then--with a low growl of
+distant thunder--a fragment broke away from the great mass of black
+cloud that hung upon the crest of the cliff above us and drifted
+sluggishly across the face of the sun.
+
+When my dizziness had passed, and I could again see clearly, the warrior
+was standing upon the Stone of Sacrifice--naked save for his
+breech-clout, and armed with a round shield and a maccahuitl of hardened
+gold. The monk still wore his flowing habit, whence the hood had fallen
+back, so that his head was bare; in one hand he held his crucifix, and
+with the other he was motioning away the sword and shield that a soldier
+held out to him: at sight of which refusal on his part to be armed there
+was a shrill outcry among the multitude that the fight would not be
+fair; and to this sharp noise of strident voices there was added a
+solemn undertone that came in a low roll of thunder from the overhanging
+cloud.
+
+[Illustration: FRAY ANTONIO'S APPEAL]
+
+As though to still the clamor, the monk waved his hand; and when at this
+sign the outcries ceased, he asked--yet addressing not the Priest
+Captain but the whole mass of people gathered there--if certain words
+which he desired to utter would be heard. And in answer to him there
+went up a shout of assent, in which was drowned completely (save that
+we, being close beneath him, heard it) the Priest Captain's order that
+the fight should begin. And it struck me that the Priest Captain showed
+his appreciation of the critical situation with which he then was
+dealing, and his dread of the forces which an ill-timed word in
+opposition to the will of the multitude might let loose against him, by
+refraining from repeating his order when silence came again, and all the
+thousands gathered there leaned forward eagerly to hearken to what Fray
+Antonio would say.
+
+And what he did say was the most moving and the most exalted deliverance
+that ever came forth from mortal man. To that great multitude he
+preached there shortly, but with an eloquence that I doubt not was born
+directly of heavenly inspiration, a sermon so searching, so full of
+God's great love and tenderness, and so full also of the majesty of His
+law and of the long-suffering of His mercy and loving-kindness, that
+every word of it falling from his lips seemed to burn into the depths of
+all those heathen hearts. My own heart was thrilled and shaken as it
+never had been stirred before, and the boy Pablo wept as he listened;
+and even Young, to whom the spoken words had no meaning, grew pale, and
+sweat gathered upon his forehead as his soul was moved within him by the
+infinitely beseeching tenderness of Fray Antonio's voice: for most
+wonderfully did his voice rise and fall in its cadenced sweetness and
+entreaty, and there was a strangely vibrant quality in his tones that
+matched the tenor of his words, and so held all that vast multitude
+spellbound.
+
+As he spoke on, a hush fell upon them who listened; and then through the
+throng a tremor seemed to run, but less a sound of actual speech than a
+subtle manifestation that in a moment a great outburst of assent would
+come, and I felt within me that the work which Fray Antonio had dared
+death to accomplish already was triumphantly concluded; and so waited,
+breathless, to hear this heathen host proclaim its glad allegiance to
+the Christian God.
+
+But the Priest Captain also perceived how imminent was the danger that
+menaced the ancient faith, and dared to take the one chance left for
+saving it, and that a desperate one, by breaking in upon Fray Antonio's
+discourse with a ringing order that the fight should be no longer
+delayed; whereat a deep growl of dissent ran through the crowd, that was
+echoed in a still deeper roar of thunder in the dark sky. In truth, the
+gathering of the storm in the heavens above seemed to be wholly in
+keeping with the storm that with an equal celerity was gathering on the
+earth below. There was a heavy languor, a dense stillness in the air,
+and the cloud above us had drifted out from the face of the cliff so far
+that it now hung over all the city like a vast black canopy. From this
+sombre mass, that buried all beneath it in gloomy shadows, flashes of
+lightning shot forth that each moment increased in fiery intensity, and
+the rolling roar of thunder each moment grew louder and sharper in its
+dark depths. Even as the Priest Captain spoke there came a yet more
+vivid flash, and almost with it a crashing peal.
+
+At the word of command, so vehemently given, the warrior faced about
+upon Fray Antonio, and held high aloft his sword; but the monk, firmly
+standing there, while in his eyes shone so glorious a light that it
+seemed as though the wrath of outraged Heaven blazed forth from them,
+opposed to this earthly weapon only his out-stretched crucifix, and thus
+confronted the death that menaced him with so splendid a bravery that
+for an instant his huge antagonist was held still by a wonder that was
+born half of admiration and half of awe; and in the breathless hush of
+that supreme moment Fray Antonio cried out, in tones so clear and so
+ringing that his words were heard by all the thousands gathered there:
+
+"I call for help upon the living and the only God!"
+
+And even as these words still sounded in our ears there shot forth from
+the cloud above us a swift red flash of blinding light, and with this
+came a crash of thunder so mighty that the cliffs above strained and
+quivered, and great fragments of rock came hurtling down from them, and
+a shivering trembling surged through the whole mountain, so that we felt
+it swaying beneath our feet.
+
+And as we gazed in awe, through the gloom that from all parts of the
+heavens was gathering towards the height whereon we were, we saw before
+us God's wrath made manifest; for the warrior, still holding raised the
+metal sword that had tempted death to him, trembled, reeled a little,
+swayed gently forward, and then, with, a sudden jerk, swayed backward
+again, and so fell lifeless--his bare right arm, and all the length of
+his naked body to his very heel marked by a livid streak of bloody
+purple that showed where the thunder-bolt had passed. For a moment the
+monk also seemed stunned; and then, kneeling beside that
+lightning-blasted corpse, and holding his hands out-stretched towards
+heaven, whence his deliverance had come, he cried in a clear strong
+voice, of which the solemn tones rang vibrant through that awful
+silence: "The Christian God liveth and reigneth! Believe on Him whose
+love and whose mercy are not less tender than is terrible His
+transcendent power!"
+
+There was no mistaking the thrill of movement that ran through the
+multitude as these words were spoken. I drew a long breath of
+thankfulness, for I felt that Fray Antonio was saved, and that in
+another instant my ears would be nigh burst by the thunderous roar of
+all those thousands--won to him by his own most moving eloquence, and by
+sight of the miracle whereby his deliverance had been wrought--that he
+should be set free.
+
+And in this instant--in the very moment that this sigh escaped me, while
+yet the pause lasted before that great shout came--the Priest Captain
+sprang from, his seat above us into the balcony where we prisoners stood
+guarded, on downward into the arena below, and thence upon the Stone of
+Sacrifice--all with a demoniac agility most horrible to look upon in one
+of his withered age--and there, with a fierce thrust of a spear that he
+had caught from a soldier's hand in passing, he pierced Fray Antonio
+between the shoulders straight through the heart; and the monk, still
+grasping in his hands his crucifix, fell face downward upon the Stone of
+Sacrifice, and lay there dead!
+
+Then Itzacoatl, standing with one foot upon the monk's dead body, and
+grasping still the spear that he had planted in that noble heart, cried
+out, triumphantly, "Behold the victory and the vengeance of our Aztec
+gods!"
+
+And the multitude, swayed backward from the very threshold of the
+Christian faith, shouted together in one mighty voice, "Victory and
+vengeance for our gods!"
+
+
+
+
+XXXV.
+
+THE TREASURE-CHAMBER.
+
+
+Close in the wake of that great thunder-crash there burst upon us so
+mighty a flood of rain that it seemed as though the lightning had riven
+solid walls asunder within the thick black mass of overhanging vapour,
+and so had let loose upon us the waters of a lake. In a moment the whole
+pit of the amphitheatre was awash, knee-deep, and before those who were
+standing there could flounder to the steps leading upward they were
+buried to their waists--and this although the water was pouring out
+through the vent provided for it with such violence that we could hear
+the rush and gurgle of it above the dashing and roaring of the falling
+rain. And all the dark mass of cloud above us was aflame continuously
+with blinding flashes of red lightning, while a continuous crash of
+splitting peals of thunder rang through the shattered air.
+
+Doubtless this storm was our salvation. That the Priest Captain's
+intention, even from the first, had been to kill us also, and so make
+his victory complete, I do not for a moment doubt; but he was too shrewd
+to waste upon a few terrified spectators an exhibition that would carry
+with it a salutary demonstration of his power; and with the bursting of
+the flood upon us, the crowd that filled the amphitheatre had begun a
+tumultuous flight to the temple; going thither partly for shelter, and
+partly being awe-struck by what had passed before them and by the
+tremendous fury of the storm, that they might find safety in the
+abiding-place of their gods.
+
+Therefore, the order was given hurriedly that we should be taken back to
+our prison; in obedience to which command our guards led us through the
+temple--where they had difficulty in forcing a way for us through the
+dense throng that had gathered within its walls--and thence to the
+Treasure-house beyond; and they were in such haste to be quit of us,
+that they also might seek safety in the temple, that they scarce waited
+to close the grating behind us before they sped away.
+
+So overwhelming was the grief that had fallen upon us that for some
+moments we stood as though stunned where the guards had left us; and,
+for myself, my one regret was that the chance of the storm, by saving me
+yet a little while longer alive, had lost to me the happiness of dying
+in the same hour with the friend whom I had so strongly loved. I think
+that this thought was in Young's heart also, as he stood there silent
+beside me, the blood so drawn away from his face that a dull yellow
+pallor overspread his bronzed skin, while his breath came short and
+hard. As for the boy Pablo, his whole being was shattered. He sank down
+on the rock at our feet, and seemed to be moaning his very life out in
+long quivering sobs.
