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Title: Gold and glory - or, Wild ways of other days, a tale of early American discovery
Author: Stebbing, Grace
Language: English
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GOLD AND GLORY
WILD WAYS OF OTHER DAYS
A TALE OF EARLY AMERICAN DISCOVERY
BY GRACE STEBBING
_Author of "Silverdale Rectory," "Only a Tramp," etc._
_WITH ILLUSTRATIONS_
New York
THOMAS WHITTAKER
2 AND 3, BIBLE HOUSE.
INTRODUCTION.
Only an apology for having written this historical tale.
My private opinion is, that all writers of historical tales should
return me thanks if I apologize for them with myself, all in a body,
the truer the tale the ampler being the spirit of the apology.
While I have been writing this tale, sometimes in its most important
or serious portions, I have been startled by detecting my own mouth
widening with an absurd smile, or by hearing a ridiculous chuckle
issuing from my own lips, and have suddenly discovered that I was quite
unconsciously repeating to myself the famous old Scotch anecdote of the
old woman and the Scotch preacher--"That's good, and that's Robertson;
and that's good, and that's Chalmers; ... and that's bad, and that's
himsel'."
Turning the old woman into the more learned among my possible readers,
and the Scotch preacher into myself, I read the anecdote--"That's good,
and that's Prescott; that's good, and that's Robertson; that's good,
and that's guide-book; that's good, and that's Arthur Helps; and that's
bad, and that's hersel'."
I can only wind up my apology by pleading, that at least my badness has
not gone the length of distorting a single fact, nor of giving to this
wonderful page of history any touch of false colouring.
G. S.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I. _A POISON-FLY FOR THE HEART OF ARAGON_
CHAPTER II. _CONSPIRATORS_
CHAPTER III. _RIVALS AT DON PHILIP'S HOUSE_
CHAPTER IV. _THINKING OF EXILE_
CHAPTER V. _DEATH FOR ARBUES DE EPILA_
CHAPTER VI. _SANCHO'S BROKEN VICTUALS_
CHAPTER VII. _CONSULTING A SWEET TOOTH_
CHAPTER VIII. _A POWERFUL FRIEND_
CHAPTER IX. _FROM THE NEW PRINTING PRESS_
CHAPTER X. _A JACK IN OFFICE_
CHAPTER XI. _THE FIRST FIND_
CHAPTER XII. _SURGEON TO THE REDSKINS_
CHAPTER XIII. _FOR LIFE OR DEATH_
CHAPTER XIV. _MASTER PEDRO'S DOGS IN DANGER_
CHAPTER XV. _NOISE TO THE RESCUE_
CHAPTER XVI. _I AM 'DON ALONZO'_
CHAPTER XVII. _GOOD OLD DON_
CHAPTER XVIII. _DEATH FOR DON_
CHAPTER XIX. _THE WAY TO TREAT THE REDSKINS_
CHAPTER XX. _THE MASSACRE AT CAONAO_
CHAPTER XXI. _THE PATRIOT CACIQUE HATUEY_
CHAPTER XXII. _ANOTHER STORM FOR THE PILOT ALAMINOS_
CHAPTER XXIII. _A SYMBOL WITH TWO MEANINGS_
CHAPTER XXIV. _KINDRED FEELING_
CHAPTER XXV. _MONTORO DE DIEGO TURNS HANGMAN_
CHAPTER XXVI. _CORTES BURNS HIS SHIPS_
CHAPTER XXVII. _MONTORO LEADS A CHANT_
CHAPTER XXVIII. _THE GODS MUST AVENGE THEMSELVES_
CHAPTER XXIX. _MONTORO AND CABRERA RESCUE A HUMAN SACRIFICE_
CHAPTER XXX. _TOO USEFUL TO BE KILLED_
CHAPTER XXXI. _ONCE FOR ALL--THEY SHALL CEASE_
CHAPTER XXXII. _ON THE ROAD TO MEXICO_
CHAPTER XXXIII. _THE CAUSE ONCE MORE IN JEOPARDY_
CHAPTER XXXIV. _AN INDIAN GIRL-CHAMPION_
CHAPTER XXXV. _THE TLASCALAN KNIGHT'S PROBATION_
CHAPTER XXXVI. _ACROSS THE CAUSEWAY_
CHAPTER XXXVII. _ESCALANTE'S FATE DECIDES IT_
CHAPTER XXXVIII. _THE DOWNFALL OF AN EMPIRE_
CHAPTER XXXIX. _HOMEWARD BOUND_
CHAPTER XL. _REINSTATED_
GOLD AND GLORY,
OR
Wild Ways of other Days.
CHAPTER I.
_A POISON-FLY FOR THE HEART OF ARAGON._
In an apartment, gorgeous with a magnificence that owed something of
its style to Moorish influence, were gathered, one evening, a number of
stern-browed companions.
A group of men, whose dark eyes and olive complexions proclaimed their
Spanish nationality, as their haughty mien and the splendour of their
attire bore evidence to their noble rank.
The year was 1485: a sad year for Aragon was that of 1485, and above
all terrible for Saragossa. But as yet only the half, indeed not quite
the half, of the year had gone by, when those Spanish grandees were
gathered together, and when one of them muttered beneath his breath,
fiercely:
"It is not the horror of it only, that sets one's brain on fire. It is
the shame!"
And those around him echoed--"It is the shame."
During the past year, 1484, his Most Catholic Majesty, King Ferdinand
of the lately-united kingdoms of Castile and Aragon, had forced upon
his proud, independent-spirited Aragonese a new-modelled form of the
Inquisition. The Inquisition had, indeed, been one of the institutions
of the noble little kingdom for over two hundred years already, but in
the free air of Aragon it had been rather an admonisher to orderliness
and good manners than a deadly foe to liberty. Now, all this was
changed. The stern and bitter-spirited Torquemada took care of that.
The new Inquisition was fierce, relentless, suspicious, grasping,
avaricious, deadly. And in their hearts the haughty, freedom-loving
Aragonese loathed its imperious domination even more than they dreaded
its cruelty.
"It was not the horror of it only," said Montoro de Diego truly, "that
made their eyes burn, and sent the tingling blood quivering into their
hands. It was the shame."
And those others around him, even to Don James of Navarre, the King
Ferdinand's own nephew, echoed the words with clenched hands, and
between clenched teeth--
"It is the shame!"
But what cared Torquemada, the Grand Inquisitor, that mortal wounds
should be inflicted on the noblest instincts of human nature? or what
cared his tools in Aragon? Crushed, broken-spirited men would be all
the easier to handle--all the easier to plunder or destroy.
Montoro de Diego had been one of the deputation sent by the Cortes to
the fountain-head, as it was then believed, of all truth and mercy and
justice, to implore release from the new infliction; for whilst one
deputation had gone to the king himself, to implore him to abolish his
recent innovation, another, headed by Diego, had gone to the pope. But
the embassy was fruitless. The pope wanted money, and burning rich
Jews, and wealthy Aragonese suspected of heretical tendencies, put
their property into the papal coffers. The pope very decidedly refused
to give up this new and easy way of making himself and his friends
rich. The king's refusal was equally peremptory, and the deputations
returned with dark brows and heavy hearts to those anxiously awaiting
them.
The burnings and confiscations had already begun.
Soon after Diego and his companions entered the city of Saragossa they
encountered a great procession, evidently one of importance judging
from the sumptuousness of the ecclesiastics' dresses, their numbers,
and the crowds of attendants surrounding them, crucifix-bearers,
candle-bearers, incense-bearers, and others. There was no especial
Saint's Day or Festival named in the Calendar for that date, and for a
few moments the returning travellers were puzzled. But the procession
advanced, and the mystery was solved.
In the centre of the gorgeous train moved a group so dismal, so
heart-rending to look upon, that it must have rained tears down the
cheeks of the Inquisitors themselves, had they not steeled their hearts
with the impenetrable armour of a cold, utter selfishness.
Deadly pale, emaciated, unwashed, uncombed, with wrists and fingers
twisted and broken, and limping feet, came the members of this group
clad in coarse yellow garments embroidered with scarlet crosses, and a
hideous adornment of red flames and devils. Some few of the tortured
victims of base or bigoted cruelty were on their way to receive such a
pardon as consisted in the fine of their entire fortunes, or life-long
imprisonment; the others--they were to afford illuminations for the
day's ceremonies with their own burning bodies. For each member of
the wretched group there was the added burden of knowing that they
were leaving behind them names that were to be loaded with infamy, and
families reduced to the lowest depths of beggary.
"And all," muttered a voice beside Diego's elbow, "for the crime, real
or suspected, or imputed, of having Jewish blood in their veins."
"Say rather," fiercely muttered back the noble--"say rather, for the
crime of having gold and lands, which will so stick to the hands of the
Inquisitors, that the king's troops in Granada will keep the Lenten
fast the year through, before a sack of grain is bought for them out of
those new funds."
"Ay," answered the unknown voice, "the Señor saith truth, unless there
shall be hearts stout enough, and hands daring enough, to rid our
Aragon of yon fiend Arbues de Epila."
Montoro de Diego turned with an involuntary start to look at the
speaker of such daring words. For even though they had been uttered in
low cautious tones they betokened an almost mad audacity, during those
late spring days when the very breath of the warm air seemed laden with
accusations, bringing death and ruin to the worthiest of the land, at
the mandate of that very Arbues.
But Diego's eyes encountered nothing more important than the wondering
brown orbs of a little beggar child, who was taking the whole imposing
spectacle in with artistic delight, unmixed with any idea of horror,
and who was evidently astonished at the agitated aspect of his tall
companion, and irritated too, that the Señor should thus stand barring
the way, instead of passing on with the rest of the rabble-rout
trailing after the procession.
Whoever had ventured to express his fury against the new Inquisitor of
Saragossa, it was evidently not this curly-headed little urchin, and
with a somewhat impatient gesture of disappointment the noble turned
away in search of his companions. But they also had disappeared.
Carried away by the excitement or curiosity of the moment, they also
had joined in the dread procession of the Auto da Fé.
CHAPTER II.
_CONSPIRATORS._
"It is the shame," that was the burden of the low and emphatic
consultation that was being held by the group of men, gathered
privately in the palace of one of the indignant nobles of Aragon.
Little more than twenty-four hours had passed since the disappointed
deputation to Rome had returned, in time to witness the full horrors of
the cruel tribunal they had so vainly tried to abolish, and the feeling
of humiliation was keen.
And shame, indeed, there was for the brave, proud Aragonese, that the
despotic tyranny of the Inquisition should hold sway amidst their
boasted freedom and high culture.
"We are not alone in our indignation," added Montoro de Diego after
a pause, and with a keen, swift glance around at the faces of his
companions to satisfy a lurking doubt whether the muffled voice at his
elbow, yesterday, had not indeed belonged to one of them.
But every face present was turned to his suddenly, with such vivid,
evident curiosity at the changed and significant tone of his voice,
that the shadowy supposition quickly faded, and with a second cautious
but sharp glance, this time directed at doors and windows instead of
at the room's occupants, the young nobleman replied to the questioning
looks by a sign which gathered them all closer about him as he repeated:
"No; we are not alone in our just resentment. The spirit of
disaffection is rife in Saragossa."
"The Virgin be praised that it is so," muttered one of the grandees
moodily, while another asked hastily:
"But how know you this? What secret intelligence have you received?"
"And when?" put in a third questioner somewhat jealously.
The new system was already beginning to grow its natural fruit of
general suspicion and distrust. But Diego speedily disarmed them as
regarded himself on this occasion. His voice had been low before, it
sank now to a scarcely audible whisper as he answered:
"One, I know not who--even the voice was a disguised one I
believe--spoke to me yesterday in the crowded streets; one who must
have marked the anger and mortification of my countenance I judge, and
thence dared act the tempter."
"But how?" "In what way?" came the eager, impatient queries.
"In the intimation that the world were well rid of Arbues de Epila."
As those few weighty words were rather breathed than spoken, those
self-controlled, impassible grandees of Spain started involuntarily,
and stifled exclamations escaped their lips.
Arbues de Epila! The day was hot with brilliant sunshine. Even in
that carefully-shaded room the air was heavy with warmth, and yet--as
Montoro de Diego muttered the hinted threat against Arbues de Epila,
the crafty, cruel, unsparing Inquisitor--those brave, dauntless,
self-reliant men felt chill. They were in a close group before, but
involuntarily they drew into a still closer circle, and looked over
their shoulders. In open fight with the impetuous Italians or with the
desperate Moors of Granada, no more fearless warriors could be found
than those grandees of Spain, but against this new, secret, lurking,
unaccustomed foe their haughty courage provided them no weapons. To be
snatched at in the dark, torn secretly from home, fame, and family,
buried in oblivion until brought forth to be burnt; and branded,
unheard with the blackest infamy--these were agonies to fill even those
stout hearts with horror.
Stealthy glances, of which until the present time they would have
been altogether disdainful, were cast by each and all of them at one
another. Who should say that even in their own midst there might not be
standing a creature of the Inquisition, bribed to the hideous work by
promises of titles, lands, position, or Paradise without Purgatory?
Quailing beneath these strangely unaccustomed fears all maintained a
constrained silence for some time. But meanwhile the suggestion thrown
out yesterday, and now repeated, worked in those fevered brains, and
at length the fiercest of the number threw back his head, folded
his arms across his breast, and spoke. Not loudly indeed, but with
a concentrated passion that sent each syllable with the force of an
alarum into the hearts of his hearers.
"The stranger was right. We have been cravens--children kissing the
rod, with our petitions. Now we will be men once more, judges in our
own cause, and Arbues shall die."
As he pronounced that last dread word he held out his hand, and his
companions crowded together to clasp it, in tacit acceptance of the
declaration. But there was one exception. One member of the group drew
back. Montoro de Diego stretched forth no consenting hand, but stood,
pale and sorrowful, gazing at his friends. They in turn gazed back at
him with mingled astonishment, fear, and fury. But he never blenched.
His lip indeed curled for a moment with something of scorn as he
detected the expression of terror in some of the gleaming eyes turned
on him. But scorn died away again in sadness as he said slowly:
"Is it so then, truly, that we nobles of Aragon have already yielded
ourselves voluntarily for slaves, accepting the despicable sins of
slaves--cowardice and assassination! Now verily it is time then to weep
for the past of Aragon, to mourn over its decay."
But bravely and nobly as Montoro de Diego spoke, he could not undo the
harm of his incautious repetition of the stranger's fatal hint. Some
of his companions had already their affections lacerated by the loss
of friends, torn from their families to undergo the most horrible of
deaths, the others were full of dark apprehensions for themselves, or
for those whose lives were more precious to them than their own. And
the thought of getting quit of the cruel tormentor took all too swift
and fast hold of the minds of that assembled group.
"It is very evident," muttered one of the party with a scarcely stifled
groan--"it is very evident, my Diego, that you count amongst the number
of your friends none of those whose names, or position, or country,
place them in jeopardy."
"Ah! indeed," added another, without perceiving the flush that suddenly
deepened on the young noble's cheeks, "and it is easy enough to
discover, even if one had not known it, that Diego has neither wife nor
child for whose sake to feel a due value for his life and lands."
Again that sudden flush on the handsome face, but Montoro stood in
shadow, and none marked it. The gathering of men, now turned into a
band of conspirators, was more intent on learning from Montoro de
Diego whether he meant to betray their purpose, than in taking note of
his own private emotion, and once assured of his silence they let him
depart, while they remained yet some time longer in secret conclave,
to concert their plans for destroying Arbues and the Inquisition both
together.
"There cannot be much difficulty one would imagine," muttered one of
the conspirators, "in compassing the death of a wretch held in almost
universal odium."
But others of the party shook their heads, while one, more fully
acquainted with the state of affairs than the rest, replied moodily:
"Nay then, your imagination runs wide of the mark. The difficulty in
accomplishing our undertaking will be as great as the danger we incur.
The cruel are ever cowards. Arbues wears mail beneath his monastic
robes, complete even to bearing the weight of the warrior's helmet
beneath the monk's hood. And his person is diligently guarded by an
obsequious train of satellites."
"Then we must bribe the watch-dogs over to our side," was the stern
remark of the haughty Don Alonso, who had been the first to seize upon
the suggestion thrown out by the unknown voice in the crowd.
Immediately after that declaration the noblemen dispersed, for it was
not safe just at that time for men to remain too long closeted together.
CHAPTER III.
_RIVALS AT DON PHILIP'S HOUSE._
When Montoro de Diego quitted the palace of Don Alonso his face
betokened an anxiety even greater than that warranted by the
conversation in which he had just taken part. To say truth his secret
belief was, that the deadly decision arrived at by his friends was the
frothy result of recent disappointed hopes, and that with the calming
influence of time bolder and more honourable counsels would prevail. As
he left the palace, therefore, he left also behind him all disquietudes
especially associated with the late discussion, and the settled gravity
of his face now belonged to matters of more private interest.
Don Alonso had declared, that it was easy enough to see that Don
Diego had no friends amongst those looked upon with evil eyes by
the authorities of the Inquisition. But Don Alonso was wrong. The
two friends whom Don Diego valued more highly than any others upon
earth were reputed of the race of Israel. Christians indeed, for two
generations past, but still with a true proud gratitude clinging to
the remembrance that they had the blood in their veins of the "chosen
people of God." They were Don Philip and his daughter Rachel.
Don Miguel had remarked with something of a sneer that it was easy
enough to remember, from his present action, that Don Diego was
unencumbered with family ties. And Don Miguel was so far right that
Montoro de Diego was as yet a bachelor. But he was on the eve of
marriage with Don Philip's daughter, and the words of his fellow-nobles
had rung in his ears as words of evil omen. As he paced along the
streets he tried in vain to shake off his dark forebodings, and it was
with a very careworn countenance that he at length presented himself at
the home of his promised bride.
To his increased disturbance, upon being ushered into the presence of
Don Philip and his daughter, the young nobleman found a stranger with
them; at least, one who was a stranger to him, though apparently not
so to his friends, with whom he appeared to be on terms of familiar
intercourse.
Don Diego at once took a deep aversion to the interloper, for he had
entered with the full determination to press upon Rachel and Don Philip
the expediency of an immediate marriage, in order that both father
and daughter might have the powerful protection of his high position,
and undoubted Spanish descent and orthodoxy. But it was, of course,
impossible to speak on such topics in the presence of a stranger. So
annoyed was he that his greetings to his betrothed bride partook of his
constraint, and the girl appeared relieved when her father called to
her:
"Rachel, my child, the evening is warm; will you not order in some
fruit for the refreshment of our guests?"
As the beautiful young girl left the apartment in gentle obedience to
her father's desire the stranger followed her with his eyes, saying
with studied softness:
"Your daughter is so lovely it were a pity that she had not been
dowered with a fairer name."
The old man sighed before replying: "Perchance, Señor, you are right.
And yet, in my ears the name of Rachel has a sweetness that can
scarcely be surpassed."
"It might sound sweeter in mine," rejoined the stranger still in tones
of studied suavity, "if it were not one of the names favoured by the
accursed race of Israel."
A momentary flash shot from the eyes of Don Philip, but hastily he
dropped his lids over them as he answered with forced quietude:
"Doubtless I should have bestowed another name upon my child had I
foreseen these days, when it is counted for a crime to be descended
from those to whom the Great I Am, in His infinite wisdom, gave the
first Law and the first Covenant."
He ceased with another low, quiet sigh, and a short silence ensued,
during which Don Diego felt rather than saw the sharp, searching
glances being bestowed upon himself by the stranger, who at length
rose, and said coolly:
"Ay, truly, Don Philip, a crime it is in the eyes of Holy Mother Church
to have aught to do, even to the extent of a name, with the accursed
race, and so, to repeat my offer to you for the hand of your fair
daughter. I support my offer now with the promise--not a light one,
permit me to impress upon you--to gain the sanction of the Church that
her old name of Rachel shall be cancelled, and a new and Christian one
bestowed upon her?"
As he finished speaking he turned from Don Philip with a look of
insolent assurance to Don Diego, who in his turn had started from
his seat, and stood with nervous fingers grasping the hilt of his
rapier. As the nobleman met the sinister eyes, full of an impertinent
challenge, he made a hasty step forward with the haughty exclamation:
"And who are you pray, sir, who dare ask for the hand of one who is
promised to Don Montoro de Diego? Know you, sir, that the daughter of
Don Philip is my affianced bride?"
"I have heard something of the sort," was the reply, in a tone of
indescribable cool insolence. "Yes; I have already learnt that you have
had eyesight good enough to discover the fairest beauty in Saragossa.
But you had better leave her to me, noble Señor. She will be--" and
the speaker paused a moment to give greater emphasis to his next
slowly-uttered words--"she will be safer with me than with you--and
her father also." And with a parting look and nod, so full of latent
knowledge and cruel determination that Don Diego's blood seemed to
freeze in his veins as he encountered them, the new aspirant for the
beautiful young heiress took his leave.
As the great iron-bound outer door clanged to, behind him, the head
of the old man sank forward on his breast with a groan. His daughter
re-entered the apartment at the moment, and the smile which had begun
to dawn on her countenance at the departure of the unwelcome guest gave
way to a cry of dismay. Flying across the floor she threw herself on
the ground beside her father with a pitiful little cry.
"Oh! my father, are you ill?--What ails you, my father?"
For some seconds the old man's trembling hand tenderly caressing the
soft hair was the only answer. At last he asked with a choked voice:
"My daughter--couldst thou be content to wed yon Italian?"
The words had scarcely passed his lips when the girl sprang to her
feet, gazing with wild eyes at her questioner.
"Kill me, my father, but give me not to yon awful, hateful man.
Besides--" and with a look of agonized entreaty she turned towards Don
Diego--"besides, am I not already given by you to another?"
"And to another who has both the will and the power to claim the
fulfilment of the promise," exclaimed Montoro de Diego, coming forward,
and clasping the girl's hand in his with an air of iron resolution.
Once again there was a heavy silence in the darkening chamber, and when
it was broken the hearers felt scarcely less oppressed by the sound,
although the words themselves seemed to speak of happiness.
"My son," said the old man in low and urgent tones, "it is true, I have
given you my child--my only one. Fetch the good old priest Bartolo now,
at once, and secretly, and let him within this hour make my gift to you
secure."
A faint protest against this sudden, unexpected haste was made by the
young bride, but Don Diego needed no second bidding to the adoption of
a course he considered to be dictated as much by prudence as affection.
Two hours later Montoro de Diego wended his way to his own palace with
his young wife, Rachel Diego, by his side.
"Do not weep so, my Rachel," entreated the young nobleman as he led his
bride into her new home.
But the tears of the agitated girl flowed as bitterly as ever as she
moaned, "My father--oh! my father! If but my father had come with us!"
"He has promised to take up his abode with us, if possible, within
the next few weeks, my Rachel," returned Montoro de Diego, in the
vain endeavour to give her comfort. But she dwelt upon the words, "if
possible," rather than upon the promise. She guessed but too well the
fears which had dismissed her thus summarily from her father's home.
She had heard but too much of the hideous tragedies of the past two
months, and her husband himself was too oppressed with forebodings to
give her consolation in such a tone of confidence as should secure her
belief.
Don Philip had offered his life for his daughter's happiness, and his
daughter well-nigh divined the fact.
Had the Christianized Jew consented to give his daughter, and his
daughters princely fortune, to the vile informer of the Inquisition, he
would have escaped harm or persecution, at any rate for that season.
But he counted the cost, and taking his life into his hand, for the
sake of his child's happiness, he committed her henceforth to the
loving charge of the noble-hearted Don Diego. The fulfilment of the
sacrifice was not long delayed.
The days went by, and the weeks--one--two--three. The second day of
the fourth week was drawing to its close, since the group of Spanish
noblemen had muttered their passionate resolves to rid their Aragon
of Arbues de Epila. They had not been idle since then. Time had not
quenched their burning indignation, but rather fanned it fiercer as
they gathered fresh adherents, and gold, that ever needful aid in all
enterprises. But the one adherent Don Alonso and Don Miguel most longed
for still held aloof.
The lengthening shadows of that day belonged also, as the reader knows,
to the second day of the fourth week since Don Diego's marriage, and
his new ties made him but increasingly anxious to keep in the most
careful path of rectitude, for the sake of expediency now as much as
honour.
The name of Montoro de Diego was hitherto so unblemished, his rank was
so important, that he might well believe himself a safe protector for
his young bride, and for his new father-in-law, even though it was
not wholly unmixed, pure Spanish blood that flowed in their veins.
And he was firm in his refusal to have any part in schemes of danger.
His wife was safe, hidden up in the recesses of his palace; and his
father-in-law, he trusted, had secured safety in flight.
On the day succeeding that on which Don Philip had refused to purchase
peace at the price of his daughter's welfare, Rachel Diego had received
a few hurried lines of farewell from him, saying that he was going
into exile until safer times for Saragossa, and bidding her be of good
cheer, as all immediately concerning themselves now promised to go well.
Under these circumstances Don Diego might be pardoned, perhaps, if for
a time he forgot the miseries surrounding him--forgot his hopes to
infuse a bolder, nobler spirit of upright resistance to evil, into his
comrades, and rested content with his own happiness.
But there came a dark awakening.
The day had been one of dazzling heat; and as the sun's rays grew more
and more slanting, and the shadows longer, Don Diego bid his gentle
young wife a short adieu, and sauntered forth to draw, if possible, a
freer breath out-of-doors than was possible within.
He had been more impatient in seeking the evening breeze than most of
his fellow-citizens, for the streets were still almost deserted. There
was but one pedestrian besides himself in sight, and Montoro de Diego
was well content to note that that one was a stranger, for he was in no
mood just then for parrying fresh solicitations from his friends by
signs, and half-uttered words, to join their secret counsels. He was
sufficiently annoyed when he perceived at the lapse of a few seconds
that even the stranger was evidently bent on accosting him. Determined
not to have his meditations interrupted he turned short round, and
began to retrace his way towards his own abode.
But not so was he to secure isolation. The rapid pitpat of steps behind
him quickly proved that the stranger was as desirous of a meeting as he
was wishful to avoid it; and scarcely had the Spanish nobleman had time
to entertain thoughts of mingled wonder and annoyance, when he shrank
angrily from a tap on his arm, and faced round to see what manner of
individual it might be who had dared such a familiarity with one of the
grandees of Aragon. The explanation was sudden and complete.
A low, mocking laugh greeted the involuntary widening of his eyes. Don
Diego stood face to face with the man he had seen but once before; but
that was on an occasion never to be forgotten, for it was the evening
of his marriage, and the man before him was the one who had dared try
to deprive him of his bride. For that he bore him no love, nor for the
hinted threats then uttered; but now his blood curdled with instinctive
horror as he gazed at the sinister, cruel face mocking his with an
expression on it of such cool insolence.
Don Diego's most eager impulse was to dash his companion to the ground
and leave him; but for the first time in his life fear had gained
possession of him. Fear, not for himself, but for those whom he held
more precious.
"Why do you stay me? What would you with me?" he questioned at last, in
tones that vainly strove for their customary accent of haughtiness. The
cynical triumph of the Italian grew more visible.
"Meseems, my Señor," he replied with a sneer; "meseems from your
countenance, and your new-found humility of voice, that your heart must
have prophesied to you that matter anent which I have stayed you, that
counsel that I would, for our mutual advantage, hold with you. It is of
Don Philip and his daughter Rachel that I wish to speak with you."
Montoro de Diego inclined his head in silent token of attention, and
the foreigner continued in slow, smooth speech:
"Doubtless, my Señor, you remember that in your presence, some few
weeks ago, I made proposals of marriage for the fair, rich daughter of
Don Philip. The night of the day on which I made these proposals the
birds flew from me, and from my little hints in case of contumacy, out
of Saragossa. That was a foolish step to take, my Señor, was it not?"
He paused for an answer, and the dry lips of Don Diego replied stiffly:
"Don Philip asked me not for counsel in his actions, neither did I give
it."
"Ah!" resumed the Italian with a second sneer, "that may perchance be
a true statement, Don Diego; but I shall be better inclined to accept
it worthily, when you shall now reverse your professed behaviour, and
accept the post of adviser to the obstinate heretic."
"I cannot," was the hasty exclamation. "Don Philip is no heretic, but a
faithful son of the Church, and I have no clue to his retreat."
"Then I can give you one," was the low-spoken answer. "Don Philip has
been tracked, and brought back. But his daughter is not with him. He
refuses to confess her hiding-place, although he is now in the dungeons
of the Holy Inquisition, and can purchase freedom by the information."
"Cruel, black-hearted villain!" exclaimed Don Diego, shocked and
infuriated at length beyond all prudence; "know this, that Rachel,
daughter of Don Philip, is now my bride. And know this yet further,
that the nobles of Aragon are not yet so ground beneath the feet of a
new dominion that they cannot protect their wives, and those belonging
to them, from the perjured baseness of dastards who would destroy them."
Once more the young nobleman turned to quit his abhorred companion, but
once more that hated touch fell upon his arm, and the Italian again
confronted him with a face literally livid with malice as he hissed out:
"The nobles of Aragon are doubtless all-powerful, my Señor, and yet for
your news of your bride I will give you news of her father. Ere this
hour to-morrow the burnt ashes of his body will have been scattered to
the four winds of heaven. Take that news back to your bride to win her
welcome with."
Don Diego was alone. Whether he had been leaning against the walls of
that heavy portico five seconds, five minutes, or five hours, he could
scarcely tell when he became conscious of his own painful reiteration
of the words, "Ere this hour to-morrow--ere this hour to-morrow."
"What is the matter, Montoro? rouse yourself. What about this hour
to-morrow?" asked the voice of Don Alonso at his elbow. And Montoro
shudderingly raised himself from the wall, looked with dazed eyes at
his friend, and repeated:
"Ere this hour to-morrow. Will she know?"
"Will who know?" again questioned Don Alonso, as he passed his arm
through his friend's and drew him on, for the street was no longer
empty. Doors were opening on all sides, and the people pouring forth
to the various entertainments of the evening. Some curious glances had
already been cast at Don Diego, as he leant there stupefied with horror
and anguish for his wife's threatened misery.
In the early part of the evening the Italian tool of the Inquisition
had sought Don Diego. When evening had given way to night, Don Diego
sought the Italian, and as a suppliant.
"It ill suits an Aragonese to sue to the villain of a foreigner," said
the wretch, with malicious sarcasm. "It makes me marvel, my Señor, that
you should deign thus to condescend."
"I marvel also," murmured the Spaniard, rather to himself than to his
unworthy companion. "When the sword of the Moor was at my throat I
disdained to sue for mercy; when I lay spurned by the pirate's foot I
felt no fear; but now--ay now, if you will--I will give you the power
to boast that one of the greatest of the nobles of Aragon has knelt at
your feet to sue for a favour at your hands."
"And you will not deny the humiliating fact if I should publish it?"
demanded the Italian, with a half air of yielding, and Montoro Diego,
with a light of hope springing into his face, exclaimed:
"No, no. I will myself declare the deed, if for its performance you
will obtain me the life and freedom of Don Philip."
Like a drowning man stretching forth to a straw, Montoro had snatched
at a false hope. With that low, mocking laugh that issued freely enough
from his thin, cruel lips, the Italian said slowly:
"Ah! your wish is very great, my Señor, I see that--truly very great to
save a heart-ache to your bride. But--see you--you have hindered Jerome
Tivoli of his desire, and now it is his turn, the turn of the 'base,
black-hearted villain,' Jerome. And he takes your desire into his
ears, he tastes it on his palate, it is sweet to him, sweetened with
the thought of revenge, and then--he spurns it--spits it forth from
him--thus!"
The Aragonese tore his rapier from its sheath, and darted forward, his
fierce southern blood aflame with fury at the insult. But his companion
stood there coolly with folded arms, content to hiss between his teeth:
"We are not unwatched, my Señor. I have plenty to avenge me if you
think Doña Rachel will be gratified to lose husband now as well as
father."
The mention of his wife was opportune. It restored Don Diego to his
self-control. With a mighty effort mastering his pride, he collected
his thoughts for one final attempt on behalf of the good old man doomed
so tyrannically to an awful death.
Before seeking this second interview with the foreigner Montoro de
Diego had schooled himself to bear everything for the sake of his
one great object, and although for a moment he had allowed self to
rise uppermost, he now once more crushed it down, and returned to the
attitude of the humble suppliant.
He did not indeed repeat the offer, so insultingly rejected, to kneel
to the informer, but he appealed earnestly to more sordid instincts.
The man had alluded to Don Philip's daughter as rich as well as
beautiful, and he now offered him the heiress's wealth as compensation
for the loss of the heiress herself.
As he spoke a sudden gleam of satisfaction shot into the Italian's
eyes, and a second time a hope, far greater than the first, rose in
the petitioner's heart; but yet again it was dashed to the ground.
Just as he was prepared to hear that his terms were agreed upon,
his companion's countenance underwent a sudden change. A shadow had
just fallen across the floor, and with a heavy scowl replacing the
expression of greed he bent forward with the hasty mutter:
"Fool of a Spaniard, has that idiot tongue of thine but one tone, that
thou must needs screech thy offers, like a parrot from the Indies, into
all ears that choose to listen?" Then aloud, as though in continuation
of a widely-different theme: "And so, as I tell thee, thy offers go
for nought, for the wealth will of right flow into the coffers of the
Sacred Office when the accursed Jew shall have suffered in the flesh to
save his soul. And now," insolently, "I have no more time to listen to
thy prating, and so go."
Whether he went of his free will, or was turned out, Montoro de
Diego never clearly remembered, but on finding himself beneath the
starry sky, he dashed off to the palace of the dread Arbues himself.
Well-nigh frantic with despair, as he thought of the torments that the
aged prisoner was even then all too probably undergoing, he forced
admittance, late though the hour was, to the presence of the stern
ecclesiastic, who was prudently surrounded by guards even in the
privacy of his own supper-room. Nothing short of the great influence of
Don Diego's high rank would have enabled him to penetrate so far, but
even that did not protect him from the Inquisitor's rebuke, nor gain
him a favourable hearing for his cause.
"It is our blessed office," said the bigoted supporter of Rome's worst
errors, "to purge the Church, to--"
"If Don Philip die, others will die with him," sharply interrupted the
young Spaniard, with fierce significance, and he left the Inquisitor's
palace as abruptly as he had entered it, half determined, in that
bitter hour, to throw in his lot with the conspirators. If there were
none to listen to reason, none to obey the dictates of justice or
mercy, why should he maintain alone his integrity?
So passion and despair tried to argue against his conscience, as he
retraced his steps to his own home and the waiting Rachel. But the
events of that night were not yet over.
CHAPTER IV.
_THINKING OF EXILE._
As Montoro de Diego entered the deep portico of his palace entrance,
he stumbled against some obstruction in the way. He stooped, and found
there was a man dead, or in a deep swoon, lying at his feet.
Before he could ascertain more, or summon his servants, a third person
stepped out of the obscurity and muttered rapidly:
"Remember, the gold is to be mine. It is not my fault that he has thus
suffered before release."
Then the whisperer of those significant words was gone, and the
young man was alone with the prostrate form of his father-in-law.
Relinquishing his intention to call for aid, he lifted the inanimate
body in his own strong arms, and bore his burden into a small inner
apartment, reserved for his own devotion to such learned studies as
were then flourishing in Aragon under the fostering care of royal
encouragement. Something of medicine and surgery he had also acquired,
but he soon discovered with bitter sorrow that in the present case
his skill was useless. The old man was dying. Every limb had been
dislocated on the rack.
"They tortured me to try to extort the secret of my child's
hiding-place," murmured the old man quietly. "But thanks be to the
Lord, He gave me strength. This day I shall be with Him. They have but
hastened my coming home, my children."
And so, with forgiveness and love in his heart, and the light of coming
glory on his face, this rescued victim of the Inquisition died in his
daughter's arms, just as the sun's first golden rays were brightening
the streets of Saragossa. Those rays that were glowing on the walls of
the dungeons, within which slept, for the last time on earth, those
innocent ones who were that day to be burnt in one of the awful Autos
da Fé; those rays that were glowing on the walls and windows of the
palace where Arbues the Inquisitor still slumbered.
"For so He maketh His sun to shine on the evil and the good."
The morning was still young when Don Diego received two visitors.
The first, Jerome Tivoli, was quickly dismissed with the curt but
satisfying speech:
"A noble of Aragon ever keeps his word. The miserable treasure you
crave is yours."
His interview with Don Alonso was far longer.
"Surely now you must join us," urged that fiery spirit with impatient
indignation. "You cannot refuse to aid in avenging the wrongs of your
father-in-law."
"His mode," murmured the other, "of avenging his own wrongs, was to
pray for light for his murderers."
But Don Alonso was marching with hasty strides up and down the
apartment, and did not hear the words. His own conscience was ill
at ease, as the head of conspirators having assassination for their
object, and he had an unacknowledged feeling that he would be more
comfortable in his mind if the upright Montoro would throw in his lot
with them. But Don Diego was firm in his refusal. That recent death-bed
scene had given him back his faith in the wisdom and love of God, in
spite of the darkness now around him, and he ended the discussion at
last, by saying:
"No, Alonso, I will keep my honour whatever else I may be forced to
lose. But, although I will not join you, I will tell you whom I would
join, were my Rachel a man, or, being a woman, had she but been inured
to hardships as a mountain peasant. I would suffer exile thankfully, so
embittered to me has my native land become."
"Embittered indeed to us all," almost groaned the other, adding, "But
whom then is it you would join in your exile? Any of our friends, or
one I know not?"
"One you know not, nor I either, personally," was the reply; "but one
whom we both know well by reputation. That Christopher Colon, the
Genoese, who, for the past six months almost, has been wearying our
Queen Isabella of Castile to provide him means to find some strange
new world; some vision of wonder that has risen in his imagination,
brilliant with lands of gold and pearl, and perfumed with sweeter
spices than the Indies."
Don Alonso uttered a short laugh of contempt.
"Ah, ha! And you mean to tell me that you would be willing to throw in
your lot with that beggarly, visionary adventurer! Our King Ferdinand
knows better than to waste his maravedis on such moon-struck projects,
or to let his consort do so either."
"And yet," said Montoro, somewhat doubtfully, "and yet, although of
course new worlds are foolishness to dream of, some islands might
perchance fall to our share, if we adventured somewhat to find them,
as such good and profitable prizes have been falling, during the
past fifty years, pretty plentifully, to our clever neighbours, the
Portuguese."
"Ay, and even they won't listen to this Genoese, you may recollect.
Besides, the Pope has given everything in the seas and on it, I have
heard, to those lucky neighbours of ours, so of what use for Spaniards
to jeopardize lives and treasure to benefit the Portuguese?"
"Nay," answered Don Diego, "the Pope's grant to them is only for the
countries from Cape Horn to India. Why should not we obtain a grant for
lands in the other hemisphere?"
And so the poor young nobleman tried to stifle grief and apprehension
in dreams of other lands, of whose discovery he would not live to hear,
although his son would one day help others to found new homes on their
far-off soil.
CHAPTER V.
_DEATH FOR ARBUES DE EPILA._
The days went by; the days of that year, 1485: and still the hideous
spectacles of the Auto da Fé continued to be witnessed with shame and
anguish by the inhabitants of Saragossa. Still the cry of the tortured
victims ascended up to heaven, and still Arbues de Epila lived in his
case of mail.
Those were busy, agitating days for Spain. The war with Granada was
still in progress. King Ferdinand was much exercised in mind with
various jealousies connected with French affairs, and, more than
all important for future ages, the Queen's confessor, Ferdinand di
Talavera, together with a council of self-sufficient pedants and
philosophers, was taking into consideration that request of the
Genoese, Christopher Colon, or, as we call him, Columbus, to be
provided with such an equipment of ships, men, and necessary stores, as
should enable him to find and found countries hitherto unheard of, and
only thought of, most people declared, by crack-brained dreamers.
"Besides," finally decided Talavera and his sage council, with pompous
absurdity; "besides, if there were nothing else against this scheme,
such as the convex figure of the globe, for instance, which, of course,
would prevent vessels ever getting back again, up the side of the
world, once they got down, there was the impudence of the suggestion.
It was presumptuous in any person to pretend that he alone possessed
knowledge superior to all the rest of the world united."
And such impertinent presumption was certainly not to be encouraged
in an "obscure Genoese pilot." And so, for that while, after weary
waiting, and the weary hope deferred that maketh the heart sick,
Columbus and his splendid plans were dismissed. But this result was not
arrived at until four years after the months with which we are, for the
minute, more immediately concerned; and so to return to the thread of
our narrative, and to add yet further--and still the men of Saragossa
gathered into secret bands, discussing rather by tokens, than by words,
the unspeakable cruelties that were being committed in their midst, and
the proposed destruction of their arch-instigator, Arbues de Epila.
All was ripe at length for the fulfilment of the fatal plot; fatal,
alas, not only to the Inquisitor, but to his murderers also, and to
many and many another wholly innocent of the crime.
All day long Don Alonso, Don Miguel, Don James of Navarre, with the
rest of the conspirators, many of them with the noblest blood of Aragon
flowing in their veins, watched with a fierce, hungry eagerness for the
moment in which to strike the blow. The hours wore on, the evening
came. In low-breathed murmurs one and another rekindled their own
fury, or revived the flagging courage of a companion, by recalling the
generosity of character, the blameless life, of some friend or relative
snatched out of life by this barbarous persecution.
Night fell over the city of Saragossa, and gradually the conspirators
stealthily, silently drew round about the walls of the cathedral. It
was approaching midnight. The fierce persecutor of his fellow-men was
on his knees before the great altar of the cathedral, on his knees
before Him who has said, "I will have mercy, and not sacrifice."
Arbues knelt there in the flood of brightness from the lighted altar,
and his enemies gathered up around him in the gloomy shadows of the
surrounding darkness. Suddenly there was a muffled shout--a cry. He
raised his head;--too late,--escape was impossible. Already the arm and
hand were streaming with blood that had signed so many warrants for the
torture and death of others. Then came the fatal blow.
[Illustration: Arbues knelt there in a flood of brightness from the
lighted altar. Suddenly there was a muffled shout--a cry. He raised his
head;--too late,--escape was impossible.]
A dagger shone, gleaming red with life-blood, in the light, from the
back of the victim's neck, in the flesh of which its point was firmly
embedded.
Who gave that final thrust none knew but the giver. Only Don Miguel,
who stood by in the fierce crush and _melée_, heard the words hissed
out as the deadly weapon was darted forth:
"So dies the fiend, Arbues de Epila!"
And he, too, cast a hasty glance beside him, as Montoro de Diego had
done when those words were uttered behind his ear in the Auto da Fé
crowd some weeks ago.
But Montoro de Diego had found no one at his elbow but an innocent,
wide-eyed child; and Don Miguel only found a crowd of terrified,
cringing priests, who with pallid faces and trembling limbs bore off
the dying superior to his own apartments, where he lingered two days,
blindly giving thanks to God that he had been accepted as a martyr in
His cause!
"The enemy of our liberty, our honour, our security is dead," muttered
Don Alonso in fierce triumph to Montoro de Diego, as he sought
temporary shelter from the dangers of pursuit in his friend's palace.
But Don Diego shook his head with prophetic sadness as he answered:
"May the Holy Virgin grant that you have not called down worse evils
upon our unhappy city!"
All too soon his fears were realized. The Church was offended, and the
sovereigns, at the assassination of the great Inquisitor, and terrible
was the vengeance wreaked far and wide upon all who had been, or were
supposed to have been, implicated in the impious deed. Hundreds upon
hundreds of people died, by torture, in the dungeons, at the stake,
by persecutions innumerable, and starvation; and the whole province
of Aragon was still further cruelly humiliated in the persons of its
nobles, who were condemned in crowds to do penance in the Autos da Fé.
Don Alonso and Don Miguel were hanged instead of burned, not in mercy,
but in sign of greater infamy, and that they might feel themselves
ground to the very dust by the intense degradation of their punishment.
And Don Diego did not escape the general ruin of his friends.
The heat of the search for victims had somewhat abated, when the
covetous desires of one of the members of the Inquisition turned upon
the possessions of the wealthy nobleman.
A path to the coveted riches was soon found. Montoro de Diego's words
were suddenly remembered that he uttered on the night of Don Philip's
death--"If Don Philip die others will die with him." On these words
he was condemned, first to lingering months in a loathsome dungeon,
then to death; and his young wife was driven forth from the gates of
Saragossa in widowed penury and despair. The second Montoro de Diego
was born a beggar and fatherless, but he had the brave, upright spirit
of his father in him for his portion; and with his fortunes our tale
is, for the future, concerned.
CHAPTER VI.
_SANCHO'S BROKEN VICTUALS._
Poverty and pride do not go well in company, and so a Spanish lad of
some fourteen or fifteen years of age had begun to learn. But the
lesson was hard, and one badly learnt, when one evening some broken
victuals were flung to him as they might have been to a famished dog,
and accompanied by the exclamation:
"There, starveling, be not squeamish, but feed those lean cheeks of
thine, and give me thanks for thy supper."
"I'll give thee that for thy base-born impudence," was the passionate
retort, as the youth seized the package of broken meats and was about
to use it as a missile to hurl at the donor's head.
But as the muscular young arm was raised it was suddenly grasped from
behind, and a sweet, soft voice said hurriedly:
"My son, bethink you. For those of noble blood to be street-brawlers
brings as great disgrace as beggary. You have never yet so far shamed
me, or forgotten the due restraints of your rank."
As the slight, pale woman spoke the lad's clutched fingers loosened
their hold of the parcel; it dropped back into the dusty gutter;
and with burning cheeks he suffered himself to be led away from
the neighbourhood of the half-angry, half-contemptuous man whose
well-intentioned gift had been so spurned. When the mother and son had
disappeared the man turned, with a short laugh, from watching them, and
addressed himself to a neighbour.
"Easy to see who they are. Holy Mother Church has had something to say
to their belongings in the past, I wager. But noble though they may
be still, and rich though they may have been once, they are clearly
starving now, and had better accept good food when they can get it."
And in this declaration the worthy Sancho was certainly most right,
although the bread of charity, even when most delicately bestowed,
tasted bitter in those hungry mouths; for the man was further right in
his belief that mother and son were of high birth, and the mother had
also been reared in luxury.
However, the little incident over, with the alms-giver's comment upon
it, the worthy burgess of the small town of El Cuevo, upon the very
borders of Aragon, turned his thoughts to matters of greater interest
and importance.
"What thinkest thou, friend Pedro, of the new expedition preparing to
set out for yon troublesome new-found island of Hispaniola--has it thy
approval?"
The friend Pedro thus addressed was busily engaged in inspecting
various samples of foreign spices. He now raised a solemn pair of eyes
from his aromatic treasures as he replied:
"Troublesome it may be to those who govern it; but so long as my
son doth continue to send me home a sufficiency of these marketable
commodities, it is not he nor I that shall grumble at its finding."
The burly Sancho laughed.
"Ay, ay, neighbour, I know thee of old. A well-lined pocket thou ever
holdest good recompense for a few thwacks. Would that the grand old
Admiral Columbus could find comfort for ingratitude and sorrows with
such ease!"
"But so he might do if he would but try," was the shrewd answer. "You
see our brave Genoese hath ever been more needful for empty-handed
honour and glory, than for gathering together good store of worldly
spoil, to fall back upon when men should begrudge him the shadow-prizes
he desired. Now it seemeth that he may chance to have neither."
"Well, well, I know not," continued Sancho. "The queen hath ever a
good will to the great man. And although he is not to be commissioned
to go himself to the punishment of that Jack-in-office Bobadilla, men
say that the Commendador of Lares, Don Nicolas de Ovando, who is now
preparing to set out thither, hath all the virtues under the sun. Wise
and prudent and abstemious, and of a winning manner."
"Umph!" grunted the spice-dealer. "Don Ovando had needs be a second
St. Paul if he is to win justice and mercy for the poor natives out
yonder, at the hands of the off-scouring of our streets; and that is
what our gentle-hearted queen hath most at heart."
Master Sancho nodded his head gravely.
"Ah, friend Pedro, I say not but you are right. And that minds me: if
my head were not so thick, I might have bethought me to advise yon
lad, with the great eyes and the short temper, to seek fortune, like
many another of his peers, in those far-off lands across the ocean. I
daresay he would have accepted that advice with a better grace than he
did my scraps."
His neighbour looked up this time more fully than he had yet done, and
let his hands rest for a few moments idle on the samples with which he
had been so occupied, as he exclaimed with genuine astonishment:
"Why, friend Sancho, verily it seems to me that you have taken some
queer true interest in yon ragged piece of impudence. I have noted you
more than once, ay, than twice, watch him of an evening as he went by
till out of sight. And now, when he would have flung your kindness back
at you, still talking of him, forsooth. Nay then, had he so treated me
he would have been roundly cuffed, I tell thee; and so an end."
Broad-shouldered, easy-going Sancho laughed and gave a shrug.
"I am not fond of being ready with my fists, friend Pedro; my hands
are large, and might hap to be over heavy; besides, I have a broken
thumb. But you judge rightly; I have taken a fancy to that set-up,
handsome-faced young beggar. And I have watched him, not only of an
evening past these doors, but at other hours in the town; and although
he rejects help for himself, many a time have I seen him give it to
those weaker or more helpless than himself."
Meantime, while he was being thus discussed, that same "set-up,
handsome-faced young beggar" was remonstrating with his mother against
her oft-reiterated lectures to him on humility, and on a studied
avoidance of everything that should draw observation upon them.
"I will not slink into corners like a thief, nor hide myself in holes
like a rat," he exclaimed at last, with haughty indignation. "Hast thou
not told me thyself, my mother, that I am an Aragonese?"
But Rachel Diego replied with a lip that trembled while it curled:
"In truth art thou, my son, a child of a barren land. The heir of
territories so stricken from the Maker's hand with poverty, that
perchance we waste life's breath in lamenting that treasures so
miserable should be wrested from us."
But the mother's new line of argument, to soothe her son's dangerous
agitation, was fruitless as the other. His eyes flashed still more
brilliantly with his burning indignation, as he retorted again:
"You say right, my mother. The land of Aragon is so poor and barren,
that perchance her sons and daughters might all long since have
forsaken their churlish, niggard-handed mother, and finally renounced
her, but that she gives them liberty. Even in our oath of allegiance we
tender no slaves' submission to oppression."
The widowed mother turned her sad eyes upon her proud-spirited boy.
