Some compensation we had in our walks round the pyramid, beguiling the time we could not sleep with a cigar, contemplating the fine starry nights and sometimes the lunar rainbows so rarely seen; or we watched the broad shadow of the pyramid cast athwart the white haze shrouding the plain, fringed by an immense brilliant corona, which seemed to float in space. Never had I gazed on anything so curious and fantastic as this terrestrial halo; and if the ancient worshippers of Cukulcan ever witnessed the phenomenon, they must have deemed it little short of miraculous.
We were still without a cook; for Julian was so atrociously bad that I kept him at the squeezes, taking the cooking ourselves in turn, which wasted much valuable time. One evening, after everybody had gone to
BAS-RELIEFS FROM PILLARS OF SANCTUARY OF CHICHEN-ITZA. rest, I was sitting alone writing my impressions, my head full of the ruins and the people who inhabited them. I suddenly looked up, to see standing before me a lovely maiden more like an apparition than a mortal being. Was this the shade of a Maya princess who had returned to the scenes of her former life, conjured up by my imagination? Meanwhile the beauteous figure stood looking and smiling at me. I was amazed, speechless, hardly daring to break the spell, when a third figure stood out from the dark entrance, in whom I recognised the commandant of Pisté.
“You are surprised at our visit,” he said.
“Rather, especially at this hour, and in such a night.”
“Time is of no account when you wish to serve a friend; I heard that you required a cook, I brought you mine, that’s all.”
“A cook!” I ejaculated to myself. What a fall! my Indian princess a cook! I looked at her again, and I could not believe that so much youth and beauty were put to such menial occupation. I wondered at the commandant’s self-abnegation. I was somewhat embarrassed, nevertheless, as to where I should put her. I called up Julian to prepare a bed for her, but as he was not easily roused, I had time to reflect that with a hundred men about me, El Castillo was no fitting place for a young girl. I was profuse in my acknowledgments to the commandant, observing that as nothing was ready, it would perhaps be better to put off her coming for a day or two, apologising for the trouble they had taken in coming through the woods and having to climb the pyramid in such a pitch-dark night. He knew what I meant. I slipped a coin in the girl’s hand, as she held a bottle towards me. “Drink,” said the officer; “it is Josepha’s present to you.” I did so, while Josepha merely put her lips to the bottle. We shook hands, and my two visitors disappeared in the night. The draught was Staventum, a strong spirit, which made me light-headed, and in a fit of somnambulism I wandered about, spouting poetry at the top of my voice, on the very edge of the pyramid, whence I was fortunately removed, without any further result than to awake the next day with a splitting headache. Our long-expected cook arrived at last, and she was so old, and such a fright, that it relieved me of all fear on her account.
Akab-Sib, “writing in the dark,” is a modern appellation, due to a bas-relief found on the lintel of an inner door at the extremity of the building. The cut we give is a copy of our photograph. We can give no explanation respecting this relief. The figure it represents is sitting before a vase full of indistinct objects, with outstretched arm and forefinger pointed, whether in question or command is uncertain—not much for the imagination to go upon. We will restrict ourselves to pointing out the analogy of the characters in the inscriptions with those at Palenque. The structure consists of eighteen rooms, reared on a plain pyramid, with a stairway to the east, without any ornamentation.
The Caracol is a round building, 22 feet in diameter, with a double inner corridor and a central pillar; it is a kind of tower, used probably for civil or religious ceremonies, for we have found this kind of structure at Cozumel and in all the great centres.