+
+But presently, as our minds grew steadier, the thought of Rayburn came
+to us; and the strain upon our heart-strings was relaxed a little by
+remembering that our lives still were worth holding fast to in order
+that we might minister to his needs. Yet when we came again into the
+room where he lay, it seemed at first as though he also was lost to us;
+for even in that faint light we saw that his face was a deadly white,
+and when we spoke to him he neither spoke nor moved. But, happily, our
+dread that he had died in that gloomy solitude was not realized; for as
+I laid my hand upon his bare breast I felt his heart feebly beating, and
+at the touch of my hand he sighed a little, and then slowly opened his
+eyes.
+
+"He's only swounded," Young cried, joyfully. "It's th' smotherin'
+shut-upness o' this forlorn hole he's lyin' in. There's a little more
+air out in th' big room. Just grab t'other end o' th' stretcher,
+Professor, an' we'll yank him out there--nobody's likely t' come in t'
+stop us while this storm lasts. An'--an' we must be careful how we talk,
+Professor, y' know," he added, in a lower tone, as we raised the
+stretcher. "It won't do for him t' know about--about _it_ now." There
+was a break in Young's voice as he spoke, and I could feel by the
+momentary quiver of the stretcher that a shiver went through him as he
+thought of that "it," about which we must for a time hold our peace.
+
+Young bore the forward end of the stretcher, and as we came into the
+oratory I felt him start as he exclaimed, "What th' devil's broke loose
+here?"
+
+The darkness of the storm outside shrouded the oratory in a dusky
+twilight; but even through the shadows which lay thick about us we could
+see that there had been within this chamber some outbreak of
+extraordinary and tremendous violence; for the image of the god
+Huitzilopochtli had been cast down and broken into fragments, and just
+behind where it had stood there was a dark rift in the gold-plating of
+the walls, where several plates had been wrenched bodily away.
+
+A strong odor of sulphur hung heavily in the air, and, as I perceived
+it, the whole matter was plain to me. But Young sniffed at this odor
+suspiciously when we had brought the stretcher gently to rest upon the
+floor, and in a startled voice exclaimed, "Th' devil has been bustin'
+around in here for sure, an' he's left his regular home-made stink for a
+give-away!" and as he spoke there was manifest a decided bristling of
+his fringe of hair.
+
+I could not help smiling at this quaint proof of the shattered condition
+of Young's nerves--for, under ordinary circumstances, he was the very
+last man in the world to place faith in things supernatural--but I
+answered him promptly: "Then the devil did a stroke of honest business
+at the same time, for all this is the work of the same thunder-bolt, or
+of a part of it, that killed that Indian. Didn't you hear the rocks
+flying from the cliff where it struck?"
+
+"That's just what I was goin' t' say myself," Young replied, a little
+awkwardly. "An' that's what's the matter with Rayburn, an' made him
+swound away. How d' you find yourself now, old man?" he went on--rather
+glad to change the subject, I fancied--as Rayburn, at sound of his own
+name, moved a little.
+
+"I feel queer," Rayburn answered. "Sort of numb and dizzy. Where's the
+Padre?"
+
+"An' it's not much blame to you that you do feel queer," Young replied,
+hurriedly. "This last thing you've taken it into your fool head t' do is
+bein' busted all t' bits by a stroke o' lightnin'. Most folks would 'a'
+been satisfied with havin' their legs pretty much sliced off by
+Injuns--but reasonableness ain't your strongest hold, Rayburn; an' I
+guess it never was."
+
+Rayburn smile faintly as Young spoke, but instead of attempting to
+answer him--being still numbed by the heavy shock that he had
+received--he settled his head back upon the rolled-up coat that served
+him for a pillow, and languidly closed his eyes. Whereupon Young, seeing
+that there was nothing further that we could do for his comfort, betook
+himself--as his bent at all times was when any strange matter presented
+itself, and in this case with the half-crazed eagerness with which those
+upon whom a great sorrow has fallen seek instinctively to engage their
+minds with any trifling matter that will change the current of their
+thoughts--to investigating carefully the work of destruction that the
+thunder-bolt had wrought: examining the fragments of the idol, and the
+loosened plates of gold and the place on the wall whence these last had
+been wrenched away; which examination was the easier because the
+storm-cloud was leaving us--though the almost continuous loud rolling of
+the thunder still stunned our ears--and a stronger light came in through
+the opening in the roof.
+
+I seated myself beside Rayburn and paid no attention to what Young was
+doing; for my brooding sorrow was like a slow fire consuming me--as the
+tragedy that I had but just witnessed, and the infinite pathos that
+there was in seeing Rayburn thus miserably dying, overwhelmed me with a
+desolate despair. Even when Young called to me, in a tone so eager and
+so penetrating that at any other time I should have been startled into
+quick action by his words, I did not rouse myself to answer him; though,
+in a dull way, I knew that he would not thus have spoken unless some
+matter of great moment had aroused the full energy of his mind.
+
+"Professor! I say, Professor!" he repeated: "Get right up and come here.
+Don't sit there like a chuckle-headed chump. Get up, I tell you. Here's
+some sort of a show for us. Here's what looks like a way out o' this
+God-forsaken hole!"
+
+As I heard these words I did get up, and in a hurry, and so joined Young
+where he was kneeling on the floor close beside the rear wall of the
+oratory, directly behind where the idol had stood until the thunder-bolt
+had dashed it down. It was at this point, apparently, that the lightning
+had entered the chamber; for here several of the plates of gold with
+which the walls were covered--overlapping each other like
+fish-scales--had been loosened, while three of them had been wrenched
+entirely from their fastenings and had fallen down. As I joined him,
+Young excitedly pointed to the opening thus made, through which was
+visible not a solid wall of rock but a dark cavity, and from which was
+blowing a soft current of cool air.
+
+"It's a way out! It's a way out! I tell you," he cried. "This suck o'
+wind proves it. If we only can get some more o' these blasted plates
+loose we'll light out o' this and euchre the Priest Captain an' his
+whole d--n outfit yet! Ketch hold here, Professor, an' put your muscle
+into it for all you're worth. Grab right here; now!" And Young and I
+together pulled at the same plate with all our might and main. But for
+all the impression that we made upon it we might as well have tried to
+pull down the mountain; the plate did not stir. Young gave a hearty
+curse (and I confess that hearing him swearing in that natural way again
+was a real comfort to me), and then we took another pull; and all this
+while, so much does the thought of saving his life put cheer into a man,
+my heart was bounding within me and the hot coursing of my blood seemed
+like to burst my veins. Young's fervor was not less than mine, and we
+wrenched and tugged together, and never stopped to mark our cut and
+bleeding hands.
+
+"We've _got_ t' do it!" Young exclaimed, as we paused at last, without
+having loosened the plate in the least degree. "There's some way o'
+workin' this thing, I know. It must be some sort of a door, an' if we
+only can get th' hang of it we'll be all right. Have you got your wind
+again, Professor? Let's try 'f we can't sort o' prize this plate out;
+it's a little loose. Just get your fingers under it an' we'll sort o'
+pull it up an' out at th' same time. So! Now sling your muscle into it.
+Heft!"
+
+We were stooping a little, and so had a strong purchase, and with all
+our united strength we heaved away together. There was a rattling of
+metal, a yielding of the plate so easy that our tremendous effort was
+out of all proportion to it; my fingers seemed suddenly to be nipped in
+a red-hot vice; Young uttered a yell of pain, and then we both were
+sprawling on our backs on the floor, while in front of us was a broad
+opening in the wall where a wide section of the panelling had risen
+upward (the plates sliding up under each other), and so had made an open
+way.
+
+"H--ll! how that did hurt!" Young mumbled, with his nipped fingers in
+his mouth; and I must say that the vigor of his language was not
+uncalled for, as I well understood by the pain that I myself was
+suffering. I never remember pinching my fingers so badly as I did then
+in the whole course of my life.
+
+However, we did not suffer our hurts, which were not really serious, to
+delay us in exploring this hidden place that so suddenly and with such
+unnecessary violence had opened to us. Pushing upward the ingeniously
+contrived door from the bottom, we easily raised it until an opening was
+discovered the full height of a man; and through this we went into a
+narrow passage in the rock that in a moment turned and so brought us
+into a room that was nearly as large as the oratory that we had just
+left, and that, as we presently found, actually communicated with the
+oratory by means of two narrow slits high up in the wall; which
+apertures here were plainly visible, but on the other side were so
+cleverly disguised by an ingenious arrangement of the overlapping plates
+as to be entirely concealed. Like the oratory, too, this room had an
+opening in its roof through which air entered, and so much light that we
+could see about us plainly. And the very first glance that I cast around
+me in this strange place assured me that, by sheer accident, we had
+found our way at last to the secret chamber wherein King Chaltzantzin's
+treasure had lain hidden for a thousand years.