"My son, no oath of allegiance has as yet been called for from thy
lips."
The flush deepened on the young Spaniard's face. He pressed his teeth
into the crimson lower lip for some seconds to strangle back a groan
that sought escape from his own over-burdened heart. He had heard of
the tragedies of those months before his birth.
"No," he muttered at length bitterly. "No. It is true. I am esteemed
too contemptible to have even vows wrung from me that are counted
worthless. But the oath that my father spoke is registered in my heart;
the oath due from us, whose proud heritage it is to call ourselves the
nobles of Aragon. And such is the oath that I, in my turn, tender to my
sovereign, Ferdinand of Aragon and Castile."
The lad paused a moment, and then, with folded arms, and in low, firm
tones, repeated the proud words of the Aragonese oath of allegiance.
"We, who are each of us as good, and who are altogether more powerful
than you, promise obedience to your government if you maintain our
rights and liberties, but if not, not."
As he spoke Rachel Diego dropped her face into her hands, and as he
ended she murmured in stifled tones:
"Your father pronounced that haughty vow, and what availed the boast?"
What indeed! The young Montoro gazed for a moment at his wan mother, at
the bare room, and then, with all his haughtiness lost in a flood of
sudden despair, he darted from the miserable apartment to wrestle with
his agitation in the wild darkness of a stormy night.
That his heart should be torn with bitterness and grief was little
wonder, for all too well he knew how it came to pass that his mother
was fatherless and a widow, and how he himself had been robbed of
his parent and his patrimony. Something of the dismal tale of Don
Philip's tortured death, and of the base villain who had grasped at
his daughter's fortune, had been told the boy from time to time by his
mother. Something, also, of the avarice and barbarity that had wrested
a few despairing words to the destruction of his own father, the noble
Don Montoro de Diego.
But much fuller details of those dismal days of 1485 had been given to
the disinherited son of a blameless father by the old priest Bartolo,
who had secretly aided the outcast young widow and her infant when
they were first driven from their home, and who had continued to give
them all the assistance in his power until his death, some months ago;
in that very month of December, in fact, of 1500, when the hearts of
so many in Spain, and elsewhere, throbbed with indignation at the
news that a vessel had arrived in the port of Cadiz with the great
discoverer on board, in chains like a common malefactor.
While the young Montoro was mourning over the dying priest, however,
he little heeded the gossip going on around him about one who, during
the remaining five years of a well-worn life, was to have a far greater
influence on the orphan lad's career than ever the good old priest
would have had the power to exercise.
But the days of December passed on. The old priest was buried. Columbus
was delivered from his chains by hasty order of the king and queen, and
was further invited in flattering terms of kindness to join the royal
Court at Granada; a thousand ducats to defray expenses, and a handsome
retinue as escort on the journey, being sent in testimony that the
friendliness of the invitation was sincere. And so the saddened heart
of the glorious old Admiral was once more warmed with half-fallacious
hope. Not so with poor Rachel Diego and her son.
Life had been hard enough while Father Bartolo lived, but after his
death the struggle for existence became well-nigh desperate; and by the
time the months had come round to this following December of 1501, more
people, in the obscure little town of El Cuevo, than the worthy burgess
Sancho, had come to the conclusion that the unknown young widow and her
handsome son were dying of starvation.
But death was evidently preferable, in the minds of the helpless
couple, to degradation. Work they could not obtain, and charity they
would not accept.
"And small blame to them after all," muttered Master Sancho to himself,
a few days after his vain effort to bestow a supper on the objects of
his interest. "I don't believe that I, either, should relish the taste
of other men's leavings. Thanks be to the virgin that I have never had
to eat them. But yet--to starve? Umph! I know not whether I should like
the flavour of starvation any better."
And he folded his arms across his portly person with a slightly mocking
laugh of self-consciousness.
This short soliloquy had been occasioned by the sight of young Montoro
Diego passing the end of the street. His reappearance now, in the
street itself, with a large loaf of bread in his arms, brought the
soliloquy to a sudden stop; and Sancho left his post of observation in
his own doorway, and hurried as fast as his weighty figure would allow
to the pedestrian, finding no very great difficulty in barring the
lad's further progress along the narrow roadway with his broad form.
Montoro threw back his head impatiently.
"What now?" he demanded, with flushed cheeks. "Have you some more dog's
meat that you wish to be rid of?"
The burgess laughed.
"Verily, my son, there is a bold spirit hidden under those rags of
thine. But a truce to laughter; for verily I feel angered with you now,
and I have a right?"
"Because I would none of your mean gifts?" asked Montoro hotly.
"Nay, indeed; that was your affair. But I am angry, and have a right
to be, that you should accept aid from others which you will not have
from me."
"Accept aid!" repeated the lad wonderingly. "Of what are you speaking?
What aid have we received since the only friend died of whom we would
accept it?"
But even as he spoke he caught the eyes of his companion fixed upon the
loaf by way of significant answer, and he added shortly:
"This I have earned. It is no gift."
Then slipping under his questioner's arm he thought to have escaped;
but Master Sancho caught him by the shoulder and held him fast.
"Look here, my son, by your air and looks I judge you to have been
born to a rank far above my own and so if it be your pleasure I will
speak to you with uncovered head by way of deference. But speak to you
I will, for I have taken a fancy to you; and if you are not as set
against work as against alms I may help you."
There was a spasmodic twitch of the shoulder at those last words; and
the boy's face was so turned away that his captor could not read it.
But after a moment's silence the worthy-hearted man continued, with a
different accent of somewhat impatient anger:
"Hark ye, lad, ye may be as indifferent about thyself as it may please
thee; but I cry shame on thee to refuse aught that may provide needful
nourishment for that sweet and gentle mother of thine. To nourish
thy false pride--ay, I will even call it by a juster name, thy base
pride--thy mother is offering herself a sacrifice."
There was a gulping sound in the boy's throat, and then with a choking
gasp he muttered:
"She could not, she would not, live on charity."
"No," instantly agreed the burgess of El Cuevo; "that I begin to
believe. But she could and would live on the honest earnings of your
hands. And be you noble or no, you'll find ne'er a priest in Spain to
dare tell you that it is more honourable to let a mother starve than to
work for her."
For the first time Montoro Diego let his eyes fairly rest on his
mentor's face. There was something so genuinely true in the ring of the
voice that the boy's anger and indignation dwindled away he scarce knew
how, and gave place to a growing trust. With an effort he crushed down
his emotion as he replied in low tones:
"I have no coward scruples against work, believe me. But I am noble, as
you say. The son of one who died wrongfully for the death of Arbues de
Epila. It was at the peril of their lives that any helped my mother,
even with work, at the time that my father was thus barbarously mur--"
Burgess Sancho sharply clapped his hand over the boy's mouth, muttering
with half-angry solicitude:
"Knowest thou not, my son, that a still tongue is wisdom? Keep thy
information of the past for those who ask for it, and to those who do
so give it not. You, a starving boy in the streets of El Cuevo, I can
help. You may have dropped from the clouds for aught I know. Dost thou
not comprehend me?"
Montoro's dark eyes gleamed with a flitting smile. The Aragonese of
those days were not wanting in intelligence. But at the same time his
native pride, and even his nobility of character, forbade him to accept
aught at the expense of his identity, and so he quickly let his new
friend understand.
"I have no inheritance but my father's name and my father's unsullied
memory," he declared firmly; "and I will bear that openly. I have
earned this loaf to-day, and more, by grinding colours for the great
painter staying yonder; but first I told him who I was."
"More foolish you," remarked Master Sancho, with a shrug. "But what
said he to thy news?"
"Even as thou--that I had more truth than wit. But he gave me work all
the same, for he said that he need have no fear. The king could replace
heretic nobles with other nobles, but he could not replace a painter,
and so he would be wise enough to keep the one he had."
"Ay, then," agreed Master Sancho, "the Señor is right; and if I
were you I would turn painter also, for the royal ordinance of last
September did not name that amongst the many things you may not be."
"No," returned Montoro with a bitter laugh; "that last ordinance
of persecution only excludes me from such employments as would be
possible, not from those needing gifts vouchsafed only to the few. But
I must say adios, for my mother will already have feared some mischance
has come to me."
"To our next meeting, then," said the worthy burgess. "And meantime I
will cudgel my brains till I find some means to help you, for all you
are so self-willed and impracticable, my son."
The friendly look and the confident nod that accompanied these gruffly
good-humoured words were full of such pleasant encouragement that
Montoro Diego flew home with a heart suddenly grown as light as though
he had already regained the power to use the title of 'Don' before his
name, and had already won back the heritage of his ancestors.
We say "already," for of course Montoro, like all brave-spirited,
properly-constituted individuals, was perfectly convinced, even
in the lowest stage of rags and hunger, that the day would most
positively come when he should re-enter his fathers home as the
publicly-acknowledged Don Montoro de Diego. Meantime there was good
bread for his supper that night, and for his mother, together with a
handful of roasted chestnuts and a bottle of thin wine, grateful in
that warm climate from its very sourness.
"And to-morrow," he said cheerfully, "the great painter says, my
mother, that I may work in his studio again. And, if only you would go
with me, he would not again sigh that there were none beautiful and
tender-faced enough in the land to sit to him for the Holy Mother."
Rachel Diego said hastily, "Hush, my son," and shook her head at him;
but at the same time she smiled, and a delicate flush tinted the pale
cheeks, for her boy's loving praises were so sweet in her ears that
they turned the humble supper into a feast.
The mother and son were very happy together that night; but had those
two who so greatly loved each other known that even then schemes were
being revolved in a shrewd and busy brain that would result, within
a few short months, in placing a wide and storm-tossed ocean between
them, one at least of the couple would have found the bread given to
her turned to ashes in her mouth, and would have changed her smiles to
weeping.
Happily for them, however, no prevision marred the rare joyousness of
those few hours, nor disturbed the sleep that followed, gladdened with
bright dreams.
CHAPTER VII.
_CONSULTING A SWEET TOOTH._
"Friend Pedro!"
"Ay, what now?"
And the spice-dealer looked up from a small pile of curiosities, lying
on a tray on his knees, with a more than half-betrayed idea that
nothing his neighbour had to say could be so important, as calculating
how much he might hope to make by the sale of those uncommon wares.
But this belief was somewhat lessened when his eyes rested on his
friend's countenance. "Hey, then!" he ejaculated; "our painter yonder
saith that thou art never a true Spaniard, for thy face is too round,
but were he to see thee now he would surely tell a different tale."
"It is but lengthened by the height of my considering-cap," was the
answer, with a laugh that speedily restored his visage to its usual
good-humoured breadth.
Master Pedro appeared greatly relieved by the change. To say truth,
in that land of solemn faces and staid deportments, a cheerful
neighbour was as refreshing as a sunlit breeze in the early days of
spring; and the spice-dealer, although the solemnest of the solemn
himself, duly appreciated the fact, not to mention that he had a true
though hidden affection for this especial neighbour, and would have
grieved greatly if sorrow had befallen him. But long faces only due to
considering-caps--well, that was another thing, and really not worth
wasting the minutes of a working-day upon. He bent his head once more
over his tray of West Indian treasures, as he asked with diminished
interest:
"And pray then what has led thee to the wearing of a cap so weighty?
Have the good fathers of St. Jacomb refused the purchase of thy Venice
lustres, or will not they give thee a fair price for them?"
Burgess Sancho laughed again. "Nay, neighbour, trouble not thyself
to guess, for thy guess is wide of the mark. The good fathers closed
eagerly with my offer of the lustres, and the maravedis I demanded in
exchange are already in my pouch. But hark ye, friend Pedro!--with the
lustres came to me also two Venice glasses of the most changeful pearly
hue, tall and thin, and of a good capacity. And I have a mind to keep
them to myself, and, moreover, to try to-night how the flavour of a
good wine from Madeira goes with them. Come thou in, when the sun hath
gone down, and help me with my judgment."
"And also with my judgment on a matter of far more moment," muttered
the worthy trader to himself, with a shrewd twinkle in his eye at
having thus cleverly angled for his neighbour's company.
For the spice-dealer was one difficult to entice farther than his own
doorway; and nothing short of those promises of choice wine from the
Portuguese island of Madeira, to be drunk out of yet choicer goblets,
would have tempted him on the present occasion to break his rule. As
it was, the last glimmer of daylight had disappeared more than an hour
when a cloaked figure stepped from one door to the next, and gave a tap
upon the nail-studded panels.
"Better late than never, friend; come thy ways in," said Master Sancho
heartily, as he acted the part of his own door-porter, and ushered his
neighbour into a room brightly lighted with fire and lamp; for even
in that sunny land of Spain the cold, damp winds of December made the
blaze of crackling logs pleasant after sundown. What would not have
been so pleasant to English ideas, was the overpoweringly pervading
odour of burning lavender, a bundle of which was slowly smouldering
on the hearth, by way of giving the atmosphere of the apartment that
special tone and perfume considered desirable by its occupants.
On a small table in front of the cheerful hearth stood the beautiful
Venice glasses, tall and slender, shimmering with opal tints in the
ruddy glow, which also shone through a flask of golden-tinted Madeira,
and danced hither and thither over various dishes daintily set
forth with sweet-meats. For, ascetic-looking as Master Pedro was in
appearance, he had as sweet a tooth as any Roman, and Master Sancho was
too anxious to gain his aid or counsel to neglect anything that might
tend to put him in good humour.
But although Pedro's eyes gleamed with a certain satisfaction at sight
of the festive preparations, he was shrewd enough to read between the
lines; and as he stretched his feet comfortably towards the fire, and
put back his delicate glass after a contented sip, he asked with grim
humour:
"And now, friend Sancho, that you have baited your net and caught your
fly, tell me, what wouldest thou seek from out it?"
The merchant's face flushed at the unexpected question, and he began
hastily: "Now, by the Holy Virgin, I protest that good fellowship--"
"And some perplexity besides," interrupted Pedro with a knowing smile,
"made you anxious for my company. But tell me without hesitation what
you would have of me, for I would stretch many a point to serve so good
a neighbour."
"Thou sayest so!" exclaimed worthy Sancho, as he rose hastily to his
feet, and with hand resting on the table bent over his companion,
eagerly scanning his countenance. "Thou sayest so, and would hold to
that thou hast said?"
"Ay verily," was the calm answer. "Almost, maybe, to the extent of
putting my limbs in danger of the rack, if they might save thine from
the like peril thereby."
However, in spite of his declaration, Master Pedro was somewhat taken
aback when his companion dropped again into his chair, muttering
thoughtfully:
"Nay then, not quite so bad as that, I hope; not quite so bad as that;
although--" and he raised his voice slightly once more, and raised his
eyes to his friend again as he added--"although I certainly did think
it were prudent to seek your advice in the privacy of my own home,
rather than to proclaim my desires to the ears of the whole town. It is
now three weeks since you accused me of taking an interest in a certain
large-eyed vagrant boy--"
"Ay indeed," with fading interest, "of watching the bundle of rags as a
dog might watch a rat."
"Even so. And when you have watched anything in that way for the space
of months, you end by either loving it, or holding it in abhorrence. I
have ended by loving it. And unfortunately I love where the law hates.
Father and grandfather of that bundle of rags have perished at the
mandate of the Holy Tribunal."
Master Sancho ceased, and bestowed a long, silent stare upon the
glowing logs, while his companion took a long, slow sip of the rich
wine. At last the spice-dealer put down his glass, placed his hands
slowly, outspread, on his knees, and said in slow, muffled tones:
"Friend Sancho, I have some rules for life which I have found good.
One of them is, 'Never give advice.' But this once I will depart from
that rule, and advise thee to rid thy heart of this unlucky love,
and for the future ever to wear thine eyes within thy cloak when yon
lean-cheeks is within sight."
"Umph!" calmly ejaculated the host, still staring into the fire. "I
knew that would be thy first well-meant advice; and, to tell thee the
truth, I reckon that it may be as well for me not to be gazing at the
lad quite so much as I have done of late. It is with that belief that I
have turned to you to help me to get quit of the poor starveling."
At these last unexpected words the guest started, and cast a keen,
swift glance of almost angry wonder upon his entertainer, as he said
hastily:
"Nay, neighbour, what is that thou sayest? I advise thee to have nought
to do with the lad, that is true; but canst thou think, even for thy
safety, that I would aid thee to get rid of the poor fatherless one?"
A smile began to steal over the merchant's broad countenance, as he
replied coolly:
"Ay, verily, and that is what I can and do expect. But not, as you seem
to fear, to the lad's hurt. Here, in our Spain, it is not easy just
now to set him on his feet. But if you will give him some commission
to your son--nay, be calm and hear me out--if you will do that for the
comfort of his mother, I will furnish him clothes and a fair purse, and
trust me, I will also find means some way to smuggle him on board one
of the ships, now fitting out in the southern port of Cadiz to carry
the Commendador to Hispaniola. That is my scheme; many a good hour that
I might have enjoyed in sleep have I bestowed upon it, and now you are
going to aid me to carry it through."
"Never!" exclaimed Master Pedro, excitedly; "never, never! Not for all
the maravedis that ever fell into the coffers of the Holy Office will
I help thee to help one who inherits its suspicions. Dost hear me,
neighbour Sancho?--I say, never!"
"Ay, ay, I hear thee," calmly replied the individual addressed. "I
heard thee say that same 'never' in my dreams two days ago, and
answered thee with 'ever.' Now I hear thee say it actually with thy
lips, and still I answer it with 'ever.' But take another taste of the
wine, friend Pedro; fill thy glass again, if but to see the mingling
of the colours, and draw in thy chair closer to the warmth. No need to
neglect the comforts of the body because thy mind is perturbed."
"Ah!" growled the other. "Thou hast well put into words the doctrine of
thy life, I warrant me."
Master Sancho laughed.
"And if so, neither words nor doctrine, can any say, have served
me shabbily. If it should so fall out in the future that even in
this world I must suffer for my sins, or for other folks' caprices,
nevertheless in the past my face hath had its share of rejoicing in the
sunshine of its own smiles."
"It is in the sunshine of the smiles of others," retorted the
spice-dealer, "that most men would fain be able to rejoice."
"Ay, even so, and that is where most men fall into error," was the calm
reply. "Comfort from the smiles of others is like the fleeting comfort
a sick beggar gets from the glow of another man's fire. A healthy man
has the abiding glow in his own veins, and he carries it about with him
where he goes. Thus is it when the spring of smiles is within thine own
heart, man, and thou art led to accept gratefully blessings as they
fall to thy hand."
The spice-merchant's eyes opened somewhat roundly as he heard this
short philosophical-sounding speech, so very unlike his jovial
neighbour's ordinary conversation, but before he could utter the
sarcastic words of surprise hovering on his tongue, he was recalled to
his recent anxieties by his friend continuing in a more earnest tone:
"And thus, as I like to grasp at the blessings as they come--the
blessings of good fire, good friends, good food; good fun--so I
can even open my hand wide enough to take hold of another sort of
blessings, when they are thrust upon me so plainly that I can but see
they are being offered. Do you mind the text upon which Father Ignatius
preached to us on Christmas Day?"
Master Pedro considered a moment, and shook his head. To say truth,
when that sermon began, his head was occupied with the doubt of whom he
should trust to send with his next consignment of money, glass beads,
and other things, to his son.
"It was appropriate to the occasion," he said at last with a clever
evasion worthy of the Delphic oracle.
But his companion was too much in earnest now to smile. He replied
quietly:
"The text was this: 'Inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of the least
of these, my brethren, ye did it not to me. Depart from me, ye cursed,
into everlasting fire.'"
So sternly solemn was his utterance of those two final words, that
the other was thrilled with it, and moving uneasily on his seat, he
muttered:
"One would think you were talking of the Holy Tribunal itself, to hear
you."
"Only," ejaculated Sancho, "that I am talking of something
infinitely more terrible. The one fire is for five minutes, the
other--everlasting. I prefer the five minutes' one, if it must come
to the choice. But, if you will help me, I think not we shall run
much risk of either. Those who are in danger of their lives over
here, and endanger those who aid them, are perfectly welcome, I have
discovered, to imperil those same lives on their own account in the
other hemisphere, for the glory of our country. And, on this I am
resolved--yon black-eyed rascal shall have his chance with the rest."
CHAPTER VIII.
_A POWERFUL FRIEND._
"Come with me, and ask no questions."
Such was the oracular order addressed by Master Pedro to his friend,
Master Sancho, the morning after the conversation over that wonderful
new wine of Madeira, and, with great alacrity, the merchant prepared to
obey, exclaiming, with a joyous rub of his hands:
"Ah, neighbour, have your will in that matter of the questioning, for
well I guess you would not think to fetch me from my business at this
hour of a working-day but on account of our last night's confab."
However, for all so sure as he had felt on the matter, he began to be
uncomfortably doubtful when his companion led him from his own door
into the next, from which issued the mingled odours of every known
spice under the sun, and none of them, to worthy Sancho's thinking,
deserving to be compared with the sweet airs wafted over the fields of
their own native lavender.
"Come in then," testily exclaimed Master Pedro, from the interior of a
room just within the house, and at the entrance of which his friend
had been arrested by the snarlings of two particularly vicious-looking
pups. "Come in; they'll not hurt thee. They know better than to touch a
Spaniard. They are to teach manners to the natives out yonder."
"Ah!" ejaculated Sancho, with an involuntary shudder, and a look
expressive both of disgust and anger. But he quickly concealed these
emotions. For the present he had one great object in view, and for its
furtherance he must keep his companion in good humour, although his own
was tested to the uttermost, not only by the dogs and their purpose,
but by Master Pedro's employment for the next twenty minutes or so.
The trader with Venice well enough understood the merits and beauties
of crystal-clear lustres, coloured vases, and golden goblets, and he
had a fair taste in the velvets from Genoa and the fine straws from
Tuscany, but of what use or value all those Moorish tags and rags
could be, which the curiosity-dealer was turning over, save to patch
the holes in the cloaks of the beggars who lay around the doors of the
neighbouring church of San Salvador, he could not imagine.
"Nay, friend Pedro," he exclaimed at last, with an effort to show no
temper, and to still speak pleasantly; "nay, friend Pedro, if thou hast
brought me here to get a bid from me for yon small rubbish-heap, I tell
thee frankly I value it at nought, seeing it will not even serve to
feed a fire with. Nevertheless, I will even take it, to pleasure thee
and to save mine own time, and at what price you list."
"Wilt thou then that?" said the other, with a grim smile, as he slowly
lifted himself up from stooping over the pile of lumber, of all hues
and textures, rich and sombre-coloured, thick and fragile. "Another
time, neighbour Sancho, I would warn thee to be more chary of passing
thy word to a blind bargain, lest one more cunning than thyself should
hold thee to the promise. To purchase the rare wares of this small
rubbish-heap would take many more than all the maravedis paid thee
yester morn for thy lustres, by the fathers of San Jacomb. This veil
alone hath been purchased of me for a fair round sum."
Master Sancho stared at the filmy texture, disfigured here and there
with rents, and shrugged his shoulders.
"Thy wife, Doña Carlina, would not wear it."
"She will not have the chance. That veil, now many years since,
shrouded the form of a Sultana--the ill-used queen of Aba-Abdalla,
the last king of the Moors in Granada, thanks to the Virgin, our good
knights, and Queen Isabella. And now Señor Antonio del Rincon hath
hired it, and various others of these draperies, for the finishing of
his great picture of the Life of the Blessed Virgin."
"And when he hath done with it?" inquired the good merchant, with
something of growing reverence.
"Then it hath been purchased by a party of the ricos hombres,[1] who
have vowed it to St. Jago, in memory of that grand day ten years
ago, when our valiant Spanish knights adventured themselves, in the
disguise of Turks, within the walls of Granada, as champions of their
enemy's helpless queen. But come, friend, time passes, and Señor
Antonio will be waiting for his stuffs."
[Footnote 1: The wealthy class next in standing to the nobles.]
As it was not good Sancho, but Master Pedro himself who had been
delaying the expedition, the friends were soon enough on the road
now that he was ready; and a hope began to dawn again in the mind of
Montoro's new patron, that made amends to him for the loss of minutes
from his daily toils.
"Señor Antonio del Rincon stands high in favour at the Court,
neighbour," he observed at last, meditatively, as they walked along,
side by side, to their destination; and Master Pedro answered shortly:
"Ay, neighbour; even so. He doth."
The reply was given in a tone not exactly inviting to further converse,
but that zealous Sancho nevertheless continued, still thoughtfully:
"Ay, ay. And doubtless being a favourite he hath influence to obtain a
favour if so be he could be influenced to ask one."
A shrewd, quick glance from his companion's eyes rewarded this
conjecture; but they and the bundle of "properties" had now arrived at
the temporary abiding-place of del Rincon, known to after-times as the
father of the Spanish School. And Master Pedro's face assumed its usual
solemn business aspect.
"Mind ye," he muttered hastily, as he paused outside the door of
the studio for a moment, to pull and pat his great package into an
orderliness somewhat destroyed by its carriage from his house--"mind
ye, neighbour, I have brought thee hither, and the rest of the business
ye must manage for yourself; for never another step in so craze-pate
an affair, and one so near akin to rack and faggot, will you get me to
stir, though you should promise me the free gift of your next freight
of Venice glass entire."
"Nay then, friend Pedro, I'll do more," was the laughing whisper; "if
my hopes succeed, I'll even 'you' thee in gratitude, as thou dost me
for repression."
A little further compression of the wrinkled lips, a little further
wrinkling of the furrowed forehead, gave the only sign of that mocking
speech having been heard; and an instant later jovial Master Sancho
appeared as sedately ceremonious as his companion, for they had entered
the studio, and stood in the great man's presence, from whom both hoped
great things; the spice-dealer for himself, the trader with Italy for
another.
A man between fifty and sixty was the Señor Antonio del Rincon, the
gravity of genius somewhat tempered in his countenance by the suavity
learned from contact with that sweet woman, as she was noble Queen,
Isabella of Castile.
At the artist's elbow stood the handsome young Montoro, who raised
his great earnest eyes with a swift smile of recognition as Master
Sancho entered, and then bent them once more over the colours he was
grinding with most diligent care, for his employer. Never once again
did he cease work during the animated discussion that ensued between
the painter and the owner of the curiosities, although his friendly
well-wisher marked the eager flush that crimsoned his whole face when
a few words were spoken over the veil, of the splendid daring of Don
Juan Chacon, Ponce de Leon, and their two companions, when they stood
victors over the four false-hearted Zegries within the walls of Granada.
"Humph! He is worth better things than such a task as that," ejaculated
the burgess, unconsciously uttering his thought aloud.
The painter turned to him surprised.
"Hey, master merchant, what is it thou sayest? That the veil is too
honourable to take a subordinate place on my canvas, thou thinkest?
Well, maybe thou art right," beginning to relapse into abstracted
contemplation of his work; but with eager deference Master Sancho
stepped forward, putting into words the first thoughts that occurred to
him. Pointing a trembling finger towards a somewhat coarse dish holding
gifts presented to the infant in the manger, he said hastily:
"It was not of the veil I was thinking. But if Señor Antonio would be
pleased to accept of a dish of crystal, curiously chased, and worked
with gold and gems, for use instead of yon, I would gladly bestow it
for the grand picture's sake, and for the Virgin's honour."
And thus cleverly did Master Sancho, and with true unselfishness, slip
his dexterous finger into the pie; and in the course of conferences
that day, and a few succeeding days, over the costly dish and similar
articles, he pulled out a goodly plum for Montoro Diego. The last use
the dying Antonio del Rincon was ever to make of his Court influence
was in the service of his young colour-grinder; and soon after the
opening of the new year 1502, good Sancho treated himself to a holiday,
and set out on a journey across Spain to the port of Cadiz accompanied
by Montoro, and bearing a written recommendation of his _protégé_ from
the benevolent Queen to the great Admiral himself.
"I thought the Virgin had decreed, my son, that I should have to
smuggle thee out of Spain in a cask of the Madeira wine, or in a Venice
flask," said the generous-hearted burgess laughing, and rubbing his
hands, as they proceeded on their first day's journey in fearlessness,
and such comfort as even in those days a well-lined purse commanded.
The lad answered him with sparkling eyes. His emotions were as yet too
strong for many words. Sorrow at parting with his beloved mother for
the first time was somewhat soothed by having left her in the kind care
and friendship of Doña Carlina; but wonder at his suddenly changed
fortunes, and dazzling hopes of the future, filled his heart almost to
suffocation.
CHAPTER IX.
_FROM THE NEW PRINTING PRESS._
"And I am surety for you, my son; so if you owe me any thanks for my
pains, be honest."
Such was the parting injunction of Master Sancho, as he bade his
_protégé_ farewell in the harbour of Cadiz on the morning of the 8th of
May, 1502. And with a hot flush in his cheeks, and sparkling eyes, the
youth replied quickly:
"Honest! Am I not noble? How should a noble of Aragon ever sully his
name with dishonour?"
"How indeed?" replied Master Sancho as he laid his hand on the lad's
shoulder and continued gravely: "One may well wonder that any bearing
the name of man should sully his manhood by aught that is base; but you
will henceforth be surrounded by many a companion who knows nought of
honour but the honour of grasping more than his neighbour, who cares
for no shame but the shame of being thought capable of virtue. See that
you become not one of them."
"You have said that the great Admiral is far from being one of
such blots on Spain," said the lad more humbly. "And as I am to
be on his own ship, so I will trust to show myself deserving of
the honour. And"--he added after a moment with a sudden burst of
gratitude--"deserving of all your noble generosity towards me, and your
most helpful trust. The memory of that will be a strong guard to me
from temptation."
"May St. Jago grant it!" ejaculated the good-hearted man with
affectionate fervour.
And then patron and _protégé_ had to exchange hasty farewells, for
Ferdinand Columbus, a boy a year or two younger than Montoro, came to
summon him on board. Kind-hearted Queen Isabella, in her good-will
towards the old and trouble-worn navigator, had given up the services
of her young page that on this occasion he might accompany his father,
and comfort him with his mingled love and enthusiasm.
To Montoro also it was some secret relief to see that there was one
even younger than himself about to brave the very many known, and
many unknown, perils of those far-sought adventures and discoveries;
for more than his timid, grieving mother in El Cuevo had sought to
persuade him that, in leaving that humdrum, safe little town for
untried paths, he was foolishly relinquishing all chances of growing up
to man's estate. That the Admiral was about to take one of his own two
sons seemed a tolerable proof that matters could not be so altogether
desperate as that.
Meantime, while these thoughts were flashing through Diego's brain, the
merchant's eyes had been attracted by a great iron-bound, iron-clasped
book under the boy Ferdinand's arm, and he at once remembered his
friend Pedro.
[Illustration: Meantime, the merchant's eyes had been attracted by a
great iron-bound, iron-clasped book under the boy Ferdinand's arm.]
"My lad," he said, with one of his most winning smiles, "I have left a
neighbour behind me in my own town who loves curiosities, and things
from past times, not only for their value as articles of merchandise,
but for their own sakes, and I would gladly pleasure him with some
worthy gift, on my return, after his own heart. Thinkest thou that I
could purchase yon great old tome of thee? Missal or Moorish prayers,
songs or quaint sayings, I care not, so it be but rare and of a
far-gone date."
He put out his hand as he spoke to examine his wished-for bargain;
and as Ferdinand Columbus courteously yielded it for inspection he
accompanied the civil act with a smiling:
"See for yourself, Señor, if it be old enough to suit an antiquary.
Rare it is, certainly; but for the age--it cannot boast as many years
as I. It is one of the Bibles printed, by the king's permission, in
our own tongue, by Theodoric the German, at his printing presses in
Valencia. This copy my father took with him on his first voyage, ten
years ago, across the Atlantic, and he would not think of undertaking
any great expedition without it."
"And doth he greatly study it, and do you?" inquired Master Sancho, as
with mingled awe and wonder he turned the leaves of a book upon which
his eyes had never before rested.
But its bearer appeared to think that it was being treated with too
much freedom, and rather anxiously held out his hands to receive it
back as he murmured in a shocked voice:
"_I_ study it, Señor! The holy saints forbid. That is for the priests.
It is taken with us that by its blessed power may be exorcised such
spirits of evil, and baneful influences, as we may meet with in those
unblessed regions of the West."
So saying, with a formal bow to the merchant, and a sign to Montoro to
follow him, the son of the great discoverer of a new world, but not of
a more enlightened faith, returned to the small boat that was to carry
them on shipboard.
Master Sancho stood on the busy strand watching with many another,
until they were drawn up the vessel's side, and then, with a tolerably
deep sigh for the loss of his young companion, he wandered away into
the streets of the bustling city, and soon became the owner of many
curious treasures brought from all parts of the known world, and far
safer possessions in that land of the Inquisition than the one he
had made an attempt, in ignorance, to buy for his timidly cautious
neighbour.
Indeed, with all his own honest courage shown on behalf of the orphaned
and beggared young noble, the worthy merchant himself would not have
cared to risk travelling with a copy of the Scriptures in his bales,
unauthorized.
In those days the Bible was for the priests, as Ferdinand Columbus had
said; and the priests took good care not to let the fountain of light
out of their hidden keeping. They loved darkness to reign in the land
rather than light, because their deeds were evil. But when the boy
passed the book for a few minutes into Montoro's charge, as soon as
they got on board, that he might the more readily go in search of his
father, he was not again giving it into the hands of one so ignorant of
its contents, nor to whom it was an affair of so much mystery.
One small, unsuspected portion of her inheritance had Rachel Philip
saved from the rapacious grasp of the vile informer, Jerome Tivoli, the
Italian. It consisted of three rolls of vellum closely written over in
Hebrew characters, and when Don Philip's father became a Christian he
did not declare his possession of these rolls; but, on the contrary,
closely concealed them, lest he should be deprived of the pearl without
price--the Word of God.
In a secresy that the more fully impressed the lessons upon his mind
had Don Philip's father taught his son to read these rolls, and to
write "in his mind and in his heart" God's law. In like manner had Don
Philip, in his turn, taught his daughter; and in like manner had Rachel
Diego taught her son to read those three rolls--the Pentateuch, the
Psalms of David, and the book of the prophet Isaiah.
Through all her troubles of widowhood, wanderings, and poverty she had
kept those books, and she still kept them, for she dared not risk her
child's life with their transfer to him. But it mattered not, for their
truths were imprinted in his soul, and his faith was a living faith,
pure and free from superstition, being built upon the knowledge of
God's own Word.
Many of those Jew converts who fell at the mandate of the Spanish
Inquisition were the truest Christians, the most upright men, and the
best citizens of their age, for they _knew_ what they believed.
From his mother's secret teaching, and his own reading, the young
Montoro had become wise unto salvation before the new career began that
had been opened up for him by the merchant's benevolence; and when he
stepped on board the world-renowned Admiral's ship it may be safely
said that the young sweet-voiced, earnest-eyed lad was the mental
superior of most of those with whom he was surrounded. He had now a
great curiosity to see what might be the contents of the Christian
parts of the Bible; and while he awaited his young companion's return,
and was pushed with scant ceremony out of the way of the rough sailors,
only to be hustled yet more imperiously aside by the penniless but
haughty hidalgos who were setting out, as they fondly believed, on a
royal road to fortune, he had the opportunity to gratify his desire.
Partly by others' driving, partly by his own good management, he at
length got comfortably stowed away into a quiet corner, and there,
dropping himself down on to a bale of goods, he carefully unclasped the
great book, and turned towards the latter half.
He began to read at once the first words of the first page that opened
beneath his eyes, for the disputes he had witnessed during the past few
minutes between several of his self-asserting companions made them
appear startlingly appropriate.
"And there was also a strife amongst them, which of them should be
accounted the greatest."
Many a time did those words recur to his memory during the coming
years, but just then, as he sat in his obscure corner in enforced
quietude and inactivity, he read on and on with forgetfulness even of
his novel position and commencing adventures, in his absorbing interest
in a history then read and fully understood for the first time. We know
the account of our Lord's agony, base betrayal, and awfully cruel death
so well that we have not the faintest idea of how intensely it moved
intelligent minds, who first quietly perused it for themselves in its
own pathetic simplicity, unspoilt in its solemn appeal by any priestly
shows or pageants.
Montoro Diego clenched his fists and his eyes flashed as he read of
Peter's denial of his Lord and friend.
"Mean coward!" he muttered. And then his own eyes grew dim as he read
how the slandered, insulted Son of man, the denied of his own chosen
companion, "turned, and looked upon Peter." He seemed to feel his own
being thrilled with the sad reproach, the tender compassion, and the
full forgiveness of that look, and a smothered choking sob parted his
own lips, as "Peter went out, and wept bitterly."
He read on undisturbed, until he suddenly, as it seemed to him,
received an answer to many long-standing, half-formed questions in his
mind, with the words:
"And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, He expounded unto them in
all the Scriptures, the things concerning Himself."
That was the last of his reading for that day, and for many days to
come.
Montoro's eyes were resting on the words--"And beginning at Moses,"
his lips were repeating a phrase that seemed for him to form the close
connecting link between the religion given by God to his forefathers,
and the crown of that religion as sealed by Jesus Christ, when
energetic young Fernando found him out in his hiding-place. The younger
boy pounced upon the volume instantly, with a half-indignant cry.
"Nay then, Diego, if that be thy name, I gave thee this volume of my
father's to hold; there was no commission attached that thou shouldst
read it, or even so much as venture to unclose the clasps. It is more
than I have done, myself."
Montoro rose from his rough couch, and for all apology said with a
long-drawn breath:
"I have found wonderful things therein."
Half-an-hour later it would have appeared that all memory of those
wonderful things was lost. The anchors of the somewhat shabby little
fleet of four vessels were being raised, and with flushed cheeks
and eyes blazing with excitement Montoro Diego was making amends
for ignorance by the most determined vigour and good-will. Such a
little while ago he had been hustled on one side as a useless bit of
goods, whose room was worth more than his company; but already his
keen-sightedness and ready hands had reversed the judgments of those in
his immediate neighbourhood in his favour.
The afternoon was wearing on, when a grave, kind voice addressed him:
"My son, I have been observing you. You have done well."
It was the Admiral himself who spoke, the grand old man who had
attained to ever great heights of humility as he attained to greater
fame, and who never held himself too high to see the worthy efforts of
his humblest follower.
Montoro's handsome face grew brilliant with delight, and as he bent
it gratefully in acknowledgment of the commendation, his heart seemed
to rise to the possible achievement of deeds of hitherto unheard-of
heroism. At that moment he little knew what those deeds would be; deeds
not indeed wholly unmatched in the previous history of the world, but
yet so rare that, not infidels, but, on the contrary, the most earnest
believers in Christianity, are tempted sometimes to believe that their
faith must be a fable, and those who proclaim its teachings must do so
to tickle their hearers' ears, and as a pastime of the moment.
Having uttered his few words of encouraging praise, Columbus passed on,
and Montoro, for whom there was no further employment for the moment,
turned to lean over the side of the vessel, and watch the receding
shores of his native land, the fast-diminishing lines of the harbour
of Cadiz, and its throngs of traders from all nations. His mother was
very present with him at that minute, and his mother's parting words:
"You, the unknown and disinherited noble of Aragon, son of a
foully-slandered and slain father, are, in the world's eyes, nought.
You, the boy Montoro de Diego, may be a hero, the winner of fresh glory
for your name, the gainer of the highest honour from your fellow-men.
The past is not your fault, the future may be your praise. Keep firm to
God and the truth, and fear none."
That last injunction "to fear none" was indeed little needed in the
sense in which the boy took it.
"I am not wont to fear," he said, with a touch of impatient pride,
adding the next instant, as his eyes rested on his mother's gentle
face, and with a mischievous smile, "I rather thought, my mother, that
your counsels to me generally were against being overbold."
"That is true," was the reply, with a fleet answering smile. "But
that is in matters concerning thyself, my son. Be ever backward in
self-assertion, and ever fearless in the cause of justice, truth, and
mercy. As thy father was, so I pray that his son may be."
* * * * *
"My father saith that he likes the look of thy face, and wills that we
may be friends."
Such was the abrupt announcement of that courtly page and intrepid
young adventurer, Fernando Columbus, breaking in upon Montoro's
reverie, and joining him at his post by the vessel's side.
A third person stood there also for a minute,--a man with grey hair,
and a form shrunken with old age,--and a tear rolled slowly down his
furrowed cheek as he gazed for the last time at his country's strand.
Montoro's great eyes widened with questioning wonder at sight of the
bowed old man, and when he withdrew he asked his companion, in low
tones, what could have possibly induced one so infirm to set out upon
such toilsome journeyings.
Ferdinand turned his head to look after the retreating figure, and
shrugged his shoulders. "Well, I suppose his inducement would be
thought by many people a more sensible one than those of the rest of
us, although, if we have anything of a rough voyage, I doubt he will be
proved to have set out too tardily."
"Still, I hope for my part we shall not always have these smooth
waters," impulsively exclaimed the inexperienced young sailor. "I want
to see what a storm on the ocean is like. But that by the by. Just now
I wish to know what is the inducement of that old hidalgo for leaving
his own home, and the comforts he seems to need. Why do you think it is
a sensible one?"
"Because," answered the younger boy more gravely, "gold without life is
useless, and even glory without it is not much worth. And various of
our nobles at the Court have come to the belief that the fountain of
youth wastes its precious waters in some hitherto undiscovered region
of this New World. The brave knight, Ponce de Leon, hath determined on
an expedition to go in search of it; meantime yon wealthy Señor hopes
to bribe the Indians to bestow upon him a draught of the precious
water before it be too late. And my father though something doubtful of
this thing, hath consented that Don Aguilar should have passage with us
for the chance. He, himself, would far rather find the Holy Garden of
Eden, which he tells me most surely is out yonder."
"At any rate," said one of the knightly adventurers who had now
stepped up beside the two lads; "at any rate, Ferdinand, whether thy
father finds the Garden or no, I trust that no flaming firebrands of
the Indians will hinder him from finding, and traversing, that strait
leading from this ocean into the Indian Sea, of which he seems to be so
well assured. The finding of that passage will be wealth for all of us."
Unfortunately for the hopes of those days, that expected passage proved
to be a land one, and is now called the Isthmus of Darien, which art,
not nature, promises soon to convert into the realization of Columbus's
belief.
CHAPTER X.
_A JACK IN OFFICE._
It was the 29th of June. There was a hush on board the Admiral's ship.
Yonder were visible the white low houses of San Domingo on the island
of Hispaniola. Around the ship the sea lay still and grey, and the
sails hung limp in the hot, heavy air.
A knot of men gathered close around a cabin, listening with lowering
brows and compressed lips to bitter groaning, and sobbing cries, that
were being wrung from one within, by his wounded soul. Well might the
old and way-worn discoverer of mighty continents feel tempted at that
moment to cry: "Hath God forgotten to be gracious?"
A storm was coming on; one of his four poor, shabby vessels--that on
which his beloved brother Bartholomew held command--was in a shattered
condition, and he had asked leave to take shelter in the harbour of the
small island he had himself given to Spain, and Spaniards had refused
him! What wonder that the noble and generous heart of the old Admiral
was wrung to its very depths! What wonder that, as Montoro leant with
Fernando against the cabin-door, the lad clenched his fists until the
nails almost cut his palms, and muttered fiercely to his boy friend:
"Fernando, ask thy father's leave. There is not a man on board will
refuse to turn our guns against those miscreants, though they were
twenty times our countrymen. Only let him give the word, and he shall
be speedily avenged."
"Ay, speedily," echoed two or three hoarse voices in the group, from
those who had caught the tenor of Montoro's passionate request, and the
Admiral's young son raised his eyes gratefully. His steadfast face was
pale with emotion, his lips trembled. Even this weak testimony to his
father was some comfort.
"I only wish," he exclaimed, struggling to speak with manly calm; "I
only wish that, as you say, the Admiral would give the word that we
should let our guns loose against the dastard hounds. We would soon
teach them a lesson they should not easily forget."
"Nay then, young Señor, how about yon fleet?" asked one of the sailors
significantly, pointing to a number of gay and gallant-looking ships at
a short distance within the harbour. "Think you, Señor Ferdinand, that
yon fleet would leave us alone if we took to avenging our insults by
bombarding the town? And they are close upon twenty to one!"
"What of that?" hastily ejaculated Montoro, his cheeks still crimson
with excitement. "God fights on the side of right and just--"
He stopped abruptly. The sounds of grief within the cabin had ceased
during this short discussion, and at this instant the door opened,
and a hand was laid on Montoro's shoulder, while the well-known slow,
distinct voice said with grave earnestness:
"That is true, my son. The great Father fights on the side of right
and justice. But He still better loves to espouse the cause of the
merciful. Instead of seeking to destroy life let us rather try to save
it, that with the measure we mete it may be measured to us again."
"That comes out of the great book I gave thee to hold the day we
started," whispered Fernando to his companion, who nodded. It had been
a favourite quotation of the benevolent old priest, Bartolo. Meantime
Christopher Columbus proceeded to give proof that he spoke not with his
lips only but from his heart.
The great fleet in the harbour of San Domingo was that which had
brought out his superseder, Ovando, a few weeks since, and it was now
in all the bustle of preparation for a speedy return to Spain with
crowds of home-going adventurers, many ill-wishers to the just and
virtuous discoverer, numbers of prisoners Spanish and native, and an
immense amount of gold, pearls, and other treasures, well-nigh every
ounce of which had cost a life.
On board this fleet were the Admiral's most bitter enemies; on board
its grandest vessel was the narrow-minded, mean-spirited upstart,
Bobadilla, who, to the ever-enduring disgrace of his own name and of
his country, had dared to send the great seaman, the great thinker,
the man of unbounded hopes, enthusiasm, courage, endurance, and
magnanimity--the man who to Bobadilla was as a lion to a rat--had dared
to send this giant hero home in chains like a vile malefactor but two
years before, and had covetously grasped at his possessions, impudently
installing himself in the house of his patient victim, and laying
greedy hands upon his arms, gold, plate, jewels, horses, books, and
even his letters and precious manuscripts.
Against that fleet, with all its proud sumptuousness contrasted with
the miserable little squadron granted to Columbus, and against his base
enemies on board, the company on board his own ship considered that he
had a full right to feel the most vengeful wrath. It was not Montoro
only who could scarcely believe his ears when, after the pause of a
few moments following his sacred quotation--moments devoted to further
keen, close scrutiny of those weather signs in which he was so deeply
skilled--the Admiral summoned forward the crew of the boat that had
just returned, and despatched them with a second message to the new
governor Ovando, to entreat him to save the fleet from the certainly
approaching storm, by a few days' delay of their departure.
"Better to leave them to meet their fate as they leave us," muttered
Montoro, with the yet unconquered passion of his nature. But once again
that firm touch came upon his shoulder. The Admiral's quick ears had
caught the growl, low as it was.
"My son," he said quietly, "you shall go with my messengers. That will
be a fitting rebuke for you, will it not," he added with a grave
smile, "for uttering opinions contrary to those of your commander, and
contrary to those of the Divine Ruler of the universe?"
Obeying a sudden impulse of veneration, Diego snatched the aged hand
in his own, and pressed it to his lips. "I can never attain to your
generosity, Señor," he murmured, "nor be thus forgiving to those
wrongfully my enemies."
Just as the boat was starting, Ferdinand Columbus bent over the ship's
side, and called mischievously:
"Diego, there, hark ye!"
"Ay, what is it then?" asked Montoro, as he lifted his head, resting
on his oar the while. "What news hast thou since I left thee and the
caravel?"
"Great news," was the mischievous answer. "My father gives me leave to
tell thee that, since thou art doubtless feared by reason of the coming
storm, he will obtain permission at least for such a whipper-snap as
thou to abide on shore."
That quick, unmanageable spirit of Montoro's was set all ablaze for
a moment at the supposed imputation of cowardice; and he was about
to shout back an answer little in accordance with his late act of
reverence, but Diego Mendez, the officer in command of the little
embassy, hastily clapped his hand over the lad's mouth, as he said with
a short laugh:
"Nay now, art thou not a very fool to be so taken in? Dost thou not see
by thy tormentor's face that the brain of no Columbus but himself made
up that message for thee?"
The friendly intervention was timely. When Fernando called down
again--"Say then, dost accept the offer?"--his companion's face was
brimming over with merriment like his own, as the retort was shouted up:
"Ha, Fernando, my good Señor, thou art but a sorry messenger. My
absent ears have caught the purport of thy father's words better than
thy present ones. The Admiral's message to me is, that since thou art
feared, I must obtain a leave to land for thee. I bid thee, then, calm
thy quaking heart, since I will not fail. Adios."
"And a slap o' the ear for thee when thou returnest," was the answering
shout; and then the boat cast off, and was rowed with vigorous strokes
to that once fertile, but already so dismal and desolated island of
Hispaniola, the head-quarters of cruelty, lawlessness, suffering, and
rapacity.
Montoro was very quickly to have a specimen of the deeds that had
brought the island to its present wretched condition.
As the boat approached the strand, crowds of idlers gathered about,
some to give the new-comers welcome, more to express their contemptuous
dislike of the Admiral by covert sneers or openly-expressed scorn
bestowed upon his followers.
There, flaunting in silks and brocades, which not even the proudest
hidalgos dared any longer wear in Spain, stood half-a-dozen men, who
had been loosed from richly-deserved felons' dungeons at home, to serve
as colonists for the New World. Near them, reclining in a sumptuous
litter, borne upon the bleeding shoulders of four of the meek-spirited
and unhappy natives, was an ignorant, cunning rascal, whom Montoro had
himself seen carried off to prison for theft in El Cuevo. Now he lay
there in all the insolent dignity of riches, with a palm-leaf umbrella
borne over his head by one slave, whilst another sickly-looking
creature fanned him.
Closer to the edge of the soft-lapping waters was a real Spanish Don,
whose poverty-stricken estate had driven him to hide his thread-bare
pride in exile. To indemnify himself for leaving his beloved Castile,
he spent his whole time and thoughts on the island in squeezing wealth,
almost, as it seemed, even out of its very stones. His slaves died off
day by day, very nearly as soon as they were allotted to him; but that
was nought to their owner, so long as with the remnants of their dying
strength they reaped his harvests, and brought up gold for him from the
mines. They were to him as machines for making riches; and when one of
the machines wore out, it must be tossed aside to make room for another.
