distract our attention from the peril that we all were in because of the
slumbering of these sentries. "If this is a specimen of the way all the
watches are kept," Rayburn said, angrily, "we stand a pretty good chance
of being murdered in our beds. It all comes of trying to make soldiers
out of savages. These Tlahuicos will fight well enough, I never doubted
that, but to put such men on guard is simple idiocy. They have been
slaves all their lives, and they haven't the least notion in the world
of personal responsibility. It's a lucky thing that we have found out
their methods, for I shall give the Colonel a talking to about putting
on guard some of his own men who can be trusted. It's clear that these
fellows cannot tell us anything. We'd better keep on down to the
landing; if the Padre has gone"--there was a sudden break in Rayburn's
voice as he said these words--"it's pretty certain that he has gone by
water, and we may come across somebody down there who happened to be
awake and saw him start."
There were slight signs of wakefulness beginning to show themselves as
we went down towards the water-side; a few doors already were open; here
and there thin threads of smoke curled upward through the still air;
around a fountain a half-dozen women were clustered, drawing water in
great earthen pots, and chattering together softly in half-drowsy talk.
At the pier, however, we found some people who really were wide-awake:
fishermen just returned with a boat-load of fish that they had caught in
the lake. And these, when I questioned them, in a moment resolved all of
our troubled doubts into a sad certainty. Only an hour before, as they
lay out on the lake, a canoe had passed them paddled by a single
Indian, and in the canoe they had plainly recognized Fray Antonio. It
was impossible that they should be mistaken, they declared, for the
habit which the monk wore made him very plainly recognizable; and they
had observed him with a particular care, for they had been greatly
surprised by perceiving that the canoe was heading directly for "the
great city"--by which name all save the priests were accustomed to speak
of Culhuacan.
Neither Rayburn nor I spoke, as we walked back together through the town
to the Citadel. Our hearts were altogether too full for words. Even I,
who had been in part prepared for Fray Antonio's departure by the tenor
of his speech with us the night before, had not anticipated his going
from us so suddenly to what surely must be his death; and to Rayburn his
departure came with the startling force of a heavy and unexpected blow.
Young was awake when we returned, and was in much anxiety concerning us;
for our custom at all times was to hold closely together, and he knew
that something out of the common must have happened to make us break
through this very necessary rule; and his fears were further aroused
when he perceived the sad gravity of our faces, and that Fray Antonio
was not in our company. Yet, though thus prepared to learn that evil of
some sort had overtaken us, he was not at all prepared to learn how
great that evil was. When, therefore, we told him of what we had
discovered, which gave absolute assurance that Fray Antonio had carried
out his purpose of surrendering himself into the Priest Captain's hands,
Young stared at us for a moment in a dazed sort of way, as though by no
means grasping the meaning which our words conveyed. And then the whole
meaning of them seemed to come to him suddenly, and he burst forth into
such a raving volley of curses that it seemed as though he were fairly
maddened by his ungoverned rage.
I envied Young, as I am sure Rayburn did also, the relief that must come
to him with this rough but frank and natural expression of his bitter
grief. For ourselves, we stood sad and silent, yet with our hearts
almost breaking within us, as we thought how small was the chance that
ever in this world should we see the face of Fray Antonio again.
XXIX.
THE ASSAULT IN THE NIGHT.
Neither the Council, in its irresolute parleyings, nor Fray Antonio, in
his resolute action, had at all considered certain factors which they
themselves had interjected into the problem that they then were dealing
with from such widely different stand-points and in such widely
different ways. The Council, at a stroke, had transformed the Tlahuicos
into soldiers, and had given the promise that in reward for their
faithfulness and valor these slaves thenceforward should be freemen.
Fray Antonio had preached to all those assembled at Huitzilan a creed
that had taken strong hold upon many hearts, and that especially had
won the hearts of those of the long-oppressed servile class--to whom its
doctrine of equality seemed to hold out an absolute assurance that their
life of slavery was at an end.
