The Aztec Treasure-House 32 – Janvier · Verses Across
Literature · Historical Fiction
The Aztec Treasure-House 32Defeat
18
Literature · Historical Fiction
The Aztec Treasure-House 32
Defeat
JanvierEnglish
After all, the life that I thought was lost, and had but little sorrow for the losing of it, slowly came back to me again. For a good while before I recovered consciousness fully, I understood a little of what was going on around me by sounds which, no doubt, were loud and ringing, yet which seemed to me to come faintly from a long way off. They plainly were the sounds of fighting--of weapons rattling together, of shouts and yells and death-cries--but I did not associate them with our present battling, but thought that we still were in the cañon, and were still fighting those wild Indians by whom poor Dennis was slain. And I knew that I had been hurt badly; for in my head was a throbbing pain so keen that it seemed like to split my skull open, and my stomach was stirred by most distressing qualms, and my weakness was such that I could not ease the sore muscles of my body by moving by so much as a hair's-breadth from the cramped position in which I lay.
It seemed to me a vastly long while that I remained in this dreary condition of half-consciousness, with no certain knowledge of anything save the pain that I suffered; and then I felt some one touch me, and a hand laid upon my heart; and this touch so far roused me that I heaved a long sigh and slowly opened my eyes. For a moment I did not know the face that I saw bending over me; nor was this wonderful, for in place of its usual ruddiness was a death-like pallor, that was the more marked by contrast with the blood that trickled down over it from a great gash across the brow whereby the bone was laid bare. But there was no mistaking the voice that called out: "He's alive, Rayburn!" and added, "I don't see what right he's got t' be alive, either, after a crack like that. I guess studyin' antiquities must everlastin'ly harden an' thicken a man's skull!"
"Studying engineering doesn't harden a man's leg, anyway," I heard Rayburn answer. "That cut pretty near took mine off. But now that we've stopped the bleeding I guess I'm all right. I think I can work over to you on my hands and knees and help you with the Professor. Now that I know he's alive I seem to be a lot more alive myself."
"Just you stay where you are," Young called back, sharply. "If you move you'll start that bandage an' I'll have t' tie you up all over again. I'll attend t' th' Professor." And then Young bent over me, and, with a tenderness that I never would have thought his rough hands capable of, set himself to bandaging my wounded head. But the best thing that he did for me was to give me a draught of water from a gourd that had been slung about the neck of one of the soldiers lying dead there; which draught, with the comfort that the cool wet bandage about my head gave me, brought back to me so much of my strength that I was able presently to sit up and look around.
Truly, a more ghastly sight than that which my eyes then rested upon I never saw. The gate-way of the Citadel was a very shambles. Piles of dead men lay all around me; and the prodigious number of the enemy lying slain there testified with a mute eloquence to the desperate fashion in which our handful of men had fought. Over the rough pavement, down the slope towards the lake, there flowed a stream of bright red blood that in places shone a brilliant vermilion where it was touched by the glintings of the sun. Among the dead I did not see Tizoc's body, and for this I was glad. Half a dozen of the enemy stood by us as a guard; but these suffered us to minister to each other, evidently feeling that no great amount of caution was necessary in dealing with three badly wounded men. Indeed, these guards, in their way, manifested a kindly feeling for us; for when they perceived that our gourd of water was empty one of them picked up another full gourd from amid the dead and handed it to us. From inside the Citadel there still came a tumult of fierce sounds which gave proof that though the battle--if it could be called a battle--was ended the work of killing still was going on; but these sounds sensibly diminished while we lay there waiting to know what fate would come to us, and we concluded, therefore, that there remained no more rebels to be slain.
Rayburn was seated upon the ground at no great distance from me, his back propped against the wall. As he saw that I was looking towards him, and had again my wits about me, he greeted me with a very melancholy smile. "It's been a pretty cold day for us, Professor," he said, "and there's no great comfort in knowing that it's partly our own fault that these fellows have laid us out. I didn't give them credit for such good tactics; and even with the bad watch that we kept I don't see how they managed to get their men round on the other side of our camp. Well, it must please them to know how straight we walked into the trap that they set for us, like the pack of fools that we were."