But with all Don Alfonzo's heartless barbarities to his miserable
victims, he had a warm corner in his callous heart for his own
countrymen, whoever they might be. All Spaniards were friends to Don
Alfonzo, while the ocean lay between him and his home. He watched the
progress of the incoming boat with eyes almost as eager as those with
which, week by week, he counted his golden gains; and when, from the
shallowness of the water, the rowers had to stop some way short of
dry ground, he looked round hastily for some one whom he could order
off for their assistance. None of his own people were in sight, but a
weak, wan-faced Indian lay beside him, and him the nobleman immediately
commanded to rise, and go into the water to help drag up the boat.
With a moan the poor creature began to obey, but too slowly to suit the
despotic impatience of the Spaniard.
"Hurry thy lazy carcase, then, thou black-skinned dog," he exclaimed
imperiously; and to enforce his words he raised a bamboo cane he held,
and brought it down with a fierce swish through the air, which told
its own tale of what its effect should be if it came in contact with
the native's tender flesh. As the cane rose the Indian crouched with a
low, pitiful cry, which was echoed with an added note of indignation by
Montoro from the boat.
The next moment Montoro sprang to his feet with a second cry of
impulsive admiration. The stinging slash of that bamboo cane had come
down upon the arm of a young Spaniard, who had stretched it out as a
cover for the helpless Indian; and then, when the arm had performed
its allotted task, it was quietly withdrawn, terribly cut as it must
have been, and folded over its owner's chest, who as quietly turned and
confronted Don Alfonzo.
"It is the command of our Sovereign, Queen Isabella," he said firmly,
"that the Indians be treated with humanity, and according to law."
"Who is that?" asked Montoro, as he sprang on to the sandy shore, and
pointed out the young man who had made his arm serve so readily for
another man's shield.
Shyness was never one of Montoro Diego's failings; and now curiosity
and a generous admiration made him put his question eagerly to the
first person he came up to. All he got at first was a return question
to match his own, a good-humoured:
"And pray, then, who are you? If you're come to work you are welcome;
if you have come to make others work, you may as well be off again, for
there are more than enough of that sort here already."
"I am going off again," replied Diego laughing. "I have not come to
stay; not just yet, at least. But do tell me who that young Señor is."
"Well, he's a crack-brained young Señor, to begin with," was the reply,
with a shrug of the shoulders. "His name is Bartholomew Las Casas,
and he's only been out here a few weeks. He came out with Ovando. His
father came out here before, with the Admiral himself."
Montoro grew still more interested.
"But why do you call him crack-brained?"
"Because he is crack-brained. Crazy as he can be about what he calls
the wrongs of the black rascals out here. His father took one over for
him to have as his own in Spain, five or six years ago, and comfortable
enough the fellow was with such a soft-hearted master. Then comes the
royal order that there are to be no more of these Indian slaves in
Spain; that they are not cruelly to be kept from their own country,
and they are forthwith all packed back again, to be grabbed at as fast
as they arrive, and worked to quick deaths in the mines. Meantime, our
young Señor Las Casas has been taught to think a whole host of nonsense
about their miseries, and his duties of relieving them. If he uses his
arms as their covers in his fashion just now he'll pretty soon need
some one to relieve him.”
"Ay, verily," murmured Montoro musingly as he turned away from his
informant and rejoined his companions. The history of his own family's
wrongs had made him more keenly alive to the wrongs of others. He had
a generous feeling of envy that it had been the arm of the young Las
Casas, and not his own, that had taken the blow for the Indian. But, as
the great American poet says,
"A boy's will is the wind's will."
Before half-an-hour had passed Montoro's will had veered round once
more--from a desire to relieve injuries to a desire to inflict them.
For humanity's sake Columbus had sent urgent warnings and entreaties
that the departure of the fleet might be delayed a few days, to avoid
the coming storm. And for his charity he received contempt. The
Governor and his counsellors looked at the quiet sky, the calm sea,
they felt the soft breeze on their cheeks, and the contemptuous answer
was sent back:
"In this year of grace dreamers of dreams are out of fashion."
"When I see the Admiral's letters patent as the authorized reader of
the heavens, and the interpreter of its signs," said the Governor
haughtily, "doubtless he will find me an obedient pupil. Meantime I
prefer instruction when I ask for it."
"He and all the rest of them deserve to be drowned if they are not,"
said Diego Mendez indignantly, as he returned with his party to the
boat, and put back to the ship.
Montoro's thoughts flew back to the cannon on board. He felt just then
as if nothing on earth would so well satisfy him as to see them pointed
at the Governor's house, to see their flash, to hear their roar, and to
witness the wholesale destruction they could cause.
"Why was there no young Las Casas to avenge this insult to the Admiral?"
But there was One mightier than Las Casas to do that, One whose
artillery was mightier than the cannon in which Montoro put such
confidence. Two days passed, and then the tropical storm burst in
all its fury. To such poor, unforbidden shelter as he could find the
Admiral had guided his battered little squadron, and there he and his
followers waited, and watched the gathering gloom of earth and sea and
air and sky; and well it might seem to some of those watchers that a
spirit of retributive wrath was brooding over the scene of cruelty,
treachery, and insolence.
"It will require all their seamanship to ride out the coming
hurricane," said the pilot, Antonio de Alaminos, on the second day, as
he regarded somewhat dubiously their own quarters.
And Diego Mendez answered moodily:
"I should heave no sigh if they and their ill-gotten wealth went to the
bottom of the deep before mine eyes; but I do grieve to have heard that
on the craziest of their barques they are carrying home the Admiral's
gold, the poor remnant of his rents they have permitted him."
"Never have care for that, Señor," said the young Fernando earnestly.
"It is my father's, and it will be kept safe for him."
"It is as well that thou canst console thyself with that belief, any
way," muttered the man, as the boy went off to where Columbus was
already issuing orders, needed by the sudden wild gusts of wind that
came as forerunners of the tempest.
Then came the wild roar and whirl, and darkness made more awful by the
fiery flashes that momentarily illumined the terrors of the scene.
On land trees uprooted, houses flung into ruins as though made by
children's hands of cards, the fields of maize changed as in an instant
from fields of gold to grey, scorched deserts. Living beings struck at
a breath into corpses; others crushed in the downfall of their homes.
And at sea those four poor cranky vessels, which were all a great
country could afford its great benefactor, tossing and toiling in the
boiling sea.
Now the waters would seethe as though some hideous cauldron, prepared
by evil spirits for some demon feast, and the doomed vessels shook
through every plank and spar as though with living horror. And then,
with a sudden shock the waters would rush together, and mount wildly
into mountain waves crowned with crests of foam.
The ships lost sight of each other. Sailors and adventurers all
gave themselves up for death. In a delirium of fear they confessed
their sins to whoever would heed the dismal catalogue. Ave Marias,
invocations of the saints, and such fragments of Scripture as they
knew, were groaned forth on all sides, rather as invocations than
prayers, as the days went by, and still the furious battle of nature
raged.
The fellow to that storm not even the veteran navigator of all seas
had experienced before. At times during the blackness of the night it
would seem to the affrighted mariners as though hell itself had opened
its jaws to swallow them. Making a pathway for themselves through the
darkness, the raging billows would suddenly rush onwards brilliant with
light, and surround the ship and its awe-struck occupants with a sea
of flame. For a day and night the heavens glowed as a furnace; and the
reverberating peals of thunder sounded to the distracted sailors as the
last despairing cries from the other ships of their sinking comrades.
What was becoming of the wretched, foolhardy creatures on board
Ovando's proud fleet they had no longer care to think. Drenched with
the ceaseless sheet of rain, which poured down day and night throughout
that long week of storm continually, exhausted with toil, worn with
fears, Columbus and his company were to be still further tried by the
majestic terrors of those southern seas.
Wildly tossed as was the whole ocean, it suddenly became observed, with
deepening dread, that in one spot the agitation was still redoubled.
Even as they looked the waters reared themselves higher and yet higher,
grim and terrible as a giant pillar of molten lead; while a livid cloud
bent down from the heavens to meet it. Thus joining, and ever gathering
fresh size and force as it sucked up the waves in its headlong course,
the dreadful column rushed on towards the ships.
The Admiral came forth from his cabin with the iron-clasped Bible open
in his hands, to exorcise the evil spirit abroad for their destruction.
Men hardened in callousness fell on their knees in silent prayer.
Antonio de Alaminos stood gazing with fixed eyes at the invincible
enemy. His skill and knowledge were powerless in the presence of that
foe. As he stood there waiting for the end he was startled by a voice
beside him so clear, so calm, that it was distinct even in the midst of
that wild tumult.
"Alaminos, thinkest thou that we shall live through the storm?"
Starting, the pilot turned his gaze for a moment from the advancing
column, and exclaimed:
"Montoro! boy, hast thou no fears?"
"None," was the low, soft answer of his lips. "None," was the answer
of his rapt, earnest eyes, full of a beautiful awe and reverence. "He
holds the storm in His hand, and us."
Even as the boy spoke the vessel swerved, the waterspout passed on
beside it, and they were safe.
"The Admiral's Bible has saved us," exclaimed the mariners, as wild
with joy as they had been with fear.
Alaminos, the pilot, looked at Montoro de Diego, and said nothing. For
the first time in his life the thought had stolen into his mind whether
the faith to be learnt from the teaching of the Bible might not be a
more precious thing than even its print and paper.
The force of the long-protracted tempest was at length spent; the
sea subsided, and Columbus's scattered caravals, none of them lost,
gathered together again to offer thanks to God for their preservation,
and to seek the shelter and refreshment no longer denied them, in the
ports of Hispaniola.
The storm had passed, but it had left behind it sorrow and shame and
gloom on the countenances of Ovando the Governor, and those about him.
The gay, grand fleet, despatched against the Admiral's advice, was
lost, with all those many hundreds of souls on board, and all that
wealth. The Admiral's enemies had perished; Bobadilla, the mutinous
Roldan, and many another. Those gallant ships were gone. Only that
poor, mean, weak little barque, inferior to all its consorts, that had
been thought good enough to carry the Admiral's grudged revenue, that
lived through the storm, and took its little treasure safe into the
Spanish port.
"It is my father's; I told you that God would guard it," said Fernando
Colon, some months later, when the strange, good news of that survivor
reached his ears.
CHAPTER XI.
_THE FIRST FIND._
Great storms are very terrible, and weeks of drenching rains, Montoro
de Diego, and his friend Ferdinand Columbus, had time to discover,
were most disagreeable accompaniments to travels whether by water or
land. As for poor Don Aguilar, the hardships of the way killed him,
as Fernando Colon had foreseen, before he had a chance to purchase
a draught from that dreamt-of fountain of youth. And long-continued
dismal weather very nearly also killed the courage at least of most of
the old hidalgo's companions.
After that first great storm, a few days were passed at Port Hermosa,
to refresh the crews, and repair the caravels, and then Columbus
started forth again to find the wished-for, but non-existent, strait
through the Isthmus of Darien. Having spent about five months in this
fruitless search he gave it up, greatly to the delight of the whole of
his companions. They were much more anxious after what they considered
the infinitely superior quest for the gold mines of Veragua, distant
about thirty leagues from Porto Bello.
What with cross currents, however, contrary winds, and bad weather,
those thirty leagues took nearly a month in the traversing, and it was
not until the day of the Epiphany, 1503, that the Admiral reached the
mouth of a river, to which he gave the name of Belen, or Bethlehem. In
the immediate neighbourhood of this river was the country said to be
so rich in the precious mineral that Columbus felt convinced that, as
further discoveries would find the Garden of Paradise in the new-found
world, so also he was on the borders of that land of Ophir whence king
Solomon had drawn his stores of the valued treasure. Meanwhile, every
one but himself, and his son Ferdinand, was very eager to get similar
treasure for his own purse, and so soundings somewhat less cautious
than usual were taken, the four caravels crossed the bar at the
mouth of the river Belen, now swollen by past months of rain, sailed
some little distance up it, and there cast anchor for a season of
exploration.
Montoro was as wild with eager excitement and delight as any one, when
he obtained leave to go with the first boats sent on shore.
"Do you then, too, care so much for gold?" asked his friend Fernando,
in a disappointed tone, as he saw his companion's glowing face. "I had
not thought it of thee."
"Nor need now," was the quick answer. "I go not to hunt for gold, but
glory. My father's wealth they robbed him of. The glory he won on the
walls of Alhama will cling as long as time shall last to the name of
Don Montoro de Diego. Such glory, and not gold, would I win also."
"Nobly spoken, my lad of the quick temper," said Señor Diego Mendez,
in smiling allusion to the time when he had hindered hasty words by
putting his hand over the boy's mouth. Since that day Diego Mendez
had many times taken note of his young companion. Neither Montoro's
ability, courage, wit, nor readiness were lost upon him, and the
occasion was soon to come now when he was to show his appreciation of
them.
As the boats' crews stepped on shore, one or two of the eager seekers
after fortune gathered up handfuls of the glistening sand, eyeing it
sharply, as they did so, in such a way that Diego Mendez exclaimed with
a laugh:
"Why now, comrades, would it not be well, think you, just to set to
work, and shovel the shore pell-mell into the boats, and carry it off
at once to Spain? Of course you'd be rich then, no doubt, without
further trouble."
"Well, we've had enough of that, at any rate, already, to deserve some
pay," grumbled one, while a couple of others sulkily enough dropped
their glittering burden to avoid further ridicule.
"How pretty it is though," exclaimed Montoro, who stood watching the
wet grains as they fell shining in the sunlight. "And here is some
more up here!" he cried in astonishment half-an-hour later, suddenly
stopping short from his companions, in their progress through the
forest, and dropping on his knees beneath a tree.
"Some more what?" asked half-a-dozen voices at once, as their owners
crowded round in amazed watching of their young comrade, who was most
busily grubbing away at the tree's roots.
"Ay, indeed, some more what?" repeated the Adelantado, in equal
surprise. "What is it that you have found?"
"Why some more of that shining sand," was the ready reply. "And of
course it is nothing worth really, only that it is somewhat strange,
methinks, to find it up here so far from the sea wet and shining."
"Strange! ay, strange indeed," echoed Diego Mendez, now quickly
pressing through to his namesake's side. "Passing strange, my lad, if
it be indeed, as you say, shining because, this dry, hot day, it lies
there wet. But--is it so?"
Just as that question was put Montoro raised his stooping face with
almost a startled glance at the questioner. He had told Fernando,
and told him truly, that it was glory, not gold, that he desired.
Still treasure meant power to return to his mother, power to give her
comfort, power perhaps to win back his ancestral home. And he knew now
that his hand was full, not of grains of sand, shining because they
were wet; but of grains of gold, shining with their own lustre.
"No," he breathed, for a moment awed by his discovery. "No, my Señor,
this is no sand heavy with the spray of sea waves. This is the treasure
you are seeking."
Montoro's find put a stop to all further explorations for that day,
excepting explorations about those roots. The entire party fell into
a state that might, far more literally than usual, be termed one of
'money-grubbing' excitement. More diligently than the greediest pigs
ever grubbed for a feast round about oak trees or beeches, or Spanish
pigs grub for truffles, did those Spanish gentlemen grub with fingers
and nails round about the trees of that wild American forest.
Montoro put a crown to the triumphs of his keen-sighted eyes by finding
quite a fair-sized little lump of gold at the edge of a streamlet,
which he put by carefully for Fernando; and then he employed himself in
gathering a supply of the abundant fruits to carry back to the ship for
the general benefit.
"Nay then," said Antonio de Alaminos, gratefully accepting a bunch
of bananas, "but these are worth all the gold that was ever found
or fought over, my lad. Our God gives us these as loving gifts. I
sometimes think that He has given us gold as He gave the forbidden
fruit--to try us."
Montoro raised his eyes for an instant and then lowered them again, as
he murmured:
"Often hath my mother said that there are many things more worth."
"Truly are there," was the assent. "But hark!" he added in a louder
tone and more quickly, "here is the Admiral. He is calling for us."
The summons was an important one. So satisfactory were the accounts
brought back of the country, not only as regarded the promise of gold,
but as to its general appearance of fertility and beauty, that the
Admiral forthwith resolved upon the establishment of a colony.
"You think not," he demanded as Montoro and the pilot drew near; "you
think not, Mendez, that it is the finding of this glittering dust only,
that hath dazzled your eyes with respect to the virtues of the land?"
Mendez was about to reply with due gravity when his friend, Rodrigo de
Escobar, broke in boldly, exclaiming:
"Nay then, as the Jewish spies said of old so can we say now, that it
is a goodly land and a pleasant; and if it overfloweth not with milk
and honey, neither is it inhabited with a people akin to the Anakim;
and it has at least the grapes of Eshcol, and many a pleasant thing
besides."
The Admiral smiled gravely.
"All which meaneth, I take it, Señor Rodrigo, that whosoever else
believeth thy report, thou believest it thyself."
De Escobar bowed, while one beside Montoro muttered with a low laugh:
"Most assuredly friend Rodrigo would believe everything favourable of
a land that flowed with that best of all sweet golden honey, the real
gold itself, even though all else were desert."
"And small blame to him," retorted Tristan, captain of one of the
other caravels, who had just come on board to hear the news. "Señor
de Escobar is much of my own way of thinking--that life united with
poverty is but a poor sort of an affair, not worth the trouble of the
guardianship."
This being the general opinion, and a very slight amount of
questioning eliciting the universal adhesion to Rodrigo's proposition,
that a land where gold was to be gathered, even about the roots of
the trees, was a good land to stay in, it was not difficult to obtain
volunteers for the new colony.
Besides, even for those who were not so madly eager for gold Veragua
had many attractions, seeing that the land abounded in rich fruits, the
water in fish, the soil was fertile, and the Cacique and his people
friendly.
"And what more can you want?" said Amerigo Vespucci decisively.
"What more can any men want?" said another, with a shrug of the
shoulders. "Especially men like us, who have had for these weeks past
to munch our biscuit in the dark, lest our stomachs should turn at
seeing how many and how fat were the other eaters we were obliged also
to devour."
"Bah!" ejaculated De Escobar, as he flung over a morsel of the said
biscuit at the same time into the water. "It is too abominable of thee,
Tristan, thus to remind a hungry wretch of the foul nature of his food.
For thy barbarity thou shalt owe me thy first--"
"Nay, Señor," interposed Montoro Diego out of the dusk; "here is
somewhat to make amends for thy lost supper. These great nuts have hard
outsides; but within they are better than our little ones of Spain."
CHAPTER XII.
_SURGEON TO THE REDSKINS._
Colonists for the proposed new settlement having proved so easily
forthcoming, the next step in the business was to provide them
habitations, and shelter of some sort for the needful stores.
Accordingly the next morning, almost as soon as it was light, a number
of men were sent on shore, as builders of the first European town to be
founded on the mainland of America. Bartholomew Columbus went with them
to choose a site for the place of which he was to be the Governor; and
amongst the number of his companions were Diego Mendez, Diego's special
comrade Rodrigo de Escobar, and of course Montoro.
"I cannot get on at all without my sharp-eyed namesake," said the
notary good-naturedly, when he pleaded with the Admiral for Montoro's
company. And thus, some little it must be confessed to Ferdinand's
vexation, Montoro was once more of the land-going party, proving of as
much service on this occasion as on the last, although the results were
not so immediately apparent.
Cutting timber, clearing ground of a troublesomely-luxuriant
vegetation, and driving stakes, had progressed for some time merrily
enough, to the evident wonder and interest of an ever-increasing crowd
of natives, men, women, and children, when Diego Mendez, looking about
him for a help in a hard piece of work, discovered Montoro some couple
of hundred yards or so distant from the building-ground, and apparently
engaged in a very private and earnest conversation with a couple of
native women, and three or four children.
"What, in the name of St. Jago, is the lad after now?" he exclaimed
rather irritably, for he had got his fingers pinched in a split
bamboo he had wanted his _protégé_ to help him in sundering, and
small annoyances were more trying to these brave Spaniards than great
disasters. "Montoro," he shouted, "Montoro, you come here, can't you!"
Montoro was back like an arrow.
"Ay, Señor Mendez; what would you with me?"
"What would I?" was the hasty answer. "Why everything; all manner
of things. But thou'rt such a fellow! Thou'rt never at hand when
needed. At least,"--still growling, but with a grim dawning accent of
compunction for injustice,--"at least not always. Here thou'st left me
to well-nigh lose the half of my hand, while thou'st been trying to
wheedle gold mine secrets out of those poor fools yonder, with that
soft tongue of thine."
"No such thing," exclaimed Rodrigo de Escobar with his usual
volubility, before Montoro could answer for himself. "You are mistaken,
Mendez. Had the lad been using a soft tongue so usefully his absence
might be the more readily forgiven him. But it is a stupid soft heart
that deserves the blame this time. Because gold-seeker, discoverer,
navigator, builder, and half-a-dozen other things are not trades enough
for the young jackanapes to take to at once, he must needs be taking a
turn now at surgery."
"Nay then, Rodrigo," said his friend incredulously, and looking
alternately from the laughing accuser to the half-troubled accused. The
face of neither tended in any way to relieve the notary's curiosity.
"Speak out, man," he said at last. "With what is it that you charge the
lad?"
"With what I say," replied de Escobar with another laugh. "With playing
the surgeon unauthorized, Children and monkeys are all alike--they must
needs imitate what they see others doing; and consequently, one of
those monkey-children yonder got hold of my hammer awhile since, and of
course contrived to hammer its own fingers pretty sharply."
"Terribly!" broke in Montoro impulsively, forgetting his temporary
shyness in the recollection of his pity. "The poor little creature, my
señor, has hammered his fingers perfectly black, and the poor ignorant
mother could only cry over it, and do nothing; and so--and so--"
And so, and so Montoro Diego once more grew shy as his own part in the
business drew to the fore, and came to a stammering conclusion, and
Diego Mendez with a smile took up the tale.
"And so, and so then, my friend, I suppose you do really confess that
Don Rodrigo de Escobar has laid only true things to your charge,
and that you have thought, by adding your ignorance to the woman's
ignorance, to make one wisdom. Hey, my modest young friend, then is it
so?"
Montoro looked up now, with flushed cheeks it is true, but with some
returning boldness also, as he replied sturdily--
"My ignorance, at any rate, my señor, has had this good result--that
the child no longer cries. But if you would spare me yet another five
minutes, I would fain return to him, just to make my bandages more
secure than I left them in my haste upon your call."
"Come then, have your way," said his new patron good-humouredly. "I
confess I am not a little curious to see what sort of surgery you have
evolved from that daring head of yours, and whether it be not a gag in
the squaller's mouth that has produced this peacefulness."
But there was no gag in the small redskin's smiling mouth, neither,
assuredly, was there one in the mouth of the small redskin's mother,
who poured forth a perfect torrent of incomprehensible words as she
alternately kissed Montoro's feet and her child's injured hand, or
rather the great bundle of wet leaf-poultice in which it was most
scientifically enveloped.
"Umph!" muttered Diego Mendez, as he looked at the bound-up limb and
the grateful mother. "And pray how hast thou come by thy skill, my
friend? Is St. Luke thy patron saint, and has he instructed thee?"
"My mother has been my teacher," was the quiet answer. "And she had
much learning of many various uses to mankind, from her father."
The notary cast a keen glance of sudden intelligence at his companion,
and then said slowly--
"Ah, now thou hast let me into a secret as to thy birth that I had
partly guessed at before. Now I know from what race thou hast drawn
much of thine intelligence, and the bookishness that hath ofttimes
surprised me. But hark ye, lad, for I have a kindness for thee. Tell
to none others of our companions what thou hast thus told to me; for
remember, Spain has decreed just now that she will have no dealings,
save those of the fire and the rack, with the great race that is too
wise for bigotry to let it live. And the favour thou art sure to win,
and the good fortune, will make men but too ready to use ill tales
against thee. But now--leave thy patient, and let us back to our
building again, for the day wears fast."
So saying, he turned his steps back towards the rising settlement; and
when Montoro had managed with some difficulty to disengage himself from
the thankful woman, he followed his patron, the native child clinging
to him with his sound hand, and contriving to make his short legs keep
up with his companion's long ones.
A general laugh greeted the truant when he returned thus accompanied;
but Montoro tossed up his handsome young head very independently as he
shouted--
"Laugh as you may please, my señors; but when you desire a guide and an
interpreter, do not then think to borrow mine."
"Ah! ha!" exclaimed Diego Mendez, not at all displeased at his
_protégé's_ readiness. "My friends, methinks the lad hath had the best
of it; and we were wise not to provoke him to register a vow to keep
his useful new acquaintances to himself."
"If he did," muttered Rodrigo, "there would but need to draw a long and
doleful face to make him break it. For no oath's sake would he ever be
got to cut off a John Baptist's head."
"I'll cut off thine, though," grumbled Juan de Alba, "if thou keepest
not those bamboo points to thyself, instead of using them to pierce
mine eyes. Thou art a clumsy carpenter, in very deed, as ever I saw."
"And I rejoice that thou shouldst have to say so," retorted the other.
"The fingers of Rodrigo de Escobar scorn this servile work."
"Do they also scorn to peel bananas?" asked the Adelantado, coming up
with a great ripe bunch at an opportune moment to stop a squabble from
growing into a quarrel. He had enough to do to keep the peace among his
gang of noble workmen.
CHAPTER XIII.
_FOR LIFE OR DEATH._
For some few days the work of building progressed merrily enough.
The seemingly ubiquitous Montoro Diego, with his beautiful voice,
his bright eyes, and his untiring activity, inspired the whole party
with a portion of his own spirit; and his grateful native friend, the
mother of his small patient, proved of the greatest comfort to the new
colonists by keeping them plentifully supplied with fruit, fish, birds,
and food cooked after the native fashion, but very acceptable to men
who had lived hardly too long to be fastidious. Besides, they were
very desirous of sparing as much as possible their own small remaining
stores of biscuit, cheese, wine, oil, and vinegar, of which the Admiral
could only leave so small a quantity for the civilized provision of the
colony.
At the outset of the new undertaking, others besides the mother of the
child had shown most hospitable alacrity in bringing gifts for the
white strangers' larder; but by degrees these gifts ceased, and at
last, whilst all the others of the Spaniards still looked gay enough,
Montoro's face began to grow very grave. He still had many good things
brought to him, but he noticed that they began to be brought with an
air of secresy, and at last the poor creature proved her gratitude by
giving him signs as plainly as she dared, that Quibian, the Cacique of
Veragua, was not altogether so friendly as he seemed.
"It was not his own gold mines, but those of a dreaded neighbour chief,
that he had pointed out to the Spaniards on their first arrival," she
declared; "and now he was noting with jealous eyes, and an angry heart,
the preparations of the white strangers for taking up their abode on
his territories."
Poor Cacique! Had he known the dismal fate that was so speedily to
overwhelm him and all he cherished, his jealousy and wrath must have
burnt with a fierceness to consume his heart. But for the moment the
Spaniards were but a handful of men in an unknown and populous country;
moreover, the water in the river had fallen, dry weather had set in,
and threatened to continue, the bar at the river's mouth was visible at
low tide, and the ships were shut in beyond the possibility of present
escape. It behoved the Admiral and his band of followers to be careful,
and each individual felt it incumbent on him personally to watch for
the safety of all; even to sleep, as the saying is, like a dog with one
eye open.
Under these circumstances it is little wonder that Mendez noticed with
some uneasiness the unusual gravity of Montoro's face one morning,
after a short interview with his Indian patient, and the child's
mother.
"Hey, then, master Long-face" he exclaimed, with half-affected gaiety,
"say, what treason is it thou hast been concocting with thy dark friend
yonder? Hath she been offering thee the kingdom of the Cacique Quibian,
if thou wilt engage to share the throne with her?"
Montoro threw back his head for an instant haughtily. Boy as he was,
he did not like such jests. But he too much admired Diego Mendez for
his anger against him to be long-lived. Besides, he had a weight upon
his mind of which he desired to unburden himself. After the momentary
pause, he said hastily--
"The woman's communication, Señor Mendez, had no reference to me
further than as I am one of us. But if I at all rightly comprehend her
signs, this Quibian, the Cacique of Veragua, under his smoothness to us
has designs of the deepest treachery. Even now I believe that we are
being surrounded on all sides by his warriors."
Señor Mendez stroked his chin thoughtfully. To say truth, he was deeply
startled by the suspicion thus presented to him; but he was a Spaniard,
and therefore chary of displays of any other emotion than that of
pride. Moreover, he was a notary by profession, and had thus learnt
caution: to hear all he could, to see all he could, to think much, and
to say little.
His meditations were undisturbed by Montoro. At last he took the boy by
the arm, leading him farther away from their companions before he said
quietly--
"You have done well, my namesake, in bringing your tale to me. Let it
rest there for the present, and see that you show the woman no great
belief of her news, and no shadow even of a fear."
"But--" began Montoro eagerly, and then he stopped as suddenly as he
had begun.
His companion looked at him doubtfully.
"Well, Diego, 'but' what? Wouldst say thy fears are too strong to be
dissembled?"
"Even so," was the startling answer, with flushed cheeks, but with such
a bold, brave look in the uplifted eyes that the unexpected reply was
still more bewildering.
"Nay, then; thou art audacious enough in confessing cowardice,"
ejaculated the notary, with eyes so widening with wonder that they
seemed to monopolize his face.
Just a flash of a smile shot across Montoro's face at having for once
thus overbalanced the self-possession of the shrewd man of business.
But he replied almost in the same moment--
"In truth, Señor, I can afford to be bold in confessing to these fears,
seeing that they are not for myself, but for others, and for the
honour of our expedition. Verily I think that it would break our great
Admiral's heart, should terrible mischance happen to us who are with
him now in his neglected, sorely-tried old age. And that must not be."
"And how then do you purpose to prevent it?" asked Mendez, once more
the cool, self-contained notary. "Do you propose to call out the
Cacique to prove his honourable intentions by single combat, after our
own Spain's knightly fashion?"
"Would that it were possible!" was the reply with kindling eyes. "But
no, Señor, my meaning is more simple. I have told you my fears. But
if you mean to treat them as idle fancies, or to stand by to see what
comes of them, I shall forthwith carry them to the Admiral himself."
"Umph!" said Diego Mendez deliberately, "you would so, would you? And
you would do well. But hark ye, youngster--I neither intend to treat
you nor your tale as nought, so with that assurance rest thee satisfied
a while. I too have noted somewhat of late, upon which your news throws
fresh light. But be wary. Tell no one what you have told to me, and
show no sign of trouble."
Convinced at last that his warning was received as seriously as
he desired, Montoro returned to his task amongst the amateur
house-builders, and displayed considerable ingenuity as a constructor
of neat roofs out of palm leaves. His alacrity at his work was the
more cheerful when, from his position on the hill above the mouth of
the river, he saw the accountant for the new settlement put off in one
of the boats to return to the Admiral's ship. This happened within
half-an-hour of their conversation on the native woman's intelligence,
and increased Montoro's good opinion of his own wisdom in choosing
Señor Mendez as the recipient of his confidence. Cautious as he was, he
could evidently act quickly enough in an emergency. In a short time he
was rowing rapidly back to the building-ground, bringing half-a-dozen
fully-armed men with him, and making signs to Montoro to meet him on
the shore.
Down went tools and palm leaves, down from the roof with a bound sprang
the tiler, and a minute later a second flying leap had carried him into
the boat beside Diego Mendez. A few rapid words were exchanged between
the two, and then the notary said gravely--
"Well, I have made you the offer of coming with me by the Admiral's
consent; but remember, our undertaking is one of life and death."
"I understand," was the quiet answer. "But if we die, our deaths will
be a sign to all these others to prepare for defence; if we live we
shall at any rate have discovered the nature of our danger. I go with
you gladly."
And of that latter fact his earnest, animated countenance gave abundant
evidence as they proceeded on their perilous enterprise. Passing from
the river Belen, they rowed along the sea-coast until they reached the
Veragua, at which point the real peril of their enterprise began, and
the first proof was obtained of the woman's veracity.
There upon the shore, within a few yards of them, was a great
encampment of the Indians, the warriors of their tribe, and fully
armed. The number of the Spaniards was eight, the number of the
Indians more than as many hundreds. For one moment the Europeans
rested on their oars in silence. It was no preconcerted act, but one
of involuntary homage paid by all things living, however daring, when
brought face to face with imminent death.
The half-whimsical, unbidden thought darted through Montoro's brain
that his mother had declared she should never see him again on earth,
and so she could not reasonably feel hurt if her words came true. What
unconnected thoughts flashed for that same supreme instant through
the mind of Diego Mendez none can say. It had scarcely passed when he
sprang into the shallow water, walked on shore, and with an air of the
most dignified composure advanced alone into the very midst of the
great fierce gathering.
Utterly overawed by the white man's astounding temerity, the Indians
fell back, with wonder and irresolution depicted on their countenances.
They answered questions with trepidation.
"Yes; they were on the war-path. Their Cacique had enemies in the
neighbourhood."
"Ah!" replied Diego Mendez with cool courtesy, "then our coming is
well-timed. In return for your Cacique's attentions to us we will
now aid his arms against his foes. We will accompany you on your
expedition."
"Not so," was the Indian chiefs angry reply. "We are strong enough to
fight our own battles; we seek no help. Only leave us: that is all we
desire."
By manifold signs his followers equally betrayed their impatience to
be rid of the new-comers, and strenuously declined to have anything
to do with the boat, or its crew. Seating himself in the small barque
with his face toward the Indian camp, and closely wrapped in his
cloak, Diego Mendez calmly sat, hour after hour, and watched the dusky
warriors.
The day waned; the short twilight drew on. One of the occupants of the
boat began to feel his courage cooling under this tedious inaction, and
he ventured to mutter somewhat anxiously--
"The night is coming, Señor Mendez. We shall be wholly at their mercy
in the darkness."
"Even so, Juan," was the calm answer; "and yet we must remain. We set
out with no thought of going in search of child's play. It is our lives
or the expedition."
And so they sat on in that boat, watching and watched, and the night
fell. Easily could the Indians have slain them all, but they were
afraid. The spirits of a thousand warriors were quelled by one man's
fearlessness. And as the blackness of night began to fade away into
pale dawn, the chief and his army faded from the scene--stole back
to Veragua stupefied and conquered. Moral power had won its strange,
bloodless victory. Then the watchers in the boat roused up, took their
oars again, and returned with their news to the ships.
"And thus the woman's truth is proved," said Montoro eagerly.
But his convictions were something lessened when the Admiral said
slowly--
"You are more sure than I, my son. That you saw an army of the natives
I fully believe. But that they had any purpose to attack us I strongly
doubt. Quibian has given many proofs of his friendly feelings towards
us. And even to-day he has sent us a plentiful supply of fish, and
game, and cocoa-nuts, maize, bananas, and pine-apples."
"And even to-day," interrupted Mendez with unusual heat, "even to-day,
Señor, the Cacique Quibian is meditating our massacre. Give me but
this cool-headed boy to go with me, and we will penetrate to the very
head-quarters of his people, to his very residence itself, and learn
the truth so fully that you shall no longer be able to doubt our
testimony."
There was a pause. The veteran navigator gazed with keen eyes at his
two excited companions, and at length said slowly--
"I send you not on so perilous a quest, but you may go."
The faces of his hearers lighted up as though he had endowed them with
some new-found gold mines, and with a hasty farewell from Montoro to
his half-jealous friend Fernando, the two companions were rowed back
again to land, and at once set out alone on their desperate expedition.
For nearly an hour they walked on rapidly side by side in silence. At
last Montoro asked doubtfully,--
"Why keep we thus to the seaboard, Señor? Surely we have learnt that
the residence of the Cacique is far away up yonder, beyond the forest.
We should be turning inland if we wish to reach it."
Mendez turned his shrewd face towards his questioner with a slight
smile.
"Ah, my friend, thou art bold and brave beyond thy years, and ready,
to boot; but thou hast not yet quite an old head on thy shoulders, I
perceive. If our foes are watching for our destruction as we suppose,
how long thinkest thou, I and thou should live, bewildered, trapped,
and helpless, in yonder jungle? No, we will keep to the shore till we
reach the Veragua, and then we will follow the Veragua till it leads us
to this Cacique's village, and his own abode. Light, and a clear space,
are valuable to us just now."
Diego Mendez was willing to sacrifice his life freely for the general
good, but he had no idea of wasting it. Montoro did not wish to waste
his either, but to his impetuous nature this winding round, instead of
making a straight dash, was becoming very tedious, when they at length
reached the river's mouth, and at the same time came upon two canoes
and a party of native fishermen. Whether subjects of Quibian or of his
rival, the Spaniards could not ascertain, but whoever they were, they
showed themselves so kind and hospitable that the tired and footsore
pedestrians made signs to be taken into the canoes, when they were
about to set out on their return voyage up the river.
Making sure of consent, the notary went so far as to put his foot on
to the end of the canoe ready for stepping in. But the owners sprang
forward to push him back, with most vigorous shakings of the head, and
still more significant pointings towards the village, and the bundles
of arrows in their own canoes.
Mendez and Montoro exchanged glances. There was no longer, then, much
doubt of the fate intended them, and ere many minutes had passed they
had learnt that the disconcerted warriors of last night were only
waiting for the next day, before making a fresh descent upon the white
intruders, shooting them, and burning the new settlement.
"Even so," said Diego Mendez at last. "We have but learnt afresh what
we were well assured of before. But we will not wait for the doom
intended us. It better beseems Spaniards to be the first aggressors."
As to the general humanity or morality of that sentiment young Montoro
might have taken exception at a quieter moment; but just now he was
infinitely too excited for tranquil thought, and eagerly seconded his
older companion in so urging to be taken up the river, that at length
the kind, simple-hearted fishermen consented, although with great
reluctance.
The poor people's astonishment was still greater when, on reaching the
village, picturesquely situated on the banks of the river, and now in
all the bustle of warlike preparations, their two passengers insisted
on landing, and putting themselves into the power of their enemies.
Still Diego Mendez preserved his cool presence of mind. Having learnt
that Quibian had been wounded by an arrow, he gave out that he was a
surgeon come to heal the injured leg; and demanding immediate admission
to the Cacique, he mounted the hill to the very walls of the royal
residence.
Arrived at the summit of the eminence, he and his companion paused a
moment to take breath, and Montoro, for all his courage, could not
wholly suppress a shudder at the hideous ornamentation of the royal
domain. Three hundred human heads, recently torn from their trunks,
were arranged in circles, in all their grim horribleness, before the
Cacique's abode, the trophies of his valour, and significant warnings
to his adversaries.
Mendez also glanced at these heads, and from them to the handsome lad
beside him, so rich with the blessings of vigorous youth and health,
and a shade of regret passed over his face.
But it was too late for such reflections now. The die was cast, and
they must advance, and resolutely. The slightest token of hesitation or
fear would most assuredly be fatal.
But however brave they might be, others were cowardly enough. They had
scarcely moved forward a dozen steps on the plateau of the hill when a
crowd of women and children caught sight of the strange new beings, and
throwing their arms wildly above their heads in a very abandonment of
terror, they fled in all directions, startling the echoes with their
shrieks.
It soon became evident that they had startled more than the echoes,
for a son of the Cacique, a tall, powerfully-built man, rushed out to
ascertain the cause of the commotion, and looked ready enough to add
the Spaniards' heads to his father's collection when he perceived them
thus braving him, as it were, on his own ground.
Not being versed in the laws of chivalry, he took the notary at
unawares with a blow which nearly sent him headlong down the hill, and
Montoro almost as suddenly dashed forward with doubled fists to revenge
his companion; but Mendez was far from desiring to be so championed.
Recovering his footing, he grasped the boy by the shoulder and pulled
him back, saying hastily,--
"My friend! patience is a virtue--when it is expedient."
Thus pocketing the affront for the present in a way that was very
astonishing to Montoro, the notary by signs complimented his antagonist
on his vigour, and ended by winning the powerful young savage over
to the side of peace and good-will by presenting him with a comb, a
pair of scissors, and a looking-glass, and giving him a lesson in
hair-dressing. So delighted was the great Quibian's heir with that new
accomplishment, that he fairly hugged his instructor, and although
he could not obtain the bold Spaniards an interview with the angry,
invalid monarch, he sufficiently showed his gratitude by despatching
them safe back again to the waiting Admiral, and their anxious comrades.
[Illustration: He ended by winning the powerful young savage over to
the side of peace and good-will by presenting him with a comb, a pair
of scissors, and a looking-glass].
Thus began and ended Montoro de Diego's first great adventure in
the New World, and from henceforth he was marked out as one of
those for whom the new scenes were to be scenes of renown. With the
bitter termination, for others, of that exploit he had no concern.
He was lying in his berth in the unconsciousness of fever when,
a few days later, the Adelantado and eighty men, guided by Diego
Mendez, seized the unfortunate Cacique, and carried off his wives,
children, and chief friends to die miserable deaths of despair and
broken-heartedness. Well might the poor creatures long to prevent even
the least cruel of the white invaders from landing on their shores.
Even in the present day it is hard to teach civilized people that the
uncivilized have rights equal with their own, and as sacred. In those
days it was impossible.
CHAPTER XIV.
_MASTER PEDRO'S DOGS IN DANGER._
It was still high day when Mendez the notary, and Montoro de Diego,
returned from their expedition to the heart of the Cacique's territory,
and reported themselves once more on board the Admiral's ship; but by
the time the history of their doings and discoveries was ended, it
was too late for any further undertakings in the building line that
afternoon. Fernando got hold of his chosen friend and comrade as the
interview with the Admiral came to an end, and said resolutely--
"Come now, Diego, I take upon myself to say that thou hast earned a
holiday for the next twelve hours, and those not given to sleep I
intend shall be devoted to me; or, if it please you better, to me and
those dogs of thine."
"My dogs, indeed!" laughed Montoro. "I have told thee before, and I
tell thee again, that they are no more mine than thine. Had I but known
in time that I was to go ashore at Hispaniola, they should have been
landed there for their rightful owner, I can tell thee, and I had been
quit of their care once for all."
"Ay, and of their love too," retorted Fernando slyly.
Montoro shrugged his shoulders; but his affectation of indifference
went for nought. The mutual affection existing between the couple of
young bloodhounds, and their young keeper, was too well known by every
one on board for his occasional pretence of carelessness about them to
go for anything. His companion soon proved its present shallowness.
"Oh, well," he said, in his turn shrugging his shoulders, "if you have
left off caring about them it's all right. But I do pity the poor
brutes a little myself, having nothing to eat for the past--well,
there's no saying how many hours. But you know you didn't feed them
before you went off yesterday."
"Of course I did not," returned Montoro angrily, all his coolness
utterly vanished. "It was much too early then to feed them; but I did
not suppose I left behind me a set of heartless wretches, who would let
poor dumb animals suffer."
Fernando Colon's lip twitched with something uncommonly like a smile as
he expostulated--
"Nay then, you know perfectly that you choose always to feed them
yourself. You have ever given small thanks to those who have dared to
do so in your place."
"Ah!" exclaimed Montoro with rising passion. "And so because, forsooth,
I choose to attend to the dogs myself, when I am on board, if I were
dead you would let them starve?"
"Nay, for I should not then have to fear your scowl," was the
answer ending with a laugh. But Nando added the next moment with a
good-natured smile--
"Even the Admiral himself was not afraid of your wrath anent those
doggies, when you were safe out of the way, for he fed them with his
own hands."
As those last words were uttered Montoro turned sharply away and
brushed his sleeve across his eyes. He turned back again almost as
quickly, and laid a tolerably hard grip of his strong fingers on his
companion's arm as he muttered huskily--
"You'll never let me get a hold over my temper, Nando, if you torment
me thus. But did--did thy noble father in very truth think upon the
wants of the poor doggies?"
Ferdinand's eyes were glistening too as he replied--
"Ay, that he did indeed. And know'st thou, Toro, half I feel jealous
of thee, for verily I believe that it was as much on thy account as
for the dogs' sake that my father did them so much honour. But hark to
the storm they are making. They have found out thou art on board. Come
away, and let them loose."
The next minute the two dogs of Master Pedro, the spice and curiosity
dealer of El Cuevo, were bounding up on deck, giving vent to a
succession of excited hurrahs in their own especial tongue.
Those half-unconscious caresses bestowed upon the hounds by Doña Rachel
Diego at the hour of parting, those tears with which, in trying to
conceal them, she had bedewed the dogs' heads, had so endeared the
animals to her son, that from the outset of his long journeyings he
ever considered their comfort before his own, and reaped the just
reward in their fidelity and strong attachment to himself. But that
evening he was destined to pay a somewhat heavy penalty for the
friendship.
"Toro, you never give the dogs a swim," said Ferdinand suddenly, when,
after a regular romping match, boys and animals had tumbled themselves
down together in a promiscuous heap, to get back breath and energy for
further proceedings. The dogs were so enormously strong that playing
with them was not easy work like playing with kittens.
"I feel as if I had been engaged in a pretty stiff wrestling match,"
said Montoro, laughing, and stretching his arms, "and oh! how warm it's
become, or I."
"You may as well add that 'or I,'" laughed back the other; "for I
suspect, as the sun is going down, that the air must be somewhat
cooler than when you came on board. But the hounds really do look hot,
poor creatures, and they could get such a splendid bathe here in the
river--and so could we."
"Umph!" growled that rather tired-out young Don Diego. "I think it
would have been a much more sensible suggestion that we could have a
splendid turn-in to our berths. But you are such a horrible fellow. I
don't believe you ever know what it is to feel done up."
"Nor you either, generally," said Ferdinand with another laugh.
But his companion was not going to be weak enough to echo it, not he.
"'Generally' isn't 'never,'" he returned. "But here goes, you energetic
plague. In with you as hard as you like, I'll follow."
And so saying he rolled himself over with a very good imitation of
used-up laziness, and got himself slowly up from his hands and knees on
to his feet, with the wind-up of a solemn, self-satisfied "Oh!"
"Oh, indeed!" came the mocking echo from half-a-dozen deep throats,
followed by shouts of laughter.
Montoro was just a trifle disconcerted. He had not known of these extra
witnesses of his performance.
"Pity but thy mother were here," said Diego Mendez, one of the group.
"Then wouldst thou have surely had such another lollipop as must have
rewarded thy first triumph in this exhibition."
"Nay then," came the reply, for the performer had not taken long to
recover his self-possession; "nay then, Señor, if you are pleased to
bestow that lollipop for the show it will be the first, seeing that
on that other past occasion of which you speak I returned myself to
the floor with a suddenness that bumped my forehead, and my reward,
therefore, was a plaster."
"Thy impudent mouth deserves a hot plaster now, methinks," muttered a
surly hidalgo in the background.
But fortunately hot-tempered Montoro did not hear the mutter, and no
one else heeded it. The group of men moved off, and left the lads
once more to their own devices. Montoro stepped up to the side of the
vessel and looked over at the clear, bright waters of the river. The
dogs shook themselves and followed him, Don rearing himself up on his
hind legs on the right hand to look over, and Señor resolutely pushing
himself in between the two boys, and rearing himself up on Montoro's
left hand, with forepaws resting on the vessel's edge.
"How different the river looks now to the dingy-coloured, troubled
stream we sailed up such a short time ago," said Montoro.
"Yes," answered Ferdinand; "the fair weather has given the mud and sand
time to settle. That is why I think it looks so tempting for a bathe."
The dogs gave their answers also in an expressive fashion of their own,
like the hurrah business, hunching up their shoulders, and settling
their heads down between them with noses pushed forward, and intent
eyes that meant anything you like to imagine, except disagreement with
their friend. Still that same friend hesitated. His human companion
glanced at him with some wonder.
"Toro--"
"Ay, Nando, what now?"
"Only--the banks are very nigh on either hand, and thou canst swim now,
I take it, as well as any one on board these caravels?"
"Hey, what sayest thou?" said Montoro, with a bewildered stare in
his eyes, which was very nearly reproduced in the other pair when he
suddenly recollected himself, and exclaimed with a short laugh--"Why
now, Nando, you may fairly think that I have lost my wits; but in
truth they had but gone travelling on their own account hence to El
Cuevo, and--Come. I can swim, saidst thou? Truly can I then, and I'll
prove it by beating you and the dogs in a match from here to the shore
yonder, and back again."
"Done with you," exclaimed the sailor's son, beginning his disrobing
with eager haste as he spoke. "Antonio," he shouted to the pilot,
"Antonio! be good-natured; drop us over a rope, and bide here to summon
us back if we are wanted."
"A crocodile, maybe, will have you first," answered Alaminos as he
sauntered up.
"In saying so you belie your own boasted knowledge that these ugly
brutes will not, unprovoked, attack a human being," was the quick
retort.
"Even so," was the calm reply; "neither will they. But I said not they
would hesitate to make a snap at imps."
However, there were no crocodiles--to give the alligators the name
given to them at that time--to be seen, neither were other more
dangerous enemies to be seen, when the two boys and the two dogs took
their simultaneous plunge, with a splutter and dash and commotion that
drew two or three of the crew to keep watch beside the pilot.
Once in the water, Montoro quite forgot that he was tired, and
struck out vigorously for the shore. Unfortunately, however, for the
fulfilment of his boast, his four-footed admirers would insist upon
trying to help him, first to get back to the caravel, which they
appeared to consider the wisest proceeding; and when he had at last
thoroughly convinced them that he intended to keep his face for the
present turned the other way, their attentions were little less
retarding. One would get a whole bunch of the curly black locks between
his teeth firmly, if not exactly comfortably to their owner, while the
other made perpetual lip-nibbles at his ears and shoulders. Montoro was
not at all sorry at last to join the laughing and exultant Ferdinand on
the river bank.
"Don and Señor shall go back first when we return," he said with
a reproachful shake of his head at the four-footed individuals in
question. "I should have beaten you easily but for them."
"Poor old doggies!" said Ferdinand, stroking the great head nearest to
him as he spoke. "Good old fellows; you'd better far make friends with
me, as he is so ungrateful to you."
As though the dogs understood the address made to them, when Nando
took his hand from Señor's head, and rolled himself down the bank back
into the water again, with a great souse, and forthwith set to work
floundering and swimming and diving and jumping, Señor jumped up, gave
a hasty lick to Diego's hand, and then followed the other boy into the
water, and the two together began to hurry back to the ship, actuated
at first by a spirit of mischief, and then, by the sharply-uttered
orders of the Admiral.
And while Columbus shouted his commands to his young son to return to
him, others were trying to obey the orders to man a boat instantly,
and put off from the ship for the shore Fernando and Señor had just
left.
