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Then, having donned a scarlet cloak, the head priest, that same who had felt my heart, uttered some kind of prayer, and, raising a curved knife of the flint-like glass or itztli, struck open the poor wretch's breast at a single blow, and made the ancient offering to the sun.
Judging from the analogous words in languages allied to the Aztec, it seems not unlikely that it meant originally hatchet or breaker, just as "itztli," or obsidian, appears to have meant originally knife.
The helmets, fashioned into the shape of the head of some wild animal, with grinning teeth and bristling crest; the quilted doublets of cotton; the rich surcoats of feather; mail and weapons of all sorts; copper-headed lances and arrows; and the broad Mexican sword, with its sharp blade of itztli, a hard polished stone, which served many of the purposes of steel to the Aztecs.
They wore loose white cotton robes; their beards fell on their aged breasts; in their sashes were long knives of itztli, like that upon the sacrificial stone. They might have been the old priests who sacrificed for the Tezcucan, their existences prolonged eternally here in an atmosphere of antiquity. Zoraida spoke and they straightened, and one man answered. Kendric could not understand a word.
Again Zoraida pointed; on the stone lay the ancient knife, a blade of "itztli," obsidian, dark, translucent, as hard as flint, a product of volcanic fires. Kendric turned from stone and knife and human relics and looked with strange new wonder at Zoraida. She claimed kin with the royalty of this ancient order; perhaps her claim was just.
The unhappy victim was held by five priests upon the stone of sacrifice, while the sixth, who was clothed in a scarlet mantle, emblematic of his horrible office, cut open his breast with a sharp razor of 'itztli, a volcanic substance as hard as flint, and tearing out his heart, held it first up to the sun, which they worshipped, and then cast it at the feet of the god to whom the temple was devoted; and to crown the horror, the body of the captive thus sacrificed was afterwards given to the warrior who had taken him in battle, who thereupon gave a great banquet and served him up amid choice dishes and delicious beverages for the entertainment of his friends.
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