“Be silent, señor,” implored Noco. “I’ll save you, if I can.” Then, facing the chief priest, who towered above them a few paces in front of his silent and motionless brethren, she exclaimed, in the tongue of the sun-worshippers:
“What would you with this scion of the moon? He worships Coyocop.”
“How know we that?” asked the chief priest, sternly, a bronze giant questioning a bronze dwarf surrounded by sentinels of bronze. In the very centre of the dusky, white-garbed group stood the pale, desperate Frenchman, his rapier pointed at an angle toward the ground, while his keen eyes, bold and unflinching, travelled defiantly from face to face of the scowling priests.
“What says the Inquisition? Will they dare the terrors of my hungry blade, señora?” cried de Sancerre, mockingly.
“’Tis dread of the gray chanter that inspires them,” muttered Noco. Then she turned to the Frenchman. “I’ve told them that you worship Coyocop. They have no proof of it.”
“Pardieu!” exclaimed the Frenchman, elevating his rapier. “The blood of a sulky Spaniard on this blade is proof enough. But, I have it! Say to his holiness, the chief priest, that I will scratch a message to the spirit of the sun upon a piece of bark. Bid him, in person, take it straight to Coyocop. If he obeys not what she says to him, the City of the Sun is doomed.”
Quickly translating de Sancerre’s defiant words into her native tongue, Noco, at a gesture from the chief priest, entered her hut. She was absent but a moment and, upon her return, handed a piece of virgin mulberry-wood to de Sancerre. Drawing his dagger from its sheath, the Frenchman scrawled these words upon the white bark:
“Louis de Sancerre, of Languedoc, sends greeting to Coyocop. Warn the bearer that my person must be sacred in the City of the Sun. To-morrow I will speak to you the words I cannot write.”
Noco, without more ado, handed the note to the guardian of the sacred fire, who received it with evident reluctance. Ignorant of the art of writing, he looked upon the gleaming bark as a bit of moon-magic which might, at any moment, cast upon him an evil spell. But, for the sake of his prestige with his order, he dared not give way to the dread which filled his superstitious soul. Stalking away, with Noco hurrying on behind him, he strode through the moonlight toward the house in which the spirit of the sun was lodged.
The minutes which preceded his return were like weary hours to the distraught Frenchman, surrounded, as he was, by pitiless faces from which black, piercing eyes seemed to singe his velvets with their spiteful gleams. A tattered courtier, with drawn sword, he stood there motionless, silent, awaiting with foreboding the return of his most influential foe. If fancy, or a fever begotten of a long and exciting day, had played him a trick; if the song of Coyocop had been voiced by Julia de Aquilar only in his imagination, he knew that he was doomed. Presently he drew from his bosom the piece of bark upon which was written the Spanish maiden’s name. The sight revived his drooping courage. Whatever might be the explanation of the presence of Julia de Aquilar in this grim outland, his reason told him that his eyes and ears had not deceived him.