+
+Rude shelves had been cut in the rock on all four sides of the room, and
+on these were ranged earthen pots of curious shapes, ornamented with
+strange devices that my newly acquired knowledge enabled me to
+recognize--to express the matter in the terms of our system of
+heraldry--as the arms of a king quartered with the arms of certain
+princely houses or tribes. On these shelves, also, were many quaintly
+wrought vessels and some small square boxes, all of which were of
+gold--together with a score or so of small idols moulded in clay or
+roughly carved in stone, in which last the workmanship was so far
+inferior to that of the earthen-ware pots and golden vessels as to show
+at a glance that they were the product of a much earlier and ruder age;
+but belonging to the same age as the gold-work, or to a period even
+later, was a very beautiful Calendar Stone most delicately carved in
+obsidian, that was identical, save in the matter of size, with the great
+Calendar Stone that now is preserved in Mexico in the National Museum.
+This was placed at one end of the room upon a carved pedestal; and at
+the opposite end of the room, the end farthest removed from the
+entrance, was a great stone image of the god Chac Mool. Lying upon the
+Calendar Stone was what at first I took to be a cross-bow made of gold;
+but more careful examination convinced me, especially in view of the
+place where I had found it, that this certainly was an arbalest--called
+also a Jacob's staff and a cross-staff--such as in no very ancient
+times, until the invention of the quadrant, was used by Europeans in
+taking the meridional altitude of the sun and stars.
+
+At the moment that I made this last most curious and exceedingly
+interesting discovery, Young, who had been investigating on his own
+account, gave a yell of delight, and bounded towards me flourishing his
+own brace of revolvers in his hands. "They're all here!" he cried. "All
+our guns are here, an' th 'ca'tridges too! Now we _have_ got the bulge
+on these devils for sure!"
+
+As he spoke I also was thrilled with joy at the thought of the vengeance
+which this recovery of our arms might enable us to take upon Fray
+Antonio's murderers; but my joy was only momentary, for I could not but
+reflect that, after all, these Aztlanecas had but acted in accordance
+with their lights--excepting only the Priest Captain, for whom the most
+cruel death would be all too merciful--and that our slaying them would
+not be vengeance, but mere brutal revenge. Having which thoughts in
+mind, I answered, "At least we can shoot ourselves with them, and so be
+safe from death by sacrifice."
+
+"Not much we won't shoot ourselves," Young replied, with great energy;
+"an' nobody's goin' t' come monkeyin' 'round us with sacrifices, either.
+Why, man alive, we ain't goin' t' stay here--not by a jugful! We're
+goin' t' light right out o' this an' be smack off for home."
+
+"How?" I asked, blankly, and with real alarm; for the hot hope that had
+filled me at the thought of our having found a way of escape had
+vanished as I perceived that from this chamber there was no outlet save
+the hole in the roof; which hole also accounted for the current of air
+whereby my hope had been inspired. Therefore, when Young spoke in this
+extravagant fashion, the dread came over me that he was going mad.
+
+"How?" he answered, "why, through that Jack Mullins, of course. He _is_
+th' tippin' kind. I was just tryin' him, while you was pokin' 'round in
+that old rubbish, when I happened t' ketch sight of our guns; an' seein'
+them, you bet, made me bounce. Here goes for another shot at him! Stick
+somethin' under him t' keep him up when I heave."
+
+I was so dazed by the stunning wonder and by the joy that Young's words
+carried with them, that I obeyed his order mechanically. With a grave
+seriousness he seated himself upon the head of the idol; and as the
+figure and the stone base upon which it rested settled down at the end
+upon which he sat, and its other end correspondingly swung upward,
+showing beneath it a dark opening, I wedged up the mass with a heavy
+plate of gold that served as the lid of one of the boxes ranged upon the
+shelves.
+
+"It won't do for us both together t' go down there," Young said, as he
+rose from his seat and we peered into the dark cavity. "Mullins might
+take 't into his fool head t' shut himself up while we was down there,
+an' that ud mean cold weather for Rayburn an' Pablo. I'll just jump down
+them steps an' prospect a little, while you look after him t' see that
+he keeps steady;" and with these words down he went into the hole.
+
+In five minutes or so he joined me again. "It don't look like th' nicest
+place I ever got into," he said, "but I guess we'll have t' take th'
+chances on it. There's a little room down there, an' out o' that a kind
+of a back entry leads into an everlastin' big cave. But there seems t'
+be a sort of a path runnin' along in the cave--it's all as dark as th'
+devil--an' as paths mostly have two ends to 'em, I guess if we keep on
+long enough we'll get somewhere. We can't stay here, that's sure, so
+we've just got t' risk it, an' th' sooner we get Rayburn down there th'
+better. When he's solidly safe, then we can do some prospectin'--by
+good-luck we've got lots o' matches--an' see where that path goes to.
+Just sling on your guns, Professor, an' let's mosey back an' get th'
+percession started. It's hard lines on Rayburn t' tumble him into a hole
+like that when he's feelin' so bad; but I guess it's better t' take th'
+chances o' killin' him that way ourselves than it is t' let these devils
+do it for sure. Come on!"
+
+While he was speaking, Young had buckled his revolvers about his waist
+and had slung his rifle over his shoulder, and I also in like manner had
+armed myself--whereby was restored to me a most comforting feeling of
+strength. As for Young, the recovery of his weapons seemed to make him
+grow two inches taller, and he swaggered in his walk.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVI.
+
+THE VENGEANCE OF THE GODS.
+
+
+Almost in the moment that we thus found ourselves in condition to show
+fight again, the need for fighting seemed like to be forced upon us; for
+as we turned to leave the treasure-chamber we were startled by hearing a
+creaking sound that we knew came from the sliding upward of the grating
+in its metal grooves wherewith the entrance to our prison was made fast.
+
+We paused for a moment, and then Young motioned to me to follow him,
+stepping lightly; and as we came out into the oratory we heard a fresh
+creaking, by which we knew that the grating had been closed.
+
+"I guess it's only th' fellow puttin' in th' grub," Young whispered.
+"But go easy, Professor, an' have your guns all handy, so's you can
+shoot. If anybody _has_ come in it won't do t' let 'em get out again.
+Only mind you don't shoot unless you really have to. If there's only two
+or three of 'em we'd better try t' club 'em with our Winchesters, so's
+not t' bring all hands down on us with a rush before we can get Rayburn
+away."
+
+As he spoke, we were assured that some one had entered when the grating
+was raised and had remained on our side of the grating when it was
+closed again, for we heard footsteps in the room where we ordinarily
+lay; and then the footsteps drew nearer, as though the unseen person
+were examining the other rooms in search of us, and we knew that in
+another moment or two this person would enter the chamber wherein we
+were. Rayburn was lying so quietly that it seemed as though he had
+fallen into a swoon again; and Pablo, as we could tell by hearing his
+sobs, had betaken himself to the room in which El Sabio was tethered in
+search of solacing companionship. Young motioned me to stand on one side
+of the entrance to the oratory, and himself stood on the other; and thus
+we waited, while the footsteps rapidly drew nearer, in readiness most
+effectually to cut off the retreat of whoever might enter the room.
+
+The man who did enter, passing between us, was the Priest Captain. As he
+saw the wreck of the idol, and the opening in the wall behind where the
+idol had stood, he uttered an exclamation of alarm and rage; and in the
+same moment some instinctive dread of the danger that menaced him caused
+him to turn suddenly around. So, for an instant, he confronted us--and
+never shall I forget the look of malignant hatred that was in his face
+as in that instant he regarded us, nor his quick despairing gesture at
+sight of Young standing there with his rifle raised. Even as he opened
+his mouth to cry out, before any sound came from his lips, the heavy
+barrel of Young's rifle swept downward, and with a groan he fell.
+
+Had the blow struck fairly it could not but have split the man's skull
+open; but he swerved aside a little as the rifle came down, and the
+weight of the stroke, glancing from his head, fell upon his shoulder. In
+an instant, dropping the rifle, Young was kneeling on his breast with a
+hand buried in the flabby flesh of his old throat, holding tight-gripped
+his windpipe. Excepting only Rayburn, Young was the strongest man I ever
+knew (though, to be sure, at that time he was weakened by his then
+recent wound and by the privations of his imprisonment), yet it was all
+that he could do to hold that old man down and to maintain his choking
+grasp. With a most desperate energy and a fierce strength that seemed
+out of all nature in a creature so lean and old and shrivelled, the
+Priest Captain writhed and struggled in his efforts to throw Young off,
+and sought also to grasp Young's throat with his long bony hands--while
+foam gathered on his thin lips, and his withered brown face grew black
+with congested blood, and his black eyes protruded until the half of the
+eyeballs, bloody with bursting reins, showed around the black, dilated
+pupils. And then him struggles slowly grew less and less violent, his
+knotted muscles gradually relaxed, his mouth fell open so that his
+tongue lolled out hideously, his legs and arms twitched a little
+spasmodically--and then he lay quite still.
+
+[Illustration: YOUNG'S STRUGGLE WITH THE PRIEST CAPTAIN]
+
+For a minute or two longer Young maintained his grasp. Then rising to
+his feet, breathing heavily, he wiped the sweat from his face as he
+exclaimed, at the same moment giving the dead body a vicious kick: "You
+black devil, take that! Now I've squared accounts with you for killin'
+th' Padre--and it's the best day's work I've ever done!"
+
+Though the struggle between the two had been a very desperate one, there
+had been no noise about it. Through the whole fight Rayburn had remained
+buried in his death-like stupor; and Pablo, though so near to us, had
+heard no sound of it at all.
