These reflections saddened me, and the unwilling conviction was forced upon my mind that I must soon be roused from my long, delicious dream, perhaps never again to court its enchantments with success. I gazed upon the moonlit waters, and listened to the gentle chime of the waves upon the sand, and almost regretted that I had been admitted within the grand arcanum of Nature, to adore her unvailed beauties, since they were now to be shut out from me forever, by the restraints, the unmeaning forms, the follies and vices of artificial life! A heavy weight of melancholy settled on my heart, and I bowed my head on my knees, and—shall I own it?—wept!
It was then that Antonio approached me, silently as when he stole to my side on the fearful night of our shipwreck, and quietly laid his hand on my shoulder. I knew who it was, but I said nothing, for I hesitated to betray my emotion.
He respected my silence, and waited until my momentary weakness had passed away, when I raised my head, and met his full and earnest gaze. His face again glowed with that mysterious intelligence which I had remarked on several previous occasions; but now his lips were unsealed, and he said:—
“This is a good place, my brother, to tell you the secret of my heart; for on that dark island slumber the bones of our fathers. It was there that my powerful ancestor, Baalam Votan, led the white-robed holy men, when they fled from the regions of the rising sun. It was there that our people raised a temple to the Imperial Tiger, whose descendant I am—for am I not Baalam,[5] and is not this the Heart of the People?”
This exclamation was made with energy, and, for a moment, he was silent, and gazed earnestly upon his cherished talisman.
When he resumed, it was in a less exalted strain. He told me of the ancient greatness of his people, when the race of Baalam Votan reigned over the Peninsula of Yucatan, and sent the missionaries of their religion to redeem the savage nations which surrounded them, even to the country of the Huastecas, on the river of Panuco. It was then, he said, that the Lord of Life smiled on the earth; then the ears of maize were many times larger than now, the trees were loaded with unfailing supplies of fruit, and bloomed with perennial flowers; the cotton grew of many colors; and, although men died, their spirits walked the earth, and held familiar converse with the children of the Itzaes.
Never have I heard a voice more intense and fervid than that of the Indian boy, as he described the traditionary golden age of his people. I listened with breathless interest, and thought it was thus that the prophets of old must have spoken, when the people deemed them inspired of heaven. But when he came to recount the wrongs of his nation, and the destruction of the kingdom of his fathers, I could scarcely believe that the hoarse voice, and words but half-articulated from excess of passion, proceeded from the same lips. It was a fearful sight to witness the convulsive energy of that Indian boy, whose knotted muscles, and the veins swelling almost to bursting on his forehead, half-induced me to fear that he had been stricken with madness.
But soon he became calm again, and told me how the slumbering spirit of his people had become roused, and how wide-spread and terrible was the revenge which they were meditating upon their oppressors. A few years before, his father had gathered the descendants of the ancient Caziques amid the ruins at Chichen-Itza, and there they had sworn, by the Heart of Baalam Votan, to restore the rule of the Holy Men, and expel the Spaniards from the Peninsula. It was then, that the sacred relic which he wore on his breast had been dug up from the hiding-place where it had lain for centuries, to lend the sanctity and power of the traditionary Votan to his chosen successor. But the movement had been premature; and although the excited, but poorly-armed Indians performed prodigies of valor, and carried their victories to the very walls of Merida, yet there they received a sudden, and, as it seemed, a final check, in the death of Chichen-Pat, their cherished leader. He fell at the head of his followers, who rescued only the talisman of Votan, called the “Heart of the People,” and then fled in dismay to their fastnesses in the wilderness. But the spirit which had been evoked was not subdued. Another convocation was held, and the only son of their late leader was invested with the symbol of authority. A scheme of insurrection was devised, which was intended to include, not only the Indians of Yucatan and of Central America, but even those of Mexico and Peru, in one grand and terrible uprising against the Spanish dominion.
To this end messengers were sent in every direction; and the proud cavalier at Bogota or Mexico, spurring his horse, with arrogant mien, past the strange Indian, who shrank aside at his approach, or stood with head uncovered in his presence, little thought what torrents of hate were dammed up in that swarthy breast, or what wide-laid schemes of vengeance were revolving beneath that impassible brow! The emissaries toiled through wildernesses and deep marshes, over high mountains and dangerous rivers, enduring hunger and fatigue, and the extremes of heat and cold, to fulfill their respective missions. Even the daughters of the Holy Men, like the seeress of the river Bocay, ventured afar from the homes of their people, and among distant and alien tribes, became the propagandists of the meditated Revenge!