When, therefore, the terms which the Priest Captain offered were spread
abroad through the town, and through the camp close beside the town in
which the army lay--being there in readiness instantly to occupy the
Citadel should the enemy appear--a very lively anger was aroused because
such terms should even be listened to. For what the Priest Captain
demanded was that the apostle of the new religion should be relinquished
to him to be slain as a sacrifice to the Aztec gods, and that once more
the Tlahuicos should be thrust back into slavery; while what he
conceded--in that it affected only the higher classes--made the lot of
the Tlahuicos but the more unjustly cruel and hard to bear.
And those who resented the delay on the part of the Council in sending
back the Priest Captain's envoy with a sharp denial, presently went on
from hot words to violent deeds; being directly led from mutinous talk
to mutinous action by the knowledge that the Council had so far accepted
the offered terms as to send Fray Antonio to the great city to be
slain--for not one among them could be led for a moment to believe, so
impossible from their stand-point did such an act appear, that the monk
truly had gone thither of his own free-will.
Practically, the whole army was involved in the movement that then took
place; for even its officers, while not of the servile class, dreaded
the punishment that their revolt might bring upon them, and so
preferred to take the chances of the war rather than to yield themselves
to be dealt with as the Priest Captain might dispose. Therefore it was,
on the day that Fray Antonio departed from us, that all the soldiers
together marched in from their camp and massed themselves compactly
about the Council Chamber within the Citadel, and then with loud cries
demanded that the envoy should be sent back to the great city with an
absolute refusal of the offered terms. Thus was there created a
rebellion within a rebellion; and one that the Council was powerless to
put down, for the reason that practically the whole of the force which
it had created to serve against the enemy was now risen against its own
authority with a most masterful strength.
In the case that thus was presented there was no opportunity to
temporize. The fierce, wild creatures of whom soldiers suddenly had been
made stood there before the Council Chamber, shouting and waving their
spears angrily and clashing together their arms. And so they continued,
without one moment of quiet, until their will was obeyed. Through the
savage and tumultuous throng the envoy was led forth--his looks showing
plainly his very natural expectation that his life would be let out of
him amid that ferocious company--and so down to the water-side; and
thence was sent back again to Culhuacan with the firm assurance--which
message of defiance the soldiers themselves dictated--that the terms
offered by the Priest Captain would be accepted only when all the
Tlahuicos then risen together in arms against him had been slain!
"Bully for th' Tlahuicos!" cried Young, as I translated to him these
ringing words. "Just tell 'em, Professor, that I've volunteered for
three years or th' war, an' that they can count on me t' keep up a full
head o' steam as long as there's any fightin' t' be done. Accordin' t'
my notions, now that th' Padre's over there in th' city--t' say nothin'
o' what we owe 'em on Pablo's account--th' row can't begin one minute
too soon. These Tlahuicos are th' boys for me! Didn't I tell you that
nobody could stop 'em when they once got fairly started? They're a tough
lot; but they're just everlastin' rustlers--an' their style suits me
right now all th' way down t' th' ground floor!"
The sharp excitement attendant upon this vigorous action gave place, as
the day wore on, to a dull heavy pain as our thoughts dwelt upon the
fate that Fray Antonio had gone forth to meet, and upon our present
powerlessness to defend him in any way against it. Although the envoy
had been sent back, and war was now resolutely determined upon, the
situation remained unchanged in so far as concerned the necessity
of our waiting for the Priest Captain to take the initiative. To
attack that great walled city was so hopeless a task that even the
Tlahuicos--flushed though they were by their victory over the
Council--did not venture to propose it; for they knew, as we all did,
that our only chance of carrying the enemy's stronghold lay in first
defeating its garrison in a battle in the open field. Yet this dull
inaction of waiting was a scarce of grave danger to us, in that it
tended to wear out the spirits of our men and to make them still more
careless of their guard. What Rayburn and I had seen that morning had
shown how little trust could be placed in them, in so far as the
soldierly attribute of watchfulness was concerned; and Tizoc, with whom
we conferred in regard to this important matter, had little to say that
we found comforting. Being himself a thorough soldier, he perceived the
danger to which the unsoldierly lack of vigilance on the part of the
Tlahuicos exposed our camp; but the situation was such that he was
powerless to take effective measures for our protection. The few regular
troops in our little army were not enough to do sentry duty everywhere,
and the best that could be done would be to dispose them at the points
most open to attack--"And then trust to luck," Rayburn put in, rather
bitterly, "that the enemy will be polite enough to try to surprise only
the part of the camp where the sentries are awake!"