+
+"Now, then, Professor," Young said, when he had got his wind back,
+"we've got t' bounce. Th' first thing t' do is t' fasten that gratin' on
+our side, so's nobody can get in here t' bother us while we're doin' our
+skippin'. I guess we can sort o' wedge it fast so's t' stand 'em off for
+an hour or two, anyway, an' that's time enough to give us a fair start."
+
+"We can do something better than that, I think," I said, as we went
+together towards the grating. "Unless I am much mistaken, only the
+Priest Captain knew about this sliding door and the treasure-chamber
+beyond it. If we can restore to their places those three plates, and can
+close the door behind us, I am persuaded that so far as pursuit of us is
+concerned we shall be absolutely safe."
+
+"Gosh!" Young exclaimed. "D' you know, Professor, I wouldn't 'a' given
+you credit for havin' that much common-sense. It's a big idea, that is,
+an' we'll try it on. But, all th' same, we've got t' make things as
+sure as we can, an' this little job must be attended to first."
+
+As we approached the grating we saw two of the temple guard standing
+outside of it, apparently waiting for the Priest Captain's return; and
+these men looked at us with such evident suspicion that I feared for the
+success of our plans. "Just talk to 'em," Young said, hurriedly. "Talk
+to 'em about th' last election, or chicken-coops, or anything you
+please, while I take a look 'round an' sec how we're goin' t' get this
+job done."
+
+Young dropped behind me, and then aside and so out of sight, as I
+advanced to the grating and spoke to the men, whose faces somewhat
+cleared as I told them that the Priest Captain desired that they should
+wait there a little longer. And then I managed to hold their interest
+for some minutes while I spoke about the devil that was in El Sabio, and
+about other devils of a like sort whom I had known in my time. While I
+thus spoke I heard a little tinkling sound, as of metal striking against
+stone--but if the soldiers also heard it they paid no attention to
+it--and then Young whispered, "We're solid now; come on!" Whereupon I
+quickly ended my imaginative discourse upon demoniac donkeys, and with
+no appearance of haste we walked away.
+
+"It was just as easy as rollin' off a log," Young said, jubilantly.
+"There was a big gold peg stickin' there all ready t' slide into a slot,
+so's t' hold th' gratin' down, an' all I had t' do was t' slide it. I
+guess, with a plug like that holdin' that gratin' fast, they'll need
+jacks t' open it. Th' only other way t' start it 'll be rammin' it with
+a bit o' timber; but bustin' it in that way 'll take a lot o' time, an'
+half an hour's plenty for all we've got t' do. If you're straight in
+thinkin' nobody knows about that slidin' door we're solid."
+
+I felt very sure in my own mind that I was right in believing that only
+the Priest Captain had known of this secret opening; for, after him, the
+most likely person to have knowledge of it was the keeper of the
+archives, and that he was altogether ignorant of it I was well assured.
+Therefore I most cheerfully helped Young, so far as my unskilful hands
+could be useful, in the work of restoring the gold plates to the places
+whence the lightning had wrenched them loose; and when this work was
+done, so cleverly did Young manage it, there was no possibility of
+distinguishing the door from any other portion of the wall; nor was
+there then a sign of any sort remaining to show that by the passage of a
+thunder-bolt the idol had been destroyed.
+
+As we were finishing this piece of work we heard the soldiers at the
+grating calling to the Priest Captain--at first in low tones, and then
+more loudly; and then we heard them give a yell together, which
+convinced us that they had tried to raise the grating and had found that
+it was fastened down.
+
+The ten minutes that followed was the most exciting time that I ever
+passed through. Notwithstanding the secure fashion in which the grating
+was fastened, we could not but dread that those outside had knowledge of
+some means whereby it could be loosened; and in any event there was no
+doubt but that they could force a way in upon us by beating it down.
+Therefore we knew that there was no safety for us until we were fairly
+out of the oratory, and had closed behind us the sliding door--and with
+such difficult material to deal with as Rayburn, who still lay in a
+heavy stupor, and Pablo, whom sorrow had wellnigh crazed, we found it
+hard to make such haste as the sharp exigency of our situation required.
+Pablo, indeed, was so lost in wonder at finding the broken idol, and the
+dead body of the Priest Captain, and a door open in the solid wall, that
+what little remained of his wits disappeared entirely; so that we had
+almost to carry him--while El Sabio most intelligently followed
+him--into the treasure-chamber, and there we left the two together while
+we returned for Rayburn. And as we lifted the stretcher our hearts
+bounded, for at that instant there was a tremendous crash at the
+grating; whereby we knew that those without had brought to bear against
+it some sort of a battering-ram that they might beat it in.
+
+"It's a close call," Young said between his teeth; and added, as we
+rested the stretcher inside the passage while we closed behind us the
+sliding door: "If you're off your base, Professor, an' they do know th'
+trick o' this thing, it may be all day with us yet--but it's a comfort
+t' know that even if they do finish us we'll everlastin'ly salt 'em
+first with our guns."
+
+We heard another great crash behind us, but faintly now that the sliding
+door was closed, as we went onward into the treasure-chamber; and here
+we heard the like sound again, more clearly, through the slits cut in
+the wall. As gently as our haste, and the awkwardness of that narrow
+way would permit, we lifted Rayburn from the stretcher, and so carried
+him down the short flight of stairs beneath the upraised statue to the
+little chamber that there was hollowed in the rock. Here we laid him
+upon the stretcher again; and then, without any ceremony whatever, we
+bundled Pablo and El Sabio down the hole. It was a smaller aperture,
+even, than that through which we had come forth from the Cave of the
+Dead, and how El Sabio was able to condense himself sufficiently to get
+through it will remain a puzzle to me to my dying day.
+
+All this while we could hear plainly, through the slits in the wall, the
+crashing blows which every minute or so were delivered against the
+grating, together with a shrill roar of shouts and yells; and we knew
+that before this vigorous assault the grating must give way within a
+very brief period, and so let in the whole yelping pack. If I were right
+in my belief that the Priest Captain alone knew of the secret outlet to
+the oratory, we still would be safe enough, and could make some
+preliminary examination of the cave before we closed the way behind us
+irrevocably by letting the statue fall back into its place; but if I
+were mistaken, then there was nothing for us but to take the chance of
+life and death by going on blindly into that black cavern, after wedging
+fast the under side of the statue in such a way that it no longer could
+be swung open from above.
+
+It was most necessary, therefore, that we should see what course our
+enemies would take when they came into the oratory and found it empty
+of us, and the idol broken, and the Priest Captain lying dead there;
+and, that we might compass this end, Young and I returned into the
+treasure-chamber and mounted upon a ledge that seemed to have been
+provided for a standing-place--whence we had a clear view into the
+oratory through the slits in the wall. And at the very moment that we
+thus stationed ourselves there reverberated through those rock-hewn
+chambers a deafening crash and a jingling clang of metal and a rattle of
+falling stone; and with this came a yell of triumph and a rush of
+footsteps--and then, in an instant, the oratory was full of soldiers and
+priests, all yelling together like so many fiends.
+
+But upon this violent hubbub there fell a hush of awe and wonder as
+those who had thus tumultuously entered the oratory saw the Priest
+Captain lying dead amid the fragments of the shattered idol, and
+perceived that the prisoners who had been shut within these seemingly
+solid walls had vanished utterly away; and then a sobbing murmur, that
+presently swelled into moans and cries of terror, arose from the throng;
+and in a moment more, seized by a common impulse, the whole company
+bowed downward, in suppliant dread of the gods by whom such direful
+wonders had been wrought.
+
+Young gave a long sigh of relief, and with a most mouth-filling oath
+whispered in my ear, "They haven't tumbled to it, an' we're all right!"
+
+As we gazed at these terror-stricken creatures, a thought occurred to me
+on which I promptly acted. "Get both of your revolvers pointed through
+that hole," I whispered to Young. "Point high, so that the balls will
+not hit anybody; and when I begin to shoot do you shoot also, and as
+quickly as you can. Mind, you are not to hit anybody," I added; for I
+saw by the look on Young's face that he longed to fire into the crowd
+point-blank. For answer he gave me a rather sulky nod of assent; but I
+saw by the way that he held his pistols that my order was obeyed. "Now,"
+I said, "Fire!"--and as rapidly as self-acting revolvers would do it, we
+poured twenty-four shots through the slits in the wall. No doubt several
+people were hurt by balls bounding back from the rock, but I am
+confident that nobody was killed.
+
+When we ceased firing it was impossible to see anything in the oratory,
+because of the dense cloud of sulphurous smoke wherewith it was filled;
+but such shrieks and yells of soul-racking terror as came from beneath
+that black canopy I hope I may never hear again. I waited a little,
+until this wild outburst had somewhat quieted, and then--placing my
+mouth close to one of the openings and speaking in a voice that I tried
+to make like that of Fray Antonio--I said, in deep and solemn tones,
+"Behold the vengeance of the strangers' God!"
+
+What effect my words produced I cannot tell. Our firing must have
+loosened a fragment of rock between the gold plating that lined the
+oratory and the outer surface of the wall, and even as I spoke this
+fragment fell. With its fall the opening was irrevocably closed.
+
+"That was a boss dodge," said Young, as he recharged his revolver.
+"Those fellows 'll just think hell's broke loose in here, for sure; and
+I guess after they've onct fairly got outside they'll rather be skinned
+alive than come back again. But what did you say to 'em? Hearin' you
+talkin' like th' Padre, that way, gave me a regular jolt. Don't you
+think, though, maybe it was a little bit risky t' give ourselves away?"