"But there is no boat! they are all yonder!" groaned Antonio de
Alaminos as he wrung his hands. "And the bravest and brightest spirit
of us all will die unrevenged."
CHAPTER XV.
_NOISE TO THE RESCUE._
That Montoro Diego should die 'unrevenged' was Antonio the pilot's only
moan. To wish for his life might well seem useless. How should he live
without aid, and how should aid be got to him in time, even should
there be a dozen boats available! Arrows were flying around him, and
arrows fly faster than any rowers yet heard of can ply their oars.
The fact of the matter was this. Very few people care now-a-days, nor
ever have cared, for uninvited guests; and the Cacique of Veragua and
his people were no exceptions to the general rule. When Columbus and
his four caravels appeared off their coasts, they were as pleased with
the novel exhibition as we are with a sight of the Persian Shah, an
elephant called Jumbo, or a king of the Cannibal Islands. And they
treated the exhibitors very well, giving them much more than enough for
one feast; and then, when they were satisfied with the sight, and had
found that enough of that was certainly, so far as they were concerned,
as good as a feast, they gave their visitors some very valuable little
presents, and courteously hinted--"Now you may go."
But, instead of taking the unacceptable hint, they didn't go. On the
contrary, they coolly took possession of other people's land, built
a considerable number of houses upon it, and showed plainly enough
that they meant to take up their abode there without an invitation.
These Spaniards would never have dreamt of trying to treat their home
neighbours, the Portuguese or the French, with such scant ceremony. But
these Veraguans were "only savages, heathen, miserable dark-skinned
creatures, with no rights at all." No claims to halfpence, only to
kicks.
Unfortunately, these poor heathen savages thought differently. Quibian,
with his bad leg laid up in his uncivilized palace, growled forth his
orders to his painted warriors to expel the impudent intruders; and
all his able-bodied subjects turned themselves into volunteers for the
furtherance of the same purpose. Here, there, and everywhere around
that bit of coast, and between the two rivers, lurked the Spaniards'
foes, and half-a-dozen particularly malicious ones were concealed
just within the borders of the forest, facing the Admiral's ship,
when Montoro and Ferdinand forsook its safety for their ill-advised
bathe. The spies grinned at each other with silent delight when they
saw the boys swim straight for the bank, mount it, and actually place
themselves in the full power of the enemy. The arrows would have left
the bows at once, and both the lads might have suffered but for the
dogs.
The Veraguans, like their neighbours on the great new continent, had
no domestic animals, and the gambols and tricks of Don and Señor were
most fascinatingly wonderful to those hidden spectators, who almost
forgot their desire to kill the dogs' companions in delighted attention
to the dogs themselves. But suddenly Fernando, in that very unexpected
way, rolled himself down the bank and disappeared,--he and one of the
four-footed friends,--only to reappear to their eyes half-way back
to the ship. The Indians were furious at his escape and their own
stupidity, and, darting out of their hiding-place, shot off all six
arrows simultaneously at the two hoped-for victims still remaining in
their power.
Rather, it should be said, the one hoped-for victim, for the Indians
would have rather preferred to spare Don had it been possible. But the
animal, obeying its instincts, sprang forward on seeing the strangers,
and received three out of the six arrows in its own body. The others
fell harmless, for Montoro, on seeing the unexpected adversaries, had
obeyed his natural human instincts, and sprung on one side.
In so springing he involuntarily followed Fernando's example, and
rolled down the bank. Had he then and there set off swimming back to
his friends, he would in all probability have got off uninjured; but
the help Master Sancho, the merchant, had many a time in El Cuevo seen
him render to those more helpless than himself he was ready with now,
almost as much as a matter of instinct as the actions that preceded the
unselfish act.
As he disappeared down the bank the Veraguans uttered yells of
disappointed rage; but through those sounds there fell upon his ears,
with an accent of bitter disappointment, a most piteous moan. Poor
Don had given his body as a shield for his companion, and now that he
lay suffering, perhaps dying, his companion was forsaking him. Don
felt that to be very hard lines, and so he howled out his sorrow.
He certainly would not have treated his friend so, and though his
friend was only a human being, and not a faithful dog, he had imagined
this especial human being to be different to most. It seemed he was
mistaken, and so he howled for his disappointment. And Montoro heard
the mournful howl, and understood all it said as well as if it had been
the very longest and most comprehensive German word that even Bret
Harte ever got hold of.
Ten seconds later the spectators on board the ship saw the lad
remounting the bank with a wild bound, actually returning towards his
enemies--one unarmed, defenceless boy against half-a-dozen fierce
warriors.
"And all for the sake of a dog," said Alaminos to him some time later
with a touch of anger.
"All for the sake of a creature that cried to me for aid," was the
reply. "And ere I cease to care for such, I trust that I may no longer
cumber the earth."
But during those present moments, while Montoro was climbing the
bank, the pilot was standing with wide eyes gazing across at him, and
wondering greatly as to the motives for his strange proceeding. He had
forgotten about the dog, or thought it was dead and done for.
Poor old Don himself knew better. He was lying there helpless, with
three arrows in his faithful side; but he was not yet too dead or done
for to be able to give vent to an ecstatic weak squeak of a bark when
he caught sight again of his beloved master.
So astounded were the Indians that they beat a momentary retreat
into the forest, while Montoro knelt down and pulled the arrows out
of the dog's wounds, Don the while alternately licking his hands and
moaning. But it was no time just then for delicate handling. The three
arrows were out in little more than as many seconds, and then with an
inspiriting "Hi, good dog," Diego roused up the poor animal and pulled
it down the bank with him once more, just as a second flight of arrows
sped more truly to their intended mark. This time Diego quivered, and
uttered one sharp, irrepressible cry as four of the darts struck and
pierced his unprotected flesh. Pulling out the one most accessible, he
plunged into the water, the dog with him. The Indians rushed forward.
For those past few seconds they had imagined he must have some means of
defence at hand to make him so daring, but now they were undeceived,
and proportionably brave, themselves. Another flight of arrows was
launched, this time happily with such eager, excited haste as to be
harmless. But what advantage was that? The foe had plenty more arrows,
and would apparently have plenty more time to shoot them at their
wished-for target, for both the lad and the dog were evidently much
hurt, and were swimming very slowly and feebly.
Then it was that Antonio de Alaminos wrung his hands and groaned over
his favourite's impending fate. But the Admiral did something better
than groan. There was no possibility of getting a boat across from
the building-ground in time to be of any use, and the position was
imminent. One more glance was cast by the father at his young son
rapidly nearing the vessel, and still unconscious of his friend's
danger, and then the order was shouted forth--"Fire off the guns--wait
not to take aim."
Answering shouts of comprehension greeted the order, and as the guns
were now always in a state of readiness for immediate use, it was
obeyed with almost incredible speed, so great was the eagerness to
save the young life now in jeopardy. Even while the exhausted Montoro
was plunging himself and Don under water to escape another shower of
arrows, there came the flash, the roar of the four falconets, followed
by peal upon peal of the most frantic screechings from the Indians.
Whether they were hurt was very doubtful, but it was evident enough
that they were madly terrified. Flinging away their weapons, they
decamped into the shelter of the forest again, and it was only by the
fading sound of the continued shrieks that the direction of their
retreat towards the village could be learnt.
"That was a lucky thought--to fight by fear," said Diego Mendez with a
sigh of relief, as he prepared to spring into the river to the further
aid of the rescued Montoro; but the Admiral checked him one moment,
saying reverently--
"It was a blessed thought, my friend, for it was inspired by God."
Twenty minutes later Montoro was safe in his berth; the arrows had been
extracted, and the wounds dressed, and poor Don lay dozing uneasily at
his feet. It had just been suggested that the dog should be put out of
its sufferings forthwith by a blow on the head. But Columbus would not
have it done. The lad had nearly lost his life to save the animal's,
and it should not prove such a useless service.
"You will at any rate, my father, allow me a little time to try to get
him well?" said Ferdinand eagerly.
"Most assuredly, my son," answered the Admiral. "For thy friend's sake,
and for the dog's, it shall be so."
And thus it came to pass that while Montoro lay ill of fever from his
torn wounds and over-fatigue, many weighty things befell his companions
and the Indians of Veragua, and faithful Don lay at his master's
feet and licked himself back into wholeness. In fact, Don's surgical
appliances did him good far more speedily than those made use of on
behalf of Montoro. And when his comrade Señor's bones lay bleaching in
the American forest some few weeks later, he was bounding about the
deck in full strength and health, and utter disregard of the calamities
that had befallen nearly every other living creature any way connected
with him.
When Montoro again recovered consciousness the Admiral's caravel was
once more on the way to Hispaniola. The settlement at Veragua had been
half destroyed, wholly abandoned; the poor Cacique of Veragua and
his people were slain, dead or dispersed; and once more Montoro de
Diego, and many of his companions, had to turn their hopes of fortune
to the island colony that had already, in the short space of eight
years, been so frequently the hotbed of envy, hatred, malice, and all
uncharitableness.
CHAPTER XVI.
_I AM 'DON ALONZO.'_
It was a splendid evening one day towards the end of the year 1503,
when a tall, plainly-attired, handsome youth drew near the home of a
Spanish colonist to whom he had notes of introduction. He had walked
out to it from San Domingo, a distance of some five miles, and now
stood still to survey the scene, his hand resting on a dog's head the
while that had accompanied him.
"It is a glorious place, old Don," he muttered in a tone of
considerable satisfaction, although it betokened great surprise as well.
And a glorious place it was, and most especially beautiful now that
the long, low houses of stone and earth, the waving palms, and all the
other luxuriance of that southern clime, were bathed in the golden
glory of a southern sunset. In a cushioned reclining chair, placed in
a shady spot of the broad verandah, lounged a young man, handsome,
but for a Spaniard coarse-featured and rather thick-set. However, all
defects of person were thrown into the background by a sumptuousness of
attire that fairly startled the youth as he at length approached, and
delivered his letters.
"And you are the son of Master Pedro, the spice-dealer of El Cuevo!" he
breathed forth at last.
The words of that ejaculation were common-place enough, but the tone in
which they were uttered, and the look with which they were accompanied,
made them so inexpressibly gratifying, and at the same time comical, to
the man to whom they were addressed, that he burst into a loud, long
laugh before vouchsafing them any other answer.
"Yes, yes," he said at last, recovering himself with an easy
nonchalance. "Yes, yes, youngster, I do not mind confessing to you,
since you know the fact before my confession, that the worthy old
gentleman yonder, with his frugal fare, and his better stuff cloak for
holidays, is my father, and a rare good old miser he is, to save the
maravedis for my spending. But mind ye, that is between you and me and
Saint Peter."
A wondering gaze from a great pair of thoughtful, brilliant eyes was
the questioning reply to this intimation. "And for the rest of the
world," asked the owner of the eyes after a short pause, "who is your
father for the rest of the world?"
Another laugh greeted this query.
"Why, for the rest of the world, being what you have found me, Don
Alonzo de Loyala, my father is, like thine own, some long-deceased
grandee of Spain, who neglected his duty towards his son as regarded
the due endowment of riches to maintain my rank in mine own land."
As this mocking speech ended, Montoro de Diego's cheeks flushed
angrily, and he exclaimed--
"Do you then imply that my claims to noble birth are thus also assumed?
By St.--"
"Nay then, nay," good-humouredly interrupted the other. "In these
latitudes it is not well for health to heat thyself for nought. Keep
thy passion for the red rascals, who are so lazy that they'll die
rather than live and work. I imply nothing to thy detriment. Wert thou
placed as I am, then wouldst thou also have a wealthy father at thy
back, to help thee to maintain that rank out here it should pleasure
thee to claim. Meantime, I do no more than half of those around me,
and with better right; for I am no released felon, and I deal honestly
by those I trade with. I will deal honestly with you. Twice have I had
advices from my father, and from good master Sancho, that I should try
to secure you for a companion and aid, should you elect to remain here
on the Admiral's return to Spain. And I like you at first sight well
enough to be willing to take their advice. Will you stay with me then,
or shall I help you to find friends elsewhere?"
Montoro looked at the man from head to foot slowly and earnestly, as he
lounged there before him, so great a contrast to himself, and then as
slowly and earnestly said--
"I agree to stay--for a time."
"Umph!" muttered the self-styled Don Alonzo, somewhat taken aback in
his turn. "Umph! my noble youngster, methinks from your air you suppose
the obligation to be rather more mutual than I esteem it. You are a
beggar and friendless, and I--am not."
However, Montoro was not now so friendless as his new colleague
assumed. Had he returned to Spain, even there he might now have been
found some sort of employment, and out in the Colony the spirited young
adventurer, with a pair of hands both able and willing to work, could
have easily found some more indolent seeker after wealth willing to go
into partnership with him. But Rachel de Diego was sheltered under the
roof of the spice-merchant, and her son had a hidden eagerness that he
might be able to find shelter under the roof of the spice-merchant's
son. It was to that motive that 'Don Alonzo' owed the easy settlement
of his agreement with his new young partner, and not, as he imagined,
to the promising air of luxurious comfort in his surroundings. That
offered more allurements to a third party to the affair.
Don threatened for a few minutes to upset the amiable arrangements
between his real owner and his self-adopted master, for poor Don had
very faint notions of the rights of property and ownership, and Don was
thirsty and Don was hungry, and, moreover, Don was as fond of grapes
as any Christian Don, real or pretended, to be found in or out of
Spain. All of a sudden, while Montoro was gazing thoughtfully out at
the silver line of distant sea, and Don Alonzo was muttering to himself
the remark mentioned above, tired Don caught sight of a piled-up dish
of grapes on a table in the verandah. He licked his dry lips, and went
on eyeing them. Then he licked his dry lips again, and ventured upon
a small whine. That sound recalled Montoro's wandering wits so far
that he turned round and nodded to his four-footed friend, and said
dreamily--
"Yes, yes. All right, good old Don."
That was enough. Don was in that state of longing that a very small
amount of encouragement was enough to induce him to help himself to
the desired feast, and before either of his companions knew well what
he was about, he had bounded up to the table, scrunched up one juicy,
deliciously refreshing bunch of grapes, and had a second in his mouth
about to be treated in the same way. But "there's many a slip 'twixt
the cup and the lip," and in this instance there proved to be a slip
'twixt the lip and the throat.
Don Alonzo quickly became aware of what was going on, and, seizing a
heavy bottle, he flung it with full force angrily at the dog; and it
hit, not the dog, but the dog's champion, happily only a touch, and
then fell crashing on the floor of the verandah.
The next instant Montoro's first dash forward to save the dog was
followed by a second to save Don Alonzo; for the huge animal had made a
furious spring at his antagonist, accompanied by a growl that gave full
promise of his intentions. Montoro's most resolute and stern command
was needed before the hound was brought to crouch down by his side,
with red-lit eyes still glaring at his unrecognized owner.
"That brute shall be shot before he's an hour older," came the surly
declaration at last, as Montoro knelt on the stone pavement soothing
the animal back into good temper. At the sharp announcement he looked
up quickly.
"Then you shall shoot him through me," he said passionately, "as you
struck me just now instead of him. He is my only friend out here, and
we will live or die together."
Don Alonzo shook himself irritably. He was good-hearted enough if
over-indulgent parents in the first instance, and superabundant good
fortune since, had not rather spoilt him. Besides, four years' sojourn
on the island of Hispaniola had not tended to teach regard for any
life but his own; that he esteemed at quite a high enough rate, and he
answered Montoro now with angry remonstrance--
"It is all very fine to talk heroics, youngster; but thinkest thou that
I am going to be browbeaten into keeping my own dog, to stand in danger
of being mauled by it any time its tempers up, as if I were a wretched
native!"
Montoro stood up and folded his arms.
"Neither you nor any other man, Indian or European, shall suffer from
Doffs teeth. Or, if perchance that sounds too proud a boast, for the
first human being that Don injures he shall die. He shall be as a lamb
to you now--see--hold out your hand."
With some scarcely-disguised trepidation Alonzo obeyed. Don cast a
beseeching glance of remonstrance at his friend; but instead of any
encouragement to rejection of the offered fellowship, he got a grave
shake of the head; and with a very crestfallen aspect he rose, walked
dolefully along the verandah, and put his paw into the outstretched
hand, and looked up with mute appeal for forgiveness.
Don Alonzo was wise enough to seal the new compact with a
freely-generous gift of more of the coveted grapes. If Montoro for Don,
and Don for himself, would engage that Don Alonzo should never feel
the sharpness of that animal's teeth, his owner was only too willing
that it should live. For it was quite the fashion now to use these
powerful dogs out in the new world, not only as terrible aids in battle
against the poor, half-defenceless Indians, but also to hunt down
the miserable, wholly-defenceless slaves who sometimes dared to run
away to die in peace in their native forests, instead of beneath the
short-sighted, as well as brutal, taskmaster's lash.
The young Diego had declared that Don should never be so employed, but
that declaration Don Alonzo comfortably decided in his own mind was
all nonsense. He himself had had qualms about the treatment of the
natives when he first came out, but he had long since got rid of all
such inconvenient scruples; and so of course would this new arrival
get speedily rid of his. Every one did, with the exception of that
impracticable idiot of a neighbour of his, that young fellow Las Casas,
who had come out from Spain with his head so full of theories and
bookish ideas that he had no room in it for common sense.
CHAPTER XVII.
_GOOD OLD DON._
Time passed on. In Spain good Queen Isabella died, and two years later
the poor, neglected noble-hearted, pious old Admiral, Christopher
Columbus, recommending himself to God, and his two sons, Diego and
Ferdinand, to King Ferdinand's tardy justice and each other's brotherly
love, also bade a final farewell to an ungrateful world.
And in Hispaniola also time passed on. Many there grieved over the
Admiral when he was dead, who had tormented him in every possible way
when living,--that is the way with poor, stupid human nature. But he
had one true mourner, who had loved and served him with all his heart
during the year that they were together, and whose memory for those he
cared for was not a short one. Montoro de Diego, amidst his many new
interests, felt a very keen pang of sorrow when the news was brought
out to the island, towards the end of the year 1506, of the loss the
world had sustained.
"Ah! Señor Las Casas," he sighed one morning, some months later; "ah!
then, if he had lived, and the queen, you might then have had hope even
yet to work some good for these wretched, rightful owners of these
lands. But now--"
"Ay, indeed!" exclaimed Bartholomew Las Casas with heaving chest, as he
rose and strode hastily up and down his terrace. "You may well pause
upon that but now, Diego. For now one might more wisely waste breath
in calling upon wolves and wild cats to cease from fierceness, than in
pleading with one's fellow-men for mercy, justice, or compassion. 'Give
us yourselves,' is the fierce cry that echoes all around us. 'Give us
yourselves, your wives and daughters, for our humble slaves; give us
your gold, your lands, all you hold most valuable; resign your wills,
your faith, your souls into our keeping, and we will give you leave to
live as long as unremitting toil and cruelty will let you. But resist
us, fight for your country or your liberty, contradict our lightest
caprice, and we will shoot you down as though you were so many rabbits,
we will hunt you to death with our dogs as though you were vermin or
wild beasts.'"
The young man came to a sudden stop, with a face glowing with generous
indignation, and literally panting for breath with his burst of
righteous wrath. Montoro's cheeks were flushed with sympathy as he said
in quick reply--
"It is so. I can but too terribly vouch for the truth of your bitter
accusation. But, Señor, your brethren the priests, can they not--"
Las Casas turned upon him with sharp interruption.
"Can they not help me, you would ask? Ay, verily," with indignant
scorn; "well indeed do they help the cause I have at heart! This is
one of the proclamations allowed by some of those same brethren the
priests--'Your souls are doomed to eternal perdition, your bodies
belong to those who have conquered your soil!' Much good my brethren
the priests will do!"
There was a short silence, and then he continued more calmly, and
laying his hand upon a pile of papers, "But after all, Diego, I do hope
to work some good for the poor natives. I have written out a strong
case for them, and I am intending to return to Spain shortly, there to
plead their cause myself."
"And you shall have my testimony, if you will," said Montoro eagerly.
"For it is our Don Alonzo's will that I should take a journey to Spain
this coming season, in charge of a somewhat richer freight than usual.
And if you start not immediately we may go together."
"And Don?" said Las Casas, in smiling interrogation.
"Ay, truly," was the laughing answer, although something of a blush
accompanied it. "But in faith," he added the next moment, "it is not
only for love of the animal that I have it for my constant companion.
Since I have discovered the horrible use to which its fellows are put,
I live in fear of a coming day when I may regret having saved its life."
"Then," continued his friend, "you will leave it behind you in Spain
perchance, when you return hither?"
"That is so long to look ahead," said Montoro, feeling not a little
glad that he was not called upon for an immediate decision.
When it really came to the point he did what he thought much better
than leaving Don behind in El Cuevo. He got Master Pedro to transfer
all property in it to himself. His services to the old spice-dealer
and his son had well merited so much of a reward. And as for Don, he
deserved not only a good master, but almost as many bunches of grapes
besides as he chose to eat, when, a couple of years later, he was the
means of saving Montoro's life and a bag full of gold-dust to the value
of many thousand pesos.
Diego's first return journey to Spain proved so successful, owing to
his scrupulous honesty and intelligence, that Don Alonzo speedily sent
him on a second, and others also most eagerly availed themselves of so
upright a messenger to transmit their golden gleanings to their own
country.
But, as it happened, with Diego there voyaged also to Spain three
ne'er-do-wells. They had gambled away all their slaves, all their
grants of land, all their gathered-up spoils, and then, having finally
gambled away all their future prospects of wealth in Hispaniola, the
miscreants, as mean as they were bad, slipped away from the island and
their creditors on the first ship back to Spain.
"And mind ye," muttered one of the number to his companions one
evening, as they drew near the end of their two months' voyage,--"mind
ye, if we follow that insolent, set-up fellow Diego a day or two's
journey up the country after landing, we shall not be losing time,
neither shall we have cause to regret having left Hispaniola in his
company."
"How so?" questioned one of the two eager listeners doubtfully. "My
child yonder, little Bautista, told me when I questioned him some days
ago anent Diego's gold, that the bags were to be sent by other hands to
Madrid."
"And you credit the tale!" exclaimed the first speaker scornfully.
"You'll believe next that the Garden of Paradise has been found."
"And so I will," was the retort, "when the news is given me by Montoro
de Diego. He would not lie to save his life, and least of all would he
lie to a child."
"By all the saints," sneered the third of the group, "but Don Diego
hath a warm advocate in you! Doubtless it were useless to expect you to
touch his gold, even though it lay by the wayside to be picked up."
"Doubtless under those circumstances," was the sharp reply, "there
should be little left for you to snatch. All the same, he hath shown
kindness to my boy, and he tells him nought but truth."
"Well, well," said Almado, the first speaker, more softly, "there is no
need that we should wrangle over the fellow's virtues, they sicken me
forsooth. Ne'er the less, he shall be a very saint if you will, so we
do but get his merchandise. As for the gold that is to go to Madrid,
that is but that small part, of what he carries, which is for the
king's coffers. Of that I am well assured. So you see thy little son
yonder hath been told the truth indeed, but only in part, and maybe to
mislead us."
"Umph," muttered Bautista's father, also more quietly. "That may well
be."
"Ay," agreed the third of the company, "that may well be."
And for the next few hours they all redoubled their efforts to be
on good terms with Don. They flattered themselves, indeed, that he
regarded them quite in the light of friends, for Don, like most very
strong creatures, whether going on two legs or four, never troubled
himself to show uncalled-for fierceness. As long as no one interfered
with him or his master, and his master gave him no orders to interfere
with others, he maintained the grave indifference of manner worthy of
a highborn Spaniard. But woe betide those who should presume upon this
calmness.
Arrived at Cadiz, Montoro delivered up the royal revenue to the
authorized messengers awaiting it, and then he and his dog and his bags
set out on their journey up the country, in company with worthy Master
Sancho, who had come to meet him, and two or three other traders from
the interior.
"Farewell, my little Bautista," said Montoro; "I shall pray for our
future meeting."
"Nay," said the child hurriedly, and with a frightened look round, "do
not that, Señor. I love you, you have been good to me, and so I pray
the Virgin to grant we may not meet again."
Montoro opened his eyes wide.
"How so, little man? Love me, and yet pray that we may not again cross
each other's paths? How is that, tell me?"
But the boy shook his head, and began to tremble violently.
"Do not ask me," he muttered with white lips; "they will kill me. Only
keep away from us. They do not know I have heard--"
"Ha!" exclaimed Montoro, a look of intelligence now taking the place
of bewilderment. Then he stooped and kissed the child's forehead, as
he said in low tones, "Blessings on thee for thy true heart, my little
lad, and my thanks. May the Lord have thee in His keeping, and guard
thy hands from sin."
And so they parted, each, as poor little Bautista fondly thought, to go
widely different ways, but in reality to take two routes leading to the
same goal.
For the first two days' journey inland the party to which Montoro
joined himself was a particularly strong one, too strong for the three
gamblers to care to meddle with; accordingly they withdrew themselves
from notice, until the travelling company was reduced to Montoro
himself, Master Sancho and his thick-headed attendant, and a couple of
poor-spirited merchants, who would have rather hidden themselves in
their bales at the appearance of danger, than tried to defend them. But
then--there was Don.
The third day was drawing to a close, when Diego and his companions
reached a wretched little inn, the worst on their route, and with
considerable grumbling on the part of comfort-loving Master Sancho,
they put up there for the night. To make matters worse, the amount of
available accommodation was even less than usual, for another party of
travellers had arrived before them, and taken the chief and largest
room.
However, there was no help for it. Master Sancho had to make the best
of a bad bargain, and as nothing would induce him to share a room with
Don, and nothing would induce Montoro to dispense with Don's company as
a guardian under present circumstances, he and the dog had one room,
and the worthy burgess of El Cuevo and the two merchants from Saragossa
had to crowd into the other.
"One night," explained Master Sancho to his companions, "that young
rascal I've taken a fancy to, persuaded me to share a sleeping
apartment with him and that great brute, and in the night I
snored,--I'm given to snore,--and the creature didn't approve, and
woke me up with a sounding thump of its great paw. And there, behold!
it stood reared up over me, with glaring eyes and a growling mouth. I
warrant you, I prayed in one minute to more saints in the calendar than
I've prayed to in many a long year before."
"Doubtless," assented one of the merchants with paling cheeks. "I
have ever thought it a fearful great beast, and unsafe. But hearken!
Methinks it is now quarrelling even with its own master. Ah!" with
startled breathlessness--"it is shot."
Then there was a sudden rushing all over the inn. Screams, shrieks,
shouts, slamming of doors, and above all, the continuous roar of Don's
deep growling bark.
At length men and lights were gathered in Montoro's room, and there
stood Montoro holding in a firm grip one of the smugglers. But the hero
of the fray, and the conqueror, was grand old Don standing with one
great fore-paw on the breast of one robber, the other fore-paw on the
breast of Bautista's father, who lay weltering in his blood, shot by
the other of his comrades in the attempt to shoot the dog.
"But my child, my little son," murmured the wretched, dying man.
"I will guard and care for him," said Montoro huskily.
He had been rescued from misery himself once, now he was the rescuer.
CHAPTER XVIII.
_DEATH FOR DON._
It was the early part of the year 1511, when Montoro, become now quite
an experienced islander and man of business, left Don Alonzo's place,
Palmyra, one morning for the neighbouring town of San Domingo. The
object of the visit was to arrange some important matters with certain
foreign merchants, who had lately arrived with tempting offers to the
planters for the produce of their estates.
"And don't hurry thyself," said Don Alonzo with unusual consideration.
"Take thy pleasure for a few days when thou art in the town, for verily
this dog's hole of a place is dull enough to make a man long to shuffle
off life with a native's readiness."
"If those same natives should get the upper-hand," answered Montoro
drily, "I doubt not they would help you. Meantime, I will trust to find
you still in the flesh, and well, when I return, and so--_adios_."
"And for you, fair journeyings and good bargains," said the indolent
superior, as he lay lounging in his low chair sipping a cool lime-juice
beverage. Little enough of the work he did himself towards accumulating
his own wealth.
But, lazy and self-indulgent as he was, it had not escaped Montoro that
there was a certain scarcely-suppressed eagerness, and barely-hidden
hope of some sort, underlying his present declared wishes for his
subordinate's comfort. As Montoro left the verandah and passed through
the house he called to his rescued _protégé_, who had proved useful
enough to secure himself a home beneath Don Alonzo's roof. No work had
seemed to come amiss to him, excepting that of aid to the overseers in
the gold mines, in which he had been recently employed. But the brutal
task-masters had just sent the boy back, saying that he was no good to
them whatever, worse than no good indeed, for he pitied the rascally
workers instead of flogging them.
Bautista came readily enough when he heard his beloved Señor Diego's
voice.
"Am I to go with you, my Señor?" he exclaimed beseechingly. "Ah! but I
will be to you eyes and hands and feet, if I may."
"I prefer to use my own, thank you," answered Montoro smiling, as he
patted the boy's head. "But look not so disappointed, Bautista, for if
I cannot trust myself to thee, I am going to leave in thy charge one I
hold almost dearer. I leave thee guardian of our faithful old Don. And
see thou that he comes to no harm, and--that he does no harm. I have
guarded him from that sin hitherto; do thou guard him in my absence."
A deep breath, almost a groan, burst from the boy's lips.
"My Señor," he muttered anxiously, "give me some other duty to perform
for you. This may be too hard."
Diego frowned.
"I trust not," he said sternly. "It shall be worse for others if it
prove so. And remember, you have my orders, and if need be you must
declare them."
So saying he nodded his farewell to the boy and departed, leaving Don's
new guardian in a very doleful frame of mind, for he knew well enough
the cause of Don Alonzo's desire to be a short time rid of Montoro.
The spice-merchant's son was good-natured enough so long as he was
crossed in nothing, but Montoro's settled refusal to have Don used as
a hunter of runaway slaves had roused Alonzo's spite, and for the past
year, ever since the return of Montoro and the dog from Spain, he had
been seeking some chance to gratify his malice. Hitherto where Diego
had gone the dog had gone, but at last this expedition to the town was
arranged, and for various circumstances it was more convenient to leave
Don behind.
"And at last," declared Don Alonzo with a malicious chuckle, "at last
the brute shall be set to its proper work."
Bautista was in the apartment at the time, as well as one of the
overseers, and as a significant warning to him the words were
added--"And it shall have its first taste of the flesh of any one, be
he Spaniard or native, who betrays my purpose to Señor Long-face."
No wonder the boy desired that some other duty might be commuted to his
charge by his patron, in test of his affection. As Montoro rode off
with a party of attendants, Bautista made his way to Don, and poured
out his fears to an apparently perfectly intelligent pair of ears.
"But all the same, you know quite well, Don," said Bautista
reproachfully, "you do know quite well, that in spite of your good
Christian bringing up, you would seize a poor redskin by the leg if you
were set at him."
"Of course he would, like the sensible thoroughbred he is," shouted a
well-known voice not a couple of yards distant. And Bautista sprang to
his feet with a terrified look on his face, as he saw the hateful head
overseer, Jerome Tivoli, had come up to him unperceived.
The man now stood intently regarding the dog, with a more sinister
expression than usual upon his cruel face, and the boy could scarcely
restrain himself from flying away from the spot. Nothing short of his
loyal devotion to his patron could have kept him there. At last he said
huskily--
"It is useless so to examine this dog, for, strong or weak, you can
have nought to do with it, since it belongs to the Señor Diego, and he
chooses not that it should be used for your purposes."
De Tivoli uttered a short, hard laugh, and his eyes glittered as he
said slowly--
"Ah! yes. It is the Señor Montoro de Diego's dog---his favourite. And
verily it is a fine animal, and powerful, and will do a day's work well
for us. That dog of a slave Guatchi has run away, and, dead or alive,
yon pet of our Señor Diego shall bring him back to us."
Bautista flung himself down again beside the dog, and threw his arms
about its neck, as he exclaimed with the courage of affection--
"No! I tell thee no, Señor Tivoli. Señor Diego has left it to me to
guard his dog from doing harm, and I will keep my charge."
De Tivoli's thin lips curled; but ere he could reply other footsteps
were heard approaching, and Don Alonzo himself appeared upon the scene.
"How now, De Tivoli," he exclaimed hastily. "Why dost thou waste time?
The idle rascal Guatchi hath had start enough, I trow, to breathe the
dog e'en now; why dost thou delay?"
"It is but for a minute, Don Alonzo," replied the other coolly. "Yon
boy declares that, for Don Diego's sake, it shall not be sent hunting."
"And I," retorted Don Alonzo, "swear by St. Jago that it shall."
"And I, in the name of one higher," exclaimed Montoro de Diego, thus
unexpectedly making his own appearance on the scene again, "I declare,
with Bautista, that it shall not go."
Don Alonzo started slightly, and his face flushed for a moment with
ill-restrained annoyance and uneasiness as he saw that set, resolute
countenance before him; but he tried to assume an air of carelessness,
and to laugh away the matter with an off-hand--
"Why, my mentor, how have you contrived to accomplish the business you
had in hand so quickly? What brings you back so soon?"
"Your good genius, I feel inclined to imagine," was Montoro's answer,
in tones somewhat quieter than those of his first exclamation. But
the fading sparkle in his eyes rekindled as his companion replied
irritably--
"Then I wish the meddlesome beast had minded its own business, instead
of sending you back here to pull a long face over what I mean to do in
spite of it."
As he spoke he walked up to where the dog Don lay tethered, held a
strip of cotton cloth to its nose, and then muttering viciously--
"Find him, Don, find him!" pressed his finger hastily on the spring of
the dog's collar, and set it free.
The great animal bounded forward. The next instant there was a howl, a
moan, and Don lay dying at Montoro's feet; rather, one should say, at
Montoro's knees, for the young man had sunk on to them almost as soon
as his own fist had fallen with that lightning stroke, and the same
hand that had dealt the death-blow was now soothing the poor brute's
last agonies. It was Montoro de Diego who had killed it, and yet it was
to Montoro's face that the pleading brown eyes were lifted with their
last gaze of affection, and it was Montoro's hand that the dying tongue
licked with the last breath.
"My poor old Don," muttered Montoro huskily, as he tenderly pressed the
side quivering with the death struggle; "poor old Don."
"It's fine for thee to pity the poor brute when it owes its sufferings
to thy malice," exclaimed Don Alonzo furiously, and with fingers on the
hilt of his dagger, as though they itched to lay his companion beside
the animal.
But Diego paid no seeming heed to the show of rage. Maintaining his
kneeling position for a while longer, he replied quietly--
"Yes, it once owed its life to me, and now it owes its death to me, and
better so than it should have been the innocent cause of suffering to
one of our human brethren, for whom the cross rose on Calvary."
And then he rose from beside the dog's dead body, and turned slowly
away with a saddened face. In spite of its ferocious nature, the animal
had always been most docile with him; and besides, it had been that
oft-felt link with his mother's home. How long ago now seemed that
first day of parting from his country, when Rachel de Diego's slender
fingers had rested for a few moments on the animal's head. Her son
would far rather have a second time undergone some peril to save its
life, than have had to destroy it for the prevention of a crime.
"Ah, Señor," murmured Bautista, as he crept out on to the verandah
after him a few minutes later. "Ah, Señor, you have saved poor
Guatchi's limbs from being mangled; but I doubt me you have made an
enemy for yourself."
"You were willing to do the same in the same cause, Bautista," was the
answer with a grave smile of approval. "I knew not that thou wast so
staunchly ranged on the side of justice and mercy. Henceforth we are
friends."
The boy sprang forward to clasp the hand held out to him, and said
eagerly--
"To follow in your steps, Señor, I began to remind myself that the
Indians' flesh had feelings like our own, but my past month in the
mines has been a black lesson in horror that I would not repeat to
escape the pains of purgatory. These Indians are tenfold weaker than
we are, and their sufferings are tenfold more, for they have learnt
nothing of manhood to sustain them. You have seen them die here in the
plantations, Señor, and that has roused your pity; but in those mines
it is not that _some_ die, but that _none survive_. A few days of that
dismal work beneath cuffs and lashes, and their strength is spent--"
"And then?" came the short query.
"And then," ended the boy with a sort of gasp for breath, "they sink
to the ground, and the brutal kick given to rouse them up to continued
labour, is the accompaniment of their last breath. It is little wonder,
Señor, that I should wish poor Guatchi to get away free, now that he
has escaped such toil alive."
The whole fervour of the boy's susceptible nature was aroused, and
Montoro felt more than ever convinced that he was in the presence of
one whose spirit was akin to his own.
"Hearken, Bautista," he said, after a short pause. "I have within the
past few hours copied out part of a commission against the miserable
inhabitants of this new world, lately granted by our king, and framed
by the greatest divines and lawyers of our old home. Alonso de Ojeda
and Diego de Nicuessa bear drafts of this commission with them, and be
well assured that they will not spare its execution. But stay; I will
read thee the very words themselves, addressed for peremptory orders
to these poor heathen, ignorant of the very language in which we call
upon them to obey our faith and laws:--'If you will not consent to take
our Church for your Church, the holy father the Pope for your spiritual
head, our king for your king and sovereign lord over your kings and
countries, then, with the help of God, I will enter your country by
force; I will carry on war against you with the utmost violence; I
will subject you to the yoke of obedience; I will take your wives and
children and will make them slaves; I will seize your goods, and do
you all the mischief in my power, as rebellious subjects, who will not
submit to their lawful sovereign. And I protest that all the bloodshed
and calamities that shall follow shall be due to you, and not to
us.'"[2]
[Footnote 2: Robertson's 'America,' Bk. III. pp. 193, 194.]
As Montoro came to the end of his sheet he folded and replaced it
in his pocket, and then, utterly forgetful of his companion in his
reawakened indignation, he wandered away from the verandah, and betook
himself to the simple dwelling of the good clerigo, Bartholomew de las
Casas, who was now finally settled in Hispaniola, by royal desire, as a
missionary to the natives.
"But of what use," he exclaimed this afternoon in sorrowful despair
to his equally weary-hearted visitor, "of what use, Diego, to waste
our time and strength, in trying to teach the sublime truths of
religion to men whose spirits are broken, and their minds weakened by
oppression?"
"Of what use, indeed," assented Montoro with passion, "to try to teach
men to believe in a religion professing itself the religion of love and
mercy, while they are slaves to those calling themselves its followers,
and who are acting at the same time the part of demons!"
"You speak strongly," said the true-hearted, good Christian bishop.
"But verily I cannot say you have not reason. Knowest thou, my friend,
that when first we settled ourselves upon this fertile fragrant island,
not yet fifteen years ago, the inhabitants numbered above three
millions, and now they scarcely amount to fifteen thousand. Scarcely
fifteen thousand!" he repeated slowly, and in awe-struck tones, as
though he scarcely could endure to recall the awful fact to his own
remembrance.
Montoro de Diego looked at his informant with a startled countenance,
and then suddenly bent his eyes upon the ground as though he expected
to see the 'brothers' blood' crying for vengeance from the soil.
"It is no good," he exclaimed at last. "I will stay in this accursed
place no longer. To my restlessness I might have opposed a sense of
duty; but to fight any longer against my miserable disgust at the
scenes around me is beyond my strength."
The bishop mused awhile before replying slowly,--
"And yet, good example is valuable."
"Elsewhere it may be, but not here," returned Diego hastily. "Else,
Riverenza, must your own bright example long since have turned devils
into saints, murderers into good Samaritans. What good did your example
do, even in the matter of the _repartimientos_? Did your giving up your
share of these unjustly and basely-enslaved creatures serve any other
purpose than that of impoverishing one who ever uses his wealth for the
relief of suffering? Nay, further, your good example on this accursed
island worked actually on the side of evil."
"How so?" asked Las Casas. But he looked as though he knew the answer,
even before his companion said heavily,--
"Even we reaped some miserable advantage at 'Palmyra' from your
renunciation. Some half-dozen poor creatures who had thriven under
your mild rule were made over to us to die. But see," Montoro suddenly
exclaimed, interrupting himself and springing to his feet, "the day is
passing, and I should have been in San Domingo hours ago. I started
early enough, but some suspicion that I was leaving mischief behind me
brought me back, and now poor Don is dead."
It was only a dog that was dead, but that dog was Don--the dog on whose
head his mother's tears had fallen--the dog for whose sake he had once
endangered his own life; and with these thoughts suddenly recalled
to his mind, Montoro de Diego was glad to beat a hasty retreat from
further observation.
Las Casas remained deep in earnest ponderings long after his friend had
left him, for he too had begun to think that it was vain to continue
his efforts of philanthropy any longer on the island of Hispaniola,
and that he would do wisely to exert his influence as protector of the
Indians in new fields, less overcrowded with the refuse population of
his own country.
Meantime Montoro reached the town, and was instantly accosted by a
young man of about his own age, and tall, bright, and handsome as
himself, but with a dash of off-hand daring about his person and manner
instead of Montoro's lofty dignity.
"Diego!" he exclaimed, as soon as he caught sight of him, "you are
just the comrade I most desire in our coming campaign. Throw thy
paltry bales into the sea, man, and enrol thyself under our captain's
standard."
"But who then is thy captain?" asked Montoro with some interest, "and
what is this new campaign? Thou art ever mad, my Cortes, upon some
fresh undertaking."
The handsome young notary laughed.
"Better that than sticking to the same spot till thy feet bid fair
to grow to the soil, like thy money-grubber, Don Alonzo, yonder.
But, I warrant thee, this undertaking now on hand is no mere pastime
for a summer's evening. Our captain, Don Diego Velasquez, hath it in
commission to conquer an island, the island of Cuba."
"Ay, doubtless," returned Montoro bitterly. "And hath also leave and
licence, and perchance it may be even orders likewise, to kill off the
inhabitants there, like so many mosquitoes, as hath been done here!"
The other shrugged his shoulders rather contemptuously.
"Verily, Diego, thou and our bishop yonder have been bitten by the same
dog. But to comfort thy heart, know that Bartholomew Las Casas is to be
invited to go with us to guard thy pets, lest one of us should so much
as slap one of their brats to still its overmuch squalling at strange
faces. So, what say'st thou now?"
Montoro's face cleared to a smile.
"This is what I say--that if Las Casas goes, then do I go also."
CHAPTER XIX.
_THE WAY TO TREAT THE REDSKINS._
"Montoro! I say, Montoro, I have news for thee."
"Out with it then," came the answer from our friend, who was once more
engaged in his occupation of eight years before at Veragua. Houses were
built there for a colony that was never founded, and now Montoro and
his companions were building houses on the island of Cuba, with a very
fair prospect of inhabiting them.
Only one chief had offered any determined resistance to the invaders,
and even his followers were not numerous enough to excite much anxiety.
He had fled from his native land of Hispaniola to escape the Spanish
rule, and now he was brought to bay, and compelled to make a final
effort for independence. It had just been decided to send out a party
against him, strong enough, as Velasquez put it, "To conquer the rebel
once for all, and have done with it."
"And I am to be one of the party," said Juan de Cabrera, excitedly.
"And if you choose you also are to have a hand in catching this
Hatuey, and helping to make him an example."
"He is that already," replied Montoro gravely. "Would that the poor
sheep, his countrymen, knew how to profit by it."
"By my faith," exclaimed Cabrera impatiently, "you are a queer fellow,
Diego. Wouldst thou then that these 'poor sheep,' who are as a hundred
to one of us, should know their strength, and shoot us down like vermin
in a barn?"
Montoro flung down the great wooden hammer with which he had been
driving stakes, and came forward, his face set with mingled sternness
and sorrow.
"Ay, truly, Juan de Cabrera, less would it shame me that the heathen
should thus treat us, than to know that we Christians have acted that
hideous part towards them. Hast thou heard of the late campaign in
Trinidad, where our countrymen have burnt alive in cold blood--to save
trouble!--nigh upon two hundred men and women, and innocent babes
scarcely more helpless than their kind and gentle-natured fathers? How
shall Spanish tears or Spanish blood, thinkest thou, ever wash out that
foul stain?"
Juan de Cabrera turned away for a moment, for he had no answer ready.
When he turned round again he said, with an assumption of flippancy he
was for once far from feeling,--
"Ah, well, I have not heard this shady tale before, and I don't suppose
that it has lost any of its shadows by coming through thy lips.
Doubtless it was but a toss up whether our brethren should be killed,
or should kill."
"Not so," said Montoro, sternly. "Juan Bono hath confessed, himself,
that the unhappy creatures whom he thus repaid had been as fathers
and mothers to him, and to all his party; but he had been sent to
make slaves, and he made them the more readily by burning part of the
population before resistance was dreamt of."
He stopped abruptly, and stooped to pick up his tool. Then once more
raising his eyes to his companion's face, he said slowly and quietly--
"That is all; but a ghastly all; and I would to God that the heathen
had shot me ere I heard it."
There was a long silence after this ere Cabrera ventured once more to
ask--
"But, Diego, for all this thou wilt join us, wilt thou not? Even for
the sake of thine own feelings thou shouldst do so to help in the
promotion of fair play."
"If I were the Governor himself," said Montoro hastily, "I should exert
myself in vain for justice where this unfortunate Hatuey is concerned.
He has been as a king in his own land, and now we dare to proclaim him
a rebel because he proves himself a patriot, and in the face of despair
fights for his country and his people's liberty. No; I will have nought
to do with 'catching' this noble-hearted heathen Cacique, and aiding to
throw him into slavery."
Cabrera cast a keen, furtive glance at his companion at the utterance
of that last word. Evidently, although Diego had heard that horrible
Trinidad news, he had not yet heard of the doom pronounced against
the troublesomely desperate Cacique of Hispaniola, when he should be
once safely caught in the hands of the Cuban governor. As for Don Juan
de Cabrera, he had no inclination to give the information. To turn the
subject, he said after a short pause--
"Well then, friend Diego, if thou comest not with us, what is it thou
hast a mind to? Something nobler, I trust, than wood-cutting, as
though thou wert born a boor in a German forest rather than a Spanish
nobleman."
"I feel little inclined to boast just now of my Spanish birthright, I
can tell thee," said Montoro heavily. "But to answer thy question--Ay;
I have other plans on hand than my present employment. I accompany Las
Casas on his progress of pacification through the island, and we hope
great things from our efforts, both for the natives and the colony."
Cabrera's shoulders went up in a slight shrug, almost in spite of
himself.
"It is to be hoped that you and the clerigo have picked your associates
carefully for your peaceful expedition," he said, with a touch of
scorn. "Otherwise I fear me there may chance some rubs to your tender
consciences ere it is accomplished."
"Little danger," answered Montoro, confidently, adding with a smile,
"for we have, as you say, chosen our companions with due thought. You
see, we have not invited you."
Juan de Cabrera laughed.
"Thanks for the compliment, my friend. I would a hundred-fold rather
be found guilty of too much impetuosity, than of a calm, cold-blooded
calculation."
The smile died out of Montoro's face as he now exclaimed hotly--
"It is easy at all times for men to sneer at right and justice, and to
clothe evil with grand words. In Spain our impetuosity has been a sword
in the hand of honour; why is it here a weapon that would be disdained
even by the paid tool of an assassin? But there, Juan, I but waste my
breath on thee. This is no true impetuosity, no true impulsive daring,
that robs and massacres the harmless peoples of these lands; but rather
is it the base, despicable, grovelling fruit of cold-blooded reckonings
of ounces of gold against lives. By heaven, I--"
"There, there, Toro," interrupted the light-hearted cavalier, with
unusual quietness of manner, "do not spend thy eloquence upon an
unworthy mortal like me. And for thy solace learn that, although
methinks thou and the clerigo draw the line too fine, I loathe some of
our doings out here well-nigh as greatly as thou canst do thyself. But
adios, for my party will be starting on the Hatuey hunt without me if I
do not hasten."
So saying, the gay adventurer departed with an air as jaunty as though
he were bound for one of the Court tournaments of Spain, to be rewarded
by winning kingly smiles and his lady's scarf. And shortly after his
friend Montoro de Diego, with Las Casas, departed on their Cuban tour,
accompanied by a number of armed followers, who were intended, by
their formidable appearance, to ensure unbroken peace, not to win it
after battle. But unhappily Juan de Cabrera's prognostications proved
truer than Diego's hopes.
"Well, comrade," said a soldier to a companion at the evening halt of
the first day's march; "well, comrade, thou hast then recovered health
and strength in time to have another try for fortune; at any rate for
such flimsy fragments as our present soft-hearted leaders will permit
us to accept. For my part, I had fain that I had been rather sent off
after the rebel Cacique. There will be more pickings to be gathered
up there I doubt, than we shall be able to find baskets for in this
direction. But as for saving souls--"
"As for saving souls," interrupted the man addressed in a deep,
fierce tone; "as for that matter, Guzman, we will save our own souls
by clearing God's earth of these vile, idol-serving vermin. Joshua
was sent forth of old, as Father Gonzalo saith, to rid the world of
the heathen, and so have we the like mission now. And for one Andrea
Botello will obey."
Guzman stared.
"My faith, Botello, let not the noble Señor Diego hear thee speak thus,
or thou wilt most assuredly get ordered back to the settlement again!"
But Botello's eyes blazed with a yet fiercer fire, and his brow grew
blacker, as he muttered:
"Against those who have a mission from on high, man's orders avail
nought. The commands to slay and destroy, and leave not one remaining,
have come to me from authority, supreme e'en over the Governor
Velasquez himself. Speak not to me of orders!"
"Nay, then, that will I not," murmured Guzman to himself, as he went
off to more cheerful companions. "I will spend no more words on thee,
friend Botello," he continued in soliloquy, "so long as it appears that
the remnants of thy late fever are yet burning in thy veins. It might
chance thou wouldst find thou hadst an order to stick thy poniard into
me."
A few minutes later the prudent soldier was consulting with some
friends, whether a warning hint respecting Botello's aspirations should
not be given to their priest commander.
"But say, then," laughed another, "what need to trouble the good
clerigo for nought? What can one man's moody fancies do of harm, with
so many against him on the other side?"
"Umph, no," said another, somewhat less confidently; "_if_ all the rest
are on the other side; but one fanatic can make an army of disciples,
if his feelings be but strong enough."
"Just so," was the off-hand reply. "If they be strong enough, but not
if they be the half-delirious fancies of a sick man, who ought still to
be in his bed at St. Jago yonder, instead of travelling with us. But
come on, let's hurry up to that party of redskins over there; they seem
well laden, and for my part I prefer to dine on their providing than on
my own, or that of our commanders. They treat us better."
