FAREWELL
Nahua ceased and sat down, and so great was the astonishment--or
rather the awe--of the Council at the tale that she had told, that for
a while none of them spoke. At length Dimas rose, and said:
“Maya, Lady of the Heart, and you strangers, you have heard the awful
charge that is brought against you. What do you say in answer to it?”
“We say that it is true,” answered Maya calmly. “We were forced to
choose between the loss of our lives and the doing of this deed, and
we chose to live. It was Mattai who hatched the fraud and executed the
forgery, and now it seems that we must suffer for his sin as well as
for our own. One word more: Ignatio here did not enter into this plot
willingly, but was forced into it by my husband and myself, and
chiefly by myself.”
Dimas made no answer, but at a sign the two priests who guarded the
altar with drawn swords came forward and drove us into the passage
that led from the Sanctuary to the Hall of the Dead, where they shut
us in between the double doors, leaving us in darkness.
Here, as all was finished, I knelt down to offer my last prayers to
Heaven, while Maya wept in her husband’s arms, taking farewell of him
and of her child, which wailed upon her breast.
“Truly,” he said, “you were wise, wife, when you urged us not to enter
this Country of the Heart. Still, what is done cannot be undone, and,
having been happy together for a little space, let us die together as
bravely as we may, hoping that still together we may awake presently
in some new world of peace.”
While he spoke, the door was opened, and the priests with drawn swords
led us back into the Sanctuary. As Maya crossed the threshold first of
the three of us, she was met by Tikal, who with a sudden movement, but
without roughness, took the child from her arms. Now we saw what was
prepared for us, for the stone in front of the altar had been lifted,
and at our feet yawned the black shaft from which ascended the sound
of waters. They placed us with our backs resting against the altar;
but Tikal stood in front, and between him and us lay the mouth of the
pit.
“Maya, daughter of Zibalbay the _cacique_, Lady of the Heart; white
man, Son of the Sea; Ignatio the Wanderer; and Mattai the priest,
whom, being dead in the body, we summon in the spirit,” began Dimas in
a cold and terrible voice, “you by your own confession are proved
guilty of the greatest crimes that can be dreamed of in the wicked
brain of man and executed by his impious hands. You have broken your
solemn oaths taken in the presence of heaven and your brethren; you
have offered insult to the god we worship, and violated his Sanctuary;
and you have palmed off as their god-sent prince, upon the people who
trusted you, a bastard and a child of sin. For all these and other
crimes which you have committed,--why we know not,--it is not in our
power to mete out to you a just reward. That must be measured to you
elsewhere, when you have passed our judgment-seat and your names are
long forgotten upon the earth.
“This is the sentence of the Council of the Heart, that your name,
Mattai, be erased from the list of the officers of the Heart; that
your memory be proclaimed accursed; that your dwelling-place be burned
with fire, and the site of it strewn with salt; that your corpse be
torn from its grave and laid upon the summit of the pyramid till the
birds of the air devour it; and that your soul be handed over to the
tormentors of the lower world to deal with according to their pleasure
for ever and for aye.
“This is the sentence of the Council of the Heart upon you, Maya,
daughter of Zibalbay the _cacique_, Lady of the Heart; white man, Son
of the Sea, and Ignatio the Wanderer: That your names be erased from
the roll of the Brethren of the Heart, and proclaimed accursed in the
streets of the city; that you be gagged, bound hand and foot, and
chained living to the walls of the Sanctuary, and there left before
the altar of the god which you have violated, till death from thirst
and hunger shall overtake you; that your corpses be laid upon the
pyramid as a prey to the birds of the air; and that your souls be
handed over to the tormentors of the under-world to deal with
according to their pleasure for ever and for aye. It is spoken. Let
the sentence of the Council be done. But first, since this bastard
babe is too young to sin and suffer punishment, let him be handed into
the keeping of the god, that the god may deal with him according to
his pleasure.”
As the words passed his lips, and before we fully understood them,
dazed as we were with the terror of our awful doom, Tikal stepped
forward and--even now I shudder when I write of it--holding the poor
infant, which at this instant began to wail again as though with pain
or fear, over the mouth of the pit, suddenly he let it fall into the
depths beneath.
The shriek of the agonised mother ran round the walls of the holy
place, and before it had died away the señor had leaped
forward--leaped like a puma--across the gulf of the open well and
gripped Tikal by the throat and waist. He gripped him, and, rage
giving him strength, he lifted him high above his head and hurled him
down the dreadful place whither the child had gone before.
