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.
XXIII.
A RESCUE.
That the two parties should be thus battling for possession of us gave
us a gleam of hope for the saving of our lives. While we remained
prisoners, in the ward of the Priest Captain, we knew that our death was
inevitable; inasmuch as the witness which we bore against him, if
suffered to be published, must of necessity bring his authority to an
end. But should we pass into the ward of the Council, there was every
reason why we should be cherished and protected; because, in their
behalf, we would be witnesses to the justice of their rebellion against
Itzacoatl's rule. Nor would this feeling of amity towards us be confined
to the leaders of the revolt; for we had perceived the substantial
nature of the reasons which Tizoc had given us in support of his
assurance that the hope of deliverance from oppression which our coming
brought would raise up around us a host of friends. Therefore we knew
that upon the issue of the battling that we heard the sounds of so
loudly, and yet that might as well have been a thousand miles away for
all that we could see of it, our fate must depend.
And knowing this, it was a hard trial of our nerves and tempers to be
forced to remain there idle in the dark, without the chance to strike in
our own behalf a single blow. Young strode backward and forward in such
a fashion, and the mutterings beneath his breath were so like growls,
that the likening of him to a wild beast in a cage, while trite, is
strictly accurate. Rayburn, not less resolute, but more self-contained,
pressed close against the bars and never stirred, save that now and then
he cracked his thumbs and fingers together with such vigor that the
sound was like a pistol-shot. And even I, who am not naturally of a
blood-thirsty disposition, found the need of walking briskly about our
prison in order to quiet a little my strong longing to be outside with a
weapon in my hands wherewith I could crack some skulls open. Indeed,
among us all, only Fray Antonio maintained an outward show of calm.
Thus far, all the sounds which we had heard had come to us from the
direction of the front of the house, whence we inferred that the fight
was being waged, greatly to the disadvantage of the assailants, through
the grating by which the entrance was closed. But suddenly there was an
outcry of alarm close by us in the court-yard, and then the sound of
hurrying feet there, and then a roar of shouting mingled with the fierce
clash of arms--so that we knew that the assailants, either by beating in
the grating or by scaling the roof, had got inside. They and the
defenders were engaged, hand to hand, almost within arm's-length of us.
We could hear loudly the yells with which every stroke was accompanied,
and the clang of metal striking upon metal, and the dull, crushing sound
of the blows which went home truly and carved through flesh and
bone--and we could see no more of it all than if we were dreaming, and
these sounds of savage warfare were but the imaginings of our brains!
One man, being, as we supposed, pursued by another from the central part
of the court-yard--where, as it seemed, the fight raged most hotly--made
a stand just outside the curtain that overhung the bars whereby we were
pent in; and we could hear him panting as he struck and parried there,
and then the splitting of his flesh and the crash of his bones as a
tremendous blow overcame his guard, and the soft, deep groan that he
gave as his life left him. His body fell against the curtain and dragged
it a little; and presently, as I stood there by the bars, I found that
my feet were in a pool of blood.
It was only a moment or two after this that the sounds of conflict very
sensibly diminished, and we heard a rush made, and the confused tread of
feet upon the stairs that led upward to the temple, and then came so
jubilant a shouting that we knew that to one side or the other had come
victory.
"If th' Priest Captain's outfit's on top," Young said, grimly, "I guess
we've about got t' th' end of a division; an' there's not much chance of
our changin' engines an' keepin' on with th' run." To which figurative
suggestion Rayburn gave an immediate grunt of assent.
But at that very instant there was a lull in the tumult outside, and we
heard a voice that I recognized as Tizoc's loudly calling to us; and to
his hail, that carried such joyful meaning with it, I joyfully and
loudly answered. To Rayburn and Young, of course, the call was
unintelligible, nor did they recognize the voice of him who called; and
they therefore were disposed to think, when I fell to shouting, that my
brain was addled. However, they changed their views a minute or two
later--the dead body resting against the curtain having been thrown
aside, and the curtain itself torn down--when they saw Tizoc's friendly
face outside the bars, and then saw the bars rapidly removed.
"Colonel," said Young, very seriously, as we stepped forth thankfully
once more into the sunshine, "you may not know what a brick is, but you
are one. Shake!" and very much to Tizoc's astonishment, though he
perceived that the act was meant to express great friendliness, Young
most vigorously shook his hand. Under more favorable circumstances
Tizoc, no doubt, would have asked for an explanation of this curious
ceremony, but just then his whole mind was given to making good his
retreat and so securing us against recapture. There was not a moment to
lose, he said; throughout the city the priests everywhere were rallying
forces to Itzacoatl's support, and at any instant we might be attacked.
As he spoke he drew us away with him towards the street, where the main
body of his men still remained--for only a small part of them had joined
in scaling the roof, and so taking the enemy by surprise in the rear.