The whole of the little expedition, including Las Casas and Montoro,
appeared to be of the same way of thinking, to judge by the way the
hospitable and kind-hearted Indians were soon surrounded. Whether owing
to the absence of newspapers and telegrams in those days, or to the
hopes of the poor inhabitants of the New World that kindness would
gain kindness, at any rate in their own case, cannot now be said; but
while the refugee Cacique, who had fled from the barbarities of the
Spaniards on his own island, was being hunted down in one part of Cuba,
in another the gentle, courteous natives were treating their invaders
with the most true-hearted friendliness.
"They must, verily, be worse than the tigers of the forests who harm
these simple creatures!" exclaimed Montoro one day, as a number of
Indians hastened to the new encampment with the farewell offerings
of fruit, rice, cooked food, and various little presents as tokens
of peace and good-will, accepting smiles for thanks with inborn
graciousness.
Las Casas smiled at his friend's ardour.
"I feel now," he said joyously, "that I can afford to smile, for all
things here are going forward as I would wish. The natives are learning
that there are at least some amongst the white men who have a knowledge
of right and wrong. And for these with us, Montoro, thinkest thou not
that they have begun to find it pleasant to continue in well-doing, and
to awaken smiles instead of tears? For myself, I do hope so, I confess."
"And I," assented Montoro earnestly. "I do believe, my father, that
thy noble example has reaped at length the good fruit it has so long
merited."
The two friends passed on, nor marked a pallid-faced, fierce-eyed man,
who had stood near them, and now muttered between his teeth, gazing
after the clerigo:
"Tremble, thou Saul, who wouldst spare Agag, and the chief of the
spoil, when thou shouldst destroy! Guard thyself, lest the vengeance
that falls upon the enemies of the Cross encompass thee also, as were
meet."
CHAPTER XX.
_THE MASSACRE AT CAONAO._
Some weeks had passed, and all had hitherto gone well, when one day,
on arriving at the suburbs of the native town of Caonao, Las Casas
announced it to be his intention to remain there two or three days,
making it the limit of his present expedition, and then to return to
the head-quarters of Velasquez, with the report of their doings and
adventures.
"Meantime," he said, with the cheerful good-humour proper to his nature
when at ease for others--"meantime we will make holiday for the next
forty-eight hours."
"And," said Diego smiling, "thanks to our good red brothers here, we
can also give our holiday its proper accompaniment of feasting."
"Just so," agreed Las Casas, with an answering smile. "I confess the
truth; it was the sight of the abundant supplies of all kinds with
which we are provided, that led me to resolve on marking this terminus
of our pleasant expedition with something of the nature of a festival.
Gather the men for me, Diego, some into the surrounding houses, the
remainder may well encamp out here in these gardens, fit for Paradise
itself."
"And for yourself, father?" asked Montoro. "Are you bent on other
explorations?"
"Not very distant ones," was the bright answer. "I am but about to
explore yon temple, and endeavour to use my stammering tongue for God's
glory with its inmates. They may now better believe, I trust, that we
come as bearers of a message of mercy."
"Truly I hope so," replied Montoro, as he nodded the brief adieu to his
friend, and then turned quickly to execute the duties committed to him.
In thus hastily turning, he almost knocked over a man who, unobserved,
had silently moved up close to the two chiefs of the party, until he
stood almost shoulder to shoulder with de Diego.
Diego was about to administer a sharp and haughty reproof to the
presumptuous intruder on the society of his superiors, but a second
look at his companion checked the words on his lips; and he stood a
listener instead of a speaker, as the man uttered, through drawn lips
that scarcely moved, a wild denunciation of the Amorites, the Hivites,
the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Gergashites, and the
Jebusites.
Those who hear of the matter now may feel tempted to smile, but there
was no smile on the countenance of the young nobleman, no feeling of
mirth in his heart, as he stood facing the mad fanatic. The man's eyes
were fixed in a glassy stare that saw nought then visible; and his
eager, bloodthirsty curses against those he denounced as the enemies of
God, and of his Christ, made Montoro's blood run cold.
"Friend," he began at last--"friend, rouse thyself. Recall thy
scattered thoughts. Those enemies of God's people, and daring breakers
of His laws, have perished for their iniquities more than two thousand
years ago. What priestly tales from the Holy Scriptures have been
startling thy ears of late?"
"He hath been ill, at death's door with malarious fever, but a few
days before joining this expedition, Señor," answered another of the
soldiers coming forward now, and hastily putting his hand on his
comrade's arm, as though to draw him away, but at the same time with an
air of secret warning which, at another time, would not have escaped
the keen eyes of the young officer. Now, however, Montoro was anxious
to get the clerigo's wishes carried out before his return on the scene,
and he was more intent on taking a view of the ground around him, as to
its capabilities for comfortable encampment, than in noting the actions
of individuals.
"See," he said kindly, but somewhat absently, "yonder come our kind
Indian friends with supplies of water; doubtless thy comrade is
suffering from thirst. Go forward with him, and see that his wants are
well attended to."
The man bowed, and quickly pulled his companion on to hinder the word
answer he seemed about to give.
"Thou art a very fool, Botello," he muttered angrily, when out of
earshot of Diego. "Of what good to rouse us up to help fulfil thy
purpose, when thy blabbing lips must go well-nigh to betray it, to
the one of all others most keen to hinder it. The clerigo hath some
thoughts to spare from his red lambs to his own comfortable living,
but this Señor Diego carrieth the vile heathen on his back to his own
greatest detriment. Verily, methinks he would far sooner have that
sword of thine pierce him than one of them."
Botello turned, with those dull-burning, sullen eyes of his fixed upon
his friend.
"If it is thus with him," he said between his clenched teeth, "then
will he receive due punishment in witnessing the slaughter of those he
thus dares to cherish. But come, the hour has arrived, and the victims."
And suddenly, with a wild cry, he dashed forward towards a group of
some hundreds of defenceless Indians--men, women, and children--laden
with fruits, and jars of water for their Spanish guests. Snatching his
sword from its sheath it flashed for a few moments in the sun, as he
brandished it on high, and then, with a madman's howl, he plunged it
into the bodies of an infant and its mother who was advancing with a
timid smile to offer drink to the thirsty travellers.
Tearing the reeking weapon from his first quivering victims he rushed
on over them, dealing death and wounds frantically around him. For some
moments he was alone in his dread activity. The Indians were spellbound
with the dismal horror. Even his own fellows were awe-struck with the
impetus of the hideous onslaught.
But quickly the scene changed. In his fatal career the wretched madman
cut down the beloved young squaw of a tall and unusually powerful
Indian, before he could fling himself before her as a cover. Baffled
of his loving effort he threw himself upon the Spaniard, utterly
regardless, in his despairing fury, of the blood-dripping sword.
Snapping it with his hands as though it had been a thread from his
native cotton plants, he tossed away the pieces, and then, with those
sinewy, disengaged fingers, throttled his antagonist, and cast the dead
body of the wretched Botello beside that of the murdered Indian.
The red man's ferocious shout of triumph was the signal for answering
shouts of fury from the Spaniards. They had looked on while innocent
and gentle women and children were ruthlessly slaughtered, but the
sight of one of their own number slain was one that aroused all their
fiercest feelings of revenge, and ere it could be well said that they
had had time for thought swords and daggers were flashing in the light,
the fair, flower-bestrewn earth was streaming with blood, and mangled
bodies of dead and dying creatures, some still clasping their simple
offerings, that pleaded for good-will, in their stiffening hands, were
piled in awful heaps around the camping ground.
To this drear, sickening sight Montoro de Diego rushed forward as he
saw the tumult that was raging. Guzman, one of the few who remained
faithful to his leader's trust in him, flew to the temple to summon Las
Casas. The redskins' friend was just issuing from the building when
his follower reached it, breathless with haste, pallid with horror, and
bespattered with gore from the pitiful victims who had been falling in
wholesale crowds around him. The countenance of the clerigo turned pale
also as he caught sight of the panting soldier.
"What is it?" he exclaimed. "Our brethren--what of them? Is it a
massacre?"
Guzman nodded. He could not speak; one word he managed to gasp
out--"Go." For a massacre it was indeed, though not of the nature
imagined by Las Casas; not a massacre perpetrated by ignorant heathen
of those from whom they had scarce ever received ought but wrong, but
a massacre barbarously committed by Christians on those from whom they
had received nought but kindness and submissive respect. But Las Casas
waited not to learn more from his breathless retainer. He saw the wild
tumult surging in the distance; he heard the confused roar of mingled
shrieks, shouts, yells, and groans; and whatever was going forward that
concerned his company his place was in their midst, to die with them if
their rescue were no longer possible.
In a moment of time this decision had darted through his brain, and the
next instant he was flying over the ground that intervened between the
temple of Caonao, and the open plain where the deadliest of the uproar
was in awful progress.
Two or three huts of less pretensions than the houses in the town were
scattered here and there. Close to the fighting, dying, struggling
multitudes stood one of these wooden buildings somewhat larger than the
rest. In it a number of the hospitable Indian women had been gathered,
a few minutes since, cooking and preparing food for their cruel
invaders. Now a panic-stricken, shrieking rabble of both sexes and all
ages was dashing into it, Indians pursued by Spaniards--Indians, as Las
Casas perceived at the first horror-stricken glance, with nothing but
crushed fruits and flowers in their hands, or wounded infants moaning
in their arms, Spaniards with blood-dropping, crimsoned swords. Then he
knew all. A groan of bitterest anguish burst from his lips--
"Oh, my God!"
The words were a prayer, an abject prayer to the Most High for mercy.
Had the earth at that moment opened her black jaws and swallowed up
every Spaniard present, had fire from heaven licked them up and carried
them to hell, Las Casas would have felt no wonder. He wondered more
that an all-powerful God should spare.
One moment he gave to that groan, one moment to that prayer, and
then, throwing himself in the doorway of the hut, he dashed aside a
half-frenzied soldier who was entering in pursuit of the wretched
fugitives, and uttered a mighty, furious shout:
"Back, Spaniards, back, you dastardly mean hounds, every one of you,
or run your swords thus hallowed with the blood of the innocents into
your leader's body. I invite you to it, fiends every one of you rather
than men, that I may the more speedily close mine eyes for ever on this
scene fit only for the shades of hell."
Then he looked into the hut upon the huddled flock of trembling,
weeping, wounded human sheep. Some had climbed, for refuge from their
bloodthirsty pursuers, to the rafters of the roof, and hung there, with
their wild eyes gleaming, through their long black hair, down upon
events below, and their white teeth chattering for fear.
The sudden appearance of Las Casas upon the spot, and the change of
his usual mild demeanour to one of such haughty, biting indignation,
had created a temporary, rapid lull about the spot where he stood. A
permanent arrest of the massacre in that direction, he all too fondly
believed, and so he began to soothe and reassure the poor creatures
gathered together for death within the walls of that humble little
dwelling. Some few words of comfort in their own language he knew,
and spoke most eagerly, but the deep sympathy of his countenance, his
pitying eyes, spoke still more eloquently, and above all, his fame had
come before him even here, as a father and friend of the helpless.
Gradually some put back the hair from their faces and ventured to look
around them, mothers loosened their convulsive grasp of their children,
and the climbers on the rafters swung themselves down to the ground
again. But even Las Casas could see that all was not yet achieved
for the restoration of peace. At a few hundred yards' distance the
horrible, shameful work of slaughter still continued, and once more
quitting the hut and its defenceless multitude, Bartholomew Las Casas
dashed onwards to repeat his efforts at arresting the wholesale murder
of defenceless men, helpless women, the aged and the infant.
"Oh, Montoro!" he ejaculated as to himself, as he neared this fresh
scene of horror. "Alas! Montoro de Diego, where canst thou have been to
allow such things!"
A voice from beside his feet answered him--"I am here, my friend.
Disabled at the first moment. But do not heed me. Hasten to save what
poor remnant there may yet remain of these unhappy victims."
Las Casas looked at his half fainting friend, then at the dreadful
_mêlée_ beyond, and with a hurried--"I will return immediately," he ran
on, and a second time hurled his furious commands at his followers to
cease their cowardly slaughter of their helpless prey.
A second time the leader's voice and the leader's presence cowed the
Spaniards back to order--momentarily. From the rear where the hut
lay there suddenly broke upon the air wilder shrieks and yells than
had been heard before. Deep oaths and curses of Spanish throats were
mingled with the shrill Indian cries, and off darted the soldiers
gathered about Las Casas to join their other comrades. They were like
so many score of bloodhounds, with the taste for blood so aroused
that it could no more be satisfied. Not again could the friend of
the Indians reach the doorway of that hut until it had become a
charnel-house, so crammed with the dead and dying, that the stoutest
heart might turn away from the ghastly task of learning if there were
yet any, amongst those heaps of mangled bodies, to whom it might be
possible to speak last words of pity.
There had been five hundred living human beings crowded into that
building when Las Casas left it ten minutes ago, now there lay there
five hundred mangled bodies lying in crimson pools, some already stiff
and stark, some writhing in the death agonies, none ever to see the sun
in this world again, or to learn on earth that the religion called the
Christian faith, which those white intruders came to spread, was not
the religion of a demon more vile than any their untaught imaginings
had ever dared portray.
A poor mother's despairing wail over her mortally wounded child, had
been the slight spark needed to rekindle the blind rage of the Spanish
soldiers. A soldier had held a crucifix before the infant's dying eyes,
and the mother, fearing fresh cruelties, had wildly dashed it from the
man's hand. That was more than provocation enough for gold-seekers
who salved their greed for wealth and fame with the plea, that their
journeyings were to widen the limits of Christ's kingdom.
Scarcely had the crucifix fallen to the ground ere the murdered woman
fell beside it. Many a dead body had the man to move the following day
ere he recovered the treasured symbol of an immortal love. All that
night the leader of the expedition knelt, alone, in prayer.
All that night Montoro de Diego lay praying, faint and weak from loss
of blood, shed at the commencement of the hideous fray in the vain
effort to arrest the massacre. Never, so long as Montoro lived, did he
hear the name of the little town of Caonao without a shudder, never
did he remember the sounds of those women's wails, the sounds of those
children's cries of dying agony, without a moan escaping his own lips,
and a shivering horror overwhelming him that such things should have
been.
One day for a day of burial, and then, in a solemn hush as though a
funeral _cortége_, or a train of vanquished fugitives, the expedition
formed again for marching, and retraced its steps to St. Jago. Montoro
made one attempt to cheer his friend, but the soothing words were
hurriedly put aside.
"Nay, nay, Diego. Speak not to me of comfort in our shame and bitter
affliction. I came forth confident in my own strength, in my own power
to rule man and to guide those under me in the ways of peace, and the
Lord of Hosts has thus humbled my presumptuousness in the dust. Speak
not to me of comfort; there is none save in prayer."
CHAPTER XXI.
_THE PATRIOT CACIQUE HATUEY._
The march back to the Cuban seat of government was made more rapidly
than the march out had been. Then, all had been gaiety and brightness.
A band of picked men under a favourite and joyous-natured leader, peace
and good-will for their motto, and friendly natives hovering ever
around them as they journeyed, to turn each day into one of pleasant
feastings.
Now the leader had but stern, grief-stricken eyes to turn upon
those under his command, and the men walked on bowed with a sense
of well-merited disgrace. Few and far between were the offerings
made to them now, and those were bestowed with trembling hands, and
countenances marked by abject terror. None of the circumstances of the
homeward way tempted the explorers to linger.
But full as was the generous-hearted Montoro's cup of sorrow, it was
not yet so full but that it was to be called upon to hold more, even to
overflowing.
The shadows of the marching men were beginning to lengthen as they
moved along, as though the shades had learnt the art of deception with
each hour of the growing day, and wished to startle the whole race of
earth's crawlers, beetles, snakes, worms, and their fellows, with the
semblance of an oncoming race of giants. The air was full of humming
insects, quivering heat, and the rich scent of leaves and flowers.
The Spaniards stepped onwards slowly. They were near the end of their
journey now, and their eyes were tired with gazing at that
"Landscape winking through the heat."
A hot shimmer over all things, such as Tennyson had never seen when he
wrote a line which almost makes one feel warm even on a cold winter's
day.
Montoro was feeling depressed and weary, and sentiments of gladness and
regret were pretty equally mingled in his breast as he saw the various
roofs close before him of the newly-founded town of St. Jago. But
personal sorrow cannot be indulged by leaders.
"Put your best feet forward, my friends," cried Bartholomew Las
Casas at this moment. However bitterly he might grieve over recent
occurrences, there was still sufficient of the spirit of the commander
in him to rebel against the notion of reappearing before Velasquez,
Cortes, and the rest of their fellow-adventurers, like a company of
whipped dogs; but he need not have troubled himself, for an event was
taking place at that hour in St. Jago that absorbed all interests.
Hatuey, the Cacique of Hispaniola--Hatuey, the noble, untutored
patriot--had been taken prisoner whilst fighting his last battles
for freedom and his country, and Hatuey was adjudged to suffer as a
rebel! He was to be made an example of, so the Governor declared--to be
the scarecrow to frighten all others of his race and the surrounding
nations from daring to perform one of the most sacred duties of
mankind. The Spaniards acknowledged it to be so for themselves;
but then--Hatuey was a heathen, and had refused to be forced into
Christianity at the point of the sword.
Las Casas, Montoro, and their followers were close to the town when
Montoro de Diego was suddenly almost thrown to the ground by an Indian
woman, who flung herself before him with a wild, heart-rending cry, and
clasped his knees convulsively.
Already Diego had become known on the island as a friend of the
friendless, an eager helper of the helpless, and this poor, despairing
creature had been on the look-out for him, during the past hours of
that day, with a gnawing agony of longing that had made the hours seem
like weeks. He was her last hope, and now, catching sight of him, she
flew forward with a wildness of look and manner that made those around
believe her to be mad.
And in truth the favourite wife of Hatuey was well-nigh frantic with
dread and horror at the threatened fate of the one she loved.
Las Casas and the whole of the small band of warriors drew around
as she poured forth her lamentable tale, with groans and sighs and
streaming tears, and the countenances of the two leaders glowed with
deepening indignation as they listened. At length Montoro lifted
himself up with flashing eyes, and turning to his friend exclaimed
passionately--
"It seems that we Spaniards are bent on accumulating sins upon our
heads, until the measure of Heaven's wrath shall be attained. Give me
your permission that I leave you now on the instant, and hasten to
avert at any rate this threatened iniquity."
"If it be possible, with the grace of God," murmured Las Casas; but
Montoro had hastened away with the Indian woman before the words were
uttered, and was already on his road to the Governor's house. The
others followed.
"What! returned, my very esteemed friend Diego?" exclaimed the laughing
voice of Juan de Cabrera from the verandah of the Governor's residence
as the other approached.
Montoro sprang forward more quickly.
"Well met, Cabrera," he cried, in tones so stern that their ordinary
melody was lost; "well met, for thou canst tell me where I may most
wisely seek the Governor."
"That can I," was the reply more seriously, "or rather, I can tell thee
where thou mayest seek him and find him; but as to the wisdom of the
search, verily that is another matter. For my part, I am thankful to
maintain my present distance between myself and him just now. And if
you are prudent you will remain with me, and ask no further questions."
Montoro strode forward still more hastily, and his face paled with
emotion as he asked huskily--
"Toy not with me, Juan. Thou canst not surely mean that yon diabolical
act of which this woman speaks is already in progress?"
Cabrera bowed, murmuring at the same time--
"Ah! then thou hast heard. I would have spared thee."
Montoro shook himself wrathfully.
"Exert thyself to spare the deeds, not the hearing of them after. Where
is the spot that is to be made foul for ever by this crime?"
Cabrera raised his hand, and pointed.
"But, Diego, stay with me. Spare thyself a needless agony. Wert thou
eloquent as the archangel Gabriel himself thou wouldst avail nought to
turn Velasquez from his present purpose."
Diego was already going off to the place indicated, but he turned back
a moment.
"I am not purposing to use my words on Velasquez, but on his prisoner.
This poor creature tells me that Hatuey is offered life on one
condition. It shall be my office as a humble suppliant to implore him
to accept it."
So saying, with a sign to the weeping Indian woman, he darted off
with a fiery speed that gave the poor creature at least the comfort
of feeling that she had one with her who sympathized with her hapless
misery. They were not long in reaching their destination.
Scattered groups of men and women, chiefly Indians, they came up
with first, and then there was a dense crowd around a central space
occupied by the Governor, a small group of counsellors, and a tall and
noble-looking Indian, so still, so silent, so immovably calm of face,
that he seemed rather a life-like statue of a Stoic than a human being.
Yet more central still was a great stake surrounded by a pile of
faggots, beside which stood two Indian slaves, who were to feel the
bitterest sting of slavery in doing to death their champion.
Had Hatuey been a slave, and assigned this post, he would have joined
the victim at the stake rather than perform it; but all are not thus
noble-minded. Life is sweet, even with floggings, or rather, death
has terrors for all men, excepting such as are steeled by doggedness,
or for such as are sustained by the hidden strength from on high, a
strength to which the Cacique may now have owed his courageous calm,
although his Christian murderers scorned him as a heathen.
But his poor, heart-stricken squaw felt no courage, no grand sentiments
of resignation, as she caught sight of her chief and husband being
now dragged towards the giant pile, and saw the ropes which were to
bind his body to the stake. With a piercing cry she tore a way for
herself through that dense circle of pitiless Spanish warriors, and
cast herself at Hatuey's feet uttering dry gasping moans worse to hear
than any weeping. Montoro de Diego followed her through the crowd, and
strode up to Velasquez.
"Señor!" he exclaimed, in a voice that vibrated to the depths of
many a callous heart of even those hardened listeners by whom he was
surrounded; "Señor, already are we as so many Cains in this land;
pause ere you give Satan yet another plea against us in the courts
above. Lay upon me what burden or what fine you will, and let me ransom
yon grand example to all patriots. Give me his life, that the heathen
may learn that Spaniards prize true greatness."
He came to a pause in his rapid speech from breathlessness, and then
for the first time gave himself full opportunity to notice his hearer's
face.
Cynicism and contemptuous indignation were united in the Governor's
expression, but there was no hope to be read there for the success of
Montoro's prayer.
There was a sarcastic sharpness in Velasquez' voice as he replied--
"Methinks, Señor Diego, you take somewhat too much upon yourself. I
trust to teach Spaniards, and the heathen too, to prize true greatness,
in the person of one who knows how to punish those who dare to set
themselves in defiance to his country. For the rest, ill news travels
apace, and we have heard of the brave doings of your _peaceful_
expedition at Caonao. It were a pity that ere you hastened to the
rescue of one man you did not spare those hundreds."
"I would have laid down my own life to do so," was the low, hurried
answer. "But do not add to my remorse by refusal of this petition."
Velasquez turned himself about to his officers with a scornful laugh,
exclaiming--
"Verily, my Señors, 'petition' he calls his demand, backed up by
threats of Heaven's thunderbolts for refusal. Humility and arrogance
could not well be more perfectly combined."
The great man's laugh was subserviently echoed by some throats, whilst
some other of the faces showed shame, or indifference to the spectacle
before them.
Montoro de Diego stood yet for some moments gazing with deep, solemn
eyes at the Governor. Years before, his father had pleaded for a life
with the Inquisitor, Arbues de Epila, and vainly, and had left a true
prophecy behind him when he left. So now the son. Turning his eyes
slowly from one to another of the group, and then of the wide circle,
Montoro raised his hand and cried aloud--
"As that man stands there doomed most basely to a barbarous and cruel
death, so may many standing here now, at no long distant date, know
what it is to await a horrible death at the pitiless hand of savages."
"He is offered mercy if he will become a Christian," suddenly said the
Governor with some change of tone, and an involuntary shudder at the
horrible mental pictures conjured up by the denunciation.
Montoro started. Yes; he had forgotten that. He had forgotten there was
yet a hope, and that it was to that he had intended to cling when he
accompanied the Indian woman to the scene of judgment. Wasting neither
time nor words on ceremony, he turned his back on the Governor, and
followed the woman to the edge of the faggot-pile, in the centre of
which Hatuey stood, already bound to the stake, and utterly calm as
ever, excepting when his eyes seemed constrained to rest upon the
sobbing woman at his feet.
The priest, Father Olmedo, now stood beside him, exhorting him to
change his faith and save his soul. But the admonitions were as though
spoken to the wind, for all the heed the Cacique appeared to pay.
[Illustration: The priest, Father Olmedo, now stood beside him,
exhorting him to change his faith and save his soul. But the
admonitions were as though spoken to the wind for all the heed the
Cacique appeared to pay.]
"It is useless," said Father Olmedo at last. "I have done all I can
for mercy's sake, and for the glory of our most holy faith, but he is
obstinate and irreclaimable. He will not hearken to me. He will not be
saved. Slaves, light the pile."
The Indians raised their torches, a thrill ran through the assembled
multitude, the crouching woman sprang to her feet with a piercing
shriek, flinging her arms above her head, and Montoro sprang forward,
shouting in stentorian tones to the faggot-lighters,
"Hold!"
There was a moment's pause. Some gleam of thankfulness began to come
into the executioners' eyes. The woman dropped her arms to clasp
her hands with renewed hope and entreaty. A shade of half-impatient
curiosity gathered on the Cacique's face. He had betrayed no agitation
at impending death, but this reprieve troubled him. And it was only a
reprieve.
The passionate earnestness of Montoro did touch some answering chord in
the Indian's breast which the priest had not known how to reach, and,
but for that swift-flying news from Caonao, Hatuey might have consented
to look forward to the Paradise which Montoro painted in such glowing
colours. But, as he listened with some signs of yielding on his face,
recollections crowded back upon his mind, and suddenly turning full to
Montoro, he asked with startling abruptness--
"But tell me then, assure me of this. There are two of these abodes of
bliss, are there?--two of these glorious, sunlit homes of paradise?"
Diego's eyes widened with wonder. So earnest, so eager were the tone
and manner of the questioner as he put his singular query, that the
answer was not at once forthcoming. He repeated it impatiently.
"Tell me then, and truly, if one of the white-faces knows how to speak
the truth--has this gracious Lord of whom you speak provided one
Paradise for those of your race, another for His children here? I would
know that before I hear ought else, or give my answer to your plea."
Yet again Montoro paused an instant, and then he replied slowly and
distinctly--
"They shall be one fold under one Shepherd. Spaniards and Indians who
have been good, and loved their Lord, will live there together in love."
As that last word was uttered the Cacique drew himself up to his full
height once more, and with curling lip exclaimed--
"In love, you say! Ah! in love such as that which murdered my people in
Haiti, and drove me from my home! In love such as that which has hunted
me to death, and will look on now to note exultingly if my tortured
body writhes! In love such as that which has slain the hundreds of the
innocent and the helpless at Caonao! The love of the wild cat or of the
rattle-snake! I spurn your love! I hate your love! and will none of
your Lord nor of your Paradise. Our gods teach us not such love. Light
your fires quickly. I welcome your faggots and their flames. I long to
escape from the sight of the faces of the dastard white men to my own
heaven, where nought so vile as a Spaniard can ever hope to enter."
Montoro fell back stunned from before the dark face working with mortal
hatred. Stumbling against the woman, who once again lay moaning on the
ground, he stooped to raise her, and the next moment he himself, with
his swooning charge, was dragged back from the lighted pile, and forced
by friendly hands to the outside of the wide circle; while Hatuey, the
heathen patriot, was burnt to death by Spaniards claiming to do all
things "for the glory of the Christian faith."
"And thus," murmured Las Casas as he withdrew, sick-hearted, from the
dismal scene,--"thus do they let the light of the Gospel shine, even
with a lurid light that makes it to be abhorred."
"As I abhor this land," groaned Montoro. "I have fled from the horrors
of Hispaniola, and now I am driven forth once more to find, if it be
possible, a land where I may dare without shame to confess myself a
Spaniard."
CHAPTER XXII.
_ANOTHER STORM FOR THE PILOT ALAMINOS._
It was the 18th day of February, 1519, an eventful day for many a one
besides Montoro de Diego.
The sun was sparkling on the wavelets in the bay, and on the sails of
the little fleet riding at anchor in the harbour of the so-called town
of Cape St. Vincent, at the westerly extremity of the island of Cuba.
The brilliant rays of that southern sun were also shining on an eager
assemblage of possibly nine hundred men, who considered themselves
quite sufficient for the conquering of great nations.
Dark native faces with smooth cheeks and chins, and surrounded by
lank black hair, showed conspicuously amongst the greater numbers of
their Spanish comrades. Guns, crossbows, gleaming armour, and a small,
precious little troop of sixteen hardly-acquired horses, were also
gathered there on the strand awaiting embarkation. And over all waved
the great banner of black velvet with its embroiderings of gold.
Many of those stern great Spanish eyes were raised with devout gaze to
its crimson cross, set in flames of azure and white, and to its Latin
motto:--
"Friends, let us follow the cross; and under this sign, if we have
faith, we shall conquer."
Once, as Montoro de Diego lifted his glance to those words, he quietly
clasped his hands in silent prayer. But the action had not been secret
enough to escape the observation of that scoffing, sharp-sighted Juan
de Cabrera, and he muttered flippantly--
"Nay then, comrade, lower your looks a little. There yonder is the sign
I follow, and so long as we all hold together and have faith in that,
never you fear but we'll conquer, if even that gay-gilt red and black
thing should fall overboard."
Instinctively Montoro followed the direction of his companions glance
towards the "sign" indicated--a man about his own age, slightly above
middle height, and singularly handsome, both in face and figure.
His complexion was pale, and his large dark eyes gave an expression
of gravity to a countenance otherwise indicating cheerfulness. His
figure was slender, but his chest deep, his shoulders broad, his
frame muscular and well-proportioned, presenting a union of agility
and vigour that qualified him to excel in fencing, horsemanship, and
the other generous exercises of chivalry, and to bear with well-known
indifference any amount of toil and privation.
This strikingly handsome form and countenance were further set off with
all the advantages of rich, well-studied dress, and a few magnificent
ornaments of great value. All combined to mark the frank, gay-hearted
soldier, the cool, resolute, calculating man, born to command, and
determined to be obeyed.
Such was Hernando Cortes, the commander of this present expedition
to the mainland of America, which was destined to be so memorable
for those engaged in it, and for the world. And such as he was, he
possessed the almost unbounded love and confidence, not only of Juan
de Cabrera, but of all those now enlisted under his standard. Officers
and privates, any or all of them, would have cheerfully laid down their
lives for him.
Nevertheless, with some few of them the Cross came first. Gold, renown,
adventure, excitement for themselves, honour for their leader, but
above all, triumph for the Cross; and so ready ears hearkened to him as
he stood there, splendid in hope and beauty and strength, radiant in
the clear morning light, and exclaimed--
"My brothers, we are entering on an enterprise that shall make our
names famous to after-ages. We go from this tiny bay as the conquerors
of nations vaster than our own country, and fit to be the gardens of
Paradise. I hold out to you a glorious prize, but it is to be won by
incessant toil. Great things are achieved only by great exertions,
and glory was never the reward of sloth. If I have laboured hard, and
staked my all on this undertaking, it is for the love of that renown
which is the noblest recompense of man. But if any among you covet
riches more, be but true to me as I will be true to you, and I will
make you masters of such as our countrymen have never dreamed of. You
are few in number, but strong in resolution; and, if this does not
falter, doubt not but that the Almighty, who has never deserted the
Spaniard in his contest with the infidel, will shield you, though
encompassed by a cloud of enemies; for your cause is a just cause, and
you are to fight under the banner of the Cross."[3]
[Footnote 3: 'Hist. Conquest of Mexico,' Prescott.]
"God grant," murmured Diego, "that that sign of Divine love may wave
over scenes less dismal in our future conquests, than it has done in
the past."
But with the exception of the good priest, Father Bartolomé de Olmedo,
none were in a humour to pay attention to the sigh. The spirited
speech of the general had set all the chords of ambition, avarice,
and religious zeal vibrating, and the whole force was burning with
impatience to set out, without a moment's loss of time, on the promised
career of triumphant conquest. Solemn mass was forthwith celebrated by
the two priests accompanying the expedition, the fleet was placed under
the immediate protection of St. Peter, the commander's patron saint,
and, weighing anchor, it took its departure for the coast of Yucatan.
A glorious day for Spain, as men count glory, was that February day of
1519, but so black a day for the unhappy native kingdoms of America
that one learns, almost with a thrill of thankfulness, that it was not
to be all sunshine for the ruthless conquerors. Bright weather gave
place to hurricanes, and the ships were scattered in every direction
in that unknown sea. Only on board the general's own ship was a pilot
who could pretend to any accurate knowledge of those storm-tossed
waters, and even he looked grave, that old Antonio de Alaminos, who had
acted as pilot to the great Columbus in his last voyage in 1502, and
who regarded the fact as the greatest glory of his chequered life.
In the height of the tempest a voice beside his elbow, a voice
singularly clear and sweet even for that Spanish tongue, said calmly,
and with no shade of anxiety in the tones--
"Thinkest thou, Alaminos, that we shall live out the storm?"
The old pilot turned, and cast a hasty glance at the speaker's face. It
was one worth looking at--a noble face, with the stamp of uprightness
on the brow, and a perfect peacefulness in the eyes, even at that
moment when Death's lean claws seemed already to have the cranky ship
in his clutch, and to be dragging it, and its helpless living freight,
into the vortex of those whirlpool depths.
That first swift glance Alaminos repeated with a longer one--one that
had a sudden question in it, and a puzzled memory. At last he asked
quickly--
"Have you been on board this vessel, captain, since we cast off from
St. Jago? Have I seen you, or heard you speak, during the past few
days?"
"Never a word of speech hast thou heard from my lips until now, since
I enrolled myself under the banner of Hernan Cortes," was the answer,
with a passing smile.
"And I have only since yesterday been chosen to form one of the company
on board this ship. Nevertheless, thou hast seen me before, good
Alaminos, and heard my voice, and then," with another of those fleeting
smiles, "thou wast pleased to give me good words in return, as also did
our great and grand old Admiral."
Again that keen, swift, puzzled glance from the old pilot's eyes, ere
he passed his sleeve over them, to get rid of the sudden tribute they
paid to the memory of that same grand old Admiral who had died nearly
thirteen years ago. Montoro blinked his own eyelids for a moment before
he added--
"Ay, Antonio, it is now within a couple of months of seventeen long
years since a lean-cheeked, ignorant boy stole up to thy side one day
in these same waters, and asked thee for the first time that question:
'Thinkest thou that we shall live out this storm?'"
"And as then, so now," answered Antonio de Alaminos, with wondering
recollection, "the storm begins to fall to calm, even as the words are
spoken. Your eyes, Señor, and your voice are the same as then; is the
fearless, holy faith the same that made that wise, noble boy so calm
and brave in the face of death? or--doth the man but mock his boyhood
by the repetition of those words?"
The privileged old pilot put his queries sturdily, and backed them with
one of those clear, searching glances that had the faculty of reading
men as cleverly as shores, shoals, and quicksands. But the heart of
Montoro de Diego had little to hide; the flush that burnt in the
bronzed cheeks was the flush of humility, not shame, as he replied in
tones so lowered as scarcely to be audible against the wind--
"The man is, I fear, no wiser, no nobler, than the boy could claim to
be, but he does hold fast to his boyhood's one little bit of wisdom, in
clinging to the fount of all wisdom and salvation."
"Salvation!" exclaimed a voice close at hand from one who had come
forward unobserved, and had caught the last word; "ay, indeed, this
lull hath been our salvation, I verily believe. Thanks be to St.
Peter for his guardianship. I vow the first handful of gold-dust to
his shrine, if we ride safely at anchor off the shores of Cozumel by
nightfall."
So spoke Hernando Cortes, and as he spoke he laid his hand with
friendly familiarity on Montoro's shoulder.
"Dost recollect, Diego," he said, smiling, "how I prevailed upon thee,
now six years ago, to be one of Velasquez' followers in the conquest of
Cuba? Little we thought then of the time to come, when thou shouldst be
a follower of mine for a far greater enterprise."
Montoro's face reflected his companion's smile as he replied--
"Perhaps it were best to beware of boasting until we are beyond
Velasquez' reach."
Cortes laughed outright.
"Ah ah! how sorely he repents him already, the poor Governor, that he
gave me this command. Verily, Montoro, I think I owe you as many thanks
as myself for getting away from Cuba before his messengers could stop
us. You are the quickest, readiest fellow I ever saw."
"In flight," exclaimed Juan de Cabrera, sauntering up, and with a
mischievous nod of his head. "Will he be as good, think you, captain,
at a fight?"
"Stand forth and learn," cried Montoro, as he drew his sword, and
flashed it in his friend's face with a suddenness which made that
worthy start back against the vessel's side.
Montoro and Cortes joined in a shout of laughter.
"Well, my friend," said Cortes, "thou hast well earned thy answer and
received it."
For once the temper of the easy-going cavalier seemed somewhat ruffled
as he growled out--
"The beggar brats in the streets of Madrid can be ready enough in their
onslaughts on defenceless foes. They are as swift another way when an
officer of justice shows his face."
Montoro de Diego restored his sword to its sheath, and stepped up to
the angry knight with outstretched hand.
"Forgive my jest, Don Juan," he said with a smile. "You should do so
the more easily, inasmuch as you must remember that I did but turn your
own against yourself. I have little fear that when need comes either
you or I will be found wanting in due bravery."
"And I have still less," added Cortes. "Meantime I confess that I
should turn coward, did I find my best friends drawing on me."
Thus cleverly did the Commander of the present bold enterprise heal
any little remnant of soreness that might have rankled in the breast of
one of his retainers.
With enemies of his own countrymen behind him, and a nation likely to
prove filled with formidable foes before him, Hernando Cortes felt
anxious enough to have good fellowship reigning in his camp.
"How else," he said a little later on to Montoro, between jest and
earnest--"how else, friend Diego, thinkest thou that I shall be able to
obtain for our gracious and royal master those 'comfortable presents of
gold, pearls, and precious stones,' which are required of us, as proofs
of the natives' good-will and the success of our expedition?"
Montoro shrugged his shoulders with some haughty impatience.
"Methinks, Captain, with our countrymen now-a-days it is gold before
all things. If possible, no doubt, gold and glory both; but if not,
gold at any rate, even with disgrace."
This time it was the handsome face of the Commander that flushed hotly.
"Diego, you use hard words."
"But just ones," was the firm reply; "although I apply them not to you.
Left free to the dictates of your own noble nature, I shall not fear
the having bound myself to follow you. But"--with a look around, and
in lower tones--"there are those in your band may be too strong for
you--those whose one article of faith for themselves is, 'I believe in
the delights of wealth!' whose one article of belief for the natives of
these regions is, 'Beggar yourselves for us, and you shall be saved as
future footstools for our feet in heaven. Do otherwise, and you shall
be slaughtered here and damned hereafter.' Am I not right?"
For answer Cortes imitated his companion's shrug of the shoulders.
"But I promise you this," he added--"I will make an example of the very
first who transgress."
"Thanks for the assurance," said the other.
And then, a disabled barque coming in sight, Cortes went off to give
orders as to aiding it to gain the port of Cozumel.
CHAPTER XXIII.
_A SYMBOL WITH TWO MEANINGS._
"Captain," said Juan de Cabrera some few hours after his momentary
disagreement with Montoro, and now once more with a smiling
countenance. "See, Captain Cortes, I have but stepped forward to remind
you that St. Peter hath well earned that handful of gold-dust, you
vowed a while since to his shrine. And if you will be advised, you will
entrust the gift, with an added pinch or two, to me."
Don Juan de Cabrera had inherited a good fortune from his father, who
had been killed during the siege of Zarento in 1501, under the great
Captain Gonsalvo. Cabrera was a child at that date; and by the time he
was old enough to understand the use of wealth, and to wish to have the
spending of some of that he had been brought up to believe he should
enjoy, his mother and other guardians had so wasted the greater part,
that they were glad to try if they could banish disappointment by
filling his brain with other thoughts.
In those days of wonderful and incessant discovery, all ranks were
tempted from time to time to try a turn of Fortune's wheel. Even the
rich and prosperous frequently left luxury and friends and home, for
many a long year, behind them, while they wandered about the world,
seeking they scarcely knew what--change and variety, it might be,
perhaps--change from slothful ease to the novel sensation of vigorous
discomfort. And that they certainly obtained.
But however that might be, when his mother and his uncles and his
confessor talked of the glorious voyagings, and journeyings, being
now enjoyed by so many of his countrymen, the young Cabrera caught at
the bait eagerly enough, and had very soon started off to make a new
fortune for himself.
That fortune, however, was as far away from his hands now as when he
set out to find it! But he took things easily, and looked bright enough
as he stood there, with his laughing face, before Hernando Cortes,
offering himself as gold-bearer to the shrine.
But Cortes was in no humour for a joke.
"I will get my handful of gold for St. Peter from St. Peter's
namesake," he said sternly, and with his large brilliant eyes fixed on
the glum, crestfallen Pedro de Alvarado, captain of one of the vessels,
who had contrived to reach the shores of the island of Cozumel before
the Captain-General of the expedition.
"And if you make such use of Fortune's favours in the future," said
Hernando Cortes still more sternly, "it will prove a bad day for you,
my worthy Señor, when you came under my command."
"What has he done?" muttered Cabrera to Diego, who was standing by with
a wrathful countenance.
"Done!" was the retort. "Why, done like the rest of our Spanish
wolves--spent the first hours of his arrival here in showing the
natives what good thieves we make."
"Ay, verily," added the good Father Bartolomé de Olmedo. "And he hath
added blows and beatings, doubtless, that the lesson may be the better
remembered."
"Or," muttered that Juan de Cabrera beneath his breath, "to make some
amends by those gifts for what he hath taken away."
But Señor Juan took some care that his companions should neither hear
the words, nor see their author's smile at his own small witticism. He
turned away from the groups collected together on the shore, and set
off for a short walk inland.
"Whither away there?" questioned a voice behind him a few moments later.
Montoro and the priest had followed him.
"My son," said Father Olmedo, "methinks lonely saunters may be scarcely
wise in a strange land at any time; but to indulge them now, when Pedro
de Alvarado hath so angered and terrified the people, is too imprudent,
I should have thought, even for thy careless courage."
"Say rather, for my careless indifference, father," said the young man
with a touch of honest reverence for once. "I can lay no claim just now
to brave fearlessness. I had even forgotten there was aught to fear.
But see, who goes yonder?"
The three men stopped, as three other men, all Indians, passed them at
a light run. One turned a few yards ahead and nodded gaily to Montoro.
"Why, Diego," exclaimed Cabrera in surprise, "surely that is thy man
Melchorejo, whom thou hast had so many years?"
"Ay," was the reply, "even from his childhood, when I bound up his
wounded hand for him. My slight deed of kindness hath reaped a rich
reward since then."
"So it seems," rejoined the other, "if it is to be crowned by
desertion, so soon as he has the fair chance of return to his own home."
"But it is not to be so crowned," answered Montoro quietly. "At any
rate not now. He has but gone with those poor Indians just taken
prisoners by Alvarado, to restore them to their friends."
"And to act as our interpreter from Hernando Cortes," added Olmedo; "to
assure the Indians of his good-will towards them, and earnest desire
for the maintenance of peace."
"And behold!--behold its emblem," suddenly cried Cabrera with an
unusual expression of wondering awe upon his face.
And before his companions could question him, he had sprung forward
and flung himself on his knees on the ground, with hands raised in
adoration.
"What hast thou?" called Father Olmedo eagerly, and for the moment
standing still in his amazement.
"What hast thou found?" called also Montoro de Diego equally bewildered.
And then the two hastened onwards a few paces; in their turn caught
sight of some most unexpected object, and also in their turn sprang to
their companion's side. One instant the eyes of the priest met those of
the Spanish nobleman with an expression of deep rapture in them, and
then Bartolomé de Olmedo was about to sink down on his knees beside
Cabrera. But his purpose was arrested.
"Do it not, my father," hastily murmured Montoro. And clutching at the
priest's arm he drew him sharply back to stand beside himself, where he
remained gazing down at a stone cross about three feet high, erected in
the outer court of a small temple they had reached.
The priest looked round at him for a moment reproachfully. The next
a sort of mingled fear and horror showed themselves growing in his
countenance. And he wrenched himself free from the detaining hand.
"Art thou a renegade from the most Holy Faith?" he asked in stern and
heart-grieved tones.
"Not so," was the short and absent-minded answer, while eyes and
thoughts were still equally fixed, it was very evident, upon that cross.
Father Olmedo was greatly puzzled, but very doubtful, he hardly knew
of which--whether of his suspicions, or of Diego. In his turn laying a
hand on the other's arm, he said impatiently--
"Rouse thyself, my son, and answer me like a man, and, if it may be,
the Blessed Virgin grant it, like a true son of the Church--"
"Which I am."
"May the saints grant it, I have said."
"Why, father, I would vouch for that grave Toro's allegiance to Holy
Mother Church with my life!" cried Juan de Cabrera springing to his
feet to take part in the question.
There was a scarcely perceptible pause, and then Cabrera added--
"Why do you doubt him, my father?"
Montoro answered the question with quiet gravity.
"Because I hindered him from an act which, although innocent from its
ignorance, I feared that his conscience would regret. I have prevented
the father from paying adoration to the God of rain."
"What?" shouted Cabrera, retreating from the cross as if he had been
stung, but at the same time staring at it with all his might.
"What?" repeated the priest with equal wonder, but more soberly.
"What can be the reading of your strange riddle, my son?" he asked in
amazement. "You stay me from the due reverence I would have hastened
to pay to this most blessed symbol of our faith, and then you tell
us--verily, my brain is perplexed--I know not what it is thou wouldst
say!"
"I would say only that I have said," was the earnest answer.
"Marvellous as it must appear to you, my father, marvellous as even yet
it appears to me, it is nevertheless true, that the symbol, to us so
sacred as the Christian symbol of salvation, is to these poor heathen
people of this world the symbol of the God of rain."
"Umph," muttered Cabrera, eyeing the cross somewhat ruefully. "Father,
I ever have so many penances lying upon my shoulders; shall I have yet
another for having thus knelt in worship to a heathen god, and will it
be a heavy one?"
"I were fain to say 'Yes' for thy levity," came the reply.
"Levity, i' faith!" ejaculated the young Spaniard. "My question arose
from no careless merriment, I can assure you. But if I draw not a long
face, like Toro yonder, with each word I say, I am ever twitted with my
levity."
He turned away in one of his short-lived huffs, while the priest looked
at him with no unkindly smile, and said more freely--
"Nay then, my son, pardon me. I do believe that now thou art something
wounded in thy spirit, as I myself by now had likewise been, but for
the ready thought and hand of our good friend here."
"Good to you, bad to me," retorted Cabrera. "If he could not speak in
time to spare me the sin, and mortification, of bowing down to an idol
he might have held his peace, and not thus have proclaimed my shame."
"Shame, nonsense," said Montoro good-humouredly. "In my boyhood, when
I first came out here under the great Admiral, I and others paid
loving reverence to our Saviour before one of these native crosses.
And doubtless, He who sees the hearts of men accepted our prayers and
praises, for the spirit with which they were offered."
Cabrera's superstitious fears seemed somewhat relieved.
"What sayest thou, father?" he asked.
Father Olmedo paused a few moments. He was a good and merciful man, and
a good priest; but his training had cramped his intellect, and he could
not quite as readily as Diego grasp at true and noble thoughts. Until
now he had felt almost as horrified as the worshipper himself, that
Christian prayers should have been offered up at an idol's feet. But
Cabrera was impatient.
"Say, father, do you also think that I have placed my soul in no
jeopardy?"
Bartolomé de Olmedo must reply.
"Thy soul in jeopardy?" he repeated hastily. "Nay, then, nay; there
is here no question of thy soul, my son, seeing thou didst it but in
ignorance; and for those who sin in ignorance our Lord hath said the
stripes shall be few."
"But still, then, there will be those few," muttered the young
Spaniard, eyeing the small cross vindictively, before he turned back to
Montoro with the reproachful query--
"Diego, thou couldst stop the father from kneeling to false gods, why
wert thou too careful of thy breath to spare me a word of warning?"
Montoro smiled at his unreasonable companion.
"Well thou knowest, Juan, or at any rate can guess, that I saw neither
the cross, nor thine intention to do it reverence. The trees hid it
from our view."
"And the waters of yon stream shall henceforth hide it from the view of
all," exclaimed the discomfited disciple of Rome, as he stooped, and
prepared to exert all his strength in uprooting it from its present
position. But the politic priest stopped him.
"Hold!" he exclaimed quickly. And then more tranquilly: "My son, we
will leave the sacred symbol of our faith standing where'er we meet
with it. Only, cleansing it from its past unhallowed memories, we will
reconsecrate it to Him who died thereon. Our conversion of the heathen
shall thus be rendered easier, by seeing that we also reverence the
cross."
Cabrera looked doubtful for a few moments.
"Dost thou not think, father, that, whatever thou mayst do to these
crosses, they will still remain to the redskins their god of rain; and
that, whatever thou mayst try to teach them, and they may profess, it
will be still as the god of rain they will worship them?"
"So I should fear," murmured Montoro thoughtfully.
But the priest said sententiously--
"My son, those questions are for the blessed saints, and the pope."
CHAPTER XXIV.
_KINDRED FEELING._
"He shall be hung; I have said it."
And Hernan Cortes looked very much indeed at that moment as if he had
said it.
"As if he had said the whole band of us should be hung," muttered that
incorrigible Juan de Cabrera. After a moment's pause he added, "Toro,
my brother."
"Thy brother!" exclaimed a companion standing by. "Thy very reverend,
great, great-grandfather, thou shouldst say."
"Doubtless," returned the other calmly; "but still my brother in arms,
so do not interrupt thy betters, Rodrigo, but hearken. My brother Toro,
dost thou not feel thankful that there is no rope in the camp strong
enough to hang us all at one go?"
Montoro lifted his proud head high.
"If I were a thief I should be glad," he said slowly, and with a
significance little relished by not a few of those about him.
Some of them sauntered off to the neighbourhood of less strict censors.
