“We cannot fail, señora, for the full moon is my god! We’ll find your Cabanacte ere the night is old—and none will ever know. And now, begone! Between the setting of the sun and the rising of the moon I’ll come to you and Coyocop. Be true to me, señora, and by the magic of my silver wand you’ll look upon your grandson’s face to-night.”
In another moment Noco, eluding the Great Sun’s glance as she stole between the tall sun-worshippers, had crept from the cabin into the rosy light of day.
The hours which followed her departure passed like long days to de Sancerre. He watched the Great Sun’s wives as they became surfeited with the petty tyranny which they exercised at the expense of a throng of lesser women, upon whom rested the drudgery necessitated by the approaching feast. Cares of state—an inventory of the tribute paid to his divine right—occupied the attention of the King until noon had long been passed and left de Sancerre to his own devices. Seated at the entrance to the cabin, the Frenchman could observe what was passing in the sunny square outside, while he still kept an eye upon the Great Sun and his busy household. Half-naked boys and girls, gay with garlands of flowers, were arranging long lines of wooden benches in front of the royal dwelling under the direction of a master of ceremonies who had escaped death with his king.
The bench upon which the Great Sun, the chief priest, and de Sancerre, the nation’s guest, were to sit stood just in front of the King’s cabin, and had been covered with painted skins and surrounded by a carpet of magnolia blossoms.
As the hour for the banquet approached the nobly-born sun-worshippers gathered in groups at the further end of the square, awaiting a signal from royalty to seat themselves upon the benches, hot by this time from the glare of a cloudless day. Gayety, suppressed but impatient, reigned in the City of the Sun. Black eyes flashed above smiling lips, and now and then a chorus of happy voices would raise a chant in praise of a deity who had blessed the earth with fecund warmth. Even the stealthy, silent, keen-eyed temple priests failed to cast a damper upon the joyous children of the sun as they mingled with the throng or lurked in the shadow of their skull-crowned palisade.
The banquet had been under way for more than an hour before de Sancerre, seated between the Great Sun and Coheyogo, had been able to revive the hope which had sprung up in his breast earlier in the day. His environment, as it met his eyes at the outset of the feast, seemed to preclude all possibility of a successful issue to the plan which he had impulsively put into operation. A group of plebeians, watching the nobility as it made merry—apparently at the King’s expense, but, in reality, at theirs—stood directly in front of Coyocop’s abode and were laughingly driving de Sancerre’s heart into his pointed shoes. Would the gaping throng disperse as the sun sank low in the sky, and leave to the Frenchman one chance in a thousand for the triumph of his daring scheme? The hours, as they passed, left de Sancerre less and less self-confident, while they increased the joyous hilarity of the feasters among whom he sat. The mud-made walls of the houses on either side of him had begun to throw long shadows across the square before de Sancerre was able to cull from his surroundings a bud of hope. It sprang from the tongue of Noco, who, as she passed behind his back, muttered in Spanish:
“I will touch your arm at dark. Then follow me.”
At that moment the women serving the royal table placed before the Great Sun and his guests of honor bits of bark upon which rested fish still hissing from the heat of a wood-fire. De Sancerre, who had turned to nod to Noco, caught a gleam of excitement in the black eyes of the serving-woman who had stretched her scrawny, brown arms between him and the chief priest. As he faced the feast again the fish in front of him recalled the written warning which he had received that morning from Julia de Aquilar.
“Touch no fish at to-day’s banquet,” repeated de Sancerre to himself. “’Twas good advice, I think. I’ll let this schemer, Coheyogo, eat my dish.” Acting upon the impulse of the moment, the Frenchman touched the chief priest upon the arm, and, as Coheyogo’s black eyes met his, he made a gesture toward the retreating form of Noco, as if he invoked the aid of the temple to recall the interpreter to his side. The spontaneity of de Sancerre’s action had its effect upon the sun-priest, for he turned instantly and called aloud to the double-tongued and two-faced hag. With a rapidity and deftness worthy of a prestidigitateur, do Sancerre transposed the fragments of fish-laden bark upon the bench, and, as Coheyogo resumed his former attitude, he was confronted, unknowingly, with a dish with which a fanatical but disobedient priest, hating moon-magic, had tampered.
There is but short shrift given to the day when the sun deserts it in southern climes. Twilight had already begun to cast a gloom upon the feast, against which the forced gayety begotten of cinnamon-flavored wine could not prevail, when de Sancerre again felt old Noco’s touch upon his arm. Before he turned to her the Frenchman, whose heart was beating wildly beneath his rusty velvets, cast a glance at the Great Sun. To his great satisfaction he discovered that his royal patient had wholly disregarded the warning vouchsafed by his recent illness and had been indulging in the pleasures of the table to an extent that had placed again in jeopardy the lives of those of his subjects who were doomed to accompany him in state to the spirit-land. But it was the condition of Coheyogo at that moment which gave to de Sancerre the greater cause for joy. The chief priest sat blinking down at a half-eaten fish, as if he struggled vainly to read the grim secret which it held. Now and then his head would drop forward as if he had been overcome by sleep. Then, by an effort of will, he would straighten his spine and attempt to collect his thoughts. The Frenchman watched him searchingly for a moment, and observed with delight that the struggle which the chief priest was making against a slothful but resistless foe would end in full defeat.