"But what of Pablo, our young companion?" I asked, stopping short as I
spoke.
"My men are looking for him; they will find him in a moment; he surely
is safe; he may be already outside. Come."
The possibility that Pablo truly might be outside of the building was
the only argument that could have induced us to leave it without him;
and that possibility was so reasonable a one that we made no more delay.
Indeed, we fully realized the necessity for promptness. From all parts
of the city came a humming, angry sound, which assured us that
everywhere the people were aroused; and Tizoc bade us arm ourselves with
what weapons we could use most effectively among those which were
scattered about the pavement of the court-yard, as we surely would have
need of weapons soon. A sword was the only instrument of warfare of
which I had knowledge--which knowledge was acquired during my German
student days--and I took, therefore, one of the heavy maccuahuitls; and
the others also, excepting Fray Antonio, similarly armed themselves,
each with a sword that they found lying beside the dead hand that never
would wield it more. It was as we obeyed Tizoc's order that we saw how
fierce and how bloody the fight had been; for the court-yard was red
with blood, like a slaughter-house, and over the stones everywhere dead
bodies were lying, all cut and gashed with ghastly wounds. Excepting a
few of Tizoc's men, who had bound up their hurts, and who staggered
along with us, not a wounded man remained alive; whence we inferred that
the fight had been waged on strictly barbarous principles, and that no
quarter had been given. And of this we had proof; for as we passed
through the guard-room we found there a moaning wretch, belonging to the
Priest Captain's party, in whose chest was a great hole made by a
spear-thrust--and at a sign from Tizoc one of our men stepped aside, and
with a blow of his heavy sword coolly mashed in the wounded man's skull,
and so finished him.
The metal grating that closed the entrance had been raised by Tizoc's
people from the inside, and we passed out beneath it to where the main
body of his men was drawn up in readiness to march. But of Pablo and El
Sabio there was no sign. Tizoc was not less distressed by the loss of
the lad than we were, for he had counted upon the moral effect which the
exhibition of Pablo and El Sabio most certainly would produce to aid
powerfully in fomenting the spirit of revolt. When, therefore, we
refused to go forward until further search had been made, he did not
oppose us; but he told us plainly that further looking for him in that
place was useless, for already every room in the building had been
examined without the finding of a trace of him. There could be no doubt,
he said, that when we had been made prisoners Pablo, and El Sabio with
him, had been taken up the stair to the temple for greater security; in
which place, if they were not both by this time dead, they still
remained. Whereupon Young was for making an attack upon the temple
instantly, and in this project Rayburn and I warmly seconded him; and
even Fray Antonio said that this was a case in which he felt justified
in using carnal weapons, since the fighting would be to rescue from
among infidels a Christian soul.
But Tizoc hurriedly explained to us the hopelessness, at that time, of
such an assault. The success that had attended his bold rescue of us had
been due to the suddenness of it; for the majority of the people in the
city, including the large force of soldiery there, assuredly was on the
Priest Captain's side. It was outside the city that the strength of the
revolution must be gathered; and his orders were, when his rescue of us
should be accomplished, to carry us safely out beyond the walls with all
possible speed. Such of the Council of the Twenty Lords as had decided
to take the chances of revolt--being all the members of that body save
the five priests that had belonged to it--already had gone down to the
water-side, together with the small force that they had gathered, that
they might seize the water-gate and hold it until we should join them.
Even now it was certain that in going down through the city we should
have to fight our way, and each moment that we delayed our retreat
increased our danger. Capturing the temple now was a sheer
impossibility. Our only hope of saving Pablo's life lay in our getting
away promptly, and so beginning the preparations that would lead to
ultimate victory.
All the while that Tizoc spoke he was edging us away towards the outer
face of the terrace, where steps led downward; and when the men who had
been searching the building once more for Pablo returned without him, he
resolutely gave the order to march. To the arguments that he had
advanced we were compelled to yield; but our hearts were heavy with
sorrow for the boy whom we were leaving behind us, and little hope was
in our breasts that we ever again should see him alive.
The truth of Tizoc's words about the great danger that we ourselves were
in became apparent as we crossed the terrace next below that on which
our march began. Where the street passed through the rampart by a narrow
portal, and so by a flight of stone steps descended to the next level,
soldiers were clustered together with the evident intention of disputing
the way with us. Their number was so much less than ours that we made
short work of them; killing a few, and driving the remainder down the
steps before us. But those who escaped ran on ahead of us to where the
next rampart was, and there joined themselves to a much larger body that
lay in wait for us. Here our work was less easy; for the force that
confronted us was nearly our equal, and some resolute fighting was
required before we could drive it before us and so pass on. Some of our
men were killed there, and more of the enemy; and I got a trifling hurt
in my arm from the point of a javelin, that, luckily, did little more
than graze the skin. I do not think that I killed anybody there, but I
remember very plainly the look of pain and of anger on the face of that
fellow who poked his javelin at me when I gashed his arm, and broke the
bone of it, with a blow from my sword. I was glad, at the moment, that I
had succeeded in giving him a worse hurt than he had given me; and then
the absurdity occurred to me of my thus fighting with a total stranger,
against whom I had no personal ill-will; and I could not but feel sorrow
for him as I thought of the long time that he must suffer severe pain
and great inconvenience because I had chanced to strike him that blow.