Partly that we might see for ourselves how our pickets were disposed,
but more that by action of any sort we might divert our thoughts from
the sorrow that was gnawing at our hearts, we walked out together in the
late afternoon to the rocky heights of the promontory that on the
western side of the town extended far into the lake. From a military
stand-point this position was of great importance to us, inasmuch as
bowmen or slingmen gaining access to it could command a considerable
part of the town, and even could annoy very seriously the garrison of
the Citadel; and it also was of value to us as a place of lookout whence
an attacking party coming by way of the lake from the city could be
perceived while yet it was a long way off.
We were surprised, therefore, when we had come well out upon the
promontory, that no sentinel challenged us; but our surprise vanished a
moment or two later as we perceived one of our men curled up comfortably
against a sunny rock and apparently sound asleep. However, as we got
close to the man it was clear to us that his sleep was one that he never
would waken from, for a pool of blood stained the rock beside him, and
an arrow was shot fairly through his heart. We made but a short stop
beside this fellow--who plainly had been shot in his sleep, and so
deserved the fate that had overtaken him--and then went forward
anxiously that we might see how the other sentinels stationed hereabouts
had fared. The result of our quest was as bad as it could be; for in one
place or another among the rocks we found all five of the men who had
been posted upon the promontory, and all of them were dead. Three more
of them certainly had been shot while asleep or wholly off their guard,
as was shown by the easy attitudes in which we found them sitting or
lying among the rocks. The fifth had not been instantly killed; as we
inferred from finding a broken arrow sticking in his left arm, and some
signs of a struggle about where he lay, and a great split in his skull,
as from a sword stroke, that finally had let the life out of him. It
struck us as strange that this man had not aroused the camp with his
shouts; but his post was at the extreme end of the promontory, so that
he must have called very loudly in order to be heard; and it was
possible that in the suddenness of his danger he never thought to call
at all. However, the important matter, so far as we were concerned, was
that these five sentinels had been slain close beside the town and in
broad daylight, and that but for the chance of our coming out upon the
promontory the most important of our outposts would have remained
unguarded until the night relief should have come on. It was Rayburn's
theory that the plan of the enemy was to place his own men on the vacant
posts--trusting to the reasonable certainty that in the dusk of evening
one naked Indian would look much like another--and so despatch the
relief, one by one, as the guard was changed.
Of those of the enemy who had accomplished this piece of work so
skilfully we could see no sign--unless it were a boat that we dimly saw
a long way off on the lake, and that presently wholly disappeared in a
bank of haze; and despite the hot sunshine basking upon us a chill went
through me at thought of the stealthy daring and truly devilish cunning
of the men who thus could do their evil work in the full light of day,
and close to the encampment of an army, and yet could get safely away
without leaving a trace of their presence save the dead bodies of their
foes.
Having made sure by carefully searching among the rocks throughout the
length of the promontory that none of the enemy was hidden there, we
hastened back to the town to tell what we had come upon, and to provide
for mounting fresh sentinels in the place of those who had been relieved
by death. We had expected that the news which we brought would stir up a
great commotion; and we were not a little troubled, therefore, knowing
how serious the matter was in its exhibition of the carelessness of our
guards, by finding that only Tizoc and a few other tried soldiers were
more than lightly discomposed by what we had to tell. The general
feeling seemed to be--inasmuch as our lucky discovery had dispelled the
danger--that there was no need to worry about a calamity which had not
occurred; and what after all was the most essential consideration--the
constant danger that threatened us by reason of the criminal laxity of
the watch maintained by our pickets--practically was lost sight of.
