The Aztec Treasure-House 23 – Janvier · Verses Across
Literature · Historical Fiction
The Aztec Treasure-House 23The Outbreak of Revolution
18
Literature · Historical Fiction
The Aztec Treasure-House 23
The Outbreak of Revolution
JanvierEnglish
So dismal was this sound, and so many were the dismal possibilities that it suggested, that as I heard it a cold chill went down into my heart; and I was glad enough that we at once were led forth from the guard-room, and that in consideration of matters of immediate moment my mind was diverted from dwelling drearily upon a future that seemed full of gloom.
For all the brilliant blaze of sunlight that brightened the large court-yard into which we were conducted, there was about it curious coldness and cheerlessness. As in the case of all the other houses which we had observed, the stone-work of the walls and of the pavement was a dull black; but here there were no flowers, nor bright-colored hangings over the inner doors, nor brightness of any sort or kind. The carving of the stone was extraordinarily rich, to be sure; but the bass-reliefs which covered the walls were wholly of a gloomy sort--being for the most part representations of the slaughter of men in sacrifice, and the tearing of hearts out--so that the eight of them made me shiver, notwithstanding the warmth of the sun. From the centre of the court-yard a broad stair-way ascended to the plateau above on which the temple stood; and this direct way of communicating with it led me to the conclusion that the building was a dependency of the temple, and that very likely the higher members of the priesthood were housed here.
However, little time was given for looking around us, for our guard hurried us--El Sabio following close at Pablo's heels--across the court-yard to a door-way at its farther side, before which hung in heavy folds a curtain of some sort of thick black cloth. Across this entrance the guard was drawn up in orderly ranks behind us; and then the barge-master, who had preserved absolute silence towards us since our march through the city began, held aside the curtain and silently motioned to us to enter.
From the bright sunshine we passed at a step into a chamber so shadowy that we involuntarily stopped on the threshold, in order that our eyes might become accustomed to the semi-darkness before we advanced. The only light that entered it came through two narrow slits in the thick wall above the portal that we had just passed; and the glimmer diffused by the thin rays thus admitted was in great part absorbed by the black draperies with which everywhere the room was hung. As our eyes adjusted themselves to these gloomy conditions we perceived that we were in a hall of great size; and presently we were able to distinguish objects clearly enough to see that at the far end of it was a raised dais, having a sort of throne upon it; but not until, being urged forward by the officer, we had traversed more than half the length of the hall did we discern upon the throne the shadowy figure of a man.
Being come close to the dais, the officer halted us by a gesture; but no word was spoken, and for several minutes we stood in the semi-darkness of that strange place in absolute silence. For myself, I must confess that I was somewhat awed by my surroundings, and by the impassive silence and stillness that the dimly seen figure upon the throne maintained, and I am sure that Fray Antonio's imaginative nature was similarly impressed; as for Pablo, I distinctly heard his teeth chattering in the dark. But neither Rayburn nor Young, as the latter would have expressed it, awed easily, and it was Rayburn who presently spoke.
"This fellow in the big chair would be a good hand at private theatricals. He's got a first-rate notion of stage effect. Hadn't I better stick a pin in him and wake him up?"
"There's no good in stickin' pins into him," said Young, in a tone of great contempt. "What's the matter with him is, he's not real at all--he's stuffed!"
There was something so absurdly incongruous in these comments that they acted instantly upon my overstrained nerves, and I burst into a laugh, in which the other two immediately joined. Evidently, this was not at all the effect that this carefully arranged reception was intended to have upon us; for the seated figure started suddenly and uttered an angry exclamation, and at the same time gave a quick order to the officer.
"I take it all back," said Young; "he ain't stuffed. I guess he was only asleep."
As Young spoke there was a slight rustle of draperies, and in a moment the curtains which had veiled four great windows in the four sides of the hall were pulled aside, and the darkness vanished in a sudden blaze of light. While we shaded our eyes for some seconds, Rayburn said, with great decision: "This settles it. He must have been in the show business all his life."
But the man whom we now saw clearly did not look like a showman. He was a very old man, lean and shrivelled; his brown skin so wrinkled that his face looked like some sort of curiously withered nut. Yet there was a wonderful sinewiness about him, and a most extraordinary brightness in his eyes. His face was of the strong, heavy type that is found in the figures carved on the ruins in Yucatan; a much stronger type than I have observed anywhere among the Mexican Indians of the present day. His dress was a long, flowing robe of white cotton cloth, caught over his left shoulder with a broad gold clasp, and richly embroidered with shining green feathers; and shining green feathers were bound into his hair and rose above his head in a tall plume. His sandal-moccasins (for the covering of his feet was between these two) repeated the sacred combination of colors, green and white; and on his breast, falling from his neck, were several richly wrought gold chains. Even apart from his stately surroundings, his dress--and especially the shining green feathers which were so conspicuous a part of it--would have informed me that this man was a priest of very exalted rank; and the conditions of our presentation to him assured me that he was none other than the Priest Captain, Itzacoatl. And I may add that if ever a high dignitary of a heathen religion was in a rage, Itzacoatl was in a rage at that particular moment. Young's comment lacked reverence, but it was to the point: "Well, he has got his back up, for sure!"
