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Updated: June 4, 2025
Young was a good deal chagrined, however, because the picture of him that the secretary had drawn was forwarded as a part of Tizoc's despatches. He said that since he had set up a good likeness of himself, it wasn't the square thing to send the King a bad one.
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.
Over the rough pavement, down the slope towards the lake, there flowed a stream of bright red blood that in places shone a brilliant vermilion where it was touched by the glintings of the sun. Among the dead I did not see Tizoc's body, and for this I was glad.
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.
In Tizoc's company, but more leisurely, we also went on to the Citadel as we found the enclosure about the smelting-works was called where comfortable quarters had been provided for us in the same building wherein the Council was housed.
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 when I bade Pablo mount upon El Sabio's back, the look of surprise in Tizoc's face changed suddenly to an expression of troubled doubt, in which was also alarm. Under his breath I heard him mutter, "Can it be that the prophecy will be fulfilled?" But whatever the cause of his inward disturbance was, he spoke not of it, but turned once more forward, and gave the order to march.
It was with long-drawn breaths that Fray Antonio and I listened to Tizoc's telling of this tradition, which in many ways was far more real to us than it possibly could be to him; for we but lately had passed through that death-stricken valley and ourselves had been like to die there and every feature of the scene, that he could but vaguely describe to us, we had clearly in our minds.
This time we were not taken to the house in which we had met the Priest Captain, and whence we had been delivered from imprisonment by Tizoc's gallant rescue of us; but, passing a little beyond this house, we were led up a broad stair-way to the plateau which crowned the city, and on which stood the great Treasure-house that also was the temple in which the Aztlanecas housed their most venerated gods.
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.
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