"You won't ketch me joinin' in any more Indian revolutions, anyway," Young put in. "I did think I could bet on those Tlahuicos, an' they've just gone back on us th' worst kind. Do you feel strong enough, Professor, to tie th' ends o' this rag?" He had been binding up the cut in his forehead, and now he got down on his hands and knees in front of me, and bent his head down within easy reach of my hands; and my strength had so far returned to me that without being very tired after it I was able to make the ends of the bandage fast. The blow on his head had glanced from the skull, luckily; but it had been heavy enough to stun him for some minutes after he received it--and his falling as though dead had been the means, no doubt, of saving his life, even as in the same manner my life had been saved. Rayburn's wound was a worse one than either Young's or mine, for a great gash in his thigh had wellnigh cut his leg off, and until, with Young's help, he had improvised a tourniquet, from a bowstring and a broken fragment of a javelin, he had been in great danger of bleeding to death.
For more than an hour we were suffered to lie in the gate-way; while the work went on of slaying the wretched Tlahuicos, and then of marshalling the more important personages who had been reserved alive as prisoners, and, finally, of restoring order in the victorious ranks. At the end of this time an officer with a squad of men came to where we were lying, and roughly ordered us to rise, to the end that we also might be placed among the prisoners. Young and I had so far recovered our strength that we managed to scramble on our feet with no great difficulty; though in my case this exertion, which made the blood flow more briskly in my veins, suddenly increased so greatly the pain in my head as to bring upon me for a little while a dizziness that compelled me to lean against the wall for support. In Rayburn's case standing was quite out of the question; and I shortly told the officer in what manner he was wounded, and that to make him rise and walk assuredly would start the bandage on his leg, and so lead to his quickly bleeding to death. Thereupon the officer gave an order to some of his men to fetch a stretcher such as their own wounded were carried in; yet at the same time he said to me: "This companion of yours is a brave man; and but for my orders, I would loosen the bandage with my own hands, and so let him die without further pain;" which speech, notwithstanding the obviously kind intention of it, I did not translate to Rayburn at that time.
While we waited for the stretcher to be brought, the soldiers fastened about Young's neck and about mine heavy wooden collars, which set well out over our shoulders and were not unlike great ruffs. I confess that for my own part my professional interest in this curious piece of gear entirely overcame my repugnance to wearing it, for I instantly recognized it as the cuauh-cozatl, with which, as the ancient records tell us, the Aztecs were accustomed to secure their prisoners of war. But Young, who could not be expected to share in my delight at seeing actually alive, and ourselves made party to it, a custom that was supposed to have been extinguished to more than three centuries, grew exceedingly indignant at having thus placed about his neck what he coarsely described as "an overgrown d----n goose-yoke." Nor was I at all successful in my attempt to soothe him by telling him that the discomfort to which we were subjected was a very trifling matter in comparison with the gain to the science of archeology that flowed from this positive identification of an exceedingly interesting historical fact.
"Oh, come off, Professor," he growled. "What th' d----l do I care for historical facts, or for historical lies either?--an' they're all about th' same thing. What I want t' do is t' punch th' head o' th' fellow who put this thing on me, an' I can't. They'll be hangin' me up by my heels an' stickin' a corn-cob in my mouth next, I s'pose, an' makin' a regular stuck-pig out o' me; an' then likely enough you'll try t' make me believe that that proves something or other that nobody but you thinks ever happened, an' so want me t' feel pleased about it. Antiquities be d----d! I've had as much of' em as I want, an' more too!"
While the collars were being placed about our necks, and while Rayburn was being lifted upon the stretcher which the soldiers had brought, we heard from within the Citadel the sound of drums tapping, and then the measured tread of soldiers marching; and as we looked through the gate-way we saw that the troops had been formed in regular order and were moving towards us. At the head of the column were the prisoners--numbering three or four hundred, and all wearing wooden collars about their necks--covered on both flanks by a strong line of guards. They were ranged in order of their dignity, the unlucky members of the Council coming first, and after them the other officers of that short-lived government; then the military officers, and in the rear a few private soldiers. The fact that no Tlahuicos were among the prisoners led me to conclude that such of these as had not been slain had been held under guard until they might be returned to their owners or set again to toiling hopelessly in the mine.
The importance that in the estimation of our captors attached to ourselves was shown by their placing us at the very head of the column, in advance even of the members of the Council; and this was a compliment that we willingly enough would have declined, for such honorable consideration, according to the customs of this people, meant surely that we were reserved for a very exemplary fate. But we were in no position to raise objections of any sort just then, and we therefore fell into the place assigned to us and tried as well as we could to show a bold front as we went downward towards the lake.