Cabrera laughed. Thieving propensities were not amongst the long list
of his faults. But he looked grave again as he said--
"After all, though, it is hard lines upon that unlucky dog Morla,
that he should have to be the one to do duty--hanging for the rest of
the culprits. A flogging now, or some such penance as that, you know,
that--that--"
"That should leave him little the worse after it is over, you would
say," said Montoro.
"Just so," was the slow reply, as the young adventurer thought upon
some of his own penances in the way of heavy fines, which decidedly did
leave him a good deal the worse in pocket, at any rate, whatever might
be the case as to person. "But to be hung! That was another thing."
"What was it that Morla stole from the black beggars?" asked Ordaz, who
had but just returned with a couple of escorts from a short exploring
expedition, during which various little bits of gold had somehow or
other found their way into the pockets of himself and his companions.
Ordaz mechanically put up his hand to his neck as he spoke, as though
feeling beforehand the sensation of a rope about it. He had angered
Cortes very greatly but a few weeks since, by standing up boldly for
what he declared to be the rights of Velasquez, the Governor of Cuba,
in regard to the present undertaking. On that occasion he had the
pleasure of passing twenty-four hours on board one of the ships in
irons. There was no knowing whether this resolute, prompt commander
might not treat him to something worse now, and so his anxious
question--
"What was it that Morla stole?"
Cabrera noticed both the involuntary action and the tone of voice, and
answered both with a mischievous--
"Ah, my noble Ordaz, hast heard that the commander thinks of
overhauling all our possessions, to see how much each of us has that
may help to drown us, if hanging cords run short. Instead of feeling
that long neck of thine, thou hadst better learn the Indian art of
diving. Morla is to swing for stealing a couple of fowls, thou art
as like to sleep beneath the waves for thy golden borrowings. So to
confession with thee at once, like a good Catholic."
"Who talks of good Catholics," exclaimed Don Pedro de Alvarado, coming
hurriedly up to the group as the men stood gossiping. "There is as good
a fighting man, as ever drew sword upon the enemies of Spain, going to
be sent full gallop into purgatory just for wringing the necks of a
bird or two."
"Or rather," corrected Montoro, "for wringing the fingers of those who
held them, is perchance nearer to the truth."
"Well, well," said Alvarado, "put it as you will, most noble and
virtuous Señor Diego; but I know this, that the man is a first-rate
soldier, and our numbers are small enough already."
"Ay, and if they need diminishing," assented Cabrera, "the redskins are
like enough to do us a favour that way when they get the chance, if the
horrible air hereabouts do not do it first. Besides, poor Morla hath
made restitution."
"Hath he so?" asked Montoro with a more relenting accent in his voice.
"I feared that he had killed the owners of the fowls. Otherwise--I do
lament his heavy punishment."
"Thou art in earnest?" said Alvarado eagerly, and stepping nearer to
the last speaker, who looked hurt as well as surprised.
"Surely I am in earnest. Why canst thou doubt it, Alvarado?"
"Well," was the rather hesitating answer, "to tell truth, Diego,
I thought thou hadst of late years given so much pity to our
adversaries--"
"Our adversaries!" interrupted Montoro indignantly. "Callest thou these
poor, simple, hospitable peoples of this New World our adversaries?
That were, verily, to add mockery to our many barbarities." There was
a brief, angry pause before Montoro recovered himself, and said more
gently--"But there, Don Pedro, I meant not thus to break in upon thy
speech. I crave pardon. Thou wouldst have said that I give too much
pity to the Indians to have ought to spare for my own brethren?"
"Even so," came the blunt reply.
"And even so it is not," was the answer back. "And I will prove it, by
attempting anything thou mayest suggest, for the rescue of this man
Morla from his impending fate. What wouldst thou?"
"First to grasp thee by the hand for a true good comrade," was the
impulsive reply. "And then--"
"Well, and then? Fear not to tell me thy will," said Montoro more
warmly and cordially. "You see, I stand pledged now to help you."
"Yes, I see--I know," said the other stammering, and turning his eyes
somewhat cautiously from side to side. At last he muttered quickly in
an undertone--"Diego, there are here too many quick-eared listeners; I
will seek you in your tent an hour hence. The man is not to die till
nightfall."
CHAPTER XXV.
_MONTORO DE DIEGO TURNS HANGMAN._
A good deal within the hour Pedro de Alvarado stepped into Montoro's
tent, and with somewhat scant ceremony; for, Spaniard though he was, he
felt ceremony and strict punctuality also somewhat out of the reckoning
where a man's life was concerned.
Besides, he had just seen Morla sitting bound upon the ground between
two guardians, and with the rope beside him, with which he was to be
hung so soon as the priest should have been fetched back to the camp to
confess him. And the poor wretch had appealed to his superior with a
mixture of pitifulness and indignation.
"Ah, Captain! save me from this dismal fate. You should, in very
justice you should, for you contented not yourself with stealing skin
and bone done up in feathers. And yet you came off with no punishment
at all."
"Thou impudent fellow!" exclaimed Alvarado. "Callest thou a furious
rebuke before the whole force, and accompanied with threats too,
nothing? Thinkest thou that thy beggarly life is worth a Spanish
noble's honour?"
Morla was in no great haste to answer this peremptory question; but at
last he grumbled out--
"If one has not the honour, I suppose, then, one may at least value the
life; and I call it hard lines to lose all one's got."
A grim laugh was the reply to this undeniable statement.
"Well, well, fellow, maybe there I can agree with thee. And yet more;
know that I have already given thee more of my thoughts than thou
shouldst venture to expect."
The man's eyes brightened.
"Ah! and I am not to be hung after all, thou wouldst say, my Captain?"
"After all, I would say that thou art to be hung," was the curt retort,
and with it Pedro de Alvarado turned short round, and went his way. But
before he did so he had managed to cast a warning, significant glance
at the condemned culprit, which gave the poor fellow comfort in spite
of the sinister words, and the brutal laugh of his guardians.
The Captain betook himself, as has been said, at once to Montoro's
tent, and was greeted instantly with a ready alacrity that proved time
and reflection had not cooled his promise.
"Now, Captain, what wouldst thou?"
Don Pedro had marched in quickly enough, but his tongue seemed
unwilling to second the agility of his feet. He paused so long ere
speaking, that Montoro said at last, between jest and earnest--
"Perhaps, Captain, your suggestion is that I should substitute my own
neck for that of the poor culprit, Morla?"
"And if it were," was the reply, "I verily believe that you would
accept it. At any rate, you would accept it as easily as that which I
am about to make; that--that--"
"Well!" rather impatiently.
Alvarado made a dash at it.
"I want you to beg the post of hangman."
Montoro started back with a cry of horror. It was bad enough to him to
kill men in fair fight, but to destroy a fellow-creature in cold blood
was a thing too horrible to be thought of. He felt stunned, and it was
not until his companion had broken into a short, smothered laugh that
he could recall his scattered senses.
"Why, Diego," muttered Don Pedro, "you could not look more
horror-struck if I had asked you to murder the man, instead of only--"
"Don't, don't," gasped Montoro. "To me, hanging the man would be like
murdering him."
"Doubtless. But I intend not that you should do either, if you please."
Montoro began to breathe more freely, but also to look somewhat angry.
"Don Pedro, this is no time for speaking in riddles, to my thinking."
"Nor to mine either," replied the Captain, with a half-smile. "But to
tell you the truth, I am a trifle afraid of you, friend Diego, and I
well know that my present proposition must be somewhat unpalatable. But
mark you, I only wish that you should request the post of hangman on
the present occasion, and not that you should fulfil the duties of the
office, when you have it, to its usual end."
"Oh--h--h!" ejaculated Montoro now, with a new light of comprehension
beginning to dawn on his face. "But yet," he added, after a moment's
pause, "although I am willing enough to plead for mercy in this
instance, I fear greatly that I shall sue in vain. Cortes is so
resolved on making an example of some one."
"I know that. That is why I only ask you to be appointed executioner,
and not to plead for pardon. The wretches to whom the office is now
given have a personal spite against their comrade, and will take good
care that the fatal decree be carried out to the very letter--that he
be hanged by the neck until he be dead. Now I propose that you hang
him."
"Hold, hold," exclaimed Montoro once more, with a half-smile upon his
face, it is true, but a return of horrified disgust also. "You said I
was not to have any hanging to do."
"Well, well," was the answer, "not hanging till any one hung be dead,
or even choked. But surely, to save a fellow-creature's life, you will
not refuse to put a rope round his neck, will you?"
"Umph!" muttered Montoro, dismally. He did not at all like the
alternative. "I would really rather that some one should put the rope
round mine. But, by the bye, why do not you ask Cortes to let you have
this new kind of honour yourself, pray? Why am I, of all people, to
seek it?"
Alvarado lifted his dark eyebrows significantly enough.
"You know the answer, I dare swear, to your own question, Diego. To
whom but yourself would our worthy commander be likely to grant such
a favour, think you? He knows your feeling for the Indians, and may
credit your willingness to avenge them; but for the rest of us--Ah!
thou knowest."
Pedro de Alvarado was right enough. Hernan Cortes gave the desired
order to Montoro to replace the executioners already appointed, and at
the same time he declared very positively that he would have given it
to no one else. Secretly, he was intensely astonished and disgusted
with his friend for having asked the favour.
"Every man with a hobby is sure to ride it to death," he muttered
angrily to Montejo. "Morla must hang, to win us the trust and good-will
of the Indians for the present, that our progress towards Mexico be not
further hindered or harassed. But to think of a Spaniard longing to
kill a Spaniard, for the sake of a parcel of redskins! Faugh! Our Don
Diego hath fallen a hundred-fold in our estimation."
That same poor Don Diego felt, foolishly enough, as if he had fallen a
hundred-fold in his own estimation when he actually stood beside the
condemned culprit, Morla, with the hangman's rope in his hand.
The order obtained, Alvarado had lost no time in hurrying his friend
with him to the proposed scene of execution. They were joined on their
way by Juan de Cabrera, carrying an empty tub, at sight of which
Montoro actually shuddered, to the evident amusement of his companions,
who burst into shouts of laughter. He remonstrated impatiently.
"How can you find amusement in what perchance may turn out a tragedy?"
"Tragedy, indeed," exclaimed Cabrera, laughing as heartily as ever.
"That element is passed, my well-beloved but too long-faced friend. The
comedy is to be played now."
"And thy tub yonder represents stage properties," laughed Alvarado.
"The carrying of it becomes thee as would the carrying of a Damascus
blade."
"Beware that I break not thy head with it, by way of proving it hath
use as well as ornament to boast," was the retort of the light-hearted
knight, who ever seemed ready to dance, whether to fun or fighting.
The surly fellows who were guarding the soldier, Morla, were very
loth to give up their trust, and it was not until they had received a
particularly sharp hint from Don Pedro that their own past, present,
and future delinquencies should be visited with the heaviest possible
punishments if they did not preserve themselves from his displeasure,
that they at length obeyed his commands to betake themselves out of
sight and hearing.
"And now, sirrah," said Cabrera, jauntily, "may it please thee to stand
up and be hung; for, as doubtless thou canst perceive, the noble Don
Montoro de Diego is in haste to be quit of that rough rope, and of his
task."
The man thus adjured began to rise from the ground, but still somewhat
slowly, and with a dubious countenance. His reluctance grew greater
when he saw it reflected on the amateur hangman's face.
"But, my good Señors," he began anxiously, "I thought that surely now
you signified I should be released?"
"Yes," said Montoro, with equal anxiety; "verily I think that this play
hath continued long enough; too long for yon fellow's apprehensions and
my distress. What is to be the end?"
"Why, his hanging," replied Cabrera, quickly. "To that thou art pledged
to the commander; therefore proceed to thy task, and for the sake of
that very tender conscience of thine ask no further questions. Ten
minutes hence thou wilt have light enough to see our plot by. It is
very simple."
So saying, he placed his tub on the ground beneath the gallows, and
with a solemn shake of the head at the prisoner, desired him to kneel
upon it, and to pray that all things might go well with him. To this
piece of advice poor Morla paid the greatest heed, as he felt Montoro's
trembling fingers adjusting that horrible rope about his neck.
"Ah, Señor, not too tight," he muttered, even yet thinking it more
than probable that his noble countrymen might really hang him, in
inadvertence, if not in sport.
But they had no such intention. The next minute he felt the tub very
slowly and gently drawn from beneath him; his feet naturally went
downwards to the ground, which they managed just to touch by the toes,
and there he stood, not comfortably certainly, but still not dead--most
decidedly not.
"And there thou art to stay, upon the gallows--"
"Or under it," interrupted Cabrera.
"'Upon' was the commander's word," was the sedate answer. "It best
becomes us to keep to that. There thou art to stay upon the gallows
for the space of half-an-hour, and then be cut down, and thy body cast
outside the camp. But hearken, thou Morla; if I find thy body not
again within the camp, ten minutes later, I will find thee a further
punishment as a deserter. Don Juan de Cabrera hath consented to hide
thee in his tent awhile."
At the expiration of a rather short half-hour, a very tired, toe-aching
Morla was accordingly cut down, and Montoro returned to his tent,
thankful enough that his good repute had enabled him to save a
fellow-Spaniard's life, but also not a little relieved that the
unpleasant farce was over, and his new office of hangman come to an end
with sunset.
CHAPTER XXVI.
_CORTES BURNS HIS SHIPS._
It was night, and sleep reigned throughout the camp of the Spaniards,
for the new city of Villa Rica de Vera Cruz could as yet be considered
little better than a camp, in spite of its grand-sounding name, and the
crowd of duly-appointed officers with which Cortes had endeavoured to
give it sudden dignity.
Even the sentinels were drowsy at their posts, and scarcely feared
rebuke, for peace had prevailed both within and without for some
days past, at any rate on the surface of events, and Cortes had been
indulging in a short breathing space.
Montoro de Diego was in his tent, asleep like his comrades, dreaming of
his boyhood, and of the gentle-spirited and lovely young mother who had
made poverty and hard usage endurable to him in the past, honour and
righteous dealing his firm principles in the present. But his dreams
were to be disturbed.
Slowly, and in almost breathless silence, a fold of his tent was pushed
aside, and a man crept within, holding back the canvas for a moment,
that by the faint light he might discover the object of his search.
Then he dropped it again, and moved on the two or three paces in the
darkness, until he dropped on his knees beside the low bed on which
Montoro lay, and bent his mouth to the sleeper's ear.
"My Señor--Señor Diego," he whispered urgently. "Rouse you, my Señor."
And, with a soldier's watchful spirit, Montoro needed no second bidding
to arouse him. Grasping his sword even before he was fully awake, he
would have sprung to his feet the next instant, with a shout to banish
slumber from the whole band, but that his probable conduct had been
divined, and prudently guarded against.
One firm, hard hand was pressed down upon the nobleman's chest, another
closely covered his mouth, while the hushed voice beside him muttered
hurriedly--
"Nay then, my Señor, nay then. Lie still, and be silent, or you will
render my care fruitless. I have come to you with the discovery I have
made, before all others, for your prudence's sake, and now you are
eager as the Don Juan de Cabrera himself could be, to publish the whole
matter to the very winds, methinks."
In spite of this expostulation, which was in truth intended more as
a warning than an expression of real belief, its speaker trustfully
enough withdrew both his detaining hands at its conclusion, and
permitted his companion to rise into a sitting posture on his bed, and
to speak.
"Who are you?" was the very natural first use that Montoro made of his
power of speech, for he did not recognize the voice, and he could not
see the face. However, he was soon enlightened so far.
"I am Morla, the man you hung," was the comprehensive information. "And
you were good to me then, my Señor," came the seemingly contradictory
statement; "and so for that, and for those other reasons, that you
are wise and wary, and have our Captain's confidence, I have come to
you with my discovery of a conspiracy in the camp. It is intended by
many to forsake the great cause, and, taking to the ships secretly,
to flee from this land to Cuba, or to Spain, with evil reports of the
expedition and of its leader, to exonerate themselves."
Montoro was startled.
"Wherefore," he demanded sternly, "hast thou not instantly carried news
of this base treachery to our leader himself?"
A smile, unseen in the darkness, flitted over the man's face.
"Bethink you, my Señor, what credence should I be likely to gain
from our commander, when he learns that I am, myself, a testimony of
disobedience to his commands."
There was some plausibility in that reasoning; nevertheless, he yielded
to Montoro's desire that he should accompany him forthwith to Cortes'
tent, to corroborate the statements he wished made.
Aroused by Diego with the same stealthy caution as had been used
towards himself, Cortes was not long in learning the particulars of
the cowardly conspiracy, and, even as he listened, his prompt mind had
already begun to concert the measures for its suppression.
"But still," he said at length, thoughtfully, "we must be well assured
of the truth of these accusations before we publish them, or attempt to
punish. From whom, Toro, hast thou learnt all this?"
Montoro moved aside.
"There is my informant, Captain, and--I fully trust him."
A lamp was burning in the commander's tent, or rather hut of
palm-branches and native cotton-mats, and as Montoro stepped to one
side a man, hitherto unnoticed behind him, came forward into its light,
and, falling on his knees before a small crucifix, called it to witness
that his tale was true.
Cortes looked at him closely for a few moments and then said drily--
"If it be but as true as that thou wast not hung, friend Morla, then
will it be true indeed."
"It had needs be truer than that, Hernan Cortes," returned Montoro:
"for he was hung, as I know to my cost, as I had the hanging of him.
And at the end of half-an-hour he was cut down, according to thy
orders."
"Ah! I see," exclaimed Cortes, with a glimmer of a smile. "And no doubt
our worthy Don Juan de Cabrera found it needful to give thee a lesson
in hanging, by which thou profitedst. Is it not so, friend Toro?"
Montoro laughed.
"Partly so. But, to confess the truth, Pedro de Alvarado declared that
if this Morla were hung to death he should, himself, evermore go about
the world feeling as though there were a cord about his own neck, only
waiting to be used."
That glimmer of a smile broadened for a moment, but the time was too
serious for its cherishing.
"Enough!" said Cortes, with returning gravity. "Rise, fellow, and come
nearer. And hearken! Should these charges prove true, well; if false,
then will I myself hang thee ere to-morrow's sunset, and thou hadst
best make thy peace with Heaven, for I warn thee thou wilt not live to
laugh at me as having 'prentice hands at my new work."
The man bowed calmly.
"Ere the morrow's sunset, Captain, I shall have your thanks and praises
for my promptness."
And Morla was right. He had gained his dark news from one of the
conspirators themselves, who had turned faint-hearted at the last
moment, and from this informer all further particulars were quickly
drawn. The conspiracy was quashed, Morla reinstated in a post of trust,
and the ringleaders punished with death, maiming, or degradation.
The executions had been accomplished, a miserable pilot lay moaning in
agony and despair over his footless limbs, others were endeavouring
to find some posture of ease for bodies torn and lacerated by
fiercely-wielded whips, and the commander of the expedition stood upon
the shore, moodily gazing out to sea. He felt those hours to be the
crisis in his fate.
A gloom was over the sky, the camp, and Cortes; and a spirit of
doubtfulness and disappointment seemed to be brooding in the atmosphere.
Alvarado, Gonzalo de Sandoval, Escalante, Juan de Cabrera, and Montoro,
gathered into a group not far from their leader, watched him, and
discussed the present position of affairs.
"The conspiracy is put down for the moment," said Alvarado gravely,
"but at any hour it may be rekindled so long as we stay inactive in
this unhealthy place. And some morning we may rise to find two thirds
of the small handful of our comrades gone, and no ships left with which
to effect our own escape."
"What would you say, Alvarado," said a voice suddenly,--"what would you
all say, in truth, if you did find yourselves thus with the means of
escape cut off--with no safety for us but in victory?"
Cortes had suddenly stepped up to them as his comrade and follower
had been speaking, and there was so strange a tone in his voice as he
put this question, so deep and burning a light glowing in the depths
of his eyes, that the little group of men stood as though breathless,
gazing at him, and waiting to hear more. The tension on their minds was
strained to the utmost.
Having asked his searching question, Hernan Cortes appeared for the
moment indifferent as to the answer. Folding his arms across his broad
and powerful chest, he once more turned, and gazed out across the
waters to where the ten vessels that composed his fleet rode quietly at
anchor. They looked well enough to the eye at any rate. And besides,
they signified to those few hundreds of men, encamped on that foreign
coast, home and life and liberty. While they had those ships to flee
to, they felt brave to dare and attempt much. But without those ships,
in an unknown world and surrounded by myriads of foes, their case would
indeed be desperate. And even so Cortes, in his far-seeing wisdom,
wished it should be. He turned back to his companions, and began
abruptly as before.
"Comrades, to many, doubtless to most of our brethren in arms, those
ships signify home and life and liberty, and yet--I wish you to aid me
in burning them."
Montoro and the others of the group gazed at him speechless for one
instant, and then cast startled glances around towards the distant camp.
"Yes," said Cortes, answering the looks, "most assuredly it is we who
should be burnt before the ships, if some of yon timorous or turbulent
spirits heard word prematurely of such intention. But nevertheless,
minute by minute, as I have stood here thinking, the conviction has
grown upon me that only in the burning of those ships lies victory for
us."
"Break down the bridge behind," muttered Juan de Cabrera, "and the mule
must go forward."
"Even so," was the reply. "We are few enough as it is for the glorious
enterprise on which we are embarked, and shall we allow base-minded
churls to force us back to the contempt and ridicule of those who, we
too well know, would store up scorning for us? No, no, my brethren,
my noble and valued friends and comrades, do you but stand by me
faithfully in the future, as you have done in the past, and we will cut
off the means of retreat that, for ourselves, we value not, and force
all to die with us, or to aid us in winning the splendid triumph that
shall shed a glory on us, to endure to the end of time."
He stood there glowing with his own magnificent enthusiasm, and his
hearers, carried with him beyond the dictates of a colder prudence,
exclaimed eagerly as though with one heart--
"Agreed. We are with you. Burn the ships, and go forward in the names
of thy patron saint and St. Jago."
CHAPTER XXVII.
_MONTORO LEADS A CHANT._
"The ships are burnt!" "Our ships are burnt!" resounded on all sides
from the Spanish troops rushing from their quarters in that new Villa
Rica de Vera Cruz.
Consternation, fear, and fury gave ever-increasing emphasis to that one
wild, startled shout, "Our ships are burnt!"
"Said I not well," muttered the discontented priest Father Juan Diaz,
instigator of the former conspiracy--"said I not well that this Cortes
was leading us like cattle, for his own renown, to be butchered in the
shambles!"
Even Father Olmedo, and Morla, and others of his stamp, eagerly
watching for opportunities to earn distinction, felt their hearts sink
heavily as they repeated that startled cry, "Our ships are burnt!"
For one half-hour it may have been that Hernando Cortes trembled, and
that his friends feared for him, and for themselves.
"But after all," said Juan de Cabrera, recovering his usual off-hand
carelessness, "one can but die once, and though, as you yourself said,
Captain, one would rather die at the hands of others than one's own
friends, or one's own countrymen, still, when the breath is once fairly
out of the body, I scarcely suppose one will care much what hand drove
it forth."
"That is true," replied Cortes, with a sudden return of his usual
resolute energy and undaunted bearing, and as another tumultuous
shout rent the air throughout the so-called town of Vera Cruz, the
Captain-General strode forth from his hut, and with stentorian tones
exclaimed to his mutinous followers--
"What means this uproar, comrades? If you have complaints to make, I am
here. Make them to me."
"Our ships are burnt, and by your orders," came the reply, but by no
means from all throats now, and from none so loudly as before. Some
were cowed in the actual presence of that resolute commander of theirs,
others were awed into admiration and fresh attachment by his dauntless
attitude.
Still, a certain number there were who yet reiterated that reproachful
cry, "Our ships are burnt!"
"Yes, comrades, it is true," exclaimed Cortes, in tones as loud and
resolute as before. "Our ships are burnt, but not before the foul
creatures of these seas had so eaten through them, that they had been
water coffins for any who had trusted their lives to them for the
voyage back to Spain; ay, or even to our new Santiago yonder. Those who
had gone on board them had gone to their death."
"And those who stay here stay to their death," called a harsh voice
from the midst of the crowd. "You might at least have given us our
choice."
"And so he has, coward," shouted Alvarado. "Stand forth and show
thyself, and any others of thy chattering-teethed brethren, and I will
gather the bundle of you in my arms as one gathers a bundle of cotton,
and fling the worthless bale on shipboard! Faugh! the Captain wants not
such as thou to help him on the road to glory and renown."
The tone of this tirade was more scathing in its contempt than even the
words, and a momentary hush followed it. None stood forth to accept the
untempting offer of its maker.
At length Cortes once again broke the silence. Distinctly, but slowly,
and more calmly than before he addressed his assembled army--
"What the Captain, Don Pedro de Alvarado, saith is true. For those who
chose flight there is still the means. I desire no unwilling comrades.
For me, I have chosen my part. I remain here so long as there is one
to bear me company. But for those who shrink from the dangers of our
glorious enterprise, let them go home, in God's name. There is still
one vessel left. Let them take that and return to Cuba. They can tell
there how they deserted their commander and their comrades, and then
patiently await us until our return with the Aztecs' spoils."[4]
[Footnote 4: 'Hist. Conquest of Mexico.'--Prescott.]
Cortes ceased, and for some moments there was a silence throughout
the small army, broken only by the humming of the insects and the
occasional clink of a sword. But Juan de Cabrera never felt much
reverence for silence.
"How now," he shouted mockingly, "how now, ye bold cravens! Where are
all your voices? Ye were brave enough a few minutes since. Come along
with you to the front. Or are ye, in very truth, turned too cowardly
even to confess your cowardice, ye miserable crew!"
It seemed so, for there was still no answer from even a single voice,
and Cortes wisely changed the question, and in a few moments the whole
air was resounding with the enthusiastic acclaim from every throat:
"To Mexico!--to Mexico! Lead on, Captain! Lead us on to Mexico!"
"All the same," muttered a sullen-browed soldier to Juan Diaz the
priest, who stood beside him--"all the same, father, you did say that
we should be traitors to ourselves if any longer we continued to follow
yon upstart."
"Hold thy peace, fool," returned the discontented ecclesiastic.
"Knowest thou not that for all things, even for revolt, a fitting time
is needful?"
And with that sententious remark the politic priest edged himself away
to safer neighbourhood, and resumed the cry as lustily as the truest
among Cortes' followers--
"To Mexico! Lead on to Mexico!"
Well satisfied with the change effected thus rapidly in his soldiers'
sentiments, the Commander suddenly resolved to give the new-born
enthusiasm a safe outlet, and at the same time to further one of his
own most solemnly-cherished purposes. He raised his hands to claim
silence once more, then his voice. But his efforts were vain. He had
roused a new uproar, which, though a joyous one, was universal, and
more difficult to allay. Threats to fly might be toned down by some
tinge of shame, but offers and entreaties to be allowed to fight needed
no restraint. The cry rang on and on unceasingly:
"To Mexico! Lead on to Mexico!"
"To Mexico indeed! To the depths of the sea with you rather, squalling
rabble that ye are," said Cortes at last impatiently. Turning to the
group of officers about him he added in comic despair: "Can no one
befriend me thus far?"
"How far?" asked Alvarado and Escalante together, and with some wonder.
"How far!" repeated the Captain in a tone of increasing irritation.
"Why, to the extent of ramming something down those screaming throats,
to stop this Babel, to be sure."
Juan de Cabrera gave a delighted leap.
"I have it. I'll set the dogs barking; that will drown them."
"Ay, and thy Captain also," ejaculated Cortes, breaking into a short
laugh in spite of himself. "Wilt thou never outgrow thy boyhood, thou
madcap Juan? Thinkest thou--"
But his remonstrance died away on his lips, and they curved into an
awe-struck smile. From a few feet behind him there arose the first
notes of a solemn chant--loud and strong as a battle-cry, sweet as the
tones of a silver bell.
Alone and unaided the glorious voice sang on for a few moments, and
then Father Olmedo's rich bass joined in, and Pedro de Alvarado's, then
the light tenors of Escalante and Cabrera, and the ringing voice of
Gonzalo de Sandoval.
For the space, perhaps, of a quarter of a minute the shouting soldiers
continued their cry through the chant, "To Mexico! to Mexico!" then,
with a startled sensation of thrilling wonder, the foremost ranks
caught the sweeter sounds, hushed their own discordant tones, paused,
and joined in.
"Hearken!" came the smothered ejaculation of the man Morla to Juan
Diaz, who had just come up to him. And Juan the priest gazed at him
with wide eyes, and then, accepting this new vent for his restlessness,
he too joined in with a tremendous vigour that soon let all ears, that
were not absolutely deaf, in the neighbourhood know what was going
forward.
By some unconscious impulse the rough company of Spanish adventurers
fell upon their knees, and still the solemn chant rose and fell, and
swelled again, on that new-found western shore of an idolatrous land,
to the glory of the one true God.
Cortes alone remained standing, alone remained mute, with his great,
vivacious eyes fixed intently upon the great, earnest ones of Montoro
de Diego. By his own fearlessness and iron will he had quelled the
mutinous mob, by the power of his voice and the power of his faith
Montoro de Diego had subdued it to a noble calm and peace.
The chant ceased; the prayer of Father Olmedo for safety from foes,
and unity amongst themselves, was ended, and rising to his feet again
Montoro asked in clear, loud tones, audible to all around--
"And now, our Captain, since we have consecrated ourselves anew to
brotherhood, what wouldst thou with us? Say on: we hearken."
"Then hear this, first of all," exclaimed the leader with generous
warmth, as he grasped his friend's hand, and clasped it between both
his own. "Hear this: that from my soul I thank thee for thy Christlike
fervour, which has thus taught thee to retune our hearts to reason
after their late frantic turmoil. And for the rest," he added after a
moment's interval, and more lightly, "Ay, for the rest, the remainder
of my speech must wait, for it is ill-rewarded toil haranguing hungry
listeners."
"Yea, verily," softly assented that irrepressible Cabrera. "And the
more so when the said hungry mortals, not to speak of the dogs, poor
starving brutes, can see their victuals waiting for their mouths."
The young cavalier was right, and many other sharp eyes besides his
own had caught sight already of the long train of Indians laden with
provisions. Pheasants, turkeys, roast and boiled, and very good
eating in their native land, even though they were not accompanied
with bread-sauce, and were seasoned with neither chestnuts nor
veal-stuffing. There were, however, plenty of fresh, sweet maize
cakes to eat with them, and enough vegetables to satisfy even a
German. Then, amongst the seasonable gifts were fish of all kinds,
dressed by those clever native cooks in many savoury ways; plantains,
bananas, pine-apples, purple grapes, and even sweet-meats of various
sorts made with the sugar of the agave. Beverages also were not
wanting, from the thick-frothed, rich, vanilla-flavoured chocolate and
cooling fruit-drinks, to the fermented juice of the Mexican aloe, the
intoxicating _pulque_.
Altogether the 'victuals awaiting mouths,' as Cabrera expressed it,
to put it more in accordance with circumstances, the feast awaiting
feasters, was of such quality and quantity as to make it quite as well,
perhaps, that Hernando Cortes decided to dispense with his followers'
attention for the present.
"To claim a patient hearing for a discourse, while those savoury meats
were cooling, really might prove too much for the forbearance of even
our good Father Olmedo himself," said Cortes smiling, as he linked his
arm within that of the priest, and led him off with him as a companion
at the dinner then being carried to his hut.
"'Twould be a deal too much for mine," said Alvarado, moving off in
another direction with his friends. "Here, thou Morla,--thou'rt a good
hand at looking after fowls, thou know'st,--just hasten yonder and pick
us out the plumpest and the fairest-cooked of those good-eating great
birds yonder, and thy good patron here, Don Montoro, will give thee due
thanks."
"For thy sake, Alvarado, or mine own?" asked Montoro, laughing.
The other shrugged his shoulders.
"I'll not quarrel with thee, my dear Toro, on that point, since thou
art very sure to permit me the lion's share of food as the reward of
victory, whether won or no."
"Of course he will," broke in Juan de Cabrera, "seeing that for himself
he will henceforth live upon an elegant but unsubstantial dietary of
air."
"Wherefore?"
"For this simple reason, that time will be wanting to him for any more
substantial meal. From this hour henceforth, even to the ending of
this campaign, I do authorize, empower, and appoint him to be chief
minstrel, on duty unrelieved, to the high and mighty Hernando Cortes,
Captain-General and Chief Justice of the magnificent Villa Rica de Vera
Cruz. The appointment is splendid, though somewhat empty of--"
"Like thy words--of wit," interrupted Alvarado. "Come, crackbrain, I
will allow thee almost as good a share as myself of the viands Morla
brings, to silence thy mouth for awhile, for verily thou art the prince
of sparrows for a chatterer."
"And also a black-crested cockatoo! Ah! I always did suppose myself a
marvel, now I know it."
And so laughing off the emotions produced by the recent great crisis
in the fate of their leader and his enterprise, the party of Spanish
officers sauntered off to their quarters, and were very soon pleasantly
engaged in doing ample justice to the good cheer provided so hospitably
by those whom they designated as 'their foes.'
CHAPTER XXVIII.
_THE GODS MUST AVENGE THEMSELVES._
The wooden platters, leaf baskets, and rough earthen bowls brought by
the Indians full of good things were not long in being emptied, and
then the Spaniards were at leisure once more to indulge in curiosity.
"What think you, father, was our captain about to say to us before the
wherewithal for a dinner was so seasonably provided?"
Morla looked anxious for the answer, for although he had caught the
infection of the late sudden outburst of enthusiasm, and had shouted
as lustily as any one--"To Mexico! to Mexico!" he had a bad foot at
the present time, and contemplated with very great apprehension the
prospect of a number of days' long marches. But Juan Diaz could give
him neither news nor consolation.
"Take a siesta," was the priest's advice. "I doubt not Cortes is doing
so himself. And when he hath fed well and slept well, he will perchance
think well to inform us of his lordly will, whether half-a-dozen or so
more of his betters are to be hanged, perhaps, to do him pleasure."
"Thou the first, for an ill-conditioned, surly knave that thou art,"
muttered Alvarado under his breath, as he came up in time to hear most
of the priest's speech. Passing a few yards farther on he raised his
voice, and summoned the little army once more to assemble without delay
to hear the proposed plan of future movements.
Within ten minutes the whole force had crowded up together around
Cortes, and in breathless silence awaited the coming news. The first
words were somewhat startling. They were a repetition of their own at
the outset of that morning's tumult.
"Comrades, our ships are burnt."
Then--a long, startling pause following startling words. Men turned
their heads slowly from side to side, and gazed into each others' eyes.
Were those words and the silence ominous of evil to come? of passionate
accusations or of dark forebodings? But before one could mutter these
and many another doubt to his fellow, the words were repeated, and the
short speech continued to its end.
"Our ships are burnt. Now we go to burn the heathen gods of this
benighted land. We are helpless in our own strength; in the power of
the one true God we are invincible. Let us invite His aid and mercy by
showing due honour to the most holy faith. We go, my comrades, to hurl
the idols from their altars to make way for the Blessed Mother, and
once for all to blot out human sacrifices from this polluted land, by
raising on high the cross of Him who has become the one sacrifice for
all mankind."
The short speech of Hernando Cortes was ended, and although it
contained no hint for any one there of gain, of gold, or glory, it
went home--straight home from the speaker's heart to the hearts of his
hearers.
Intensely ambitious, and burdened with many faults, was that dauntless
leader; wild, reckless, and cruel were many of his followers; but in
some strange way they held to the Christian faith as they knew it, and
were at any time willing to lay down their life in its cause, although
none of their sins.
The emotions that closed that day were stronger and deeper than those
with which it opened. Even the turbulent priest, Juan Diaz, put on an
appearance of satisfaction now, whatever he might really still feel as
to the discomforts of pestilent marshes, uncertain commons, and the
faint prospect of better things for the future.
"Before all things spread the Catholic faith," was the watchword in
that age, of all exploring expeditions, the one universal plea for
their aid and countenance. Cortes held to it with the intense fervour
natural to his strong nature. So did his followers; but all the same
that Merry Andrew, Juan de Cabrera, took occasion during the course of
the afternoon to remark to Alvarado--
"Now, my most estimable and dearly-beloved friend, when we get into
those heathen temples do the friendly part by me, and just give me a
quiet hint where to lay my fingers on any easily-portable little bits
of gold."
"If you don't take better heed to that impudent tongue of thine,"
interfered Escalante with a laugh, "he is more likely to introduce thee
to a good cudgelling."
Alvarado himself as usual shrugged his shoulders with calm
indifference. Words that would have led to fatal combats amongst those
fiery, proud Spaniards if spoken by any one else were uttered by the
young, laughing-eyed Cabrera with perfect impunity.
"Did thy mother never think," said Don Pedro with an air of kind pity,
"of putting thee in the way of earning an honest livelihood as Court
fool?"
"Ay, that did she," was the instant reply; "but thy mother heard of it,
and begged of her not to stand in thy light. She said there were so
many comfortable little pickings--"
"Now, now, Cabrera! Hold!" sharply interrupted Montoro; "it is enough.
Verily thou dost allow that tongue of thine too much licence. Alvarado,
I would a few words in private with you, if you can for awhile forego
this youngster's company."
So saying, he linked his hand in the other's arm and drew him away,
before amusement should change into anger. And for the next hour and
more even Cabrera was deep in converse of the gravest nature with
Escalante, Alonzo de Grado, Velasquez de Leon, and Gonzalo de Sandoval.
Not a man in that little camp-city slept much that night, from Hernando
Cortes the leader down to the meanest soldier amongst his followers.
All felt that they were on the eve of great things. What had gone
before was, as it were, drill-work; but now there loomed before them
the true tug of war.
"And, in the prospect facing us there is one thing, I confess, that
fills me with an almost abject terror."
It was Escalante who spoke, brave, firm, calm-natured Escalante, than
whom there was no officer more justly honoured in the whole band for
his wise spirit and unflinching courage. And yet now he uttered those
craven-seeming words in low, hushed tones, and with eyes filled with
a nameless horror that said even more than the words had done. His
companions gazed at him in amazement.
"It is well for his present peace," said Cabrera, "that it is thyself
and not another that has said that for thee, Escalante."
"Ay, indeed," ejaculated Gonzalo de Sandoval. "But what mystery lies
there, Escalante, at the back of thy words?"
"No mystery," was the reply--"nought but a plain truth. The idea of
falling alive into some of these heathens' hands in battle, and of then
being offered up in sacrifice to their idols, and eaten after in their
ghastly cannibal feasts, in very deed seemeth to me, when I think on
it, to--"
"Ah! to pluck the heart out of thy breast before those fiendish
hands can do it," exclaimed Cabrera, starting to his feet in sudden
excitement. "I grant thee, Escalante, one has need to learn a new kind
of courage to that we have hitherto required, to hold a stiff face
before these thoughts."
"Not the terrors of the Inquisition itself," muttered Alonzo de Grado,
"can compare with them."
But Velasquez had had enough, and more than enough, for his part, of
such discourse, and flinging back his head with impetuous hauteur, he
said indignantly--
"In very truth I marvel at ye all, discussing as though it were a
possibility, the chance of a Spanish nobleman falling alive into the
hands of a base redskin! Let us turn our tongues to themes that shall
be more profitable."
"To pleasanter ones, with all my heart," said Juan de Cabrera readily.
"But see, who comes yonder in such haste?"
"Morla, for a gold button," said Sandoval.
"An easy guess enough," laughed Velasquez. "And none will take thy bet,
my friend. Was there ever another man with so huge a head as Morla!"
"Never mind, Morla, it hath brains inside," said Escalante
good-naturedly to the man, who had now come up to the party of
officers, and stood before them awaiting permission and opportunity to
speak. Curiosity gave him them soon enough.
"Brains or no brains, thou hanged rascal," said Cabrera, "what wouldst
thou with us. To have another try at thy neck by way of practice for
the natives, if they turn restive on their gods' behalf?"
A grim smile flitted for a moment over the soldier's face.
"I thank thee, my Señor, I would rather that practising were
undertaken with the Don Montoro de Diego by to witness it, and to make
sure that the lesson were not too well learnt. Meantime, I have a
message from the Captain-General to the Don Juan de Escalante, to the
effect that he will repair without delay to the Captain's tent."
The order was obeyed with alacrity, and when the officer returned, some
time later, to his brethren in arms his face wore an expression of
mingled elation and satisfaction. The confidence felt in his abilities
and integrity had received full proof, for he was to be left in charge
of the new city of Villa Rica de Vera Cruz, and of its small garrison,
of which Morla was to form one, and of the company of slaves and
attendants.
"You will at any rate be safe from the perils of the sacrificial altar,
seeing that here you will have neither priests, false gods, nor altars
for the sacrifice," said the fine young officer Gonzalo de Sandoval,
with just a touch of envy at his companion's elevation to a post of
so much trust and honour. But Cabrera looked at the matter in another
light--
"Neither will he have here the rich prizes that we go to gather from
the golden palaces of Mexico."
"I agree with you," said Velasquez. "Wealth and action, with any peril
you please, for me, sooner than poverty and a safe tranquillity."
And so the band of high-spirited young adventurers discussed their
prospects gaily, none seeing into the veiled future, nor knowing that
the one they thought to leave to such safety was doomed to deadly
peril, none dreaming that the remaining days of life of their gallant
comrade were so few, and that they were about to bid him a final
farewell. But more of that in its due course.
With the first dawn of the morrow after the day of mutiny, clamour, and
expectation, the whole camp was astir, and in no long time after, the
army was on its way through a country beautiful enough for the Garden
of Paradise, to the Indian city of Cempoalla, one of the centres of the
civilization of the Western World.
Delighted feelings of new hope arose in the soldiers' minds as
they came in sight of fruit-laden orchards in the highest state of
cultivation, and gardens evidencing a care and knowledge, in their
wonderful beauty and luxuriance, that few indeed of the gardens of
Europe could boast in that warlike age.
Hernando Cortes and his men marched on. Cortes himself maintained
a closely observant silence, but his officers and men were not so
reticent, and on all sides there were exclamations of wonder, at the
unexpected signs of an advanced civilization and refinement so utterly
unlooked-for in those regions.
And now their progress began to be somewhat impeded by the innumerable
processions that met them from the city,[5] some coming to welcome the
strange visitors, some coming as sightseers, to enjoy an early view of
the new-comers and their marvellous four-footed companions, whom they
took, like the ancients of the old world, to form with their riders one
extraordinary animal.
[Footnote 5: 'Hist. Conquest of Mexico,' Vol. I., p. 288.--Prescott.]
"Are we once more fighting on the battle-fields of Granada, think you!"
ejaculated Alvarado to Montoro, as he pointed to a long train of men
then approaching the Captain-General, and glittering in the sunlight as
they came on, clad in richly-coloured mantles worn over the shoulders
in the Moorish fashion, gorgeous sashes of every rainbow tint, or
girdles, while splendid jewels of gold adorned their necks, their ears
and nostrils.
Montoro gazed at them in equal wonder.
"But see," he murmured, almost breathless with amaze,--"see yonder,
friend Pedro. Let thine eyes travel on a little farther. Is not yon a
singular sight to behold in a country where we had taught ourselves to
expect nought but savage wilds, and inhabitants sunk in the depths of a
miserable degradation? I feel as though I had fallen asleep, to awake
in dreamland."
"And a fair enough dreamland too," replied Juan de Cabrera. "I care
not, for my part, how long I may remain there, so I be not altogether
smothered with their flowers."
That hope as to the smothering seemed almost needful with reference to
the trains of women and young maidens to whom Montoro had directed his
companion's notice. Beautifully clad from the neck to the ankles in
robes of exquisitely-wrought fine cotton, ornamented with finely-worked
golden necklets, bracelets, and earrings, and surrounded by crowds of
obsequious attendants, the graceful processions advanced, literally
laden with brilliant blossoms, the products of that most lovely
country.
Hastening gaily forward, they surrounded the warriors with their dainty
offerings. They hung a chaplet of roses about the general's helmet, and
wreaths about his charger's neck. As for the yellow-haired Alvarado
and the laughing Cabrera, they were very soon converted into tolerable
imitations of the English Maypole, or the May-day Jack-in-the-green,
their fine Spanish eyes beaming out of the midst of their bright
coverings, upon their decorators, with a smiling good-humour that gave
little warning of future headlong and annihilating cruelty.
At length the Europeans reached the city, and silence fell upon them
as they slowly entered the narrow, crowded streets, and paced along to
a temple assigned them by the Cacique for their quarters, during their
stay in his dominion.
Not one of the band would have now retreated from the enterprise on
hand had he been able. At the same time, for a company of about six or
seven hundred men to be cooped up within a close-built town, of whose
ins and outs they knew nothing, and in this position to be surrounded
by thirty thousand people who might prove to be crafty enemies, was a
state of affairs to make even the most reckless feel just a little bit
like wishing that they had at least two pairs of eyes, and one of them
situated in the back of their heads.
No one saw fit to demur when Cortes announced, on arriving at the
temple, that he intended to double the usual number of the sentinels
to keep watch at night, and that the whole force was to maintain a
constant state of the utmost vigilance, and readiness for any surprise.
"Moreover," concluded the General, with resolute determination of
manner, "moreover, comrades, it is my absolute command, on pain of
death, that none leave the precincts of our present quarters without
my leave, on any pretext whatsoever. I will myself shoot the first who
does."
"Umph," muttered Cabrera with a little raising of his eyebrows. "You
speak very positively, my Captain. How would it be with your word if
you did not get the chance!"
"Just so," returned Alvarado in the same tone. "My fears of being
caught hold of by those bloodthirsty idol-priests would do more to keep
me from straying, than any threats of being shot if I were lucky enough
to get back to camp again. Meantime, here comes a party of well-laden
cooks. Whatever other fate they intend for us, it is apparently not
starvation."
As those two thus talked together, Montoro de Diego was no little
startled by one of the women, with a flower-decked basket of maize
cakes in her hands, and cheeks streaming with tears, separating herself
with some quiet caution from her fellows, and coming up to him with
her gift, and with eyes that besought, with all the power of mute
eloquence, for a hearing for some tale of sorrow.
Montoro had been wandering with a vivid interest through some of the
numerous apartments of the temple, opening on to the courtyard where
the rest of his comrades were assembled, and he was standing within
one of the halls, and alone, when the woman caught sight of him. The
bringing of the maize bread was but a pretext for an interview.
"Be comforted. Trust me; I will do what I can," said Montoro, with the
flush of deep excitement on his face, after listening for a few moments
to the poor creature's broken utterances.
Then he dismissed her, and made his way to Cortes, asking a private
audience. But the General was in something less than his usual cordial
mood. Cortes was preoccupied, and oppressed with many anxieties that
night, and little disposed to speech or interviews with even those whom
he most esteemed.
"What is it, Diego?" he asked rather hastily--"any news of treachery
without or within? For matters of high importance one must have always
leisure; for others--I crave your pardon,--they must wait."
Montoro bowed with a certain degree of haughtiness.
"I am not accustomed to seek private interviews concerning
trivialities. But,--I will crave your pardon as you have craved
mine,--methinks, now I give second thoughts to the affair, that thou
mightest even pronounce my present matter unworthy of your present
favourable attention, and with disfavour I can well dispense."
"As I with thine unseasonable anger, friend Toro," said Hernando with
grave reproach.
But the angered cavalier had already retired.
"To brood over his fancied causes of complaint against me, no doubt,
like the most unreasonable amongst my company," muttered Cortes in a
tone of vexation.
Union was so abundantly necessary just now.
CHAPTER XXIX.
_MONTORO AND CABRERA RESCUE A HUMAN SACRIFICE._
"Cabrera."
"Diego!"
The one name had been spoken with a sort of eager hush in the voice;
the second with an accent of startled interrogation.
The hour was about ten at night. Cabrera and Diego had been on sentry
duty since Diego's short, sharp interview with the General. One of them
had just been relieved, and the other was about to be so, when Montoro
called to his friend, who passed him on his way to shelter and sleep.
Cabrera stepped up closer to his friend.
"Why, Toro, what is it? Of all men in the world to hear thee speaking
as thou hadst some mystery to whisper!"
"And so I have," came the hurried return.
Juan's big round eyes grew bigger and rounder than ever.
"Well, and if thou hast, there is ne'er a redskin about can understand
thee if thou dost but speak fast, and with some of those long words
thou knowest so--"
"Hush thee, then," muttered Montoro hastily. "It is from no redskin
that I would hide the matter that I have in hand, at least not for the
moment, but from the keenest pair of Spanish ears that either thou or I
are likely to have met with."
"If thou meanest to hint at our Captain-General by that," agreed
Cabrera, "thou art right enough, for I believe that he hears thoughts
sometimes, without need of the tongue to give them utterance. But the
business grows interesting. I love a plot. I would thou wert about to
propose to break bounds, and take a midnight wandering."
"And it is--" a pause at the fancied sound of an approaching footstep.
And then he continued, scarcely audibly, "It is even so. Wilt thou join
me?"
Cabrera paused an instant, and gave a perceptible start.
"It is death, Diego, by the General's orders."
"I know it. And it is death to a native Christian, my lost Indian
interpreter, as a living sacrifice to heathen gods, if we do not rescue
him ere the dawn. But there, I should not have asked thee to share the
double danger; I will go alone. You will not, at least, betray me?"
"No, nor suffer you to go alone," was the hurried answer. "I would
sooner shoot myself. But there comes your exchange. Where shall we meet
again?"
"In the hollow there, two yards to the right," muttered Montoro
quickly, and then he stood silent and watchful, awaiting the
new-comer, as though intent upon nothing beyond guarding his present
post.
Two minutes later he once more stood beside Cabrera, at the only spot
of the temple's surroundings whence escape unobserved was possible.
Montoro's diligent search had discovered it very soon after he quitted
the General, and the daring companions had scarcely met before they
were safe outside the temple's precincts. There they were joined by
the Indian woman, waiting to be their guide to the great temple of
sacrifice. On its lofty summit there was a fire burning, and in front
of the fire was visible, even at a distance, the great stone, stained
with the blood of the countless human sacrifices offered up to the
honour of the horrible god of war.
Closely following their guide, and keeping in the darkest shadows of
the houses along the silent streets, the two Spaniards went on their
adventurous mission of mercy. Suddenly the woman fell back upon them
for a few moments with a low cry, and her hand upraised towards the
temple's heights. The Spaniards stood still and with their eyes obeyed
her sign.
