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El Sabio, indeed, was a most melancholy and dejected creature, for his short commons and his long confinement had taken the spirit out of him pretty thoroughly; but for our purposes just then, when his tractability was very necessary to us, it was a piece of good-fortune that he had fallen into so low a way.
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.
With a yell that fairly cracked our ears the priest let go his hold and fell downward and backward; and at that same instant El Sabio delivered a final kick that struck fairly on the head of the falling man and battered in his skull.
But when El Sabio, after much coaxing, crossed the gang-plank between the boat and the pier, and so came to where he could be seen of all plainly, there was a curious low sound in the air as though all at once every man in the crowd had heaved a sigh; and the sound swelled into a loud murmur as Pablo, in obedience to a quick order that I gave him in Spanish, briskly mounted upon the ass's back.
Rayburn had crossed to the other side passing the chain back by weighting it with a rock and stood ready to receive El Sabio when he was swung across.
And it would have been fairer to El Sabio, señor," Pablo added, a little reproachfully, as we walked out together to the paddock in which the ass, grown to be very fat, was living a life of most royal ease, "had you told in the book how well he served us in bringing all the treasure, in many weary journeys, out through that dismal cave; and also how carefully he carried the Señor Rayburn down that steep mountain-side, and so to the little town beside the railway, and never hurt his wound."
As he made his wild charges, El Sabio galloped backward and forward again and again over the bodies of his prostrate enemies; in the course of which gallopings his sharp little hoofs cut their naked flesh savagely, and now and then, when he happened to land a kick fairly against a man's body, we could see, from the sinking in of the fellow's ribs and the gush of blood that burst from his nostrils, that the ass had delivered a death-blow.
It was Pablo's notion, of course, that El Sabio should hear what I had written about him. "Not the whole of it, you know, señor," the boy said, earnestly; "for some of what you have written while I know that it is true, and therefore must be told would hurt his tender heart.
Aimeric de Belenoi belauds him, Peire Cardenal is said to have enjoyed his favour, and other minor troubadours refer to him in flattering terms. El Sabio earned his title by reason of his enlightened interest in matters intellectual; he was himself a poet, procured the translation of many scientific books and provided Castile with a famous code of laws.
Rayburn was lying so quietly that it seemed as though he had fallen into a swoon again; and Pablo, as we could tell by hearing his sobs, had betaken himself to the room in which El Sabio was tethered in search of solacing companionship.
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