With a hoarse scream, Tikal vanished, and for a moment there was
silence. It was broken by the voice of Maya, crying aloud, in accents
of madness and despair,--
“Not all the waters of the Holy Lake shall wash away our sin, yet may
they serve to avenge us upon you, O you murderers of a helpless
child!”
As she spoke, followed by the señor and myself, who I think alone of
all the company guessed her dreadful purpose, Maya ran round the
altar, and with both her hands grasped the symbol of the Heart which
lay upon it.
“Forbear!” cried the voice of Dimas, but she did not heed him. Before
he or any of us could reach her, dragging at it with desperate
strength, she tore the ancient symbol from its bed, and with a loud
and mocking laugh had cast it down upon the marble floor, where it
shattered into fragments.
For one second all was still; then from the altar there came a sudden
twang as of harp-strings breaking, that was followed instantly by
another and more awful sound, the sound of the roar of many waters.
“Fly! fly!” cried a voice, “the floods are loosed and destruction is
upon us and upon the People of the Heart!”
Now the Council rushed one and all towards the door of the Sanctuary;
but I, Ignatio, by the grace of Heaven, remembered the other door, the
secret door through which we had entered, that the priest had left
ajar.
“This way!” I cried in Spanish to the señor, and seizing Maya by the
arm I dragged her with me into the passage. When all three of us were
through I turned to close the door, and as I did so I saw an awful
sight.
Out of the mouth of the pit before the altar sprang a vast column of
water, which struck the roof of the Sanctuary with such fearful force
that already the massive marble blocks began to rain down upon the
crowd of fugitives, who struggled and in vain to open the door and
escape into the Hall of the Dead. One other thing I saw; it was the
corpse of Tikal, vomited from the depth into which the señor had
hurled him, a shapeless mass ascending and descending with the column
of water as alternately it struck and rebounded from the roof.
[image: img_337.jpg
caption: Out of the mouth of the pit... sprang a vast column of
water.]
Then, before the flood could reach it, I closed the door, and,
possessing myself of the bunch of keys that still hung in the lock, we
fled up the passages and stairs till we came to the hall where we had
been imprisoned. Here, however, we dared not stay, for already strange
gurgling sounds struck upon our ears, and we felt the mighty fabric of
the pyramid shake and quiver beneath the blows of the imprisoned
waters as they burst their way upward and outward. Seizing lamps, we
ran to the copper gates at the head of the hall, and not without
trouble found the key that opened them. We had no time to spare, for
as we left it the water rushed in at the further end of the chamber, a
solid wave that in some few seconds filled it to the depth of six or
eight feet. On we fled before the advancing flood, and well was it for
us that our course lay upwards, for otherwise we must have been
drowned as we searched for the keys to open the different gates and
doors. But now fortune, which for so long had been our foe, befriended
us, and the end of it was that we reached the summit of the pyramid
just as the dawn began to break.
The dawn was breaking and seldom perhaps has the light of day revealed
a more wonderful or terrible sight to the eyes of man. Outside the
gates of the courtyard of the pyramid were gathered a great multitude
of people waiting to be admitted to celebrate the feast that on this
day of the year was to be held, according to the custom, upon the
summit of the pyramid. Indeed, they should have already been assembled
there, but it was the rule that the gates could not be opened until
the Council had left the Sanctuary, and this night the Council sat
late. As we looked at them a cry of fear and wonder rose from the
multitude, and this was the cause of it. Along that street which ran
from the landing-place to the great square rushed a vast foam-topped
wall of water twenty feet or more in depth by a hundred broad. Now we
learned the truth. The symbol on the altar--I know not how--was
connected with secret and subterranean sluice-gates which for many
generations had protected the City of the Heart from flood. When it
was torn from its bed these sluice-gates were opened, and the waters,
rushing in, sought their natural level, which at this season of the
year was higher than the housetops of the city.
On the summit of the pyramid were two priests who tended the sacred
fire and made ready for the service to be celebrated. Seeing us emerge
from the watch-house, they ran towards us, wringing their hands, and
asking what dreadful thing had come to pass. I replied that we did not
know, but that seeing the water gather in our prison we had fled from
it. How we had fled they never stopped to ask, but ran down the
stairway of the pyramid, only to return again presently, for before
they reached its base their escape was cut off.
Meanwhile the terror thickened and the doom began. Everywhere the
waters spread and gathered, replenished from the inexhaustible
reservoir of the vast lake. Whole streets went down before them, to
vanish suddenly beneath their foaming face, while from the crowd below
rose one continuous shriek of agony.