Only a few terrified women and children, who fled away as we advanced, were in sight as we passed through the streets of the town; and from many of the hovels came the moans of poor wounded wretches who had crawled to their miserable homes to die in them; and from others came the lamentations of women over their dead; and in nooks and corners, whither with their last strength they had dragged themselves, we saw men lying dead in pools of their own blood. But down by the water-side there were live men in plenty, soldiers and oarsmen, and the pier was crowded with them; while out beyond the pier the whole bay was swarming with the boats in which the enemy's forces had stolen down upon us in the darkness from Culhuacan; making their landing, as we now learned, just beyond the town in a bay that ran up close to where our army was encamped. And this scene of bustling activity in the bright sunshine made a joyous and brilliant picture; that was all the brighter because of its setting in that sunlit bay, opening out between beaches of golden-yellow sand upon the broad expanse of restful water which fell away in gleaming splendor into a bank of soft gray haze.
But the picture was still more stirring that we saw as we looked landward, when the barge that we were put aboard of pulled out from the pier and our rowers lay on their oars, and so waited while the work of embarkation went on. Right in front of us was the broad central street of the town; and the whole length of this, from the pier to the Citadel, was filled with a solidly massed body of soldiers that came down the steep descent slowly, and halting often, to the boats which were in waiting to bear them away. Barbarians though they were, these soldiers made a gallant showing. In front of each regiment was borne its feather standard, and in the midst of each company was its rallying flag of brightly painted cotton cloth. The higher officers wore wooden casques, carved and painted in the semblance of the heads of ferocious beasts; the cotton-cloth armor of all the officers was decked with a great variety of strange devices, wrought in very lively hues, and similarly strong hues were used in the decoration of the universally-carried light round shields. And all this brilliant color, the more vivid because of its background of bare brown skins, was flecked with a thousand glittering points of light where the sunshine sparkled on swords and on spear-heads of hardened gold.
"Its not much wonder that those fellows got away with us," Rayburn said, as he watched the orderly manner in which the disciplined ranks moved out upon the pier and stepped briskly into the boats at the word of command. "They're as fine a lot of fighters as I ever saw anywhere. Just look how steadily they stand at a halt, and how sharply they obey orders, and how well set up they are! I must say I don't see what the Colonel could have been thinking about when he said that we had a fighting chance against an army like that. Well, he's paid for his mistake about as much as a man can pay for anything. It breaks me all up to think that the Colonel is dead. He was good all the way through. And I wonder what will become of that little lame boy of his now? They'll make a Tlahuico of him, I suppose. By Jove! what a mess we've made of this whole business from first to last!"
My heart was too heavy for me to answer Rayburn save by a nod; for while he spoke the thought came home to me very bitterly that upon me rested the responsibility of the black misfortune in which he and Young were involved; and with this came also a great burst of sorrow as I thought how still more closely at my door lay Pablo's death--for Rayburn and Young at least had come into my plans with a reasonable understanding of the danger to which they exposed themselves; but Pablo, having no such knowledge, had followed me unquestioningly because of his loving trust that I would hold him safe from harm. My sorrow concerning Fray Antonio was keen enough, Heaven knows; but in his case I had the solace of knowing surely that he had come to his death not because of my urging, but in pursuance of his own strong desire. There was a little comfort in the thought that even one of these four lost lives could not be charged to my account; and yet this reflection seemed only to make my sorrow heavier as I thought of the woful weight of my responsibility for the other three.
For nearly two hours we lay there in the bay while the embarkation of the prisoners and the troops went on--our boat moving farther out from the pier from time to time as the double line of boats behind it lengthened. In that sheltered place there was little wind blowing, and the blazing heat of the sun beating down upon my wounded head gave me so sharp a pain that I gladly would have died to be rid of it; and I could see, from the drawn look of their faces, that Young and Rayburn were suffering not less keenly. We were thankful enough, therefore, when at last the embarkation was completed--more than half of the army remaining in Huitzilan to restore order there--and we pulled out from the bay into the open waters of the lake and were comforted by the light breeze, which yet brought with it a delicious refreshment, that was blowing there.
All the bright beauty of that lovely lake was around us, having for its background the green meadows and the darker green of the forests hanging above them on the upward slopes, and beyond all the towering height of the cliffs, which shaded in their colorings from delicate gray to dark brown, and were touched here and there by patches of black shadow where some great cleft opened; and yet all that we then thought of was that across those blue waters, which gleamed golden in the sunlight, we were going swiftly to a cruel death, and that the cliffs, whereof the beauty was hateful to us, irrevocably shut us in. Which gloomy feelings pressed upon us throughout that dismal passage, while all our oarsmen pulled stoutly together, and we went gliding onward over the sunlit waters towards the evil fate that we knew was waiting for us within the dark walls whereby was encircled the city of Culhuacan.