However, from the way in which they went cutting and slashing about
them, it was evident that neither Rayburn nor Young were troubled with
any compunctions of this nature. They were only too glad, apparently, to
get a chance to whack away at any of the Priest Captain's
representatives; and they made such use of their opportunity that the
Aztlanecas fighting with us cried out in admiration of their prowess and
their strength. Fray Antonio was more sorely tried than any of us during
this passage, for I knew that his flesh greatly longed to take part in
the fighting, and that only the strong spirit which was within him
subdued the flesh and so held his hands.
With a final rush we succeeded in forcing the enemy through the narrow
opening in the rampart, and so down the steps beyond; but as we pursued
them across the next terrace, keeping close at their heels so that they
might not have time to form again, many of our wounded fell out from the
ranks and dropped by the way--and we had left behind us a dozen or more
of our dead on the ground where the fight had been.
Our tactics of rapid pursuit of the force that we had defeated served us
well at the next rampart; for the men whom we pursued and we ourselves
came to it almost in one body, and thus threw into such confusion the
fresh force that was waiting for us that, without any long fighting
about it, we drove right through them and went on downward; and in the
same dashing fashion we carried the rampart beyond. However, when those
men whom we had pushed aside from our path so easily got over their
surprise at being so lightly handled, they formed in our rear and came
hurrying after us; the result of which was that as we approached the
last of the ramparts that we had to pass through, where was gathered the
largest body of men that we had yet encountered, we found ourselves
fairly wedged in between two bodies of the enemy and outnumbered four to
one. Here, too, the passage through the rampart had been closed by the
metal bars that were in readiness for that purpose. Setting these in
place was no real barrier to our passage, for, being intended to close
the portal against assailants from below, the fastenings which held them
were on the side nearest to us. But to remove them it was necessary that
we should fight our way through the crowd--with no possibility of
driving the enemy before us, as we had done upon the upper terraces,
since here the way was closed. What we did was literally to cut a path
through the throng; and over the men who fell dead or wounded beneath
our blows we made our advance. There was a curious creeping, uneasy
sensation in the region of my stomach as I trod thus on the bodies of
wounded men who were not dead yet, and felt them moving, and heard their
groaning; and I was conscious of a feeling of relief when a body that I
trod upon did not squirm beneath my foot, and so by its stillness
assured me that I was standing only on dead flesh that had no feeling in
it.
Very slowly did we go forward, for while the living barrier that we had
to deal with was not at the outset more than twenty feet, or
thereabouts, in thickness, hacking it down took us a tediously long
time. While still we faced a dozen or more very desperate fighters, who
held us off most resolutely from the metal bars which closed the way, a
pang of dread and sorrow went through me as I perceived that Fray
Antonio, who a moment before had been close beside me, had disappeared.
That he might the better restrain his longing to take part in the
fighting he had remained in the centre of our men; and it was hard to
understand how, in that position, harm could have come to him, for
missiles had no share in the work that was going forward, which was a
fiery struggle hand to hand.
As I looked for him in the throng--so far as I could do this and at the
same time keep up my guard against the man whom at that moment I was
fighting with--I saw some signs of uneasy movement among the enemy in
advance of us, and several of them evidently made an effort to reach
down as though to get at something that was on the ground; which effort
was wholly futile, for they were wedged so tightly together by our
pressure upon them that reaching downward was impossible. By a lucky
blow, I just then finished the man with whom I was contending, and so
had a moment's breathing spell; and at that instant I saw one of the
enemy, whose back was ranged against the bars, rise up in the air as
though a strong spring had been loosed beneath him, and then fall
sidewise upon the heads and shoulders of his fellows. And then, in the
place thus made vacant, the cowled head of Fray Antonio instantly
appeared--whereby I guessed, what afterwards I knew certainly, that he
had crawled along the ground through the press until he reached the
place that he aimed at, and then had risen up beneath one of the enemy
with such sudden violence that he fairly had sent the man spinning
upward into the air. What his purpose was I saw in a moment, for no
sooner did he stand upright than he had his hands upon the metal bars,
and then I heard the clinking together of stone and metal as he lifted
them bodily away.
XXIV.