Maya heard it, and, casting herself face downward upon the surface of
the pyramid, that she might not see her handiwork, she thrust her
fingers into her ears to stop them, while the señor and I watched,
fascinated. Now the flood struck the people, some thousands of them,
who were gathered on the rising ground at the gates of the enclosure
of the temple, and lo! in an instant they were gone, borne away as
withered leaves are borne before a gale. Ere a man might count ten the
most of the population of the City of the Heart had perished!
For a little while some of the more massive houses stood, only to
vanish one by one, in silence as it seemed, for now the roar of the
advancing waters mastered all other sounds. Before the sun was well up
it was finished, and of that ancient and beautiful city, Heart of the
World, there remained nothing to be seen except the tops of trees and
the upper parts of the pyramids of worship rising above the level of
the lake. The Golden City was no more. It was gone, and with it all
its hoarded treasures, its learning and its ancient faith, and that
which for many generations had been held to be a myth had now become a
myth indeed. One short hour had sufficed to sweep out of existence the
ripe fruit of the labour of centuries, and with it the dwindling
remnant of the last pure race of Indians, who followed the customs and
the creed of my forefathers. Doubtless their day was done, and the
Power above us had decreed their fall; still, so vast and sudden a
ruin was a thing awful to behold, or even to think upon. What, I
wondered, would the founders of this great city and the fashioners of
its solemn pyramids and Sanctuary have thought and felt, could they
have foreseen the manner of its end? Would they, then, have set the
holy symbol so cunningly upon its altar, that the strength of a
maddened woman, by tearing it away, could bury altar, temple, town,
and all who lived therein, for ever beneath the surface of the lake?
This they did to protect their homes and fanes against the foe, so
that, if need were, they could prefer destruction to dishonour; but
they did not foresee--indeed they never dreamed--that this foe might
be of their own race, and that the hand of one of her children would
bring disaster, utter and irredeemable, upon the proud head of their
holy stronghold, the city Heart of the World.
Now foot by foot the waters found their level, filling up the cup in
which the town had stood, and the bright sunlight shone upon their
placid surface as they rippled round the sides of the pyramid and over
the flat roofs of the submerged houses. Here and there floated a mass
of wreckage, and here and there a human corpse, over which already the
water-eagles began to gather, and that was all.
Presently Maya rose to her knees and looked out from beneath the
hollow of her hand, for the light was dazzling there upon the white
summit of the pyramid. Then she flung her arms above her head and
uttered a great and bitter cry.
“Behold my handiwork,” she said, “and the harvest of my sin! Oh! my
father, that dream which you sent to haunt my sleep was dreadful, but
it did not touch the truth. Oh! my father, the people whom you would
have saved are dead; lost is the city that you loved, and it is I who
have destroyed them. Oh! my father, my father, your curse has found me
out indeed, and I am accursed.”
Some such words as these she spoke, then began to laugh, and turning
to the señor, she said,
“Where is the child, husband?”
He could not answer her, but she took no note of it, only she bent her
arms, rocking them and crooning as though the infant lay upon her
breast, then came first to him and next to me, saying,--
“Look, is he not a pretty boy? Am I not happy to be the mother of such
a boy?”
I made pretence to look, but the sight of her pitiful face and of the
empty arms, as she swayed them, was so dreadful that I was forced to
turn away to hide my tears. Now I saw the truth. Weariness, sorrow,
and shock had turned her brain, and she was mad.
[image: img_341.jpg
caption: She was mad.]
We led her to the watch-house, where there was shelter, and the
priests, who had returned, gave us food so soon as we could make them
understand that we needed it, for they too were almost mad. Here her
last illness seized the Lady Maya. It began with a hardening of the
breast, which changed presently to fever. Two days and nights, with
breaking hearts, we nursed her there upon the pyramid, striving not to
listen to her sick ravings and piteous talk about the child, and at
dawn upon the third day she died. Before she died her senses returned
to her, and she spoke to her husband beautiful and tender words which
seem almost too holy to set down.
“Alas!” she ended, “as my heart foretold me, I have brought you
nothing but evil, and now the time has come for me to go away from
you. Ignatio was right, and we were wrong,--or rather I was wrong. We
should have died together a year ago, if that were needful, sooner
than commit the sin we worked in the Sanctuary, for then at least our
hands would have been clean, nor would the blood of the people have
rested on my head. Yet, believe me, husband, that when I did the deed
of death, I was mad, for I had seen our child murdered before my eyes
and I heard a voice within me bidding me to be avenged. Well, it is
done, and I have suffered for it and perhaps shall suffer more, yet I
think that I was but the hand or the instrument of Fate predestined to
bring destruction upon a race already doomed, and on a faith outworn.
