Part 29

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.