The interpreter repeated the words to Roger in the Yucatan dialect, adding that he himself had been a prisoner for eight years among the natives; and that, although a man when captured by them, had with difficulty spoken Spanish when restored to his friends; but it had now quite come back to him.
"You were but a boy when you were wrecked, Marina tells me?" Cortez said.
"Only a boy," Roger repeated, when Marina translated this to him.
"Do you remember anything of Spain?" Cortez asked.
Roger shut his eyes, as if considering.
"I seem to have a remembrance," he said, "of a place with many great ships. It was a city built on a rock rising from the sea. It had high walls with great guns upon them, which fired sometimes, with a terrible noise, when vessels came in and out."
When this was translated by Aquilar, Cortez said:
"It was Cadiz, of course. Doubtless the ship he was wrecked in sailed from that port."
A murmur of assent passed round the other Spaniards.
"Show him a cross, Aquilar. See if he remembers his religion."