+
+But when I had repeated in English the words which I had spoken, Young
+very seriously shook hands with me. "Shake!" he said. "I've done you
+injustice, Professor. Sometimes I've thought that you was too much
+asleep for your own good--but if anybody ever did anything more wide
+awake than that, I'd like t' know _what_ he did and who he was. Why,
+when those fellows tell about all that's been goin' on in here--about
+their busted idol, an' their dead Priest Captain, an' our skippin,' an'
+this row our shootin' has made, an' then about th' Padre's ghost talkin'
+to 'em that way--it's bound t' give 'em such a jolt that th' whole
+outfit 'll slew smack round an' be Christians right off!"
+
+Some such notion as this had been in my own mind as I executed the plan
+that on the spur of the moment I had formed. When, later, I thought
+about it more calmly, I could not but regret, for Fray Antonio's sake,
+my hasty action; for he would have been the very last man to approve of
+such stringent methods of advancing the Christian faith. If any result
+came from my demonstration, it certainly came through terror; and the
+essence of Fray Antonio's doctrine, as it was also of his own nature,
+was gentleness and love.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVII.
+
+THROUGH DARKNESS TO LIGHT.
+
+
+"I guess we're solid now, as far as bein' bothered by those sacred
+devils goes," Young said, as we stepped down from the ledge of rock on
+which we had been standing; "but this ain't no time t' take no chances,
+an' th' sooner we see what show we've got for gettin' anywhere through
+that cave, th' better it'll be. An' we've got t' look after Rayburn.
+He's closter t' handin' in his checks t'-day than he's been at all. Just
+think o' him keepin' still through all that row, an lettin' himself be
+yanked around like a bag o' meal without takin' any notice of it! But
+there's just a squeal of a chance for him if we do get clear away.
+Knowin' that he's safe 'll do him more good, even, than fresh air an'
+sunshine--an' oh Lord! how good fresh air an' sunshine 'll be, if ever
+we do strike 'em again!"
+
+When we descended the stair-way again to the little hollow in the rock
+where Rayburn was lying, we found that he still remained in his dull
+stupor and took no notice of our coming. Close beside were Pablo and El
+Sabio, huddled together for mutual support in this very trying passage
+of their lives. El Sabio, indeed, was a most melancholy and dejected
+creature, for his short commons and his long confinement had taken the
+spirit out of him pretty thoroughly; but for our purposes just then,
+when his tractability was very necessary to us, it was a piece of
+good-fortune that he had fallen into so low a way. As for Pablo, the boy
+was in so dazed a condition that I feared greatly he would wholly lose
+his wits.
+
+There was only a faint suggestion of light in that deeply hidden place,
+and Young struck a match that he might see to begin his explorations.
+"Well, I'll be shot," he exclaimed, as the wax-taper shed its clear
+light around us, "if here ain't a conductor's lantern hangin' up all
+ready for us, an' a can o' kerosene oil!" As he lighted the lantern, and
+the letters F. C. C. showed clearly on the glass, he added, in a tone of
+still greater amazement: "Ferro-Carril Central! Why, it b'longs t' one
+o' th' boys on th' Central!--but how th' dickens did it ever get _here_?
+An' here's a lot of old clothes--th' sort o' rags th' low-down Greasers
+wear. An' I'm blest," he went on, as he picked up a scrap of paper from
+the floor, "if this ain't a Mexican Central ticket from Leon to Silao!
+It's dated last June, an' it's only punched once, so 't couldn't 'a'
+been used all the way. I say, Professor, am I asleep or awake?"
+
+As I examined the several articles which we had come upon so strangely
+in this incongruous plate, a flood of light was let in upon my mind, and
+with this came also the glad certainty that the way before us to freedom
+was open and assured. My belief that the Priest Captain had been in
+communication with the outside world no longer admitted of a doubt, for
+here was absolute proof of it: the clothes which he wore when making his
+expeditions into the nineteenth century; the lantern that he had stolen
+in order the more easily to find his way through the cave; the railway
+ticket that he had but lately used. In an instant I had connected all
+this with what the guardian of the archives had told me concerning the
+Priest Captain's habit of retiring for long periods of time to one of
+the chambers in which we had been imprisoned, and the whole matter was
+as plain to me as day; and I knew now, that in order to guard against
+discovery, he, or one of his predecessors, to whom this secret way must
+also have been known, had caused to be set in place the fastening by
+which the grating could be secured upon its inner side; which fastening,
+within that very hour, had been the means of saving our lives.
+
+"Well," said Young, dryly, when I had briefly explained these several
+matters, "I guess he won't pull th' wool over nobody's eyes any more!
+An' now you an' me 'll do some prospectin'. We must go back upstairs,
+before we pull out for good, an' bag what there is there that's worth
+carryin' off; but th' first thing t' do is t' get Rayburn where he'll be
+comfortable an' safe. Until that's attended to we've got t' be careful
+an' go slow; so we'll rouse up this fool of a Pablo, an' get it into his
+head that if he hears anybody comin' he's t' knock th' plug from under
+Mullins an' let him down, an' then chock him fast with a rock
+underneath. It's not likely that anybody _will_ come, an' even if they
+do, I don't think that they'll know th' trick about Mullins' tippin',
+for that's a point that I'll bet a whole kag o' beer th' Priest Captain
+didn't give away t' nobody. I tell you, Professor, there wasn't any
+flies on that old man, now was there? He was a wicked old devil, an'
+I'm glad I did for him; but he was just an everlastin' keen one, an' a
+rustler from th' word go!"
+
+In the dazed condition in which he then was, we scarcely should have
+ventured to place Pablo in a position of such grave responsibility had
+there been any likelihood of his being called upon to perform the duty
+with which we charged him; but we were well satisfied that to the Priest
+Captain alone had been known the secret of the sliding door, and that,
+consequently, the need for closing the passage leading upward into the
+treasure-chamber would not arise. Without any fear for Rayburn's safety;
+therefore, we left him lying in the little room at the foot of the
+stair-way, and thence went forth through a cleft in the rock--that
+seemed to be a natural crevice, where the mountain was split apart--and
+so came into a natural cave of such great size that the light of the
+lantern was not sufficient to enable us to see its roof nor its farther
+wall. Save that the well-defined path that we followed was continuously
+steep, we did not find walking difficult, for the fragments of rock with
+which the floor of the cave everywhere was strewn had been lifted aside
+carefully, so as to make a smooth and easy way. And only in one
+place--where for a short distance the path skirted the edge of a black
+gulf, in the depths of which we could hear the rush of water--was any
+part of it dangerous.
+
+For near an hour we went onward, all the while steadily ascending; and
+then, as we turned a corner, we saw a long way before us a faintly
+luminous haze. It was so very faint that only by holding the lantern
+behind us, and then closing our eyes for a moment, could we assure
+ourselves that what we saw really was light at all; but when we turned
+another corner, presently, the light, though still faint, was
+unmistakable; whereat Young gave a whoop of joy, and we quickened our
+steps in our eager longing to behold the sunshine that we knew could not
+be far away. Suddenly the path dipped downward, and then another turn
+brought us into light so strong that the lantern no longer was needed to
+show us where to tread; and by a common impulse we gave a great glad
+shout together and went onward at a run; and so, running and shouting
+like the crazy creatures that truly for the time being we were, we made
+one turn more, and then beheld before us, reaching away broadly and
+openly in a fashion to give one a sense of most glorious freedom, a
+vastly wide plain, over which everywhere the blessed sunshine blazed
+full and strong. As we stood together in the mouth of the cave for a
+moment in silence--for no words seemed strong enough to express the
+bursting gladness that was in our hearts--two short blasts of a whistle,
+wafted upward on the light breeze that was blowing towards us from the
+plain, sounded very faintly but clearly in our ears. Young started as he
+heard this sound, and as he turned towards me he held out his hand and
+said, in a voice that was husky and tremulous, "Professor, that's a
+locomotive whistle, an' th' d----n fool is--is whistlin' 'down brakes'!"
+And in these curiously chosen, yet not unmeaning words, did we celebrate
+our deliverance.
+
+When we returned to Rayburn--and as we now knew the way, and as almost
+the whole of it was downhill, our return was accomplished rapidly--some
+of the joyous strength that we had gained seemed to be imparted to him.
+He opened his eyes as we stooped over him, and there seemed to be more
+life in them than there had been through all that day.
+
+"Rouse up, old man!" Young cried cheerily. "We've struck th' trail out
+o' this cussed hole at last, an' we're goin' t' hike you right along to
+where you'll get some of God's sunshine again, an' some air that's fit
+for a white man t' breathe;" which words brought still more light into
+Rayburn's eyes, and a little color came into his pale cheeks as we told
+him of the open way that we had found to light and life.
+
+"Where's the Padre?" he asked, as we together raised the stretcher,
+while Pablo, holding the lantern and leading El Sabio, went on ahead of
+us. Fortunately Rayburn could not see Young's face as he answered: "Th'
+Padre's--well, th' Padre's just gone on up th' line. You've got t' hold
+your jaw, Rayburn. You ain't fit t' talk; an' while we're packin' you
+along we can't talk either. Come on, Professor; and you, Pablo," he
+added, in his jerky Spanish. "Be careful with that lamp or I'll break
+the head of you!"
