Chapter XXX: Too Useful to Be Killed

"General, I have disobeyed your orders, and I accept my punishment, and acknowledge its justice."

Those words were the first that were distinctly audible above the hubbub and din prevailing in the courtyard of the Spaniards' new encampment. But they were spoken by a singularly penetrating voice, and in cold, calm tones that had an almost incredible power of making themselves heard.

During the last half-hour the moon had dispelled the darkness of night, and was shining in a steel-blue, cloudless sky, with a brilliancy at least equal to the light of many a northern day. In the foreground glittered the waters of the great Gulf of Mexico; to the left the silver thread of a river wound in and out amidst a country luxuriant and fertile as a garden; the narrow streets of the city lay at their feet; above them still gloomed and glowed, like some evil eye, that fire on the summit of the great temple, and over all, away in the distant background, towered the 'everlasting hills' and the snow-crown of Citlaltepelt or Orizaba.

So beautiful, so majestic, so peaceful the scene, could but that agitated gathering of men of the two hemispheres have been blotted out.

Hernando Cortes, tall and stately, bearing his handsome face with a proud dignity, stood with folded arms somewhat apart from the tumultuous throngs, all of whom, in the midst of their other words and thoughts, took time to cast many a searching glance at the leader; but all their scrutiny was in vain. Nothing was to be learnt of the meditations going on in the brain behind that fixed countenance.

Opposite to Hernando stood a man equally handsome in face and figure, equally calm and stately, but with a strange sweet light in his eyes as they rested on the poor startled Indians standing huddled together, scarcely knowing as yet whether to rejoice or no, at their rescue from the hands of the Cempoallan priests.

Montoro's father had died because he dared to plead for the life of the Jew. Montoro had a deep hidden gratitude in his heart, that he had been thus able to offer his life for the lives of these poor helpless Indians. And with this thanksgiving in his heart he spoke, and the babel of confused voices ceased.

Cabrera stepped up beside his companion, saying coolly--

"Well, General, here am I also. I cannot say with Diego that I will acknowledge the justice of the threatened punishment, or that I would accept it, if I could see my way on any side to doing the other thing; but--as it is--"

A shrug of the shoulders finished the sentence, and then there was a silence. The native servant and interpreter crept to Montoro's feet, clasping them, and entreating to be returned to the stone of sacrifice if otherwise his deliverer must die. The native woman hid her face in her robe, and kneeling before Cortes wept there silently.

At last Alvarado stepped forward impetuously, and exclaimed--

"Hernando Cortes, those two comrades of ours have risked their lives to save the blood of a Christian from being poured out to the honour of a heathen god! Is the order of a Spanish leader like the law of the Medes and Persians--one that altereth not? Those two have broken your command; according to that, it is admitted, their lives are forfeited. Can it be that they are to pay the penalty!"

As he concluded with that passionate demand, a sudden brilliant smile for one instant passed over the face of Cortes like a lightning flash. Then it was sternly set as before, as his lips opened to reply.

The soldiers had been subsiding into quietness before, now they were hushed into an intense expectancy that seemed as though it could be felt. The words with which their attention was rewarded were few enough.

"You ask me, Don Pedro de Alvarado, if those two of our Spanish brethren yonder are to die. I say yes, if any of you, their brethren, will shoot them. Montoro, may I crave that private audience with you that I lost this afternoon?"

Juan de Cabrera sprang forward with raised hands, and shoulders almost up to his ears. Even the Indians forgot their apprehensions and laughed. He bestowed a most horrible-looking, wide-mouthed grin upon them, and then drew his face to an almost impossible length, as he continued his way to Cortes, groaning out--

"Oh, General! don't you please to need a private audience with me also? That fellow, Don Gonzalo there, is quite beside himself with longing to try the new gun he hath just received from the armourer. I shiver with fear."

"Then take a doze of sleep to cure thee," was the laughing reply, "and get Father Olmedo to shrive thee first for thy sin of disobedience. I had needs be a schoolmaster rather than a general, to rule great overgrown boys like thee."

Then Cortes turned to a quieter region of the temple, and with his officers held deep counsel as to next proceedings. Although he spared his two followers from the mingled motives of prudence, friendship, and admiration, he felt somewhat bitterly that their romantic act of generosity had greatly complicated the position of affairs. Yesterday he had feared enmity, now he was sure of it.

"As strongly as we hold to our faith," he said gravely, "so I have ere now discovered do they hold to theirs. As resolutely as we would avenge an insult to our Lord, so will these heathen endeavour to avenge the insult put upon their gods of wood and clay. We must be prepared."