That faith I no longer believe in, for you have taught me another
worship, therefore I do not fear the vengeance of the god of my
people. May my other sins find forgiveness, if they are sins, for it
was my love of you that led me to them. Husband, I trust that you may
escape from this ill-omened place, and live on for many years in
happiness; but most of all I trust that in the land which you will
reach at last, you may find us waiting for you, the child and I
together. Farewell to you. This is a sad parting, and my life has been
short and sorrowful. Yet I am glad to have lived it, since it brought
me to your arms, and, however little I may have deserved it, I think
that you loved me truly and will love my memory even when I am dead.
To you also, Ignatio, farewell. You have been a true friend to me,
though I brought you no good luck, and at times I was jealous of you.
Think kindly of me if you can, though had it not been for me you might
have attained your ends, and, as in the old days before we met,
comfort my husband with your friendship.”
Then once more she turned to the señor and in a gasping and broken
voice prayed of him not to forget her or her child. I heard him answer
that this she need not fear, as his happiness died with her, and, even
if he should escape, he thought that they would not be parted for very
long, nor could any other woman take her place within his heart.
She blessed him and thanked him, caressing his face with her dying
hands, and, unable to bear more of such a sight, I left them together.
An hour later the señor came from the watch-house, and though he did
not speak, one glance at him was enough to tell me that all was over.
So died Maya, Lady of the Heart, the last of the ancient royal blood
of the Indian princes, myself alone excepted, a very sweet and
beautiful woman, though at times headstrong, passionate, and
capricious.
Now while Maya lay dying we learned that some Indians still lived on
the mainland, men and women who had been sent there to tend the crops,
for we saw a canoe hovering round what once had been the Island of the
Heart. The two priests who were with us on the pyramid tried to signal
to it to come to our rescue, but either those in the boat did not see
us, or they were terror-stricken and feared to approach the pyramid.
Still we kept the body all that day, hoping that help might reach us,
so that we could take it ashore for burial. Towards night, however,
when none came, we made another plan. On the roof of the watch-house
the sacred fire still burned, for the two priests had tended it, more
from custom, I think, than for any other reason. Hither we brought
some of the gilded stools that were used by the nobles of the Heart on
days of festival, and all the fuel that had been stored to replenish
the fire, building the whole into a funeral pyre around and above the
brazier. Then, as it caught, we carried out the body of Maya, wrapped
in her white robes, and laid it upon the pyre and left it.
Presently the great pile was alight and burning so fiercely that it
lit up the whole summit of the pyramid and the darkness which
surrounded it. All that night we watched it, while the two priests
lamented and beat their breasts after their fashion, till at length it
flared itself away, and the holy fire that had burned for more than a
thousand years died down and was extinguished. It seemed very fitting
that the latest office of this ancient and consecrated flame should be
to consume the body of the last of the royal race who had tended it
for so many generations. Towards dawn a wind sprang up with drizzling
rain, and when we approached the place at daybreak it was to find it
cold and blackened. No spark remained alight, and no ash or fragment
could be seen of her who was once the beautiful and gracious Lady of
the Heart.
[image: img_343.jpg
caption: Presently the great pile was alight.]
Now we set ourselves sadly enough to find a means of escape to the
mainland, which indeed it was time to do, for the waters, working in
its centre, were sapping the foundations of the great pyramid,
portions of which had already fallen away. Our plan was to form a raft
by lashing together some benches that were at hand, and on it to float
or paddle ourselves to the shore. This, however, we were spared the
pains of doing, for when our task was half completed we saw a large
canoe, manned by three Indians, advancing towards us, and signalled to
them to paddle round to the steps of the pyramid. They did so, and,
taking with us all the food and such few articles of value as were to
be found in the watch-house, the four of us embarked, though not
without difficulty, for the current ran so strongly round the
crumbling angles of the pyramid that it was hard to bring the canoe up
to the stairs.
From the Indians we learned that those on shore were so overwhelmed
with horror at the catastrophe which had fallen upon their holy city,
that they did not dare to approach the place where it had stood. But
when on the previous night they saw the great flame of Maya’s funeral
pyre, they knew that men still lived upon the pyramid, who, as they
thought, were signalling to them for help, and ventured out to save
them. They asked us how it came about that the waters had overwhelmed
the city which had stood among them safely from the beginning of time.
We replied that we did not know, and the priests with us, now that
they had escaped with their lives, seemed too prostrated to tell our
deliverers that we had been imprisoned in the hollow of the pyramid,
even if they knew that this was so.
