Part 22

"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.