+
+Although a good third of his flesh had wasted away, Rayburn would have
+been a heavy load for us to carry over level ground, even had we been
+hale and strong. Worn as we then were by our prison-life, we found
+carrying him up that long steep path in the heart of the mountain a
+weary work that only the hope and joy that strengthened us enabled us
+to accomplish. As it was, we went so slowly, and made so many halts for
+rest, that the sun had sunk almost to the level of the distant
+mountains, wherewith that great plain was bordered to the westward, when
+at last our toilsome journey was at an end. But we thought nothing of
+the heaviness of our labor as we saw the glad look that came into his
+face when he gazed out over that broad expanse of sunlit landscape, and
+snuffed eagerly the sweet fresh air, and so felt his soul grow light
+within him as he realized that he once more was safe and free.
+
+In the mouth of the cave--within its shelter, yet where he could see out
+freely, and so have constantly in his mind the comforting thought of his
+deliverance--we made a bed for him of soft pine-branches, which some
+near-by trees gave us; and we took care that this couch should be so
+thick and so evenly laid that he would lie easily upon it; for we knew
+that many days, perhaps even weeks, must pass before we could venture to
+put so heavy a strain upon his strength as would come when we carried
+him down that rough mountain-side, and so began our journey towards home.
+
+Fortunately, a little spring came out from the rock, clear and cool,
+just inside the cave; and game was so abundant on that mountain-side
+that Young came back presently from a foraging expedition with half a
+dozen codornices, that he had come so close to as to shoot with his
+revolver, and a jack-rabbit that he actually had caught with his hands
+as it jumped up almost beneath his feet; which excellent fare made a
+most satisfying supper for all of us; and eating it so added to
+Rayburn's strength--as we could tell by the fuller tones of his voice,
+and by his being able to move a little on his bed without our helping
+him--as to rouse in us a warm hope that the death that seemed so near to
+him might yet be thrust away. Our chief concern, lest the shock that
+would come to him of knowing it should fairly kill him, was to hide from
+him for the present the knowledge that Fray Antonio was dead; and to
+compass this end we plumply told him the flat-footed lie that the monk
+had gone on in search of some town whence he might bring back horses and
+supplies; and so, for a time, we laid at rest his doubts.
+
+In his own original way, also, Young tried to put heart into him. "You
+see, old man," he said, "you've just _got_ t' pull through. Think how
+d----d ashamed o' yourself you'd feel after you was dead when you had t'
+tell all th' folks in heaven that you was killed by nothin' better'n a
+mis'rable chump of an Injun! That was what bothered poor old Steve
+Hollis when he was handin' in _his_ checks--'t least it was th' same
+general sort of idea. I guess you never knew Steve, did you, Rayburn? He
+was an old railroader--had been a-workin' on th' Old Colony one way and
+another for more'n twenty years. When I knowed him he used t' run th'
+steamboat express from Boston t' Fall River--their boss train on that
+blasted old road. Steve owned a house clost t' th' line just a little
+way out o' Braintree; an' when 't was his day off he'd mostly slide down
+from Fall River on No. 2, an' walk out home from Braintree along th'
+track. Nobody ever know'd just how 't happened--Steve was th' soberest
+man I ever knowed; never drunk a drop o' nothin'--but one day, as he was
+walkin' out home, No. 15, that was th' slow freight from Boston t'
+Newport, ketched him an' got in its work on him--an' that was th' end o'
+Steve. It didn't kill him right smack off, an' I went down t' see him;
+for I did think th' world of old Steve. He was a-layin' in his bed, an'
+I could see that he was a-most gone when I got there; but he chippered
+up a little for a minute as I shook hands with him and ast him how he
+was. He said he was poorly; an' then he kep' quiet for a while. Then he
+kind o' ketched his breath an' seemed t' want t' say somethin'. So I
+bent over him, an' he said, in a kind of a whisperin' groan: 'Jus' think
+of it, Seth, what did it was th' slow freight! That's what cuts me;
+that's what cuts me the worst kind. I wouldn't a-minded if 't had been
+th' express--them things will happen, an' they've got t' come. But here
+I've been a-railroadin' for more'n twenty year, an' t' think o' _me_
+bein' busted by that d----n slow freight!' An' then he turned over, an'
+give a sort of a grunt, an' died."
+
+I am not sure that I myself should have selected this particular story
+to tell to Rayburn just then; but the moral that it contained
+unquestionably was a sound one, and, in a way, was calculated to impress
+upon him strongly the conviction that his duty was to get well.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVIII.
+
+KING CHALTZANTZIN'S TREASURE.
+
+
+Whether or not Young's story had this good effect upon Rayburn, I am not
+prepared to say; but it is certain that he slept well that night--his
+first good night's sleep for many weeks--and that when morning came he
+was so much stronger and brighter as to fill us with a still more
+earnest hope that he was well started on the way to recovery.
+
+Young quickly brought in some birds for our breakfast, and when the meal
+was finished he took me aside and said: "Now, Professor, lets me an' you
+go back t' that hole an' bring away all there is there that's worth
+carryin'. It's not much, I guess, but it's better'n nothin'. It just
+makes me sick t' think of all that gold, that ud 'a' made our
+everlastin' fortunes if we'd only been able t' pack it along with us.
+There was millions an' millions there, I s'pose--an' it 'll never do us
+any more good than if we'd never seen it at all!" and as Young spoke he
+heaved a very melancholy sigh. "But we may as well grab all we can get,"
+he went on, more cheerfully. "There was a lot o' gold boxes an' jugs in
+th' room where Mullins is; an' maybe there's somethin' that's worth
+havin' in all them little pots. Let's go back an' see, anyway. Rayburn's
+lookin' almost all right this mornin'; and Pablo's got his wits back
+now, an' can give him anything he wants."
+
+For my own part I did not desire, because of their money value, any of
+the articles which I had seen in the treasure-chamber; but I did very
+earnestly long to possess myself of that most curious arbalest, and I
+desired also to examine carefully--because of the discoveries of great
+archaeological value which I hoped to make--the contents of the gold
+boxes and vases and earthen jars. Therefore, Rayburn having expressed
+his entire willingness that we should leave him, I assented readily to
+Young's proposition; whereupon Young lighted the lantern and we set off.
+
+As we entered again the treasure-chamber there was within me a strong
+feeling of awe. During our hurried passage through it, the imminent
+danger in which we were, and then the excitement of the scene in the
+oratory, and then the joyfulness of our finding a way of escape, had
+prevented me from realizing how wonderful was the deposit that this room
+contained; a deposit that certainly had lain there for not less than a
+thousand years, and that unquestionably was the most perfect surviving
+trace of the most intelligent and most interesting people that in
+prehistoric times dwelt upon this continent. Which strange reflections,
+now that my mind was free to entertain them and to dwell upon them,
+aroused within me a feeling of such reverent wonder that I hesitated for
+some moments before I could bring myself to disturb what thus through so
+long a sweep of ages had remained sacredly inviolate.
+
+But reverence, as he himself would have said, was not Young's strongest
+hold; in truth, I am persuaded that there was not an atom of it in his
+entire composition; and as I stood hesitating beside the statue of
+Chac-Mool he briskly called to me: "Come right along, Professor; there
+ain't nobody t' stop us now. We've got th' drop, you might say, on th'
+whole outfit, an' we can do just as we blame please. This looks like a
+badly kept drug store, don't it?" he went on, "with all these pots an'
+boxes an' little jars stuck round on th' shelves. Well, here goes t' see
+what's in 'em: not much o' nothin', I guess; but then it _might_ be
+di'monds, an' that just would be gay!"
+
+As Young spoke he thrust his hand into one of the earthen jars, and
+thereby set flying such a cloud of dust that for some seconds his
+violent sneezing prevented him from examining the small object that he
+had brought forth from the jar and held in his hand; and when he did
+examine this object an expression of intense disgust appeared upon his
+face, and he exclaimed, indignantly, "Why, it's nothin' but a fool
+arrow-head!"
+
+I could not but laugh at Young as I took the arrow-head from him. For my
+purposes, this beautifully carved piece of obsidian was far more
+precious than a diamond would have been; and I tried--quite
+unsuccessfully, however--to arouse his interest in this proof of the
+high degree of skill to which the prehistoric races of America had
+attained in the manipulation of an exceedingly hard yet delicate variety
+of stone; and I added that not less interesting was the proof thus
+afforded us of the great value which these same races attached to
+implements of war.
+
+"Oh, come off with your prehistoric races, Professor!" he growled. "A
+whole car-load o' rubbish like this wouldn't be worth a nickel t'
+anybody but a scientific crank like you. If this is th' sort o' stuff
+that that old king o' yours thought was worth hidin', I guess he must
+'a' been off his head. But that pot may 'a' got in by mistake. Before I
+get too much down on him I'll give him another show." With which words,
+but cautiously, that the dust might not be disturbed, he thrust his hand
+into another jar, and was mightily resentful upon finding that what he
+brought forth from it was only the head of a lance. However, the
+determination to give King Chaltzantzin a chance to prove his sanity,
+together with the hope that something of real value might be found, led
+him to continue his investigations, and he presently had examined all
+the jars ranged on two sides of the room; and his grumbling curses
+increased constantly in vigor as jar after jar yielded only arrow-heads,
+and lance-heads, and chisel-shaped pieces of obsidian, that I perceived
+must have been intended for the making of the cutting edges of the
+maccahuitl, or Aztec sword; but, for my part, all of these things filled
+me with the liveliest pleasure as I took them from Young and attentively
+examined them; for the delicate and perfect workmanship that they
+exhibited showed them to have been made by a people that had reached the
+highest development of the Stone Age.