On reaching the shore we found a little gathering of awe-stricken
Indians,--perhaps there may have been a hundred and fifty of
them,--the sole survivors of the People of the Heart, unless indeed a
few still lived on the high land of those portions of the island of
the Heart that as yet had not been submerged. Open-mouthed and almost
without comment they listened to the terrible tale of the sudden and
utter destruction of their city. When it was done, one among them
suggested that the white man should be killed, as without doubt he had
brought misfortune and the vengeance of heaven upon their race, but
this proposal seemed to find no favour with the rest of them. Indeed,
had they known the part which we played in the disaster, I doubt if
they would have found the spirit to make an end of us.
On the other hand they gave us what food and clothing we required, and
even weapons, such as _machetes_, bows and arrows, and blow-pipes, and
left us to go our way. Often I have wondered what became of them, and
if any of their number, or of their children, still survive.
So we turned our faces to the mountains, and on the second day we
crossed them safely, for Maya had told us the secret of the passage
through the rocks, which, under her guidance, we had passed
blindfolded.
Thus, at length, having looked our last upon the blue waters of the
Holy Lake, sparkling in the sunshine above the palaces of the city and
the bones of its inhabitants, did we leave that accursed Country of
the Heart, where so much loss and evil had befallen us.
ENVOI.
My friend, now I, Ignatio, have finished writing that story of how I
came to visit the Golden City of the Indians, which so many have
believed to be fabulous, and that to-day exists no more. It is a
strange story, and I trust that it may interest you to read it when I
am dead and buried.
Perhaps you would like to know the details of our homeward journey,
but in truth I have neither the strength nor the patience to set them
down. It was a terrible journey, and once we both of us fell ill with
fever from which I thought that we should not recover; but recover we
did by the help of some wandering Indians who nursed us, and at length
reached this place from which we had fled for our lives nearly two
years before. We found the _hacienda_ deserted, for it had the
reputation of being haunted, though some of the Indian dependents, or
rather slaves, of that great villain, Don Pedro Moreno, still worked
patches of the land. Well, the señor took a fancy to stay in the
place, for it was here that he had first seen his wife, and so we sold
that girdle of emeralds which Maya took from the chest of ornaments
and gave to me when we were imprisoned for the first time in the hall
of the pyramid (do not lose the clasp, friend, for it is the only
remaining relic of the People of the Heart), and with the proceeds we
bought at a cheap rate from the government of the day, who had entered
into possession of them, this house and the wide lands round it, that
I have cultivated ever since. For, my friend, now my ambitions were
finished. I had played my last card and it had failed me, and, albeit
with a sorrowful mind, I abandoned my hopes for the regeneration of
the Indians which I had no longer the means or the health and vigour
to attempt. Also, I was no more Lord of the Heart, for with its
counterpart it was lost in the Sanctuary yonder beneath the waters of
the Holy Lake, and with the ancient symbol went much of my power.
For five years the señor and I lived here together, but I think that
during all this time he was dying. He, who used to be so strong in
body and merry in mind, never regained his health or spirits from that
hour when Maya passed upon the pyramid, and though he seldom spoke of
her, I know that night and day she was always present in his thoughts.
Twice in the spring seasons he suffered from _calenturas_, as we call
the fever of the country, which left him sallow in face and shrunken
in body; and when the spring came round for the third time, I begged
him to go to Mexico for change, returning to the _hacienda_ in the
summer. In vain; he would not do it, indeed I do not think that he
cared whether he lived or died. So the end of it was that the
_calentura_ took him again, and die he did in my arms, happily as a
child that falls asleep.
Now my days are accomplished also, and, having failed in all things
and known much sorrow and disappointment, I go to join him. My friend,
farewell. Perhaps you will think of me from time to time, and, though
you are a heretic, send up a prayer to heaven for the welfare of the
soul of the old Indian--
Ignatio.
THE END.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES.
Errors/inconsistencies of the author that have been preserved:
The Usumacinta River is referred to as the _Usumacinto_ River.
_Tabasco_ and _Tobasco_ are used interchangeably.
Minor spelling and hyphenization inconsistencies (e.g. corn-field/corn
field, lamplight/lamp-light, etc.).
Alterations to the text:
[Title Page]
Add illustrator’s credit.
[Chapter III]
Change “_Zilbalbay_ spoke to me in the presence” to _Zibalbay_.
[Chapter VI]
“tore along her deck from stem to _stem_” to _stern_.
“the mouth of the _Usamacinto_ river” to _Usumacinto_.
[End of Text]