The night had worn on, and the crescent moon rested on the verge of the horizon. I had heard the great secret of the Indian boy; his bitter recital of past wrongs and failures, and his hopes of future triumph. I now knew that the angel of blood was indeed abroad, and that, in his own figurative language, “The voice of the Tiger was loud in the mountain!”
FAREWELL TO THE MOSQUITO SHORE!
I was silent and thoughtful when he had finished; but when, after a long pause, he asked, “Will my brother go with me to the lake of the Itzaes?” I grasped his hand and swore, by a name holier than that of Votan, to justify a friendship so unwavering by a faith as boundless as his own. And when I left the outposts of civilization, and plunged into the untracked wilderness, with no other friend or guide, never did a suspicion or a doubt darken for an instant my confidence, or impair my faith in the loyal heart of Antonio Chul—once the mild-eyed Indian boy, but now the dreaded chieftain and victorious leader of the unrelenting Itzaes of Yucatan!
Time only can determine what will be the final result of the contest which is now waging upon the soil of that beautiful, but already half-desolated peninsula. Almost every arrival brings us the news of increased boldness, and new successes on the part of the Indians; and, it now seems, as if the great drama of the conquest were to be closed by the destruction of the race of the conquerors! Terribly the frown darkens on the front of Nemesis!
“The voice of the Tiger is loud in the mountain!”
FOOTNOTES
[1] The dory is usually hollowed from a solid piece of mahogany or cedar, and is from twenty-five to fifty feet in length. This kind of vessel is found so buoyant and safe, that persons, accustomed to the management of it, often fearlessly venture out to sea, in weather when it might be unsafe to trust to vessels of a larger kind.