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The threatening voice and fierce gesture with which these words were uttered, struck Montezuma with a sense of his danger, and abandoning himself to his fate, he complied with their request: his officers were called, he communicated to them his resolution.
Montezuma received him coldly, and referred the matter to Cortés, who speedily made an end of it by condemning the unhappy chief and his followers to be burnt to death. The funeral piles were erected in the courtyard before the palace, and were made of arrows, javelins, and other weapons drawn by the emperor's permission from those stored round the great teocalli.
Where I now stood, almost alone in the gloom, the vivid imagination of those men yonder in the banquet-hall at that very hour perceived the mirage of the speculative fever crowding the decks of the Pereire steamers with imaginary colonists eager to convert their savings into mining stocks and Mexican railroad bonds, and rushing to the land of Montezuma to sow and reap a rich harvest for Prance.
The real reason, no doubt, of his anger was that he found he had overrated the advantages he would gain from Montezuma being in his hands; but for this he himself, and not the emperor, was to blame. At first the capture had all the success that he had expected from it. The people had obeyed their emperor as implicitly, when a captive, as when his power had been supreme.
Now in front of these gates was an open space of turf on which the moonlight shone brightly, and in the centre of this space lay something white, shaped like a woman. Here Montezuma halted and looked at the gates, then said: 'These gates opened four days since for Papantzin, my sister; how long, I wonder, will pass before they open for me?
The dead were heaped in the houses like bees stifled in a hive, and in the streets they lay so thick that we walked upon them. The council was summoned fierce men, haggard with hunger and with war, and they considered the offer of Cortes. 'What is your word, Guatemoc? said their spokesman at last. 'Am I Montezuma, that you ask me?
There they resolved on war to the end, giving it out that Montezuma had forfeited his kingdom by his cowardice, and on that resolve they acted. Had it been taken but two short months before, by this date no Spaniard would have been left alive in Tenoctitlan.
I do not mean that there is any immediate danger, but you must remember that Montezuma has been insulted and humiliated, and made to appear small in the sight of the people.
Some days passed, as Cortez was waiting for the arrival of a fresh embassy from Montezuma. During that time Roger was unable to detect any change in the attitude of the population. The Spaniards were greeted courteously when they went abroad, and their leaders were entertained at fetes and banquets by the nobles. Roger and his two comrades were well satisfied with each other.
However, that has nothing to do with my story. The Grogo was very successful, and we were looking forward every day for the return of the Montezuma. I could not help telling Mr Merton one day of my rash oath which I had made in the presence of my grandmother, and how I had been wrecked in every vessel I had sailed in from the time I came to sea.
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