With an alertness that was astonishing in one of his years, Itzacoatl rose quietly from the throne; and as he pointed to us with a commanding gesture, he asked, sharply, why we had been allowed to retain our arms, and ordered them to be taken away from us; which order troubled us greatly, and also occasioned us a very lively surprise. As for the barge-master, he evidently was vastly puzzled by it; for, according to his notions, we were not armed. He did not venture to reply, but his uncertainty was to the duty that was expected of him was apparent in his hopeless look of entire bewilderment. It seemed to me that for a moment the Priest Captain was slightly confused, as though he recognized the incongruity between his own knowledge in this matter and his officer's ignorance; and in explaining his order he took occasion to refer to the superior knowledge with which he was endowed by the gods. Fray Antonio and I glanced at each other doubtingly as he spoke, for this explanation struck us as being decidedly forced. The gods of the ancient Mexicans pre-eminently were war gods; but they certainly were not likely to have any very extended knowledge of Winchester rifles and self-cocking revolvers.
However, when the officer comprehended what was required of him, he was prompt enough in his actions. Without any ceremony at all he laid hands on Young's rifle, that was hanging by its strap on his shoulder, and endeavored to take it away from him. This was a line of action that the Lost-freight Agent by no means was inclined to submit to. Without any assistance he unslung the rifle, cocked it as he jumped back half a dozen steps, and then raised it to his shoulder, with his finger on the trigger and the muzzle fairly levelled at the officer's heart. "Shall I down him?" he asked.
"Don't shoot!" Rayburn cried, quickly; and in obedience to this order Young slowly dropped the rifle from his shoulder, yet held it ready for action in his hands. The perfect calmness of the officer through this exciting episode afforded the most convincing proof that fire-arms were wholly unknown to him. And the conduct of the Priest Captain afforded equally convincing proof that he not only understood the nature of fire-arms, but that he was very much afraid of them; for, at the moment that Young made his offensive demonstration, he very precipitately sheltered himself by crouching behind the throne.
"Don't shoot!" Rayburn repeated. "We may have a chance to pull through if we don't rile these follows; but if we go killing any of them now it's all day with us, for sure. We'd better let 'em have our guns; but there's something mighty odd in their having found out all of a sudden what a gun is."
Very reluctantly Young surrendered his rifle to the officer, who looked at it contemptuously, as though he considered it but a poor sort of weapon in case real fighting was to be done. In turn, the rest of us gave up our rifles also; and we were mightily pleased because the officer did not attempt to take our revolvers away from us. But in this our satisfaction was short-lived, for the Priest Captain quickly ordered the officer to relieve us of them, and of our cartridge-belts as well; nor was it until we had been thus entirely disarmed that he arose from his undignified position and resumed his seat upon the throne.
While the disagreeable process of disarming us was going on I spoke to Fray Antonio of the curious possibilities suggested by the knowledge of fire-arms which the Priest Captain, alone among all the Aztlanecas, so obviously possessed; and he, in reply, bade me remember what Tizoc had told us of the use that Itzacoatl made of wax-matches in lighting the sacred fire. "Can it possibly be, then, that he is in communication with the outside world?" I exclaimed.
As I uttered these words I glanced at Itzacoatl, and the expression on his face was that of one who listens intently, and who is greatly enraged by what he hears. At the same moment Rayburn cried: "That man understands Spanish. He is listening to you."
Doubtless, some sort of an explanation would have followed this strange discovery, for that we had made it was very obvious, but at that moment a man--seemingly, from his dress, a priest of high rank--came into the hall hurriedly, and very earnestly delivered a communication to Itzacoatl in low, excited tones. That the substance of this communication was highly disagreeable to him was shown by his manner of receiving it; and for a moment he slightly hesitated, as though very grave consequences might attend upon the decision that he then made. But it was for a moment only that he stood in doubt. Then he called the barge-master to him, and gave some order in a low voice; and then, accompanied by the priest, went out rapidly from the hall.
Evidently in obedience to the order that he had received, the barge-master bade us follow him, and so led us into the court-yard again. Young proposed, since we had only this one man to deal with, that we should make short work of him, and so get back our arms--which remained where he had placed them in a pile beside the throne. But Rayburn's more prudent counsel overcame this tempting proposition. As he pointed out, the promptness with which the curtains had been pulled back showed that attendants of some sort were close at hand; and, in addition to these, we knew that the guard of soldiers was just outside of the entrance to the hall. It was certain, therefore, that we could not regain our arms without immediately using them in very active fighting; and no matter how well we fought, under these conditions we must certainly be defeated in the end. All of which was so just and so reasonable that Young could not in anywise gainsay its propriety; but he was in a very ill humor at being restrained from the pleasure of having it out with them, as he grumblingly declared; and as we passed out into the court-yard he relieved his mind by swearing most vigorously.
