_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.