“Thanks be to St. Maturin!” he muttered, contentedly, glancing toward the end of the room to which the King’s wives and the discomfited court physician had withdrawn. “My surmise was correct. The Great Sun was too hospitable to the wandering moon. I have known more enlightened monarchs, in more highly civilized lands, to succumb to their excessive zeal for good-fellowship. Quiet, care, and a few drops of balsam are all that this old chief requires to make him a king again from top to toe. Nom de Dieu, another day like this one, and I’ll need medicine myself! The rôle of executioner is not so bad, but a physician—peste! May the devil fly away with that chief priest! I fear me he’s a snake. I should dare to hope that I might rescue Doña Julia from this bloodthirsty land if I could but trust that crafty Coheyogo, who’s as keen as Richelieu and as slippery as Mazarin! I must keep a sharp eye upon his reverence, or he will yet cast his sacred cords around my neck!”
To de Sancerre, thus standing in silent revery beside the Great Sun’s couch, came Noco, hobbling from the entrance with hurried step. Her appearance was greeted by a more insistent chorus from the gossiping women at the end of the room, to whom the outcome of their royal husband’s illness meant either life or death.
“Katonah!” panted the old crone, as she reached the Frenchman’s side. “She has disappeared.”
“Impossible!” exclaimed de Sancerre. “You know her not, señora. She would not leave your cabin without a word to me.”
“I am not blind!” cried Noco, angrily. “My house is empty and the girl is gone. And Cabanacte—”
“What of him?” asked de Sancerre, impatiently, as Noco paused for breath.
“I told him of Katonah’s flight, and he has set out in search of her.”
“The traitor!” muttered the Frenchman, peering down at the old hag who had brought to him such unwelcome news. “Your grandson, Doña Noco, has abandoned the spirit for the flesh—and left Coyocop without a guard! Surely, Katonah is safer in the forest than is the spirit of the sun in a city which pretends to worship her. I shall chide your grandson, Doña Noco, if I ever look upon his giant form again. But stay you here, señora. When this great Son of Suns awakens from his sleep give him a drink of balsam—and he’ll sleep again. I go to Coyocop, and will return anon.”
The moon had not yet arisen, and darkness and silence combined to cast a menacing spell upon the impressionable City of the Sun. De Sancerre’s spirits were at a low ebb as he groped his way toward Doña Julia’s unguarded cabin. The reaction from a day of excitement had come upon him, and the gloom of the deserted square did not tend toward the restoration of his former cheerfulness. It was true that he had escaped death through a combination of circumstances which apparently had won for him the good-will of the chief priest, but the outlook for the immediate future was not promising. De la Salle could not return from the South for several weeks, even if he and his followers escaped the perils which might menace them as they approached the mouth of the great river. Cabanacte, to whom de Sancerre had looked for the aid which might make his escape with the Spanish girl possible, had betrayed friendship at the instigation of a stronger passion. His return from the forest might be long delayed. As he approached the hut in which his grateful eyes had rested upon the pale, sweet face of Julia de Aquilar, de Sancerre felt a sinking of the heart, a sensation of utter hopelessness which was an unacceptable novelty to the vivacious Frenchman, against whose sanguine temperament the shafts of despair had heretofore been powerless.
As he stationed himself, with rapier in hand, before the entrance to Coyocop’s sacred cabin, there was nothing in his surroundings to relight the flame of hope in de Sancerre’s soul. Clouds had begun to darken the eastern sky, revoking its promise of a moonlit night. A moaning wind, damp and chill, had stolen from its lair in the forest to annoy a fickle city with its cold, moist kiss. The world seemed to be made of sighs and shadows. The great square in front of him, dark and deserted, strove to deceive the Frenchman with its tale of an abandoned town. Now and then the voice of some devout sun-worshipper, raised in hoarse prayer, would penetrate the walls of a hut and bear witness to the city’s swarming life.