The fire had been replenished, and blazed up fiercely, and there,
high up above the houses of the town, on the elevated platform, and
illuminated by the ruddy glow, there now stood a group of men. As the
Europeans gazed they perceived a stir amongst that group--one appeared
to fall; there was a pause, the woman with another shuddering cry
dropped her face into her hands. Then a far-off shout fell upon the
two friends' ears, and they saw an upraised arm against the glowing
background, a hand that held something--
"Is it a head?" muttered Cabrera.
But the woman once more hurried them on.
"But if he is already slain," questioned Montoro sadly, "what can we do
more?"
"Perhaps he is not already sacrificed," came the anguished answer in
broken Spanish. "There are many to die to-night to please the god;
perhaps he still lives, and may be saved."
For that 'perhaps' the devoted champion of the oppressed, and his
friend, continued their dangerous route. It might be to meet the
fate that, only twenty-four hours before, Escalante had spoken of
with such horror. But even if they escaped that, it would but be to
receive death at the hands of their own countrymen. Montoro began to
be sorely troubled. To save one man he had brought the life of another
into jeopardy. After all, it might be that he did deserve Alvarado's
accusation. He stood still again.
"Cabrera, I have done wrong."
"Well," was the calm answer. "A thought more wildly, perchance, than
might have been looked for from the sensible Don Montoro. Shall we
return?"
"You will," was the eager reply. "We have not as yet gone too far for
you to find your way back easily."
"Oh--h," ejaculated Cabrera. "And for thyself?"
"I go on."
"Ah! I see. Thanks, my friend, for your dismissal then, but--I go on
also."
Montoro clenched his hands tightly.
"It will be a load off my heart, Juan, if you will return."
"Without you?--never. You must keep your load."
They had begun to move on again slowly before this short dialogue was
ended; but now a bitter, imploring moan from the poor creature with
them helped Montoro to forget all but her troubles, and making a sign
to her, they hurried on as rapidly as before.
After all, as far as Juan de Cabrera was concerned, any excitement,
even to the excitement of deadly peril, was better than peace and
quietness. He rather liked the sensation of feeling as though a dozen
or two pairs of those lean, small, redskin hands were stretching out
from every doorway to clutch at him, and that he had a sword by his
side which should win him freedom. Montoro for the time thought of
nothing at all, but his purpose to rescue his native servant from the
bloody altar of the horrible war-god Huitzilopotchli.
Arrived at the foot of the mound on which the chief temple was built,
the guide paused, and looked at her companions as though with some
compunction for having brought them into so great peril; but her
regrets were then too late. They had caught sight of a spectacle which
had filled them with loathing indignation; and they sprang up the
mound, rushed up the great flight of stone steps in the centre of the
temple with a fierce shout, regardless of prudence, indifferent to all
consequences, and gained the platform just in time to witness the
completion of a third awful act of heathen faith.
On a huge block of jasper, with a slightly convex surface, lay the
living, human, palpitating sacrifice. Around him were gathered six
of the war-god's priests, hardened to their awful office by almost
daily custom. Men fitted for such duties they looked, with their
wild eyes, their long and matted locks flowing in wild disorder over
their shoulders, and their sable, crimson-stained robes covered with
hieroglyphic scrolls of mystic import.
Five of these weird, sombre, butcher-priests held down the head and
limbs of the victim. The sixth, clad in a scarlet mantle, emblematic of
the office, cut open the breast of the sacrifice with a sharp razor of
the volcanic itztli, inserted his hand in the wound, and tore away the
beating heart from the yet writhing body; the awful trophy was held for
one moment up on high, then cast at the feet of the idol to which it
was devoted.[6]
[Footnote 6: 'Hist. Conquest of Mexico,' vol. i. p. 63.--Prescott.]
All was over before the Spaniards' second furious cry had had power to
escape their lips. The next instant that elevated plateau was a scene
of wild confusion.
Transported beyond himself, Cabrera had shot down the priest of
sacrifice, dashed to the ground, insensible, two of the other
black-robed ministers of the dismal faith, and then with his sword cut
asunder the bonds binding a group of prisoners awaiting their turn on
the jasper block.
Montoro had not been idle. At the point of the sword he had driven the
remaining priests into the interior of the temple, flung into the fire
the instrument of torture, and the instruments of music used to drown
the wretched sufferers' cries, and then, with a far-echoing shout--"For
the glory of the one true God!" he signed to the rescued captives,
brandished his sword aloft, and, followed by the liberated train, the
two Spaniards rushed down from the height, thrust a way for themselves
and their bewildered companions through the gathering multitudes, with
an impetuosity that bore down all obstacles, and with the happy Indian
woman once more for guide, regained their own quarters.
The whole band of their comrades was astir, and within an hour of their
stealthy departure Montoro de Diego and Cabrera, with the little group
of Indians about them, once more stood in the courtyard of the lesser
temple, surrounded by their Captain-General and the whole company of
his followers.
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.
CHAPTER XXXI.
_ONCE FOR ALL--THEY SHALL CEASE._
The number of priests in the capital of the empire of Mexico itself
amounted, at the time of the conquest, to very many thousands--five
thousand for the immense chief _teocalli_, or house of God, alone.
These priests were gathered together in great establishments, where
a most rigorous discipline was maintained, much after the fashion of
Roman Catholic institutions. And as with the empire itself, so was
it, in a lesser degree, with the empire's tributaries. In those also
chiefs and people endeavoured to make their peace with heaven, as
in the old world, by such immense endowments of lands and riches as
tended naturally to swell the ranks of a race so well provided for, and
regarded with such supreme reverence.
The smiling territory of Cempoalla was as well provided as its
neighbours, with these numerous ministers of a religion that so
strangely blended bloodthirsty superstition with exalted faith and
enlightenment.
Juan de Cabrera fondly supposed that in slaying a man whom he honestly
looked upon as a murderer of the blackest die, deserving death, he had
rid that city, at any rate, of its one hideously-skilful executioner,
and, as he put it, "that no more of that sort of work could go on for
the present, either in their presence or their absence." But he made a
most tremendous mistake.
"The king is dead. Long live the king."
The priest-executioner-in-chief had fallen, before the altar of the
god he had served with such dreadful fidelity. He had died yesterday,
to-day he had a successor burning with ardour to avenge him by
increased sacrifices, to atone for those deferred, and to prove his own
consummate skill in the detestable work.
"If only," was his fierce wild prayer--"if only the one invisible,
supreme God would grant that some of the sacrilegious, infidel white
faces might fall into the hands of the Cempoallan warriors, that they
themselves might be offered up as peace-offerings to the insulted
Huitzilopotchli!"
Were his prayer granted there was no doubt that the morose and
gloomy-natured priest would not spare also to inflict upon the
prisoners some prior tortures, ingenious enough in their barbarous
cruelty to have excited the admiring envy of the most savage of
Inquisitors.
But meantime he had other business on hand--sacrifices truly, but
sacrifices drawn from the families of his own nation; and, moreover,
sacrifices of such a nature that, had he been as wise as he was
ruthless, he would have delayed their attempted offering until those
white-faces had left his land. They were just the last drops needed to
fill the Spaniards' cup of boiling indignation full to overflowing.
Exquisitely fertile and luxuriant as the whole district of Cempoalla
looked to the Spanish eyes, so wearied with the barren tracts of sand,
and marshy swamps of their recent station, there had in reality been a
considerable time of drought lately, and the Indians were beginning to
have fears for some of their harvests. Tlaloc, the god of rain, whose
symbol of a cross had so disconcerted Cabrera and Father Olmedo, had to
be propitiated.
For some days past a solemn festival had been decreed in his honour.
The victims were bought for the altar, the invitation to the faithful
was announced, and, although a priest had been slain in the night, the
imperious god of rain must not be deprived of his offerings in the
morning. Thence the sounds which had so suddenly arrested all speech
and movement of the two armies, Christian and heathen, met together in
the great square of the city.
The waiting and suspense were short. The sounds of musical instruments
and of a wild melodious chant drew rapidly nearer. They reached the
square, and the Spaniards turned wondering eyes upon each other.
"The procession of the Fête Dieu!" exclaimed Cabrera in bewilderment.
"One might well suppose so," returned Montoro, almost equally surprised.
Cortes turned with rapid questionings to Doña Marina, the native
captive princess and his interpreter.
Passing across the further end of the square, on the way to Tlaloc's
temple, were lines of sable-robed priests, trains of flower-decked
youths and maidens from the priests' seminaries, crowds of devout
worshippers; and in the midst of all, borne aloft in view of every eye,
a number of lovely children, tiny creatures scarcely beyond the days of
infancy, dressed in bright-hued festal robes, wreathed with flowers,
and seated in gay litters, around each of which gathered groups of
chanting priests, and the parents who had sold them.
Wide-eyed and dumb with wonder were some of these little ones. And
on them the priests frowned. Others, startled, terrified, with tiny,
helpless arms outstretched to their miserable, deluded mothers, were
drowned in tears, choking with piteous sobbings. And on them the
priests cast pitiless smiles, and sang and danced with wilder fervour
than before. Those tears were of good omen for the god's acceptance of
his worshippers' prayers. Dry-eyed sacrifices were fruitless ones.[7]
[Footnote 7: 'Hist. Conquest of Mexico'--Prescott.]
But the exacting god was to have no sacrifice that day, dry-eyed or
otherwise.
The procession was passing on, when at length Hernan Cortes, with a
horror-stricken shout of comprehension, raised his head from Doña
Marina, and turning to face his followers exclaimed, in a voice that
literally trembled with passion and haste:
"Comrades! look yonder. See ye that sight? See ye those helpless babes,
decked out thus bravely as the heathen nations of old were wont to deck
four-footed beasts for sacrifice? Those babes are sold for sacrifice
by a black, well-nigh incredible bigotry. Twenty minutes hence, without
your succour, their innocent hearts will have been plucked from out
their riven breasts, as offerings to that blasphemous god who pollutes
the sign of our redemption. Say, comrades, shall this thing be?"
The men started a step forward with cheeks aflame.
"No!" exclaimed Alvarado. "By St. Jago and our good swords, no!"
"No!" echoed the whole band, as though with one voice.
"No!" cried Cabrera, impetuously. "Not if we have to put every man in
Cempoalla to the sword to deliver them."
And with these exclamations it seemed, for one moment, as though the
Spaniards were going to rush forward pell-mell, and effect a rescue.
But Cortes raised his hand and checked them. There was time yet to
proceed more peaceably. He turned back to the Cacique.
"You see," he began.
"I see there is another of those red-cloaked demons yonder," muttered
Cabrera in a tone of bitter loathing to Montoro.
But the low aside formed no interruption to the General, who continued,
with determination--
"You see, my followers and I have one heart in this matter. And I,
for my part, am resolved that within this hour the idol gods shall be
destroyed. Use your authority to stay yonder procession on its further
course to sin, and thus hinder bloodshed."
But even before his words were ended it became evident that force must
effect, if possible, what persuasion could not do. The Cacique's reply
to the imperative demand was a swift signal to his army. It was obeyed
as swiftly.
The Indian warriors gathered up from all sides, with shrill cries and
clashing of weapons. The priests began to rush on with the litters and
their wailing occupants, towards the temple, for the consummation of
the sacrifice. The Spaniards, with Montoro de Diego at their head, flew
forward, moved to too heart-sickened a pity to wait any longer upon
the rule of orders. And soon the whole square and the entire route to
the temple was one scene of wild uproar. The priests, in their sombre
cotton robes, and dishevelled tresses matted with blood flowing over
their shoulders, rushing frantically amongst their warrior brethren,
urging them on to the fray, and calling upon them to protect their gods
from violation.
All was war and tumult where so lately had been peace and friendly
brotherhood.
Cortes took his usual prompt and decided measures. While Montoro led
the rescue party, and ceased not his determined onslaught until he had
delivered the infants back to arms that, in the new turn of affairs,
were stretched out readily enough to receive them again, Cortes, by a
bold manœuvre, and the firing off of those terror-speaking guns, gained
possession of the great Cacique himself and of some of his principal
subjects, including the chief priests.
"Now," he authoritatively commanded once more, and with a better
chance of being obeyed. "Now, Nezahualth, you and your people are in
my power. Give orders that not another arrow is shot this day, or
disobedience shall cost you all your lives."
"The gods will protect us," exclaimed a frenzied priest.
Cortes turned upon him with a cold, haughty glance.
"Did the gods protect thy brethren yesternight? The Spaniards were two
to a multitude, and the Spaniards' God gave them victory. Thy god gave
his followers up to disgrace and death!"
Whatever effect these words of reminder had upon the Totonac priest,
they had a powerful one upon the Totonac chieftain, the Cacique of
Cempoalla. With a sudden lowering of his lofty head, he dropped his
face into his hands, and exclaimed bitterly that the white men must
work their will, and the gods must avenge themselves.
"Even so," said Cortes sternly. "Thus it must be, for from this hour,
once for all, their idols shall be destroyed from this city, and the
human sacrifices shall cease."
This settled the matter. The Christians were not slow in availing
themselves of the Cacique's submission to the inevitable.
At a signal from Cortes fifty soldiers darted off to the chief temple,
sprang up the great stone stairway as eagerly as Montoro de Diego and
Cabrera had done the night before, entered the building on the summit,
the walls of which were black with human gore, tore the huge wooden
idols from their foundations, and dragged them to the edge of the
terrace.
The fantastic forms and features of these symbolic idols meant nothing
to the Spaniards' eyes but outward and visible representations of the
hideous lineaments of Satan. With the greatest alacrity, cheered on by
Cabrera, the soldiers rolled the colossal monsters down the steps of
the pyramid, amidst the triumphant shouts of their own companions, and
the groans and lamentations of the awe-struck natives, who forthwith
gave up all hopes of the coming harvest in despair.
The work was finally crowned by the burning of the images in the
presence of the assembled, startled multitudes. That finishing touch
proved a wise one. Hitherto, during the work of desecration, the
Totonacs had waited in trembling expectation of some fearful exhibition
of their insulted god's great power and glory. But now. Poor impotent
deities! they had not been able even to prevent the profanation of
their shrines, the destruction of their own representations.
"What think ye of your gods now?" asked Pedro de Alvarado
contemptuously, as he spurned a heap of the smouldering ashes with his
foot, and turned his scornful eyes upon a group of humbled priests
beside him.
"Verily they be fine gods," added Father Juan Diaz, ever ready to hit
those who were down. "As able, i' faith, to help ye as to assert their
own dignity."
So began the priests and people of Cempoalla, apparently, to think
themselves. With bowed heads and dejected steps they left those
humiliating mounds of ashes. The day of solemn festival was turned into
a day of turmoil and mourning.
The people of that fair land of Mexico had received their first trample
under the iron heel of the conqueror. In their abject dejection they
aided in the business of their own humiliation.
By Cortes' orders a number of the Totonacs cleansed the floor and
walls of the teocalli from their foul impurities; a fresh coating of
stucco was laid on them by the native masons, and an altar was raised,
surmounted by a lofty cross, and hung with garlands of roses.
"And now, my friends," exclaimed Cortes, addressing the multitudes
assembled around the base of the pyramid temple, watching proceedings
with a stupefied wonder--"and now, put by your sad thoughts and your
saddened countenances, for a brighter day has dawned for you than you
have ever known hitherto. I have spoilt one procession, but I will make
you full amends with another and more glorious."
With the easy vivacity and changeableness of the semi-civilized nature,
the Indians roused up at the Spanish General's new tones of cheerful
friendship, and greeted his short speech with shouts of approval,
smiles, and nods, which received full reply. Sternness had done its
work; he was quite ready now to be as joyous and cordial and brotherly
as they would let him. They went from one extreme to the other--from
animal-like ferocity to childlike docility, owing to the weakness of
their nature. But Cortes, from the dark brows of the resolute victor
who would be obeyed, to the courteous, agreeable friend, from policy,
and an almost unequalled power of self-command. He promised the
procession, and it was soon formed.
Once more Spaniards and Indians assembled in the great square. Side by
side, no longer conqueror and captive, but host and guest once more,
moved on with calm and stately steps the two leaders, the tall, slender
Spaniard, the tall, corpulent Indian chief. Following them came the
two armies, in the same brotherly union. Then the Totonac priests,
no longer wearing their dismal black garments with those suggestive
dark-hued stains upon them, but clothed in white robes, and, like their
brother Christian priests, bearing great lighted candles in their
hands; while an image of the Virgin, little less roughly made in those
days than the idols so lately deposed, but half-smothered under the
sweet-scented, brilliant burden of flowers, was borne aloft, and, as
the procession climbed the steps of the temple, was deposited above the
altar, and a solemn mass, performed by Father Olmedo, concluded the
great ceremony, instead of a bloody sacrifice.
"At the same time," murmured Montoro to a companion late that night,
as he paced the courtyard of the Spanish encampment--"at the same
time, methinks, these poor creatures can but credit us with the cruel
insolence of strength, which has destroyed their idols to make way for
our own. They had a cross which they adored; we have cast it down to
erect our own. They had idols which they reverenced; we have burnt
their images but to set up another."
"Even so," replied the good priest, in the same low tones. "My fears
go with your thoughts--that they must have strange doubts as to our
honesty."
"We preach against idols, and yet have them," added Montoro. "I wonder
if our work this day has done much good for the salvation of souls?"
"It has done some good for the salvation of bodies, at any rate," broke
in Juan de Cabrera from his sentry post, opposite to which the two
friends had paused in the interest of their conversation. "It is thanks
wholly and solely to thee, all throughout, Toro, that that hapless
little company of babies is alive to-night. And so, my long-faced
friend, instead of looking solemn as an old crow, thou shouldst be the
merriest fellow in the company."
"Ho, there!" cried the voice of a fourth comer on the scene. "Who talks
of merriment, I would know, forsooth, at this sleepy hour of the night,
and with never an honest bit of gambling allowed to pass the watch
hours by. For my part, I feel glum as a sulky bear."
"Then keep thy distance," was the retort. "For this sultry weather
makes me suspicious that my bones may be in a dried-up state, and
somewhat too easily crackable, my very esteemed Señor Velasquez de
Leon."
Montoro laughed.
"Didst say, Juan, bones or brains were crackable?"
"Both--or meant to," said the young man. "My bones, and Leon's brains.
But come, Leon, hast thou not come to relieve guard? for that Toro
there, thief that he is, robbed me of my rest last night, and I shall
fall asleep on the march to-morrow."
"Better not," replied Velasquez, with a warning shake of the head. "Be
advised in time, lest thou mightest get left behind, and then thou
wouldst assuredly be raised by the Totonac priests to the honour of the
post of one of their lost gods. Thy beauty matches to a marvel that of
their striking god of war."
"I'll match him in the striking trait on thee then, at any rate," cried
Cabrera, as he raised his arm. But the next instant it was caught, and
held fast for a moment in a good firm grip before it was let go.
"How now, my crack-brained schoolboy?" said the laughing voice of the
General. "Hast had not enough of brawls during the past day to last
thee even over one night? Keep thy blows for the turbulent spirits we
may meet on the road to Mexico."
CHAPTER XXXII.
_ON THE ROAD TO MEXICO._
Such magnificent and royal gifts of gold and silver, of precious stones
and precious stuffs, of birds and animals, of jeweller's work and the
marvellous feather work, feather fans and feather tapestries, costly
shields and beautiful embroidery, had been forwarded, by the hands
of ambassadors, from the Emperor of Mexico to the Spanish camp, that
the Spaniards, from Cortes down to the meanest soldier, had the most
exalted ideas of the wealth and power of the new-found empire.
"For my part," remarked Juan de Cabrera one day during the march--"for
my part, I have serious thoughts of giving up the worn-out old country,
and setting up my tent for the future in this new fairy-land. Gold and
fruit and flowers, and food for the trouble of accepting it, are things
just suited to my quiet tastes."
Montoro laughed.
"Few of thy friends will doubt thy word for it, Juan. But how
about that promise to thy new, bright-eyed bride, the princess of
Cempoalla--that she should reign as the queen of beauty not long hence
in thine own old city of Madrid?"
"Umph!" ejaculated Cabrera with a slight shrug. "For the promise--well,
seest thou it was no vow, bound for honour's sake to be kept--nought
but a passing word to a woman. And since she hath me, I doubt not she
will have little care for aught else."
"Hearken to him, O ye birds!" cried Alvarado. "Thy vanity doth but
outdo thy faithlessness, thou black-crested cockatoo. But knowest thou,
I shall be fairly content, for my part, when we are indeed in Mexico's
great capital, Tenochtitlan; for I grow tired of this marching with
one's head watching all ways at once during the day, and taking sleep
at night like a dog, with one eye open."
"Ay, and worse than a dog--with one's hand on one's sword besides,"
added Cabrera.
Montoro raised his eyebrows as he looked from one to the other of his
companions.
"Think ye then, that once in the island city all your cares and
anxieties will be at an end?"
"If they do," put in Gonzalo de Sandoval, "I can tell them so thinks
not the General himself. Methinks, for all his assumption of cool
confidence, that his black locks grow something touched with grey of
late."
"And mine also," said Alvarado with a toss of his yellow locks. "But
from want of a siesta, and not from any dread of what these poor
helpless, red-skinned creatures are likely to do to us."
But even the bold Alvarado and the careless Cabrera felt, a few days
later, that confidence, and a feeling of security, were not much more
certain of acquirement in a town than amid the uncertain perils of
the high-way. Meantime their easy and bloodless victory at Cempoalla
had taught both officers and men, for the most part, a good-natured
contempt for the natives; and this sentiment was increased by the
friendliness hitherto shown them on their route, whenever they were
able to come fairly to speech with the Indians.
Alvarado and Cabrera in particular might be pardoned for their
impatience, at what they considered something of overmuch watchfulness,
for the sunny hair and blue eyes of the one, and the merry face of the
other, had hitherto won them smiles and Benjamin's portions from all
they met.
However, even before entering a town, the various members of that small
army were to learn that their General's prudence was wiser than their
own impatience of the discipline.
Between the territory of Cempoalla and Mexico lay the fine little
warlike, independent republic of Tlascala, governed by a council
elected by their tribes, and united by the strongest bonds of
patriotism, and mutual hatred to their powerful and aggressive
neighbour, the Emperor of Mexico.[8]
[Footnote 8: 'Hist. of America.'--Robertson.]
Fierce and revengeful, high-spirited and independent, Cortes decided,
as soon as he heard of them, that they were the very auxiliaries to
be desired in the contemplated conquest. For every step he now made
towards the heart of the great empire, gave him fresh evidence of what
an astoundingly bold thing he was doing, in adventuring himself and his
handful of enfeebled men in such a magnificent enterprise.
"But with some few thousands of these enemies of Mexico, these
Tlascalans," he said one evening towards the end of August, when a halt
had been called for the night--"with their aid at our back, Diego, we
shall go forward right merrily, methinks."
Montoro looked grave. To say truth, the many human sacrifices he had
witnessed of late, and the awfully numerous traces of others discovered
along the route, had caused some temporary wavering in his sympathies.
Just for the time he was not quite sure if he did not think his Spanish
sword would, after all, be well employed in slaying some of the
bloodthirsty beings who offered up, in sacrifices to their abominable
idols, girls and boys and little children, and then held ghastly
feastings on their flesh.
He had begun to feel a loathing indignation for these wretched
believers in a gross superstition, which made him a more welcome
confidant for Cortes than was usual. He was quite ready to have his
five hundred valiant Spanish companions reinforced by a few times that
number of the natives. But he had heard news from his interpreter,
during the day's march, that made him doubtful if such a reinforcement
were altogether so likely as the General appeared to think.
"What does thy face mean, Diego, since thy tongue says nought?" asked
Hernando Cortes after a few moments' silence. "Forgive me, but it looks
nigh as long as yon merry madcap Cabrera is wont to call it."
Montoro smiled slightly. But he grew earnest enough the next instant as
he said--
"Cortes, I fear me that thy face also will lengthen when I tell thee
that the Tlascalans are meditating war with us, I believe, rather than
peace."
"How sayest thou, Toro?" exclaimed that impetuous fellow, Velasquez
de Leon. "Sayest thou the rascals have a mind to feel the touch of a
good Toledo blade or two? I' faith, under those circumstances it is for
them, not us, to draw the long faces, so I warn them."
"And I warn you," said Cortes seriously, "that it is for both to do
so. But what is it that you have learnt, Diego? or rather, what reason
is given you for these worthy warriors' bad feeling? They are at such
enmity with the Mexicans, that one had some right, truly, to count with
confidence upon their friendship."
"And I fully believe would have also had it," was the reply, "had you
but given any proof that your sentiments towards this emperor bore any
likeness to their own. But--"
"Well?" came the rather impatient query; "but what? Although I have not
told the Mexicans themselves such things as should lead them to shut
their ways against us, I have let their foes know fairly well that I am
ready to aid all complainants to redress their wrongs."
"You have told them so, that is true," said Montoro, once more with a
slight smile. "The Tlascalans also admit so much; but, as they say with
some astuteness, your deeds are at variance with your words. You have
exchanged many valuable gifts with their powerful adversary, you have
entertained many of his ambassadors, and you now propose as a friend to
visit him in his capital."
"Moreover," put in Father Olmedo, "I learn from your own interpreter,
Doña Marina, that they hold us in terrible abhorrence for our hasty and
unexplained desecration of the altars of Cempoalla, a place with which
they are on terms of peace."
Cortes sprang to his feet angrily.
"That is the best deed I have performed in my life, and it shall
receive many a repetition. Preachments are no part of a soldier's
duties. It shall be mine to destroy the pollutions of the land; you,
father, can take the task of preaching it into purity with such suave
slowness as you please. Meantime, to put these rumours respecting those
Tlascalans yonder to the test. We will send an embassy forthwith to
demand a passage through their territories to Mexico."
"Send me," exclaimed Velasquez de Leon eagerly.
"And me," cried Juan de Cabrera, delighted at the prospect of real
action. He preferred using his arms to watching by them, and so did
most of his companions.
But Cortes was too politic to accept the offers. The number of his
fearless and trusty knights was small enough without risking the lives
of any of them needlessly. Some of the chief men among the Cempoallans
had accompanied the Spaniards on their march, and of these Cortes chose
out four, and sent them to their neighbours, charged with his amicable
demand.
Three or four days passed, and those messengers had not returned.
Matters began to look serious. Montoro, with his native interpreter,
and both in disguise, penetrated some distance one early morning into
the unknown dominions. They returned to the camp with the startling
intelligence that the ambassadors had been seized as traitors to their
country's cause, and renegades from the true faith, and were within a
short time to be sacrificed as peace-offerings to the insulted gods.
Instantly the whole camp was astir. The Cempoallans tremblingly anxious
to deliver their friends from the indignity of the fate awaiting them;
Cortes strongly determined that such a blot should not fall upon his
expedition, in the person of his allies.
There was no need to urge despatch in preparations. Each man of the
force, native and Spaniard alike, was burning to set forth against the
new foe. The foe was equally ready.
But amongst these strange people of the new world were some of the
sentiments supposed to belong wholly to the old world's chivalry.
Just as the army was about to set out from its quarters, on that
morning of the thirtieth of August, 1519, a long train of people was
observed approaching from the distance, bearing an ensign of peace.
Cortes called a halt of his own followers. He and Montoro de Diego,
and Father Olmedo, felt most thankful for the turn affairs appeared to
have taken, thus at the very twelfth hour. Alvarado and Velasquez, with
a good many of their like-minded comrades, it is true, were nothing at
all so well contented. They had been living on very short commons the
past few days, fare as meagre and unsatisfying as possible, and they
regarded the punishment of the unfriendly republicans as a probable
means of replenishing their scanty larders.
However, as it turned out, neither content nor discontent had any
present foundation. The Tlascalans had also, on their part, it was
true, sent an embassage, and a well-laden one. But, although the
messengers brought a good deal with them that was acceptable, a request
for peace was not one of the offerings.
As the train came near, it was discovered that abundant supplies of
food of all kinds were being brought to the half-famished little army.
But before they were presented, and to leave no doubt on the Spaniards'
minds as to the motives of the gift, one fierce, slim warrior advanced
before the company of food-bearers, and with a haughty, undaunted
bearing that extorted the respect even of his haughty hearers, he
exclaimed--
"See, poor starved-out creatures of a starved-out land, although we
refuse entrance to the impious enemies of our gods, we would not that
ye should think we grudge, or have need to grudge, you of the bounties
that your God, it seems, denies you.
"The Republic of Tlascala sends you food, and in abundance--meat and
bread. Eat, and be satisfied. The warriors of Tlascala scorn to attack
an enemy enfeebled with disease, faint with hunger. Victory over such
would be a vain one. We affront not our gods with famished victims,
neither do we deign to feast upon an emaciated prey."
"What a mercy for us," muttered that reckless Cabrera, "since your
noble disdain hath led you to feed us thus hospitably."
"For my part also," added Alvarado as quietly, "I would fain try if
food will give me back something of the strength of arm their blazing
sun hath robbed me of."
"You may well say blazing sun," ejaculated Velasquez de Leon, upon
whose excitable temperament the tremendous, continuous heat of the past
few weeks had had a peculiarly trying effect. Even the sight of the
food scarcely cheered his flagging spirits. Cabrera laid his hand on
his shoulder encouragingly.
"Cheer up, friend Leon; I will do the friendly part by thee, if thou
wilt, and offer thee up to that aggravating god of rain. Thy dignified
person may appease his angry, spiteful idol-ship."
Velasquez sighed.
"I feel well-nigh inclined, Juan, to give thee leave. I have more than
once of late had the thought that I would offer up myself."
But whatever might be the voluntarily-endured sufferings of the
Spaniards, they were light enough in comparison with those of the poor,
brave Tlascalans. Cortes accepted their food, and likewise accepted
their challenge, and the following day the two armies met to do
battle--the one to preserve its country from the presumptuous invaders'
tread, the other to make good its claim to advance where it chose.
Of the two armies decidedly the native one presented the most
magnificent and imposing appearance, not only for numbers, but for
array.
Far and wide, over a vast plain about six miles square, stretched the
enormous army. Nothing could be more picturesque than the appearance of
these Indian battalions, with the naked bodies of the common soldiers
gaudily painted with the colours of the chieftains whose banners they
followed, the splendidly attired chieftains themselves, with their
gleaming spears and darts, and the innumerable banners, on which were
emblazoned the armorial bearings of the great Tlascalan and Otomie
chiefs.
Amongst the most conspicuous of these gorgeous banners were the white
heron on the rock, the cognizance of the house of Xicotencatl, and the
golden eagle with outspread wings, richly ornamented with emeralds and
silver work, the great standard of the Republic of Tlascala.
The feather-mail of the more distinguished warriors, like the bodies
of their inferior companions, also indicated by the choice of colours
under whose orders they were more specially enrolled. The caciques
themselves, and their chief officers, were clothed in quilted cotton
tunics two inches thick, which, fitting close to the body, protected
also the thighs and the shoulders; over this garment were cuirasses of
thin gold or silver plate. Their legs were defended by leathern boots
or sandals trimmed with gold.
But the most brilliant portion of the costume was a rich mantle of
the Mexican feather work, embroidered with a skill and taste alike
wonderful. This picturesque dress was surmounted by a fantastic helmet
made of wood or leather, representing the head of some wild animal, and
frequently displaying a fierce set of teeth.
From the crown floated a splendid plume of rich feathers, indicating by
form and colour the rank and family of the wearer. The rest of their
armour consisted of shields of wood covered with leather, or of reeds
quilted with cotton, and all alike showily ornamented, and finished off
with a beautiful fringe of feather work.
Their weapons were slings, bows and arrows, javelins, and darts. And
for swords, a two-handed staff, about three and a half feet long, in
which at regular distances were inserted sharp blades of itztli--a
formidable weapon, with which they could fell a horse. They excelled in
throwing the javelin, and they were such expert archers that they could
discharge two and even three at a time.[9]
[Footnote 9: Hist. 'Conquest of Mexico.'--Prescott.]
And yet with all this, and with an almost superhuman courage besides,
the poor, noble republicans were conquered. They had not guns, they
had not horses, and they had no keen Toledo blades--those cruel blades
that cut their hands through to the bone when they grasped them, in
their desperate courage, to wrench them, if it might be, from their
adversaries' clasp.
And thus, after fourteen days of grand efforts to maintain their
hitherto unbroken freedom, and to preserve the soil of their country
from the invader's foot, the Tlascalans found themselves at length so
diminished in numbers, so broken in strength, and so utterly helpless
against the white-faces' wonderful animals and wonderful weapons, that
once more an embassage came from Tlascalan head-quarters to the Spanish
general.
Once more the stern-visaged Tlascalan warrior heralded a train of men
and Indian maidens, bearing various gifts to the invading force.
Even yet the brave redskin maintained his grave dignity of bearing, but
it was tempered now with a deep melancholy, as he exclaimed in tones of
heart-stirred grief--
"Behold, ye strange and invincible white-faces, our gods have warned
us now that to fight against ye is vain. Ye are few, and we are many;
but we are slain, and our sepulchres already overflow, while ye all
are still alive. We cannot fight against the gods, if such ye be, or
against the gods who fight for you."
"You say well," responded Cortes, solemnly. "It is our God and St. Jago
who fight for us, and through them we are as rocks to withstand the
assaults of all enemies. But if you come to ask for peace, you will
find us to be friends as staunch as we are resistless foes."
The warrior lifted his head proudly.
"We come to offer peace, and we bring gifts as signs of good-will. If
ye are, in very deed, fierce-tempered divinities, lo! we present to
you five slaves, that ye may drink their blood and eat their flesh.
If ye are mild deities, accept an offering of incense and variegated
plumes. For we are poor. We have little gold, or cotton, or salt; only,
hitherto, our freedom and our arms. If ye be but men of like nature
with ourselves, we bring you meat and bread and fruit to nourish you."
And they brought them far more besides than all that, for they brought
them strong fidelity, clever brains, and arms useful enough against
nations armed like themselves, and of no higher grade in the scale of
civilization.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
_THE CAUSE ONCE MORE IN JEOPARDY._
A very singular and picturesque affair was the camp of the Spaniards,
when they paused, for rest or war, on the march to Mexico.
The gay-coloured cotton hangings of the Mexican manufactures had, in
many instances, taken the place of the Spaniards' own rough and ragged
tent coverings. All around were squatted groups of the slaves who had
accompanied the army from Cuba and the sea-coast--races far inferior to
those by whom they were now surrounded, and with very scant ideas as to
dress, or any of the other refinements of civilization.
Then there were the gentle-spirited, courteous Totonac allies,
evidencing their cultured tastes, and advanced instincts, by gathering
armfuls of the brilliant wild blossoms about them to adorn their
helmets and their shields; whilst regarding them, a short distance off,
stood companies of the more warlike, stern-spirited Tlascalans, looking
on at their neighbours' doings with a contempt they took no pains to
conceal. They were magnificent enough themselves in their warrior's
dress, as has been seen; but, under present circumstances, aught
having a festal or light-hearted appearance they fairly well judged to
betoken effeminacy as much as refinement.
For the rest, there was little love lost between the Cempoallans and
the poverty-stricken, hardy Republicans, and although united for the
time in one camp as allies of one commander, they took care mutually
not to have too much to do with each other.
As for the Spaniards themselves, who were now but as one to eight of
their Indian comrades, they were a lean-cheeked, sallow, hollow-eyed
set of tatterdemalions enough by this time. All of them had received
more or less wounds in their fierce battles with the Tlascalans, and
even Hernando Cortes was only kept up by his indomitable resolution,
for what with illness and his doctor, he had been brought to such a
state of weakness that he could hardly sit steady on his saddle. Fifty
of his poor, overdone soldiers had died since starting from Vera Cruz,
and the whole band had at last become more than half doubtful whether
any of them would reach Mexico alive.
"And really," grumbled Pedro de Alvarado dolefully one evening, "really
I don't much care if I do. I'd just as soon lay my bones out here to
bleach as within yon mythical city of gold."
"Mythical, as to the being built of gold, doubtless," returned Montoro
de Diego in a cheering tone. "But as to there being a fine city yonder,
that you surely do not doubt. Think how hopeful all of you were a
while since, when you saw the magnificence of its Emperor's gifts!"
"Ah, well!" sighed poor Pedro restlessly. "I would give him better
thanks now for an ounce of good health than for an hundredweight of
gold."
"Ay indeed, my Captain," groaned Father Juan Diaz. "There you have me
with you. I am but just come hither from shriving two poor wretches,
who have bid good-bye to this earthly purgatory to go to that which is
invisible, and methinks 'twill be not long before you join them there."
"Nay, croaker," exclaimed a voice between contempt and indignation.
"There is many an Indian now living will have cause to wish that thine
ill prophecy were a true one, before our friend Pedro rids him of his
troublesome body. But come thou with me. I would rather try my hand at
putting some spirit into thee, than leave thee to rob our comrades of
the measure that is theirs."
And so saying Cortes, who had come up at a somewhat opportune moment,
marched off the crestfallen, discontented priest to his own quarters to
receive a pretty sharp lecture, spite his reverend profession, before
he was released.
All the same, the priest's mischievous growls had already borne
fruit, and the following morning, before the tents were struck, the
Captain-General had to receive a deputation from the malcontents, who
were too numerous to be treated with anger or disdain.
"But you are so foolish!" exclaimed Hernando, indeed trembling at the
desperate state of the mighty cause he had in hand. "Ye speak as though
it were for my glory alone, to fill my pockets with gold only, that ye
have all thus fought and struggled and endured until now! Is it not
likewise for yourselves? If our achievements shall be so stupendous and
so glorious that they hand my name down to after-ages, will not your
names also gain the like renown?"
Cortes put the exclamation as a declared certainty, but his hearers
rather accepted it as a question, and a shrunken-limbed, white-lipped
soldier from amidst the group rejoined harshly--
"Nay, not so, Captain. Those who live through the battle win their
spurs, like enough; but those who die, e'en though it be on the eve of
victory, so it be before the battle is decided, think you their names
get handed down? Faith, no, then. Fame is like other riches, limited in
quantity, and so it is reserved, like many another thing, for those who
walk over their comrades' dead bodies to success."
As the man ended his speech he staggered from weakness, and would have
fallen forward to the ground on his face but that Montoro, who had been
standing beside the General to guard him in case of mutiny, saw the
poor fellow sinking, and sprang forward in time to catch him in his
arms.
Cortes had been hitherto standing fronting his discontented followers
with an air of proud resolve, every inch the commander, and the
indomitable discoverer and conqueror, but now his countenance suddenly
changed, softened, and his lips trembled. He was the man with a genial
temper and a warm heart once more--the very comrade indeed of the
meanest soldier in his company, who bore all that they had to bear,
eat the same food, and shared all the same privations and fatigues;
or rather, differed in this, that he took the lion's share of every
discomfort whenever it was possible.
As the exhausted man fell swooning into Montoro's ready arms, Cortes
stepped forward hastily, and carefully aided in carrying him to his
own tent, and there placed him in the clever care of Doña Marina, the
interpreter.
"Poor fellow!" he ejaculated on his return to the waiting deputation.
"Poor fellow! no wonder that he speaks down-heartedly, for I find that
he has been badly wounded, and has fever."
"So have we all been wounded," said another of the group, but more
calmly. "And for the fever, well, I may almost say, and so have we all
got fever. And do you wonder, General, that it is so?"
A rather weary smile passed over the General's countenance as he
replied,
"No, truly, I wonder not at all. I also have been wounded, as you know,
in our late engagements with these brave Tlascalans, and I also have
fever. But seeing that we all confess to having suffered so much to
reach the threshold, shall we not adventure the one more step to enter
the door?"
"If it were a step!" ejaculated the new spokesman. "But as it is, we
live a worse life than our very animals. When the saddles are off them
they can forget their troubles for a while, but for us! Ah! then, we
have no dog's life indeed, but one much worse. Fighting and watching
night and day, we have no rest till death steps up to put an end to
all."
The speaker's words were hard, but they were uttered so temperately and
firmly that Cortes replied to them in the like spirit--
"You are right, my brothers--no animal, no unreasoning beast of burden
could endure the life we have borne for these past months of desperate
adventure; neither could any animal be so buoyed up with lofty hopes,
neither could it have so glorious a rejoicing if success should be
the crown at last. Our God has helped us to bear and to overcome, as
the gods of the ancients never helped even the very greatest of their
heroes. None but Spaniards, my brothers, aided by the Spaniard's God
and St. Jago, could have struggled onwards, always conquerors as we
have been, a handful in the midst of myriads of foes. And remember--"
And as Cortes uttered that word he paused, and looked round upon his
followers ere he repeated impressively, "Remember, comrades, whatever
adversities we have suffered, whatever trials, we have still ever
advanced, we have made no step backwards from our undertaking. But you
are all free men. We will all stand here and watch the man who first
makes that step in retreat and he shall have no hindrance. I myself
will be the first to bid him the 'good speed' of farewell."
"Poor fellows!" murmured Father Olmedo with a half-smile to Montoro.
"Our General is indeed clever. Few would have found a way so well to
give a choice that is no choice. How can any of them now accept his
permission to be gone!"
Montoro's countenance reflected the half-smile of his companion. But at
the same time he shrugged his shoulders with the reply,
"Ah, well! as Hernando Cortes himself says, better death with honour
than life with disgrace."
Unconsciously he uttered the last sentence aloud, and once more he did
the General good service. The poor, hard-worn grumblers heard it, and
it clenched the argument already so cleverly managed by Cortes.
"Perhaps you have reason, my Señor," exclaimed one of the malcontents.
"If we get home alive with our boasted programme of conquest
unfulfilled we shall get nought but scorning, it is probable, till we
shall wish that verily we had died with our brethren out here. So for
my part, after all, I elect to stay."
"To advance, you mean," cried Cortes joyously, making a stride forward
to lay his hand, with a well-assumed air of gratitude and friendly
familiarity, on the shoulder of the recovered adherent. "There is
no 'staying' for us, my friends. We must continue to advance to our
appointed goal, or we must retreat. And I frankly tell you all this,
that it is my firm belief that our greatest safety, nay, still more,
our only safety, lies in progress."
"How so?" boldly demanded a voice in the crowd. "For honour--well, that
may be. But for safety!"
"Ay," replied Cortes. "And for safety too, I affirm. And were it not
that the experiment would be too costly I would soon prove my assertion
to be well-founded. Hitherto our course has been one of unbroken
advance, and victory over one petty state after another, and all have
become awed by our strange power. Let us make but one day's journey
backwards, as though disheartened or worn out, and the spell would
be broken; our enemies, forgetting their own petty squabbles for the
time, would unite for the destruction of the common enemy and invader,
and by the mere force of numbers we should be overwhelmed as with an
avalanche. But now we are once more united, my hands feel strong once
more, and I will most surely lead you on, my comrades, to a full and
final success."
"Meantime," remarked Juan de Cabrera, in a tone of as much satisfaction
as marked Cortes' own voice, "meantime, my very good friends and
brothers, I see yonder a party of these worthy redskin cooks advancing
in the very nick of time with our dinner. And I confess that, for my
part, I would fain for the present put by the questions of backwards or
forwards, and stay a while to help clear their dishes for them."
Apparently Don Juan's sentiments were remarkably similar at the moment
to those of the rest of his companions, and, after a good meal, Cortes
found his band once more ready with alacrity to follow whither he might
choose to lead.
Their first destination was the beautiful and sacred city of
Cholula--the Rome, as it were, of Mexico. The Tlascalans eagerly
warned the Spaniards against approaching it or entering its streets.
The Cholulans, they declared, were fair speaking but crafty, making
amends to themselves for cowardly weakness by cunning, and the most
unscrupulous treachery.
But Cortes was never a man to be easily turned aside from his purpose.
The Cholulans sent to invite him to enter their city, but entreated
that the hasty-tempered Tlascalan warriors might be kept without in the
camp, and Cortes accepted the invitation and granted the request.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
_AN INDIAN GIRL-CHAMPION._
The ancient and populous city of Cholula was reputed of great
antiquity by the Aztecs, even when they themselves conquered it from
the descendants of its ancient founders. It was the chief seat of
the religion of the empire and of its commerce, and was held in the
most profound veneration by the Aztecs generally, as the chosen abode
for twenty years of their wonderful, benevolent, and wise white god
Quetzalcoatl, whose descendants they took the unknown Spaniards to be
when they first landed on their coasts.
Poor creatures! they were soon undeceived. These new gods taught them
plenty of lessons, truly--such lessons as human nature learns but too
readily. But they taught none of the lessons their wise ancestor and
so-called god had taught of the arts of peace, and civilization, and
wise-living.
But whatever might be the merits or demerits of Cholula and the
Cholulans, the Tlascalan Caciques showed such anxiety that the
Spaniards should give them a wide berth, that at length Cortes somewhat
impatiently exclaimed,--
"Methought the Republicans of Tlascala were reputed a brave nation; but
I see now that there are some they fear, and they are the people of
Cholula."
The eyes of the younger chieftains flashed indignantly at the
imputation, but the grand old centenarian Xicotencatl signed to
them to keep silence. He called to him a young Indian maiden, his
granddaughter, and in low, impressive tones spoke a few words to her.
As the girl listened the crimson deepened in her cheeks, her chest
heaved, and the pair of brilliant dark eyes, she turned upon the
Spanish General, were flashing as proudly as any of those belonging to
the warriors of her country.
Leaving the apartment for a few moments, she quickly returned with a
long leather thong, which she carried to Cortes, and then placing her
small, dark-hued wrists together, she made signs to him that he should
bind them with it thus.
Hernando Cortes was ever gentle with women, and he looked at the
rough leather strap, and at the delicate wrists from which the
gaily-embroidered robe had been thrown back, and met the girl's signs
with smiling shakings of the head for denial. But it was no good. The
young Indian flung back the hair from her low, broad forehead angrily,
and stamped her foot. Then pressing her wrists against each other more
tightly than before, she again held them up to Cortes with an air of
resolution, mingled with something of wistful entreaty he could no
longer resist.
"Best see, Captain," said Cabrera, inquisitively; "best let us see what
the wilful lassie will be at."
"Ay, indeed," agreed Velasquez readily. "I would fain see what rebuke
for your taunt of cowardice, Captain, the ancient white-locks yonder
hath devised, and yon maiden is so eager to carry out."
Even Montoro looked curious enough to see what small play was to be
performed for their edification. Neither he nor any of them thought it
could be anything very desperate, with that slight young girl chosen
for the heroine and only actor.
Accordingly, thus urged, and with the small, gold-sandalled foot still
tapping restlessly before him on the floor, Hernando Cortes at last set
himself to the singular task accorded him, and was not let off, by his
small monitress, before he had really bound her wrists together too
tightly for her to move them as much as a leaf's thickness apart.
Then she walked with erect head and firm steps back to the old Cacique,
where he sat, even that hot day, beside a brazier of burning coals. Old
age had chilled the physical nature, although the brave spirit still
glowed with the generous warmth of youth.
As his granddaughter stood before him he stooped for a moment over
the copper pan of fire. The Spaniards stood at the other end of the
apartment still and silent, waiting for what was to come. With all
their guessing they had not guessed rightly the nature of the lesson
to be taught them.
At the expiration of a few instants the Indian maiden returned back
towards them, walking with calm, slow dignity as before--her head
erect, her full, crimson lips lying lightly and softly together, and
her two bound arms stretched out steadily before her.
At first the Spaniards looked only at her face, and were greatly
puzzled. What had been done to her, or what had she done in that short
interval to prove the courage of her nation? They could not tell the
riddle.
Suddenly the eyes of Montoro fell to her arms, and he uttered a low,
pained cry. But he did no more. He seemed as though he could not move;
for once his readiness forsook him. His friends looked at him, saw the
direction of his eyes, and in their turn they also glanced down at the
girl's arms, and in their turn they also uttered startled cries as they
did so.
There upon the soft, tender young arms lay a glowing coal, eating its
fiery way into the bare flesh. And there came the young and delicate
owner of those agonized arms pacing along slowly, with a calm and
noble bearing and a proudly-smiling face, the champion of her nation's
dauntlessness.
Pedro de Alvarado sprang forward, an unwonted dimness in his eyes,
and snatching away the burning fragment with his fingers, he flung it
out into the courtyard, and then with hasty gentleness unbound the
tortured, swelling wrists, whilst the girl looked up in his face with
a pleased, half-smiling wonder at his pity.
The old Cacique turned to Cortes.
"Will the white-face chieftain or his brothers any longer doubt the
courage of the warriors of Tlascala? They have seen the courage of our
maidens."
"Ay, indeed!" ejaculated Cabrera. "And if the courage of the maidens
of ancient times were anything of a match to it I, for my part, feel
little wonder that in those days there was a race of Amazons. Little
use would there be in trying to keep a wife, after that pattern, in
order with a threat of fisticuffs."
Montoro turned a laughing face round from the young Indian girl, whose
wounds he was examining.
"Is that the way you try to rule your Cempoallan bride, my Juan? I had
scarcely thought it from her looks."
"Ah," was the calm reply, "thou seest, friend Montoro, thou knowest
nought of women and their natures. Sour looks and savage ways always
put the merry light in their eyes, and the laughter on their lips. I
have taught thee a useful lesson, see that it proves profitable."
"When the opportunity shall come," came the answer, but more in earnest
now than in jest, "I will surely try to profit by thy teaching, but the
teaching of thy ways and not thy words."
And then, summoning one of the young maiden's attendants to accompany
them, Montoro went with his docile and grateful patient away to a
quieter apartment.
The girl-heroine had been quite willing to bear the agonizing pain
with uncomplaining fortitude, but she was by no means loth to have the
scorched and blistered sores dressed with a skill and tenderness to
which she had been hitherto a stranger. Doña Marina stood by the while,
gaining a useful lesson, and acting as interpreter.
As the dressing drew to a close the girl said with a sudden tone of
animation,--
"The good white-face seems to think I have done something deserving
praise; will he let me take him to see what my brothers, and their
companions, bear ere they can enter the noble rank of knighthood?"
Her eyes looked so bright and eager that Montoro would have scarcely
cared to refuse the request, even had it been an unwelcome one; but
as it happened to agree most thoroughly with his own desires to see,
and learn, everything that was possible of these wonderful new-found
countries before he quitted them, his assent was almost as eager as the
offer; and a few minutes hence Montoro, accompanied by his faithful
interpreter, and the Cacique's granddaughter, accompanied, as befitted
her rank, by half-a-dozen attendants and Doña Marina, set forth on an
expedition to one of the neighbouring temples.