Apparently neither the Council nor the higher officers of the army had
the power to remedy this dangerous condition of affairs. At no time had
any very strong authority been exercised over the Tlahuicos--for all the
orders which until now had been given to them had been directed only
towards urging them along a way that they were glad enough to follow of
their own accord--and since their assertion of their will that morning,
what little control had restrained their waywardness seemed to have been
wholly lost.
However, as there was a chance in it of fighting, and as fighting was
what they longed for earnestly, our unruly soldiers were willing enough
that a strong detachment should be placed in ambush on the promontory,
to the end that the force which the enemy probably would land there that
night might be summarily dealt with. And the better to carry out our
plan of a counter-surprise the dead sentinels were left where we found
them. Tizoc was given the command of the ambushed force, and he
willingly granted our request that we might accompany him; which
request was prompted by the desire that we fully shared with the
Tlahuicos to get at close quarters with the enemy, and also by the
conviction that in Tizoc's company--though in his company we were like
to have hot fighting and plenty of it--we would have better chances of
safety than anywhere else in all our camp.
For this expedition we put on for the first time our armor of quilted
cotton cloth; and the look of these garments certainly did justify
Young's comments upon them. "It's a pity we can't get photographed now,"
he said, "so's t' send our likenesses in this rig home t' our folks.
You'd just jolt the Cap Cod folks, Rayburn, with that pair o' telegraph
poles you call your legs stickin' out from under th' tails o' that thing
that looks like a cross between a badly made frock-coat and an
undersized night-shirt. And I guess your college boys 'd be jolted, too,
Professor, if they could get a squint at you. And I s'pose that if some
o' th' hands on th' Old Colony happened t' ketch up with me dressed this
way they'd think I'd gone crazy. But I haven't got anything t' say
against these little night-shirts except about their looks. When you get
right down t' th' hard-pan with 'em, they're a first-rate thing."
For three American citizens, belonging to the nineteenth century, we
certainly presented a strange appearance, and appeared also in very
strange company, as we marched out from the town late that afternoon
with Tizoc and his men. Each of us carried half a dozen darts, and
strapped around our waists, outside our cotton-cloth armor, we each wore
a maccahuitl--the heavy sword with a jagged double edge that we knew
from experience was an excellent weapon when wielded by a strong hand.
Indeed, Young and I carried the darts rather to satisfy Tizoc than
because we expected to make any very effective use of them, and all of
our reliance both for assault and defence was upon what we could do with
our swords at close quarters. Rayburn, however, had been practising
dart-throwing very diligently, and as he naturally was an
extraordinarily dextrous man he had made rapid progress in this savage
art. The soldiers in our company, naked creatures, lithe and sinewy,
were armed for the most part with spears and slings; and the officers
wore each a sword and carried each a handful of darts. As we all stepped
out briskly together I could not but think how amazed would be the
President of the University of Michigan, and my fellow-members of the
Faculty of that institution of learning, should they happen to encounter
me in that barbarous company, and arrayed in that most barbarous garb!
[Illustration: THE LAST RALLY]
It was a little before sunset when we reached the place that Tizoc had
selected for our ambush upon the promontory; and an hour later, just as
the shadows of evening were beginning to fall, one of our lookout men
reported that a large boat--of which the oars must be muffled, for no
sound came from it--was pulling around a point just beyond where we lay.
There was a little stir among our men when this news was received, and a
shifting and arranging of weapons, so that all might be in readiness
when the moment for opening the ambush came; but we had a picked force
with us, each man of which fully understood how necessary was silence
to the success of our plans, and the quick thrill of movement was so
guarded that it scarcely ruffled the deep stillness of the night.