+
+"This business is gettin' worse, instead o' better," Young said,
+gloomily, as he began his search on the third side of the room by
+opening one of the small gold boxes. "The stuff in here is nothin' but a
+mean sort o' wrappin'-paper with pictures on it--like that old map o'
+yours that got us started on this tomfoolin' treasure-hunt. I s'pose
+_you'll_ just have a fit over it!" And as I uttered an eager cry of
+delight, and bent over this casket that contained such inestimable
+riches, he gave a sniff of contempt, and added: "There, I thought so.
+You think more o' that rotten old stuff than you would o' gold dollars.
+Well, there's no accountin' for tastes, and it takes all sorts o' people
+t' make th' world." But I paid no attention to him as I rapidly glanced
+over these priceless manuscripts; and then had my cup of happiness
+filled absolutely to overflowing by the glad discovery that in every one
+of the gold boxes, of which there were nine in all, treasures of a like
+sort were stored. In the supplemental volume (in elephant folio) to my
+_Pre-Columbian Conditions on the Continent of North America_ these
+wonderful manuscripts are reproduced in fac-simile; and when that great
+work is published the surpassing value of my discovery will be at once
+recognized. It is sufficient to say here that these several codices
+together constituted a complete hieratic chronicle of the Aztec tribes;
+and that (herein lying the extraordinary value of the collection) the
+uncertain picture-writing was accompanied by a translation into the
+ideographic characters of later times, the meaning of which I was
+enabled, thanks to the instruction that my friend the guardian of the
+archives had given me, fully to understand. In short, my discovery
+precisely paralleled that of Boussard; for even as the Rosetta Stone
+gave the key to Egyptian hieroglyphics, so did this transliteration into
+intelligible characters make all Aztec picture-writing plain. As the
+full significance of my discovery burst upon me, my joy and the
+excitement of my splendid triumph so moved me that my hands trembled as
+I held these precious manuscripts, and I no longer could see clearly the
+painted characters because of the tears of happiness which filled my
+eyes.
+
+Young, however, whose longing was only for material treasure, continued
+his investigations in anything but a thankful mood. "There ain't no
+doubt of it _now_," he said presently in a most melancholy tone. "That
+old king o' yours must 'a' been just as crazy as a loon. Look here: this
+thing ain't even a fool arrow-head; it's nothin' but a bit o' green
+glass! I reckon it's part o' th' bottom of a porter-bottle. Nice sort o'
+stuff this is t' call treasure, an' t' take such an all-fired lot o'
+trouble t' hide away! Why, I should jedge that that king must 'a' spent
+most of his time settin' up nights a-puzzlin' over plans for makin' sure
+that he was th' very d----dest biggest fool that ever lived!--an' that's
+just what he was, for sure! It's tough, gettin' left this way; but it
+wouldn't begin t' be as tough as 't is if 't wasn't for all them
+car-loads an' car-loads o' gold right clost by us here that we might 'a'
+got away with as easy as rollin' off a log if we'd only ketched on to
+this back-door racket in time. An' see here, Professor," he went on in a
+very earnest tone, "I don't believe there's anybody in there now; why
+shouldn't we just chance things a little an' go back an' get some of it?
+We've got our guns; an' even if we do strike a crowd too big for us t'
+tackle, an' have t' run for it, we won't be no worse off 'an we are now.
+Come, let's try it on!"
+
+While Young spoke I had been looking closely at the object that so
+violently had excited his indignation, and instead of replying to him I
+asked, "Are there any more pieces of that porter-bottle in the jar?"
+
+"It's full of 'em," he answered with a contemptuous brevity.
+
+"And the next?"
+
+"That's full of 'em too. All th' jars on this side o' th' room are full
+of 'em," he added, as he rapidly thrust his hand into one after
+another--and so set the dust to flying that we both fell to sneezing as
+though we would sneeze our heads off. "Oh come along, Professor: what's
+th' use o' foolin' over this rubbish; let's go for th' stuff that's good
+for its weight in spot cash every time!"
+
+"Wait till we see what is in these gold vases over here," I answered,
+turning as I spoke to the side of the room that as yet we had not
+examined.
+
+"What's th' good?" he asked, sulkily. But he lifted down one of the
+vases, and with his thumb and finger brought forth from it a little
+round black ball. "Worse an' worse," he said, as he handed the ball to
+me. "We've got down t' what looks like lumps o' shoemaker's wax now.
+That's about th' sickest lookin' thing t' call itself treasure I ever
+did see!"
+
+It did not seem to me probable that the little ball was shoemaker's wax;
+but in order to settle this point experimentally I cut into it with my
+penknife. Under the gummy exterior I found a layer of cotton-wool, and
+enclosed in this a hard substance about the size of a hazel-nut. While I
+was making this examination, Young investigated into the contents of
+the remaining vases--which themselves were exceedingly interesting,
+being made of hammered gold and most curiously engraved.
+
+"They're no good," he said, "except I s'pose th' mugs must be worth
+somethin'. Shoemaker's wax in 'em all! It's worse 'an th'
+porter-bottles--for what's th' use o' shoemaker's wax t' folks who don't
+rightly know what a shoe is? Come along, I say, Professor, an' let's
+have a whack at them piles o' gold. If we don't tackle 'em we might just
+as well never have come on this treasure-hunt at all. Some o' the stuff
+in here's worth havin'--th' gold mugs an' boxes, an' that old gold
+bow-gun that you're so busted about--but what does th' whole of it
+amount to, anyway, when you come t' divide it up among four men an' a
+jackass? I guess even th' jackass ud turn up his nose at it if he knowed
+what a lot more there was that was t' be had just for grabbin' it an'
+packin' it along. It's somethin', I s'pose, that we've pulled through
+without losin' our hair; but we _have_ pulled through all right, an' now
+we want t' make this business pay; an' unless we go for that gold this
+business won't 'a' paid worth a cuss--an' instead o' comin' out on top
+we'll be left th' very worst kind!"
+
+As Young was delivered of this dismal remonstrance I handed him the
+small object that I had extracted from the pitch-coated ball. "Before
+you make up your mind that we are likely to be 'left,' as you term it,
+suppose you look at this," I said.
+
+He held out his hand carelessly; but as he saw what I had placed in it
+his expression suddenly changed, and he burst forth excitedly: "Great
+Scott! where did this come from? Why--why, Professor, it _looks_ like it
+was a pearl; but if 't truly is one it's about th' bustin'est biggest
+one that Godamighty ever made! Do you truly size it up for a pearl
+yourself?"
+
+"Most assuredly," I answered. "And it is a fair assumption, I think,
+that there is a pearl in each one of all these little pitch-covered
+balls. As to what you called bits of green glass, they are neither more
+nor less than extraordinarily fine emeralds; I should say that the
+smallest of them must be worth more dollars than you could carry at a
+single load. Of course, all the emeralds and pearls together are not
+worth a single one of these manuscripts"--here Young gave a sceptical
+grunt--"but in the way of vulgar material riches I am confident that the
+value of what is in these jars is greater than that of all the gold
+together that we saw in the Valley of Aztlan. Without a shadow of doubt,
+you and I at this moment are standing in the midst of the most enormous
+treasure that ever has been brought together since the world was made!"
+
+"Honest Injun, Professor?"
+
+"Certainly," I answered; "and if this is your notion of getting 'left'
+on a treasure-hunt," I continued, "it assuredly is not mine."
+
+"Left?" Young repeated after me, while his eyes ranged exultantly over
+the rows of jars in which this vast wealth was contained. "Well, I
+should smile! I take it all back about that old king bein' crazy. He was
+just as level-headed as George Washington an' Dan'l Webster rolled into
+one. These pots full of arrow-heads an' such stuff was only one of his
+little jokes, showin' that he must 'a' been a good-natured, comical old
+cuss, th' kind I always did like, anyway. Left? Not much we ain't left!
+We've just everlastin'ly got there with all four feet to onct!
+Professor, shake!"
+
+
+
+
+EPILOGUE.
+
+
+Throughout my whole life I have been saddened, as each well-defined
+section of it has come to an end, by the thought that during the period
+that has then slipped away from me forever I have wasted more
+opportunities than I have improved. As I write these final lines,
+therefore, I feel a sorrowful regret, which, in a way, is akin to the
+regret that weighed upon me when Young and I, having carried into the
+cave the contents of the treasure-chamber, removed the prop wherewith
+was upheld the swinging statue, and so suffered to fall into place again
+that ponderous mass of stone. From below, where we were, lifting it was
+impossible; and by heaping fragments of rock under the forward end of it
+we presently made it equally immovable from above. Thus for outlet or
+for inlet that way was irrevocable barred; and as I write now I know
+that I am not less irrevocable severing myself from one portion of my
+past. For, says the Persian poet, "A finished book is a sealed casket.
+To it nothing can be added. From it nothing can be taken away.
+Therefore should we pray to Allah that its contents may be good."