CHAPTER XXXV.
_THE TLASCALAN KNIGHT'S PROBATION._
Fast as her nimble little gay-sandalled feet could move, the aged
Cacique's grandchild danced along the well-thronged streets of the fine
city of Tlascala, the capital of the Republic.
Friends passed her, and with smiles and nods tossed to her great
bunches of roses and sweet honeysuckle. From many a broad,
flat-terraced roof sweet-toned, merry laughter floated down, as a
well-aimed garland fell over Montoro de Diego's handsome head and
rested round his neck, or a brilliant chaplet of bright blossoms
stopped its flight on the footway before his feet.
Thither marched along a band of warriors in glittering array, and
singing as they marched to the wild music of the instruments. And here
Xicotencatl's granddaughter paused a few moments, with the impatient
small feet curbed to stillness, and the bright eyes bent to the ground
with meek deference. A company of the white-robed, long-haired priests
was passing, swinging burning censers as they went, and the clouds
of aromatic incense floated like a purple veil through the dazzling,
sunlit air of that October day.
The priests passed on, and once more the Indian maiden led her
companions on again, showing her rows of little white teeth in
gratified smiles as her Spanish companion lingered now and again to
admire the beautiful pottery, elegant in design and fine in make as
that of Florence, or to gaze in surprise at the fine public baths, or
the busy barbers' shops and sweetmeat stalls.
At the entrance of one especially narrow street she came to a second
standstill. Montoro very quickly read the cause. About half-way down
the street there was a disturbance of some sort going on,--a fight over
a bad market bargain,--and the partisans on both sides effectually
blocked up the way from every one else.
"Let us take another route," said Montoro.
But his guide shook her head.
"No need," she said confidently.
And even as she spoke two or three of the efficient, well-disciplined
Tlascalan police put in an appearance on the scene, and the tumult was
quelled almost instantaneously. A half-unconscious wish passed through
the Spaniard's mind that the Spanish guardians of the peace were
anything like as effective.
But they were nearing the temple now for which they were bound, and
all other thoughts were lost sight of for the present in wondering
speculations as to what new sights he had been brought to witness. It
was thanks to the rank and good-will of his guide, and to the fame of
her late deed, which had already spread through the city, that he thus
easily gained admission to them.
The temple-in-chief of Tlascala did not, indeed, cover forty acres of
ground, with an acre of platform for its colossal summit, like its
bewildering giant of a sister at Cholula, but it was of sufficient size
and proportions to embrace various ecclesiastical institutions within
its limits, under the jurisdiction of the priests--seminaries for the
education of children, girls and boys, colleges for the priests, and
training-schools for the young knights before their entry into the
world and its many strifes.
It was with some parade and solemn ceremony that Montoro de Diego
was admitted into its precincts, and only upon the half-pleading,
half-authoritative demand of the great chieftain's child. But at length
he and his companions stood within one of the great halls, and the
chatterbox tongues of the young girl, of Doña Marina, and of the Indian
women were hushed to reverential silence.
There upon the pavement, a few yards before them, lay a motionless
human figure, emaciated to the last degree, and with a deathly
pallidness visible even through the red-lined skin. Beside it lay the
gaudy feather mantle, the grotesque helmet, and the copper-tipped
javelin.
The figure was that of a very young man, and, so it seemed to Montoro,
of one fast dying, if not already dead. He turned with a glance of awed
interrogation to his conductor, and was bewildered past all saying, and
astounded, when he met her face glowing with enthusiasm and lighted by
a pair of eyes brilliant with proud joy.
"See, good chieftain," she murmured, with lips trembling with lofty
emotion, "see now that it is not I only of the Tlascalans who know how
to endure for honour's sake and our country. Yonder is my brother, the
youngest. This is now the fifty-third day that he watches, prays, and
fasts in the temple beside his armour, that he may hereafter with due
rank and fortitude fight in the Republic's wars."
"Surely," ejaculated Montoro, "surely this youth will never live to
fight! Methinks he hath but hours of life left even for peace."
As Doña Marina interpreted this speech the words caught the young
knight's ears, and the figure which the Spaniard had taken for that of
one in the death swoon had sprung to its feet, and by rapid words, and
gestures of indignant scorn, gave swift proof that the emaciated frame
was still instinct with keen vitality.
The brother and sister exchanged a few low-spoken sentences, the
probationer returned to his hard and comfortless couch beside the
armour that he so longed to don, and the young guide led her party away
to another part of the temple, where fresh scenes for wonder awaited
her amateur surgeon.
These said fresh scenes very nearly led to an outbreak of hostilities,
for even Montoro de Diego, for all his self-discipline, had the fiery
Spanish blood in his veins, and would imagine himself specially
commissioned to set other folks to rights; at any rate to try to do so,
whether the effort were wild or sensible.
It is true, however, that the sights to which he was now introduced
without any previous preparation were terrible enough to have aroused
the uninformed indignation of any feeling heart.
In one of the inner courts the Indian maiden made another pause, and
pointed with one of her swathed-up arms to the farther end, where a
group of men were collected around a companion, whom they were flogging
with a savage force that cut open the flesh at every stroke of the lash.
Montoro winced with sympathy as the great whip fell.
"Ah!" he exclaimed, "use the authority of your father's name to stay
that cruel punishment."
The young girl's lip curled proudly.
"It is a self-chosen punishment."
"Self-chosen!"
"Ay, self-chosen. How should the warrior dare the peril of being made
a sacrifice by enemies, if he had not fortitude sufficient to bear
the rods of his friends? But come, there is more to see, that the
white-face may learn that the warriors of Tlascala know how to suffer,
and can thereafter have small chance to fear aught that the most cruel
foes can do to them."
So saying, the girl once more led the way on to an inner hall opposite
to that by which they had first entered. She had, however, scarcely
entered it when she turned back again hastily, saying--
"No, not this yet; this is for the last. Come!"
But for once the slightly imperative "Come!" was not obeyed by the
white-face as it had been before. His keen eyes had alighted on that
which had thrilled him with horror.
"Verily," he exclaimed, "it seems that if ye have many of the blessings
of civilization ye have also its curses, even to an Inquisition with
all its iniquities."
"What do you mean? what would you do?" exclaimed the girl,
half-angered, half-terrified as she saw her companion's perturbed
countenance, and could scarcely, with the help of Doña Marina and her
attendants, keep him from dashing forward into the dim hall, where a
young man lay stretched upon a bier of damp reeds, beneath which burned
a great fire of smoking herbs, which were stirred from time to time
into greater heat.
Truly the punishment, if it were a punishment, was a fearful one; but
the Indian girl laid a firm, determined clasp upon Montoro de Diego's
arm as she pointed to the young man on his fiery bed.
"He too is my brother," she said, with stern pride--"my eldest brother.
That is his final trial. When he wins through that he will be enrolled
in the noble order of our knights. Now you know why the Indian warrior
fights well."
"You are a noble race, and worthy of a noble fate," murmured the
Spaniard; and many a sigh escaped him as they wended homewards.
* * * * *
And now we must pass on quickly to the occupation of Mexico itself,
and there, in that island city of flowers and palaces and temples
and turrets, take our final leave of Hernando Cortes, its great,
world-famous conqueror.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
_ACROSS THE CAUSEWAY._
Scarcely any one in this nineteenth century, who pretends to the name
of traveller, neglects to visit the world-famous and beautiful water
city of Italy, the white-robed bride of the Adriatic.
When the Spanish discoverers set out for the lands of another
hemisphere they little dreamt that they were to find out there another
Venice, even more strange, more wonderful in its sweet, flowery,
marvellous beauty, than the Venice on their own side of the Atlantic.
As the rough, way-hardened soldiers of Cortes came in sight of the
great Lake of Tezcuco, with its fringe of white, well-ordered,
flower-embowered villages, its dark groves of oak, cedar, and
sycamores, and its richly-cultivated fields, they involuntarily came
to a sudden halt, with first a dead silence, and then the air was rent
with a simultaneous burst of ecstatic admiration.
"But behold!" exclaimed Juan de Cabrera with sudden bewilderment;
"behold, Toro, the very islands on the bosom of yon fair lake are
islands of enchantment!"
"How so?" queried Velasquez, pushing in his eager face between the two.
"What new marvel hast discovered, Juan, where all is past belief?"
"Past belief, you may well say," returned the other. "I believe not
that Hernando Cortes himself, even in his dreams, hath had thought of
what he was to find out here. As I said before, I have cut the old
world for aye; my home is henceforth here in fairy-land."
"Well, well," retorted Velasquez, "that is stale news now. Thou'st said
that same every time, the past weeks, that thou hast caught sight of
bright blossoms, bright eyes, or a palm tree. What hast seen now of
novelty?"
"Why, his new home on a moving island," said Montoro, laughing. "Have I
not guessed right, Cabrera?"
"That hast thou," was the satisfied answer. "Trust thine eyes, my Toro,
to see farther through a deal board than the very wood-worm itself.
Thine eyes and thy voice make some amends to thy friends for thy long
face and scruples."
"I hope he thanks thee for thy compliment," ejaculated Velasquez,
with his more short-sighted eyes roving here, there, and everywhere
meantime. "But I do wish thou couldst answer a comrade's civil
question, instead of indulging in questionable flatteries. What meanest
thou by moving islands?"
"Just what I say," replied Juan de Cabrera, as the group of men moved
slowly on down the mountain road towards the vast plain of Mexico, his
eyes for the time diverted from the proud island city of Tenochtitlan
to the chinampas, or wandering islands, being propelled by their
owners from one part of the lake to another, as trade or inclination
prompted.
These chinampas might be regarded as the market-gardens of the capital.
Originally they were nothing but masses of earth loosened from the
shore by the action of the water, and held together by the fibrous
roots of the various plants flourishing upon them. Gathering these into
rafts, tightly knit together, of reeds and rushes, the Aztecs had made
for themselves artificial islands two or three hundred feet in length,
on which were grown the fruits and vegetables for Tenochtitlan.
Bright with luxuriant vegetation, graceful with little fruit-trees, and
homelike with the pretty little wooden hut of the owner, these moving
islands were a feature in the glorious landscape, quite sufficiently
noteworthy to excuse Cabrera for letting his attention be diverted by
them for a few minutes from more important objects. Even the warlike
Velasquez was momentarily charmed into an amused pleasure with the
novel sight.
"I tell thee what it is, Juan," he said, laughing. "Our General will
thus have small trouble in rewarding his faithful followers with lands
and homes. He has but to turn off a score or two of those redskin
beggars yonder and put us on, and there we are."
"Yea, verily," exclaimed Montoro in a tone of indignant scorn. "There
ye would be. Fresh examples of the base, thievish instincts of the
Spanish nation."
Velasquez started forward with flashing eyes, and his sword
half-drawn. But Cabrera dragged him back, muttering hurriedly--
"Nonsense, Leon. Thou mightest as well wish to fight that enthusiast,
Bishop Las Casas, for taking the Indians' part, as this monk-soldier
here. Let him be. He returns to Spain, he tells me, with the next
despatches. See yonder. What is Hernando Cortes regarding thus
intently?"
"Thy magic islands, perchance," was the reply.
But Cortes had no eyes just then for the mere prettinesses of the
majestically-beautiful scene lying stretched out beneath his feet, nor
even for the great volcano Popocatapetl towering above it all. His eyes
were fixed upon the approaches to that great capital of the powerful
empire of Mexico, within which he meant to rest that coming night. As
he gazed upon the city, and its approaches, his face told nothing of
the nature of his intent thought, but in his heart there was the full
confession that his determination was one bold almost to madness.
On the east of Tenochtitlan there was no access but by water. On the
other three sides the entrances were by causeways. That of Iztapalapan,
built out from the mainland to the city, on the south. That of
Tepejacac on the north, which, running through the heart of the city
as its principal street, met the southern causeway. And lastly, the
dike of Tlacopan, connecting the island city with the continent on the
west.[10]
[Footnote 10: 'Hist. Conquest of Mexico,'--Prescott.]
This last causeway, which a short time hence Cortes and his companions
were to have the bitterest reasons for remembering, was about two miles
in length. All the three were built in the same substantial manner, of
lime and stone, were defended by drawbridges, and were wide enough for
ten or twelve horsemen to ride abreast.
"But still," as Cortes told himself in the secresy of his own heart,
and as some of the more thoughtful of his men also told themselves as
they now looked down upon it for the first time, "wide as that causeway
was, some thousands of determined enemies upon it in their rear, the
thousands of the great city's inhabitants driving them in front, that
long causeway might well become the death-blow of them and their
exalted hopes."
There was a few minutes' pause. Some would not unwillingly have heard
the word of command for a retreat, while there was yet time. But that
word did not come. As Cabrera had once said so Cortes always thought:
"We must all die, and we can die but once."
The word of command was given to advance, and in no long time after,
the army had reached the city of Iztapalapan, where it was finally
determined to call a halt for the night, and make a first appearance
before the Emperor at a more seasonable hour on the following day.
With the first streak of dawn of the 8th November, 1519, the Spanish
general and his troops were astir. A lovely morning, the brilliant
beams of the sun gradually fading into dimness the innumerable sacred
fires of the assemblages of temples.
The whole city was visible to them. The wide-spreading palace of the
Emperor, like a second palace of the Cæsars, comprising many homes,
gardens of every description for plants and animals, and aviaries of
the most gorgeous description, within the one circle. Then the great
redstone mansions of the nobles, their roofs blooming like so many
exquisite parterres of flowers. The neat dwellings of the poorer
classes, of stone and unbaked bricks, here and there rudely adorned
with crossbar wooden rafters. Everywhere gardens, streets perfectly
kept and perfectly clean, and terraces.
The whole place was waking up now to a new day. All was gay with
business and bustle. Canoes glancing swiftly up and down the canals,
the streets crowded with people in their bright and picturesque
costumes, fountains playing in courts adorned with porphyry and jasper.
Stone footways, revenue offices, and numerous bridges, over which
people were hurrying in all directions; whilst the enormous market was
already becoming thronged with an animated company of many thousands
of buyers and sellers, and commodities of all kinds, from slaves
for work or sacrifice, down to pastry, sweets, and flowers. Cotton
dresses and cloaks, curtains and coverlids, toys and jewellery of the
most delicate and exquisite workmanship. Pottery stalls, graceful
wood-carvings, helmets, quilted doublets, copperheaded lances and
arrows, feather-mail, and the broad maquahuitl or Mexican sword, with
its sharp blades of itztli. Itztli razors and mirrors, and barbers to
use the razors and lend or sell the mirrors, hides raw and dressed,
and live animals. Fish, game, poultry, and building materials. Flowers
everywhere, and also, almost everywhere, in and out amongst the motley
throngs, the royal officers of justice to keep the peace, collect the
duties, and to see to weights and measures, and good faith and order
generally.
This Empire of Mexico, and above all its heart, this fair city of
Tenochtitlan, was decidedly no abode of savage ignorance, but rather
the region of a civilization but very little lower in the scale than
that of its conquerors. The deep astonishment and wonder they felt at
the discovery is but reproduced in us, as we read of all these marvels.
And the wonder in our minds must but be a hundred-fold increased as we
remember that this great and far-advanced nation, was utterly conquered
and overthrown by a handful of rough, half-taught adventurers!
Meantime, to return to these same adventurers, with no apology either
for having given you Prescott's descriptions of this most astonishing
Mexico almost word for word, as he, in his turn, has copied it from
the letters of one of the very adventurers themselves who accompanied
Cortes, that 8th of November morning over the south causeway into
ancient Mexico.
On the causeway, at the distance of about half a league from the
capital, the small army of conquest encountered a solid wall of stone
twelve feet high stretching right across the dike, and strengthened by
towers at the extremities. In the centre was a battlemented gate which
was opened to admit the white-faced warriors.
"I confess," muttered Alvarado to Velasquez, who rode beside him, as
those gates clanged to behind them, "I confess that I should not think
him quite a craven among my brethren who should indeed, at this moment,
show a real white-face for once."
Velasquez shrugged his shoulders.
"Well, it is true we have walked into the jaws of death. It but remains
to see whether our Captain-General be a wedge strong enough to split
them."
"Or, as our Diego yonder would say," returned the other, "to hold them
open until we walk out again."
"Bah! for the walking out again," was the impatient reply. "Unless,
forsooth, it be to leave but bare walls behind us. As the Lord's people
of old had command to spoil the Egyptians, so I believe are we now
ordained to spoil the heathen savages who imbrue their land with human
sacrifices."
"Well," murmured Pedro de Alvarado thoughtfully, "I know not. But it
is true, these hateful sacrifices have made even Diego himself grow
somewhat cooler, methinks, in his desire to keep our fingers away from
this Mexican pie."
At this point in the short conversation the Spanish expedition was met
by a splendid cortege of several hundred Aztec chiefs, sent forward by
their monarch, who had at length so far overcome his unwillingness to
receive the dreaded strangers as to send these messengers with words
of welcome to them, and to announce his own approach.
Having spent a somewhat tedious hour in ceremonious greetings, the
route was continued over a drawbridge, accompanied by their brilliantly
attired escort, each member of which evidently had studied the art
of setting himself off to the best advantage, as well as any dainty
Spanish cavalier at the Court of Madrid. At length there came in sight
the glittering retinue of the Emperor, wending its stately course along
the great, wide, central street towards the foreigners.
Amidst a crowd of Indian nobles, preceded by three officers of state
bearing golden wands, was borne the royal palanquin, blazing with
burnished gold, and canopied with brilliant feather work, powdered with
jewels and fringed with silver.
Having advanced to within a few yards of the Spanish General, the
palanquin was lowered, the intervening ground was spread with cotton
carpetings; nobles, bare-footed, and with faces bent to the earth,
lined the way, and the great monarch Montezuma, clothed with the girdle
and ample national cloak of the finest embroidered cotton, stepped
forth.
"Behold them!" softly ejaculated Cabrera, as the Emperor stepped to the
ground, and the Spaniard's eyes were dazzled by the passing flash of
the sandals' golden soles, and the glisten of emeralds and pearls with
which their fastenings were beautified.
Montezuma, this monarch who had taught both friends and foes to tremble
at his frown, was at this time about forty years of age, tall and
slender. His hair, which was black and straight, and of a due length
to become his rank, was crowned with a plume of feathers of the royal
green, which waved above features marked by a considerable degree of
thoughtful intelligence. He moved with dignity, and his whole bearing,
tempered by an expression of benignity not to have been anticipated,
from the reports of him that had hitherto reached the Spaniards' ears,
proclaimed a great and worthy ruler among men.[11]
[Footnote 11: 'Hist. Conquest of Mexico,' vol. ii.--Prescott.]
Such courtly and dignified compliments were forthwith exchanged between
the Aztec Emperor and the Spanish commander as might be expected
between two such men, and then the Emperor was once more borne back
to his palace, amid the homage of his prostrate subjects; while the
Spaniards, with colours flying and music playing, were conducted by
Montezuma's brother to the quarters assigned to them in the capital.
With royal hospitality the Emperor had devoted to the use of his
visitors a splendid palace, built some fifty years before by his own
father, and here he was waiting to receive them when they entered, and
he completed the ceremony of welcome by hanging a superb and massy
collar of golden ornaments around the neck of Hernando Cortes, or
'Malinche,' as with a touch of brotherly affection he now renamed him.
"This palace," he said, with the superb generosity he had already
several times shown in the magnificence of the gifts to his 'Brother of
Spain'--"This palace, Malinche, henceforth belongs to you and to your
brethren. Rest after your fatigues, and in a little while I will visit
you again."
So saying, with the most true tact and politeness, Montezuma withdrew,
only to evince afresh his thought and kindness by forthwith sending his
stranger guests a bountiful collation, and a tribe of obsequious and
skilful Mexican slaves to serve it.
Having left his visitors ample leisure, both for feastings and for a
few hours' quiet sleep, the Emperor's glittering palanquin once more
made its appearance, amidst the fountains and flowers of the courtyard
of their pleasant new quarters.
He did not depart this time until he had left behind him substantial
proofs of his good-will. Suits of garments for every man of the small
army, even including the hated Tlascalan allies, profusion of gold
chains and other ornaments, and so many gracious expressions of face
and voice, that he left even the most morose or prejudiced amongst the
Spaniards deeply impressed with the munificence and affability of one
whom they had been taught, by his enemies, to regard as a tyrannical
and bloodthirsty monster.
The iron hearts of the rough adventurers were touched for once in their
lives; and when, on the next day, they, in turn, visited Montezuma in
his royal abode, they beguiled their return march with discourse on
his gentle breeding and courtesy, and their new-born respect for this
potentate of a new-found world.
Meantime Cortes was not quite so thoroughly satisfied with this new
aspect of affairs as might, perhaps, be expected, or as were Montoro
de Diego, Father Olmedo, and others of the gentler spirits of the
expedition.
Cortes was bent on conquest, not compliments, and the strong position
of the Indians and their immense numbers, combined with the growing
good-will towards them, and respect of many of his own followers,
inspired him with a sudden hurry, and most unusual feverish eagerness
to bring matters to an issue.
As a first step to demonstrate his power he treated the inhabitants of
the capital to a discharge of the artillery, which the poor terrified
people regarded as powers wielded by the white-faces' very gods
themselves.
But this was not enough for Cortes. He decided by one great theft, made
at once, to gain a bloodless victory. He decided to steal from them
their king.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
_ESCALANTE'S FATE DECIDES IT._
"I cannot help it, Diego. It is the force of circumstances. Either we
must be the aggressors or the victims. And how, thinkest thou, I could
then answer it to myself, were I to see these men, who have with so
full a trust followed me, butchered before mine eyes?"
Hernando Cortes was striding up and down the enormous apartment of the
palace appointed him for a residence by Montezuma. His whole bearing,
his face, his voice, betokened excessive agitation. He had only one
companion with him at that hour, Montoro de Diego, and Montoro also
looked very sorely troubled.
"We have received nought at the hands of this heathen monarch,"
he murmured, in tones of heartfelt grief; "nought but the noblest
generosity, the most chivalrous respect."
"That is true," was the stern reply. "And we are going to return it
with--with--"
"The basest treachery and black ingratitude."
There was silence in the apartment, but for those tramping feet, and
the somewhat heavy breathing of the men. At last Cortes turned aside,
and came to where his friend sat with clasped hands and bowed head,
pondering over the inscrutable ways of Providence. He stood before him,
looking down upon him with an expression of impatient sorrow.
"Toro, thou and I have been friends for many a stirring year now. We
have never yet had cause to doubt each other's truth. Whatever I do in
these coming days, believe, or strive to believe, that I act--I declare
it by the holy faith itself--according to what I feel to be the loudest
calls of duty."
Montoro grasped the other's hand for a moment. He did believe the
assurance, although, to his more tender conscience and more enlightened
mind, it seemed extraordinary that a glaring wrong could assume the
garb of duty.
As the friends thus stood together the gold-embroidered,
brilliantly-dyed cotton hangings before the entrance of the room were
hastily thrust aside, and a young Spanish knight entered, and advanced
impetuously towards the Captain-General. He paused in some confusion
when he had approached near enough to see the two grave faces.
"Well, Velasquez," said his superior, with an accent of friendly
encouragement, "methinks thy countenance betokens a whole budget of
news. What is its nature? Good or evil? Fear not to speak out. I hold
myself ever prepared in spirit to accept either."
Thus encouraged, the young soldier of fortune came a step or two
nearer, as he replied with suppressed eagerness--
"It is not news, to be so called, that I bring you, Captain. I come
rather as a messenger, I would say."
"Ah!" ejaculated Cortes, with some surprise. "A messenger! And from
whom?"
"Well," said Velasquez, more slowly, "I believe that I might almost say
with truth that I bear a message to you from the whole of our force
now gathered in this island city. We would know, Captain, with your
good pleasure, what is the next step that you propose to take for the
furtherance of the objects of this present expedition--the spread of
the most holy Catholic faith, and the glory of the Spanish kingdom."
"Methinks," said Cortes, with some tone of coldness and
hauteur,--"methinks, friend, that we have already not only taken
many steps in pursuit of those two worthy objects, but that we have
likewise, in some large measure, gained them. What wouldst thou
more--thou and those for whom thou claimest to be the messenger?"
The young Velasquez de Leon changed colour somewhat at this address.
The buoyant hope of success had made Hernando Cortes even more than
usually frank and friendly, the past few days, with his officers. But
none knew better than he how to suddenly surround himself with a chill,
impassable barrier when he chose.
There was an uncomfortable pause. Cortes broke it.
"Well, Leon," he said, with a short laugh, "say on, man. Methinks thou
art but a sorry ambassador. Wilt thou find a readier tongue when I
send thee to Montezuma to invite him hither?"
The young knight sprang forward, his colour still further heightened,
truly, but with delight now instead of uneasiness.
"Order me on that service, my Captain, this very hour, and if my tongue
prove not ready enough, my sword shall make amends."
Cortes turned with a meaning look to Montoro ere he answered, more
cordially--
"I do not doubt you; that is to say, if I did not add my hand to thine
on its hilt. It is just that over-readiness of my followers to use
their swords that ofttimes ties me to inaction. If I took thee with me
to yon red-skinned monarch's palace, couldst thou possibly abide by the
policy of patience?"
"Put him in my charge, Captain," came a laughing shout from the end of
the apartment, and the next moment Don Juan de Cabrera had joined the
trio.
"Your charge indeed!" said Cortes, with a shrug of the shoulders. "A
monkey tied to a cockatoo!"
"Ah," was the calm retort, "my hair is rather rough, for I broke my
comb awhile since on the dog Ciudad's back. But yet, worthy Captain,
thy natural history is somewhat astray, as I have remarked before, or I
am ignorant if cockatoos are ornamented with black crests."
"I wonder whether thou wouldst still laugh if thou wast beaten black,"
muttered Velasquez, irritably.
"Perhaps," said the careless-hearted cavalier, "if thou wast standing
by, looking solemn enough to tempt me. Dost ever laugh thyself, my Don
Velasquez?"
"Not when life and honour lie trembling in the balance," said the young
knight, indignantly. And, forgetful for the instant of the leader's
presence, he continued--"For you, Don Juan, you seem not to remember
that we are here pent up like a stack of wood, ready for the burning
when our enemies choose to desire light for their temple's sacrifices."
Cortes bent his face forward swiftly towards the speaker.
"Say then, Leon, do you counsel retreat over yonder bridges while yet
there is time? Is that what thou camest to--"
But the commander could not finish his sentence. The Spaniard's
deference and decorum were neither of them sufficient to restrain him
at such an imputation.
"Retreat!" he exclaimed. "I have never yet been of the number of those
who have counselled that. Ere I would join in retreat I would of myself
yield me into these heathen butchers' hands, to have my heart plucked
out as an offering to their gods."
"But yet, if we stay," was the quiet answer,--"bethink you, Velasquez,
if we stay, that may still possibly be thy fate, and that of many of
us."
"Not if we make a bold fight for it at once," said Cabrera, grown
almost as serious as if Leon's rebuke were weighing on his mind.
But, as a fact, he did feel grave enough at their present insecure
situation, and, brave as he was, he had a shuddering horror at the
thought of becoming one of those dreadful sacrifices.
"Any spark may kindle the fury against us of these savages," muttered
Velasquez, "and already our easy sloth is nourishing their contempt."
A return of the former haughty look was quickly visible on the face
of Cortes at these words; but ere he could reply to them a noise and
tumult without startled all four occupants of the room, and they
hastily issued forth to learn the cause.
Montoro was the first to reach the threshold of the palace, and with a
low, terrible cry he fell back upon his comrades.
"What is it?" gasped Cortes; and, pushing to the front, he received a
ghastly answer to his query.
Spiked upon Indian lances, and held aloft by Indian hands, was an
immense human head, crowned with heavy dark locks matted and stiffened
with gore. A crowd of Indians, warriors and women, trooped along behind
it, rending the air with their yells of triumph.
For the space of ten seconds it might be that the bronzed cheek of
Cortes blanched; then he made a dash forward, caught one of the yelling
youths, and dragging him back with him to the doorway, questioned him
rapidly.
"Whose was that head yonder? Was it the head of an enemy of the
Mexicans? a Tlascalan, or whose?"
The Indian boy cringed and trembled in that tightening grip.
"It is not the head of one of the white men here with the great white
chief."
"It is the head of poor Morla, whom we left behind at Vera Cruz as
one of Escalante's garrison," said Montoro sadly. "I should know it
anywhere, and under any circumstances."
"Ay, truly," added Alvarado, in confirmation; "it is doubtless his. I
did but save the poor fellow from hanging to leave him to a fate still
worse. But what of the rest of the garrison? How comes he to have
suffered? What is the meaning of this dismal matter? Was he sent out by
Escalante as a messenger?"
All these questions, asked as they were by the lips of Alvarado, were
indeed asked by the entire party in their thoughts. Montoro, resolved
to know the worst at once, hurriedly obtained permission from Cortes,
and, regardless of personal risk, he made his way, with his faithful
interpreter, to the strangers, who were still bearing on high their
ghastly trophy.
It was with no good news that he returned soon after to his companions
in arms. Their saddest fears were realized. The noble-hearted, upright
young officer, the beloved of all ranks of his companions, had met an
early death with seven or eight of the garrison of Vera Cruz, in a
pitched battle with a Mexican general.
"Is that the boasted discipline of this great empire," exclaimed Cortes
indignantly, "that we should be cherished visitors of its Emperor, and
meanwhile our comrades should be attacked and slain by his officers?
What say you now, Montoro? Do you still place implicit trust in these
base Indians?"
There was a moment's pause ere Montoro answered gravely--
"Base, I cannot call them, in that they fight for their lands and
liberty; but I confess that I do feel now, strongly almost as yourself,
that either we must re--"
"Retreat! never!" exclaimed Velasquez de Leon fiercely, interrupting
the speaker. "What is thy other alternative, Don Diego, for the first
is nought?"
"Ay, the other?" asked Cortes, with some extra touch of anxiety, to
which Montoro's eyes replied with a grave, sad smile, as his lips
answered--
"The other alternative then, I would say, that is forced upon us for
the common safety, is, that some step be taken without delay to make
our present position more secure."
Cortes grasped his friend's fingers tight as he muttered in a voice
hoarse with emotion--
"Toro, I thank thee for those words. Thou hast strengthened my hands.
Thy stern disapprobation of my intent lay too hardly on me. Now I can
go forward."
"But meantime," muttered young Juan de Cabrera, with something of a
gulp,--"meantime, poor old Escalante hath gone forward to that land
whence none return."
Montoro laid his hand for one moment on the younger man's arm, as he
murmured earnestly--
"Only free from care and toil a little sooner, Juan. We shall join him.
Methinks rest must be very grateful after labour."
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
_THE DOWNFALL OF AN EMPIRE._
The fate of the young commander of the garrison of Vera Cruz, and of
poor Morla, effected a speedy change in the sentiments of the whole of
the Spaniards towards their Mexican entertainers.
"When the Tlascalans entered upon hostilities with us," said Juan de
Cabrera, with a grim laugh, "they fed us up as men feed fowls, to
make them fatter eating for themselves; but then, like sturdy, blunt
warriors as they are, they told us so, whereas--"
"Ay," interrupted that hot-headed Velasquez, "whereas these
smooth-spoken scoundrels here fill our mouths with one hand, only that
our eyes may be covered while they give us a dose of itztli with the
other."
"Well, well," said Hernan Cortes himself, rather gravely, "it may be
so; and verily I hope it is, for I confess I would fain believe that we
are but about to meet treachery with treachery, and not true-hearted
generosity with cruelty."
The two officers glanced at one another significantly as they moved
away out of hearing, and Velasquez remarked irritably to his companion--
"Talk of true hearts, indeed! That Diego yonder is making the General
well-nigh as soft-hearted as himself. What is a soldier, i' faith, if
he sets up to have feelings for his foes?"
"I will tell thee," said the calm, clear voice of Montoro unexpectedly.
"I will tell thee, friend Leon. He is then a true knight, such a knight
as our Cid would have called comrades with, and not a rascal. But the
General is calling for us. Father Olmedo waits to say mass, and to
bless us ere we start."
"Finish your sentence, Toro," said Cabrera quietly, and with a smile,
as he passed on with him to the chapel they had fitted up for their own
services.
Montoro looked round at his companion with some slight surprise.
"What finish wouldst have to my sentence, Juan? I understand thee not."
The other laughed as he answered in low tones--
"Mind me not, my dear friend Long-face; but thou knowest well that thy
tongue ached to say--'ere we start on our kidnapping expedition.' Ah!"
with another low, merry laugh, "said I not truly? Thy face betrays
thee."
It was indeed true that Montoro de Diego regarded the present
intentions of his companions in anything but a favourable light,
although, unless they would retreat, he knew well enough that some
strong measure was needful under present circumstances.
All he could do now he did. Whilst Fathers Olmedo and Juan Diaz were
engaged in the celebration of mass, he offered up the most fervent,
heartfelt prayers that the Father of all would have pity upon all His
children, that the Almighty Lord of the universe would so order all
things that they should further His kingdom upon earth, and His glory.
The mass ended, Cortes at once set out for the palace of Montezuma,
accompanied by a trusty band of his officers--the inflexible,
sunny-haired Alvarado, the fiery Velasquez de Leon, the intrepid and
upright Sandoval, the wary Lugo, Davila, ready-handed, careless and
fearless Juan de Cabrera, and the calm, keen-eyed, dependable, noble
Montoro de Diego.
Montoro did not, could not, approve of the new, stern step about
to be attempted for the conquest of Mexico. Nevertheless, when he
unobtrusively placed himself by the General's side, Cortes knew well
enough that, should the matter on hand come to bloodshed, Montoro de
Diego would die before his General suffered hurt.
Arrived at the palace, the unsuspecting monarch gave his usual gracious
and ready assent to his guests' demand for an audience. His oracles of
old had foretold the coming of white-faces as gods, or the messengers
of the gods, and so he ever treated them with a singular reverential
courtesy, even when he had learnt to recognize them as scourges of
evil, rather than the bright angels of mercy, teaching and blessing, he
had been led to look for and to await with eager hopefulness.
Stationed cautiously, at various intervals between their barracks and
the royal residence, were companies of the Spanish soldiers, armed
to the teeth, ready to support their General and their officers in
case of need. The guns were loaded, and pointed at the palace. Every
preparation and precaution was attended to that prudence or foresight
could dictate, and with that consciousness Cortes advanced to the
undertaking with his usual air of bold, calm confidence.
The poor Emperor was in a specially bright, gay humour. He entered
into a cheerful conversation, through the interpreters, with the
young Spanish knights, and to prove his brotherly attachment to
'Malinche,' offered him one of his daughters for a wife. He pleased
his own generous love of giving, and his guests' love of receiving, by
lavishing costly and elegant little gifts upon them after his usual
fashion.
Cabrera caught sight suddenly of Montoro de Diego's scornful, curling
lip, and eyes flashing with indignation, as Velasquez de Leon bent his
head to have a gold chain hung about his neck.
"What is it now, good Long-face?" he muttered, in some slight surprise.
"Methought that thou wouldst be well satisfied with this interval of
amity."
Montoro turned upon his friend with the fierceness of his ungovernable
boyhood.
"I would that yon poor monarch's gifts could burn ye all!" he exclaimed
passionately. "The base love of gold hath turned Spaniards into a crew
of the meanest hounds that walk the earth. Even a cat would not accept
a gift from the mouse it meant to kill."
But Montoro's generous wrath acted as the unintentional signal for the
consummation of the proposed act of treachery. His angry words and
looks startled the Emperor, and Cortes took advantage of his anxious
queries to reply to them in his own way. Suddenly dropping the mask of
smiles from his face, he exclaimed sternly--
"Can it surprise you, Montezuma, that my followers should show some
tokens of indignation, when their well-loved comrades have been slain
by your generals, during the very hours when you have made pretence to
grasp their hands as brothers?"
The Emperor's face paled somewhat.
"It has been no pretence, Malinche. I have learnt to love and trust
you."
"Then prove your words," cried Cortes, with a rapid glance round at
his Spanish officers, who gathered instantly close up about him and
the Emperor,--that poor Emperor, who had already, one would think,
sufficiently proved his trust by dismissing all his own faithful guards
and attendants from the apartment where he entertained his treacherous
visitors. "Then prove your words," exclaimed Cortes a second time,
striding a step nearer to the trembling monarch. "Trust yourself to
our care for awhile. We have been your guests; now be our guest in our
quarters, until you have proved your innocence of this cruel slaughter
of our comrades. So only will we credit what you say."
Montezuma rose from his pile of cushions, and grasping the embroidered
hangings of the wall behind him for support, he replied, with a brave
effort at self-command, and with returning dignity--
"Nay, ye white-faces, as messengers from the gods have I received you;
but you, as a culprit prisoner would hold me in your power."
"Not would, but will, or as a corpse," exclaimed that hot-brained
Velasquez de Leon; and, drawing his sword with unforeseen speed, he had
it already touching the Emperor's breast, before Montoro could spring
forward and dash it down again.
But the rash, discourteous act had pushed matters to an extremity
beyond recall. Even had Hernando Cortes felt any inclination to repent
of his harsh purpose, it would now truly have been impossible. After
suffering such a gross indignity Montezuma must have consulted his high
estate by destroying, or expelling, the handful of foreigners who had
dared to inflict it, were he able. Even he seemed conscious of this new
aspect of the affair.
"Do you desire to have me in your power that you may kill me?" he asked
at length, with a tone of calm despair that touched even Cortes' heart.
He answered eagerly--
"Nay, verily. You profess affection for me; I swear to it for you. But
I cannot let my followers be slain with impunity. I have their lives to
answer for to my sovereign."
"That may well be," was the answer. "But now they are slain; and
although, on my kingly word I declare, without my will or knowledge, I
yet profess my deepest grief for the mischance. What would you more,
Malinche?"
"That you should come with us now," was the ready answer. "Not as a
prisoner, as you put it, but as an honoured guest, surrounded by your
own attendants, and free of access to all your subjects as you are here
in your own palace."
"And for how long to remain such a guest?" asked Montezuma. He was
beginning to waver, not indeed from inward conviction of the truth of
the plausible words, but from a growing knowledge that they covered
an iron, inflexible resolve; and that he would be allowed no power to
summon any of his subjects to his aid from this snare, but at the peril
of instant death from that circle of ready, flashing swords. "How long
would you that I should thus abide amongst you, Malinche?"
"Until Guanhpopoea and his warriors shall have obeyed your summons
hither, to answer for their crimes."
"Crimes," repeated the Emperor. "Their crime, it is but one, Malinche."
"Not so," was the stern, cold answer, while Hernando's piercing eyes
fixed themselves with a full gaze upon the monarch's face. "Not so,
your Majesty. For one crime, there is the unprovoked slaughter of our
brethren. That is for us to avenge. For the other crime, there is the
presumptuous warfare waged by your general against those with whom
you are at peace, and without your will or knowledge. That is the act
of a rebel. That is for you to avenge, that insult to your supreme
authority. And it merits--death!"
Before that look, and at that word, Montezuma blanched, as before a
fatal blow, and he grew pale as death himself. Even Montoro, in his
secret heart, asked himself whether a faithful general were not about
to suffer, not for presumption, but for too great fidelity to one who
knew the arts of treachery, and of wearing a double face, almost as
well as did his Spanish brethren themselves.
One more feeble effort Montezuma made to maintain the dignity of his
sovereignty.
"My people will never submit to such an indignity for me, as that I
should quit my own royal domain to take up my dwelling with a handful
of needy strangers, who have to be dependent on our bounty even for the
food they eat."
But this last remonstrance was as vain as all the others had been.
"Your word is law with your people," said Cortes. "Give your orders,
and you will be obeyed. I, on my part, swear to you, by St. Jago, that
nought now or ever, on the part of myself or my followers, shall lower
you in the eyes of your subjects."
And so far, to the letter, Cortes did at least keep his word. From
the outward show of respect and deference towards the unhappy monarch
he never permitted his rough soldiers to depart, when that golden
litter, and the Aztec nobles, had for the second time borne the once
all-powerful Emperor of Mexico to those Spanish quarters, which were
henceforth to be his sad prison during the short remainder of his life.
Montezuma had been in his gilded bondage but a few days when the
noble chieftain Guanhpopoea, his son, and fifteen lesser Aztec
chiefs, arrived in proud obedience to the summons, and in like proud,
speechless submission suffered the cruel punishment decreed them by
Cortes, of being burnt alive. They had but done their duty in trying to
rid their sovereign of encroaching strangers, who refused all requests
to leave a country to which they had not been invited.
The chiefs were burnt alive in the courtyard of the Spaniards' palace;
Montezuma sat manacled in an apartment above, mute with a despair only
to be equalled by the shame and grief with which the heart of Montoro
de Diego felt bowed to the very dust.
He had saved ere now many an Indian from his threatened fate. This time
he was powerless.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
_HOMEWARD BOUND._
"And you must leave us then, Diego--leave us on the very eve of our
full and final triumph?"
Hernando spoke with a mingled accent of regret and bitterness. In his
reply Montoro hinted at both notes.
"I wish to leave. But believe, my captain and my long-time friend, I
shall part with you with grief, and although my conscience forbids
my further aiding a conquest and spoliation which I deem unjust, I
would not, and I dare not if I would, endeavour to be the ruler of the
consciences of others."
Cortes looked at him in some surprise.
"How so, Diego? What sayest thou? Surely thou wouldst make me, and
all of us, think as thou dost, were it but possible to thy persuasive
tongue."
But the answer came readily enough.
"Nay then, verily," said Montoro, with tones deeper and more earnest
than before; "that truly would I not. I am not omniscient. These
marvellous and wide-spread conquests and slaughters are allowed by the
universal Father, I know--"
"Why, of course they are," came the hasty interruption. "They are
undertaken for the glory of the Faith."
"And," muttered Juan de Cabrera, with just a momentary twitch of his
lips at the corners,--"and just a little, perchance, for the glory
likewise of ourselves and our silk-lined, empty pockets."
But Montoro de Diego paid no more heed to the one interruption than to
the other, as he continued with scarcely a pause--
"They are allowed by the Almighty, I know, for against His will there
can be nought on earth. But perchance they are also with His will,
by His law, and for the spread of the knowledge of His Gospel. What
mortal shall dare to judge of this? I, at least, veil my face before
the mysterious workings of the Creator; and although I feel my own call
henceforth to be to quieter scenes, I judge not those who, with regard
to honour and humanity, shall prosecute these wars."
"Then you do not leave me as you left Hispaniola long since, because
you believed it given up to the government of Satan and his captains?"
asked Cortes, with a touch of anxiety in his voice. "It is not quite so
bad as this then, is it, Toro?"
A grave smile overspread Montoro's face.
"I leave you, my friend, because, to my thinking, each nation should
be content with its own possessions, and such as it may win peaceably,
or in lawful trading; but I confess freely that, since discovery and
conquest are now the order of the day, I heartily congratulate these
countries that Providence has permitted it to you, rather than to any
others, to be the Commander of this, the most glorious expedition of
any hitherto undertaken by Spanish arms. Some things you have done
hardly, but in much you are merciful. And now, farewell."
"Farewell," returned the other fervently. "Have you any wishes, my
Diego, to leave with me?"
Diego retained his friend's hand a few moments.
"Yes--one wish. If, as the days roll on, you have any time and thought
to spare to our old friendship, yield it this offering, Cortes--show
mercy for its sake whenever it is possible."
"It is a promise," came the low-spoken answer, and the two friends
parted, never to meet again on earth.
Hernando Cortes completed his splendid conquest of Mexico; Montoro de
Diego wended his way homewards to his mother and his native land, where
a surprise awaited him of a most unexpected nature.
The philanthropy and unselfishness which had distinguished Montoro's
American career so greatly that in some circles his fame was scarcely
inferior to that even of the apostle of the Indies himself, had not, at
the same time, very much increased his wealth. This was to be expected;
but still, as the Spaniard neared Spain an involuntary sigh burst from
him.
"What meaneth that sigh, Diego?" asked a companion.
There came a second half-sigh before the answer.
"I fear it meaneth that I am not as strong as I had I hoped."
"Ah!" said Cabrera sympathetically; "that climate out yonder doth
touch--"
"Climate!" echoed Montoro with momentary scorn. "Tush, man! I speak
not of climates and bodily strength. It is of the moral powers I was
meditating when you caught me in that sigh. I started from our native
land eighteen years ago, confident, with a boy's confidence, that a
couple of years or so--say half-a-dozen at most--were to send me back
to my country so berobed and begirt with gold and glory that I should
dazzle all beholders, and walk back to my ancestral halls over the
backs of crowds of humble suppliants."
Cabrera laughed gaily.
"Ay, Diego. How like that was to a boyish dream. But now?"
"But now," said Montoro with a shrug of the shoulders, but betraying
more sadness than he wished--"but now, there is little need for thee or
any one to question. Now, as thou knowest, I return to my mother, able,
indeed, henceforth to keep her and myself in bread; but for the olives
and the oil and the wine, well, for my purse's length I will trust that
they reach not up to famine prices so long as the dear mother lives."
"And where dost thou propose that that same living shall be?" asked
Cabrera, with a curious gleam in his eyes, over which the lids were
somewhat lowered for concealment.
But such care was a little superfluous. Montoro was so taken up with
regrets which for once would have their way, that he paid small heed
to his companion's looks. He was thinking of his mother's face, and
wondering whether he should read any mute reproach for empty-handedness
in the sweet eyes that lighted it. But he had heard the question, and
he answered it--
"Have I never yet told thee, my Juan, of the humble home I have long
since provided for my mother in the little town of El Cuevo? I hope to
join her there within the next fortnight, and there I suppose I shall
end my days."
"And there _I_ suppose that thou'lt do nothing of the sort," responded
the captain with a downright bluntness, that acted as a wholesome tonic
to his friend. "Why, Toro, I suppose not that yon wretched little
town of El Cuevo is big enough to hold above half-a-score of beggars
altogether. How, in the name of St. Jago, dost suppose that, with thy
wide sympathies, thou wilt be able to exist in such a narrow field?"
This was a new way of putting the matter, and a very clever one for
that moment; and Montoro broke out into a hearty laugh, at sound of
which Juan de Cabrera took himself back to the duties of his ship with
a growling mutter to himself.
"Well, at any rate, that is some crumb of consolation to a fellow,
perhaps, for having to keep a secret that seems sometimes to be burning
a regular hole in my brain."
Happily, before that seeming grew into reality Cabrera's vessel
arrived safely at the port of Cadiz. Shortly after that he reached the
Court of King Charles in safety, and got comfortably rid of that burden
of mystery which he found so trying. Better still, he was authorized to
have the telling of it to the one it so greatly concerned--his comrade,
Montoro de Diego. He also was empowered to tell it after his own
desire,--bit by bit,--and found as much satisfaction in this telling,
or nearly so, as in telling over his own number of ounces of gold,
which proved a goodly sum in spite of his usual honesty, and general
carelessness as to golden or any other gains that had not fun for a
foundation.
CHAPTER XL.
_REINSTATED._
"Adios, my friend," said Montoro, a couple of weeks after landing on
Spanish soil.
"_Adios_ for the night, for I am sleepy," returned Cabrera. "But as
yet, _adios_ for no longer."
"But it must be," remonstrated Montoro. "My business here is
accomplished at last, and I am off to El Cuevo with the first dawn of
to-morrow."
"Are you so?" retorted Don Juan. "I must surely say that thou art in
mighty haste to part company with thy friends, my hasty Señor."
"And I must say," returned Montoro, with a pleased smile, "that thou
art as unreasonable as thou art gracious. What thinkest thou the mother
will say, whom I have not seen for six years, and then but for a flying
visit, if I linger on my road home now?"
"And what thinkest thou," demanded Don Juan, with dry
deliberation--"what thinkest thou our somewhat imperious sovereign, the
noble King Charles of Spain and Emperor of Germany, will think, and
possibly also do, if you disobey the orders of his minister that you
remain here?"
"When he pleases to give such orders about his insignificant subject
he will be obeyed," was the laughing answer. "Meantime, pending such
orders--"
"Meantime, you have such orders," said again Don Juan calmly, but so
firmly that the words began to carry some conviction to his hearer's
brain, and he started to his feet.
"Nay, Juan, play not with me thus. Tell me, is there real meaning in
thy speech?"
"Judge for thyself," was the reply. And he drew letters from his pocket
and spread them before his companion's eyes. "Canst read, Diego?"
The question was not wholly sarcastic. Many a brave knight in those
days could read the signs of a field of battle far more readily than
the pages of a book, or those written signs conveying thoughts from
mind to mind. But, as is well known, Diego could read, and his eyes
dilated with wonder as he read the few lines of the two letters now
laid before him.
One of the letters ordered that the Don Montoro de Diego should remain
at Cadiz until further advice should have been taken about him. The
second of them contained the information that the Don Montoro de Diego
was to remain at Cadiz until the end of the coming week, and then to
proceed, without further delay, to Madrid in the company of Cabrera,
his suite, and the Aztec treasure.
Montoro's bronzed cheeks grew pale as his eyes rested on the letters.
His first thought was one of dumb despair. Not for himself, for he was
toilworn and heartworn, and would have felt inclined to welcome any
death just then as the gateway to rest. But for his mother he feared
greatly that those orders signified an ominous memory of his origin.
Juan de Cabrera read his friend's face readily enough, and before the
reading his own boyish love of tormenting faded, and the mysterious
import of the letters was explained.
Montoro de Diego's report had gone before him. The good bishop Las
Casas had long since sounded a trumpet for him. Montejo months ago
had echoed the blast, and now Cortes, the conqueror of an Empire, and
Father Olmedo, the wise missionary of Mexico, had made one of the
bearers of their magnificent spoils to the King Charles also the bearer
of his own praises.
A few weeks hence Montoro de Diego, with the trembling hand of the
sweet-eyed, silver-haired mother, Rachel de Diego, clasped tightly
within his own, once more entered the home of his ancestors, from which
he had been driven in his helpless first weeks of infancy.
He had sought neither gold nor glory, but only to tread in the steps
of Him who has said--'I will have mercy, and not sacrifice.' 'By this
shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one to
another.'
He had sown the seeds of mercy, uprightness, honour, and compassion;
and even in those wild, wealth-clutching days he reaped men's honour
and a golden harvest.
THE END.
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