"Hitherto, Señor, that has been done. Now, however, the gods have spoken through the opal, and it is willed that a white man alone can avert the end of time. A white man must be sacrificed, and you are chosen."
Jack shuddered, and hid his face in his hands.
"Surely, Señor, you are not afraid!"
"Afraid!" echoed Jack, uncovering his face, with a frown. "No, Cocom; an Englishman is never afraid of death. But to come in such a form as this—oh, horrible! horrible!"
Cocom could not understand this alarm. Like all Indians, he regarded death with stoical resignation, and would have been perfectly willing himself to have been offered on the altar of sacrifice, seeing such a death would admit him at once into the Paradise of the sun. But he was very old, and therefore useless. The gods demanded a man, handsome, young, in the flower of his age, and therefore was it certain that Jack would be acceptable to the bloodthirsty Huitzilopochtli.
"Did Don Hypolito know this when he delivered me to your friends?"
"It was for that purpose he delivered you, Señor."
"Oh, fiend! devil!" cried Jack, trying to rise in his bed. "I wish I had my fingers round his throat!"
"Lie quiet, Señor," said Cocom, forcing him back. "You will make yourself ill again."
"Why should I not, seeing I am only reserved for this frightful death?"