+
+The record that I am now ending was begun partly that I might find in
+the writing of it relief from the more serious work in which I have been
+engaged, and partly because I perceived that I could properly include in
+a personal narrative many matters which were too trivial or too entirely
+personal to be incorporated into my extended scientific treatise, but
+which, I was persuaded, were of a sufficient interest to be preserved.
+But I certainly should not have finished this history of our adventures
+nearly so expeditiously had not Rayburn and Young taken a very lively
+interest in it, and pressed me constantly to bring it to an end.
+
+"You see, Professor," said Young, "I don't want t' say anything against
+that big book you're writin'. I don't doubt that in its way it'll be a
+daisy; but you know yourself there won't be more'n about three cranks in
+th' whole o' God's universe who'll ever read more'n about ten lines of
+it; an' that's why I want you t' rush ahead with th' little book--that
+stands some chance o' bein' read outside o' lunatic asylums--so's
+folks'll know what a powerful queer time we've had. Don't be too cussed
+particular t' say just where that valley is--for, while it's not likely,
+we might want t' take a fightin' crowd along an' dynamite our way back
+there some day after more cash; but, exceptin' that, just give 'em th'
+cold facts. I reckon they'll make some folks open their eyes."
+
+From times to time, as my narrative has grown beneath my hand, I have
+read aloud to my fellow-adventurers what I have written, and have
+received from them suggestions in accordance with which it has been
+corrected or amended in its several parts; and it is but just to add, in
+this connection, that in every case where I have referred (as it seems
+to me now in words not nearly strong enough) to the loyalty to our
+common interests, and to the splendid bravery which Rayburn and Young
+constantly exhibited throughout that trying time, I have been compelled
+to exert the whole of my authority over them in order to win their
+grumbling permission that my words might stand. Even Pablo--for the love
+that there was between this boy and me was far too strong to permit me
+to leave him behind in Mexico, and we are like to live together as long
+as we live at all--has taken issue with me concerning what I have
+written of his steadfast faithfulness and courage; and this on the
+ground that he could not possibly be anything but faithful to those whom
+he loved, and that it is only natural for a man to fight for his own
+life, and for the lives of his friends. In thus applying the word
+_hombre_ to himself Pablo spoke a little doubtfully, as though he feared
+that I might question his right to it; yet did he roll it so relishingly
+under his tongue, and so well had he proved his manliness, that I
+suffered it to pass.
+
+In point of fact, the only member of our party who has accepted my just
+tribute of praise with entire equanimity has been El Sabio. It was
+Pablo's notion, of course, that El Sabio should hear what I had written
+about him. "Not the whole of it, you know, senor," the boy said,
+earnestly; "for some of what you have written--while I know that it is
+true, and therefore must be told--would hurt his tender heart. It was
+not his fault--the angel!--that he gave us so much trouble when we swung
+him across the canon; and to tell him that there was even a thought of
+eating him, while we were in that dreadful valley where every one was
+dead, assuredly would turn him gray before his time. No; we will hide
+all such unpleasant parts of the book from him; but we will read to him
+what you have said concerning his beauty and his wisdom--and, surely,
+you might have said of those a great deal more; and also about his
+gallant fight with the priests, when, all alone, he slew so many of them
+with his heels. And it would have been fairer to El Sabio, senor," Pablo
+added, a little reproachfully, as we walked out together to the paddock
+in which the ass, grown to be very fat, was living a life of most royal
+ease, "had you told in the book how well he served us in bringing all
+the treasure, in many weary journeys, out through that dismal cave; and
+also how carefully he carried the Senor Rayburn down that steep
+mountain-side, and so to the little town beside the railway, and never
+hurt his wound."
+
+However, El Sabio did not seem to notice these omissions from my
+narrative, though he certainly did exhibit a most curious air of
+interest and understanding as I read to him those laudatory portions of
+it which Pablo desired that he should hear. According to Pablo's
+understanding of his language, he even thanked me for speaking well of
+him; for when the reading was ended he thrust his nose far forward, laid
+his long ears back upon his neck, planted his little legs firmly, and
+as he erected in triumph his scrag of a tail, he uttered a most
+thunderous bray. "And now, Wise One," Pablo said, tenderly, as he
+infolded the head of the ass in his arms and hugged it to his breast,
+"thou knowest that we not only love thee for thy goodness and thy
+wisdom, but that we also honor thee for thy noble deeds."
+
+Rayburn's fancy was mightily tickled by this performance in which El
+Sabio and Pablo and I had engaged--though Young evidently thought it but
+another proof of the addled state of my brains--when I told about it
+that evening as we all sat smoking comfortably in my library before the
+open fire. This was to be our last meeting for some time to come; for
+Rayburn was to start the next day for Idaho to look after some mining
+matters, and Young suddenly had decided that he would accompany him. In
+truth, Young was rather at a loss to know what to do with himself; for
+his plan for buying the Old Colony Railroad, in order to be in a
+position to discharge its superintendent, had been abandoned. "I'd like
+t' do it, of course," he said. "Bouncin' that chump th' same way that he
+bounced me would do me a lot o' good; but I've made up my mind it
+wouldn't be th' square thing t' do, considerin' that if he hadn't
+bounced me I'd still be foolin' round on top o' freight-cars, in all
+sorts o' weather, handlin' brakes. So I've let up on him, an' he can
+stay. What I want now is t' do some good with this all-fired big pile o'
+money that I've got. That's one reason why I'm goin' out with Rayburn t'
+Idaho. Right straight along from here t' Boise City I mean t' set up
+drinks for every railroader I meet. That'll be doin' good, for sure."
+
+[Illustration: IN THE LIBRARY BEFORE THE OPEN FIRE]
+
+Rayburn and I laughed a little at this odd method for benefiting
+humanity that Young had got hold of; and then Rayburn's face grew grave
+as he said: "Well, we're doing a little good, I suppose, in putting that
+old church in Morelia in good shape. I'm glad you thought of that,
+Professor. I don't suppose that anything we could have done would have
+pleased the Padre more than to have that church, that he loved so much,
+made as handsome as money can make it all the way through."
+
+"Yes," Young added, "an' I guess th' Professor's head was level in
+havin' all th' new stuff that we've put in it made t' look like 't was
+about two hundred years old. I did kick at that at first, I'll allow.
+What I wanted t' do was t' build a first-class new church, with a
+rattlin' tall steeple, an' steam heat, an' electric lights, an' an organ
+big enough t' bust the roof off every time she was played. But th' Padre
+was as keen as th' Professor, a'most, for old-fashioned things; an' so I
+guess we've done that job just about as he'd 'a' done it himself. It
+makes me feel queer, though, puttin' up money on a Catholic church that
+way; an' when I was tellin' an old aunt o' mine, down t' Milton, about
+it, she just riz up an' rared. An' she didn't feel a bit better when I
+told her that if I thought it ud please th' Padre t' have me do it, I'd
+go smack off t' Rome an' shake hands with th' Pope. And I truly would do
+that very same thing," Young continued, earnestly, while his voice
+trembled a little, "for this side o' heaven I never expect t' meet
+anybody that's so near t' bein' a first-class angel as th' Padre was.
+An' when I think how he saved our mis'rable lives for us, as he surely
+did, by givin' away his own--that was worth more'n all of ours put
+together, an' ten times over--I don't care a continental what his
+religious politics was; an' I'll punch th' head of anybody who don't say
+that he was th' pluckiest an' th' best man that ever lived!"
+
+Pablo had caught the word Padre in Young's talk, and as the lad looked
+up from the corner in which he was sitting, I saw that his eyes were
+full of tears; Rayburn's eyes also had an odd glistening look about them
+as he turned away suddenly, and emptied the ashes from his pipe into the
+fire; and I know that I could not see very clearly just then, as very
+tender, yet very poignant memories surged suddenly into my heart.
+
+And when the others left me--as they did presently, for we could not
+fall again into commonplace talk--I bade Pablo be off to bed, and so sat
+there for a while alone. What I had planned to do that night was to
+revise an address that I was shortly to deliver before the Archaeological
+Institute; but the pen that I had taken into my hand lay idle there,
+while my thoughts went backward through the channels of the past.
+
+In that still season of darkness I seemed to live again through all the
+time that Fray Antonio and I had been together--from the moment when I
+first caught sight of him, as he knelt before the crucifix in the
+sacristy, to my last sad look at the dead body whence his soul had sped
+back again to God.
+
+As my thoughts dwelt upon this most loving and most tender
+companionship, the like of which for perfectness I am confident was
+never known, and then upon the cruel violence that brought it to an end,
+so searching a pain went through my soul that I knew that either it must
+cease or I must die of it in a very little while. And then was borne in
+upon me the strong conviction--and so has it since been always, when
+thus my thoughts have been engaged--that because of my very love for
+Fray Antonio must I rejoice that he had died so savage a death;
+believing confidently that what he prayed for when first I found him in
+the Christian church of San Francisco was, in truth, that very crown of
+martyrdom that God granted to him when at last I lost him in the heathen
+city of Colhuacan. And with the pressing in upon me thus strangely of
+this strange thought, it seemed as though he himself said again to me,
+"I go to win the life, glorious and eternal, into which neither death
+nor sin nor sorrow evermore can come."
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Aztec Treasure-House, by
+Thomas Allibone Janvier
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