But the moments lengthened out into minutes, and the minutes slowly
slipped by until a full hour had passed, and the thick darkness of
tropical night was upon us, and still there was no sign of a foe. Tizoc
grew uneasy, for it was evident that we were in error in our conception
of the enemy's plan. Had he intend-to mount his own men as sentinels in
place of our men whom he had slain, and then get save possession of the
promontory by killing the relief as it came on, we should have been long
since engaged with him; but here the night was wearing on, and,
excepting only the boat that our scouts had seen, there had been nothing
to show that the attack which we had expected so confidently was
anything more than a creation of our own fears. Yet our only course was
to remain where we were until morning; for some accident might have
delayed the attack, and the necessity of holding the promontory was so
urgent that we could not take the risk of withdrawing our force.
It was weary work sitting there in the darkness, after all the weariness
of so exciting a day, and as the hours dragged on I found myself now and
then sinking into a doze, for which I reproached myself; yet also
excused myself by the reflection that I did not at all profess to have
either the training or the instincts of a soldier, but had been brought
up, as a man of peace and as a scholar, in accordance with the sound
principle that night rationally is the time set apart for sleep. It was
from a most agreeable nap--in which I was dreaming pleasantly of my old
life in Ann Arbor--that I was roused suddenly by Rayburn's quick grip
upon my shoulder, and by his sharp whisper, "What's that?"
In an instant I was thoroughly awake, and as I bent forward and listened
intently I heard very distinctly a faint cry of alarm, that seemed to
come from a long way off. Tizoc, I perceived--for he had risen to his
feet--also was most eagerly listening; and I heard a slight sound of
movement and of arms clinking as our men roused themselves, showing that
they also had heard that warning cry.
But in a moment there was no need to strain our ears to catch the sounds
which came to us. The cry that a single throat had uttered was taken up
by a thousand; and so grew into a dull, distant roar, that pierced the
black and sullen stillness of the night. And with this came also the
higher notes of savage yells, and then we heard the clash of arms--which
evidence that fighting was going on, no less than the direction whence,
as we now perceived clearly, the sounds came, assured us that while we
had maintained our watchful guard on the promontory the enemy had
surprised our camp.
Rayburn sprang up with a growl like that of a savage beast. "By G----d!"
he cried, "they meant us to do just what we've done, and we've walked
into their trap like so many d----n fools!"
XXX.
THE FALL OF THE CITADEL.
Tizoc, I was glad to see, had his men well under his command, as was
shown by the orderly manner in which they waited, despite their eager
impatience to be off, until he gave the command to march. And hard
marching we found it, as we floundered about that rough, rocky place,
tripping and stumbling, and now and then hearing a crash in the darkness
as one of our men went down. But, somehow or other, we certainly managed
to get over the ground very rapidly; and all the while the sounds of the
fight that was raging hotly struck with a constantly increasing
clearness upon our ears.
The whole width of the town lay between our camp and the foot of the
rugged path that led down from the promontory; but when we were fairly
in the streets, and no longer had rough rocks to stumble over in the
darkness, we went forward at a very slashing pace. And we were further
helped now by the fact that day was breaking, so that we could see
clearly where we were going; and we had also within us that feeling of
cheer and encouragement that ever is given to man by the return of the
sun. In but a few minutes more, in that tropical region, a flood of
daylight would be about us; and Tizoc's hope was that when the horror of
darkness, ever appalling to barbarians, should be lifted, and when our
coming should afford a firm centre to rally around, our army might
regain the courage and steadiness which it had lost in the terror and
bewilderment of a night surprise.
But he quickly found that this hope was doomed to disappointment. Only a
little beyond the gate of the Citadel we came upon a flying body of
Tlahuicos--though no pursuers were in sight beyond them--and these were
so completely demoralized that they took our company for a detachment of
the enemy, and with wild cries fled away from us down a side street and
so disappeared. "What do you think of your friends now?" Rayburn asked
Young, grimly. But Young's only answer was to curse the vanished
Tlahuicos for cowards.