Chapter XI: Part 11

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.

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!

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.