THE AFFAIR AT THE WATER-GATE
Rayburn gave a great roar of gladness as the clinking sound made him
turn and he saw what was going forward; and Young and I joined him in
lusty Anglo-Saxon cheering, while our allies, in the savage fashion
natural to them, vented their joy in shrill yells. In the midst of which
cheering and yelling we pushed forward so hotly that the enemy,
disconcerted by this sudden shifting of fortune in our favor, and the
men directly in front of us being most seriously incommoded by their
comrade lying sprawled out and kicking upon their heads and shoulders,
seemed suddenly to lose heart so completely that we had no difficulty
in cutting them down. Even had they not been too closely wedged in to
turn upon Fray Antonio, our strong dashing upon them would have
compelled them to leave him unharmed in order to defend themselves; and
so it was that, by the time we had cut a path to the portal, the monk
had released the whole tier of bars from their fastenings, and the way
was free.
As we sprang down the steps--with Fray Antonio, once more in the guise
of a non-combatant, safe in the midst of our company--we heard a great
outcry from below, and saw a considerable body of men marching up
towards us steadily from the water-side; but the alarm that sight of
them gave us was only momentary, for their shouts, and the shouts of our
men in answer, showed us that these were friends come to our support.
However we had no great need of them, for those of the enemy whom we
left alive behind us seemed suddenly to have grown sick of fighting, and
made no attempt to follow after us down the stairs. Yet the coming of
this supporting force, to be just in the matter, no doubt was the saving
of us; for more than half of the men who had been with us when we
started on our march down through the city had been slain by the way,
and nearly all in our company were more or less disabled by wounds.
Tizoc and Young and Rayburn had come through it all without as much as a
scratch, and because of their extraordinary strength these three were
almost as fresh as when the fighting began; but the rest of us were
sorely weary, and our breathing was so heavy and so tremulous that each
breath was like a long-drawn sob. Truly, then, we were glad to fall in
in advance of the supporting column and so make our way, with a strong
rear-guard for our protection, across the bit of level land that lay
between us and the lake.
At the water-side boats were in readiness for us, and here we found also
the members of the Council who had ordered, and who were the recognized
leaders of, the revolt. There was still more fighting ahead of us, for
the necessity of sending back the relief party had prevented the seizing
of the water-gate; and this was a matter that had to be attended to
quickly, for we could see bodies of men coming down several of the
streets in pursuit of us, and unless we escaped outside the wall before
they overtook us there was a strong and dismal probability that our
whole plan would fail. Therefore, we tumbled aboard the boats with all
possible rapidity, and while the pursuing parties still were far in our
rear we shoved off from the shore.
Two minutes' quick rowing sufficed to carry our flotilla of boats across
the basin, and so brought us to the long pier that extended landward
from beside the water-gate, and from which an open stair-way ascended to
the top of the wall. On the pier there was no one at all to oppose our
landing; and the force on the wall was not likely to be a large one, for
the outbreak had come so suddenly that there had been no time to
increase the small detail maintained in this position in times of peace.
Only a few of our men, therefore--thirty or forty, perhaps--were ordered
out of the boats to the attack, of which the leader was Tizoc, and with
which Rayburn and Young went as volunteers. I also would have joined the
party; but Rayburn, knowing that I was slightly wounded, begged me to
stay where I was; and Young, as he ran up the stairs, called back to me:
"You just see that they keep steam up, Professor. We'll attend t' takin'
off th' brakes."
What went on above us, on top of the wall, we could not see; but the
work done there was done quickly. There was a little shouting, a sound
of arms clashing, and then four or five men--as though this were the
easiest way of getting rid of them--were thrown over the parapet, and
fell near us in the water. To these short shrift was given. As they came
to the surface, our fellows instantly finished them with a spear-thrust
or two. Then we heard the sound of a windlass creaking, and the clanking
of chains; and as we looked through the opening in the wall we saw the
grating that closed its farther end rise slowly until the way before us
was free. Two of our boats already were in the passage, so that no time
might be lost; and as these passed out into the lake, the others
followed after them rapidly. One boat remained to bring off the
attacking party, and we wondered a little because its coming was a good
while delayed. But we wondered still more when it joined us at last, and
we found that Tizoc and Young and Rayburn were not in it; indeed, at
that moment I saw the three of them standing together on top of the
wall. In answer to the shout that I gave, Rayburn leaned over the wall
and motioned to me to keep silence; and so I knew that they had not been
left behind through treachery, but were staying there because they had
some plan against the enemy that they thus could execute. And for
knowledge of what their plan was we did not have to wait long.
As we lay on our oars, off the outer end of the water-gate, we could see
through it into the basin that lay before the city, and in a very few
minutes the pursuing boats of the enemy came into view. As they neared
us, we saw standing in the bow of the leading boat the same officer who
had commanded the guard that had brought us as prisoners before the
Priest Captain; the man of whom I have spoken, for what his real title
was I do not know, as the barge-master.