As the dawn grew full, Cortes, with his usual decisive energy, determined suddenly to know the worst at once; not to act on the defensive as he had first planned, but to issue forth immediately, and complete the desecration, already so boldly begun, of the heathen altars of Cempoalla.

"We have come hither," he exclaimed in animated tones to his followers, "to burn the idols of this polluted land, and to raise the sacred standard of the cross. Let us delay the glorious task no longer. In the name of the Holy Faith I go."

"In the name of the Holy Faith lead on, we follow you," shouted back the small, undaunted army with one acclaim; and in another minute, in firm, close array, the Spaniards had issued forth from their enclosure.

They had not made much way when an Indian scout flew back to them, with heels winged with fear, to say that the Cacique himself, at the head of his troops, was advancing to their encounter.

"All the better," muttered Cabrera. "Saves our steps, and my boots are something the worse for wear."

But before proceeding to extremities the two leaders called a parley: the Indian chief to expostulate on the violence done his gods in return for his great hospitality; and Cortes to desire that he and his subjects would hear from Father Olmedo a discourse, to prove that his gods were no gods, that it was no more possible to do them dishonour than to show respect or disrespect to an old tree-stump, and to teach them the principles of Divine truth.

With a fine courtesy the Indian Cacique gave consent, even while burning under a sense of wrong; and something he must have gleaned through the interpreter of the required teaching, for he replied with dignity--

"Know this, ye white-faces, that it seemeth to me we have not much to learn from you, beyond that faithlessness that you would have us show to our gods. We too believe in a supreme Creator and Lord of the universe--that God by whom we live and move and have our being; the Giver of all good gifts, almighty, omnipresent, omniscient, perfect. We too believe in a future life--a heaven and a hell. We too believe in the virtues of temperance, charity, self-denial; and that of ourselves, being born in sin, we are capable of no good thing. We too are admitted into fellowship with the supreme Lord of all things by the rite of baptism. The lips and bosoms of our infants are sprinkled with water, and we beseech the Lord to permit the holy drops to wash away the sin that was given to them before the foundation of the world, so that they may be born anew. We too pray for grace to keep peace with all, to bear injuries with humility, trusting to the Almighty to avenge us."

The fine old Cacique ceased, and in breathless amazement the Spaniards gazed at the Indian who had thus made confession of a faith so strangely in accord with their own, so utterly unexpected.

"And with these sublime truths," murmured Father Olmedo with wide eyes, "there is mingled the awful Polytheism, the ghastly idol-worship that revels in human sacrifices. This is verily the devil's work, transforming himself into the likeness of an angel of light that his worship may gain in glory."

Another thought came to Montoro de Diego. Imagination travels as the lightning, flashing from one end of the earth to the other. As Montoro stood there, in one of the flower-decked squares of the Indian town of Cempoalla, his spirit was hovering above the wide piazza of the Spanish city of Saragossa. It was the day, so imagination told him, of an Auto da Fé.

Slowly entering the square came the long procession--priests of the true holy Catholic faith who had learnt 'God is love,' incense-bearers, candle-bearers, and all the troop of satellites.

In Montoro de Diego's dream-ears were sounding the solemn cadences of the chants, as the procession moved slowly, solemnly along. Then, in the centre of the long imposing train he saw a dismal spectacle. Clad in the yellow garments of scorn and contumely, adorned for shame's sake and derision with scarlet flames and so-called devils, limped and crawled along the racked and wrenched, and twisted and scorched victims of the Inquisition, passing along to be burnt alive, in the name of religion, at those stakes at the four corners of the great piazza.

And as the Romish priest, Father Olmedo, thought of the Indian idol sacrifices, and murmured, "Verily this is the devil's work, uniting sublime truths with the blackest iniquity," Montoro thought of the Autos da Fé, and murmured to himself--

"If the one be the devil's work, is not the other likewise?"

At a future day the same question was asked by an Indian captive in Spain, asked with indignant scorn, and answered by himself--

"Ay, verily. Either both are of the gods--our sacrifices of blood and yours of fire--or both are of the devil. And ye, proud Spaniards, had done well to purge your own land, before ye laid waste our countries, and destroyed our nations, to remove the mote that lay in our eyes."

But we must return to Cempoalla, and pass by dreams and dreamers for the present, for there is once more a sudden sound and stir borne along upon the air. The Cacique and his army raise their heads, grasp their arrows more firmly, and look expectant.

The Spaniards close up together again, lay their hands on their sword-hilts, and wait.