For my part, even the peril that we were in did not suffice to distract my mind from curious consideration of the strange state of affairs that existed among the folk dwelling in this hidden valley if our surmise in regard to the Priest Captain's knowledge of the outer matches, his acquaintance with fire-arms, and his knowledge of the Spanish tongue. The implication was unavoidable that this extraordinary man actually had a more or less complete knowledge of the powers and appliances of the nineteenth century, and that he was using his nineteenth century knowledge to maintain his supremacy over a people whose civilization was about on a par with that of European communities of a thousand years ago. From the stand-point of the ethnologist, a more interesting situation than the one time developed could not possibly be devised. What I most longed for was the establishment of such friendly relations with Itzacoatl that I could carry out a systematized series of scientific investigations among the Aztlanecas before the impending crash of discovery came; and my keenest regret at that moment was caused by the conviction that the incapacity of Itzacoatl to understand the value of scientific inquiry into such curious ethnologic facts would result in his mere vulgar killing of me, whereby a precious store of knowledge would be withheld from the world at large.
As we came out into the court-yard we heard the sound of voices, which seemed to be raised in angry altercation, coming from the direction of the main entrance, with which there was also a slight clinking sound as of arms being got in readiness; and, much farther away, the sound seemingly coming from distant quarter of the city, the tapping of a drum. When we first had crossed the court-yard it had been entirely deserted; but now many priests and soldiers were standing in groups about it, and more were coming down the stair from the temple; and all of these men had a look of eager alertness, as though some decisive event were imminent in which they expected to have a part. But we had only a moment in which to observe all this, for we were hurried away towards the corner of the building that was most remote from the street, and here, before I well could understand what was being done with me, I was thrust so suddenly and so violently through a narrow door-way that I fell heavily upon the floor. Before I could regain my feet Young had tumbled down on top of me, and then the others tumbled on top of us both--they having been in the same rude fashion injected into the apartment; and while we thus were lying in a heap together--my own body, being undermost, having the breath wellnigh squeezed out of it--we heard the rattle of metal upon stone as the door-way was quickly closed with heavy bars.
We struggled to our feet in wellnigh total darkness--for outside the bars a curtain had been dropped that shut off almost wholly the light of day--and I am confident that no one room ever contained two angrier people than Rayburn and Young were then; for their very strength and hardihood made them the more ragingly resent being thus tumbled about as though they were bales or boxes rather than men. Rayburn's language was not open to the charge of weakness; but the words in which Young gave vent to his feelings were so startlingly vigorous that even a Wyoming cow-boy would have been surprised by them; yet I must confess that at the moment--so greatly was my own anger aroused--I thought his observations exceedingly appropriate to the occasion that called them forth, and I even was disposed to envy him the command of a technical vocabulary that enabled him to express so adequately his righteous wrath. However, I was for once well pleased that Fray Antonio did not understand English.
But our anger quickly was swallowed up in anxious grief as we discovered, when our eyes had become somewhat accustomed to the very faint light, that only we four were in the room together; and a great dread fell upon us because of the imminent peril to Pablo which this separation of him from the rest of us implied. Assuredly there was strong reason why he should be an especial object of Itzacoatl's fear and hatred. He and El Sabio together were the visible sign which told that the prophecy touching the Priest Captain's downfall was about to be fulfilled; and, more than this, Pablo's simple statement of the condition of affairs among the modern Mexicans--showing that the crisis in their fate that Chaltzantzin had foretold, and for which he had so well prepared, long since had come and gone--would be far more convincing to the masses of the Aztlanecas than would be any exhibition of these same facts that we could make to them; for we were aliens among them, while Pablo was of their own race and class. That we all were like to be done to death by this barbarous theocrat we did not for a moment doubt; but it was plain enough that every motive of self-interest must prompt him to put Pablo and the poor ass most summarily out of the way. And as the logic of these facts irresistibly presented itself in my mind a keen and heavy sorrow overcame me, for I could not shirk the conviction that, whoever might strike the blow that killed him, I myself was the cause of this poor boy's death. Fray Antonio could not see my face in that shadowy prison, yet his fine nature divined the pain that I suffered and the cause of it, and he sought to comfort me with his sympathy. He did not speak, but he came close beside me and tenderly laid his hand upon my shoulder; and his loving touch, telling of his sorrow for me and with me, did bring a little cheer into my heavy heart.
Meanwhile the commotion outside increased greatly, and even through the thick folds of the curtain we could hear plainly the clanking of arms, and the heavy tread of men, and sharply given words of command. We pressed close to the bars and tried to push, the curtain aside that we might see out into the court-yard; but the bars were so near together that our hands would not pass between them, and we therefore could gather only from the sounds which we heard what was going on outside. But the sounds were unmistakable. There could be no doubt whatever that a vigorous assault upon the building was in progress, and those within it vigorously were defending it; and we knew that the cause of the fighting certainly must be ourselves. Already, it would seem, the prophecy of the Priest Captain's downfall was assuming a tangible reality; for this rising in arms against him could mean nothing less than that his high-handed refusal to permit us to be carried before the Council of the Twenty Lords had fairly brought matters to a crisis, and that the long-threatened revolution actually had been begun.
