By Right of Conquest; Or, With Cortez in Mexico

by G. A. Henty

His guard conducted him eight or ten miles into the interior, and established him in a hut, situated at a distance from any other dwelling. Three of them, by turns, kept watch night and day over him, refusing to answer any questions as to the cause of this singular conduct. Beyond being kept a prisoner he had nothing to complain of, being well fed and treated with all courtesy.

A fortnight later he was taken back to Tabasco, as suddenly as he had left it. When he arrived there, he learned the reason of his being carried inland. A great floating castle, filled with white men, had arrived at the mouth of the river; and had opened a trade with the natives, exchanging glass beads, looking glasses, and trinkets, for gold ornaments and articles of Mexican workmanship. Their leader, he heard, was called Grijalva. The cazique had been afraid that, if Roger had heard that other white men were in the river, he would make an effort to join them; or if they heard that a man of their color was in the town, they would insist upon his being handed over to them. He had therefore hurried him away inland, and had issued the most stringent orders that none should, by signs or otherwise, acquaint the newcomers that a white man was in the town. A guard had been placed over the house in which Roger had dwelt, and none of those within it had been allowed to go out, while the strangers were in the river.

These had sailed away, the day before Roger was fetched back. He was not altogether disappointed at having missed the strangers, who were of course Spaniards; for he wanted, if possible, to see something more of this beautiful country before he left; and he was, moreover, more than doubtful as to the reception he should meet with at the Spaniards' hands, when, by his ignorance of their language, they discovered that he was a foreign intruder, in what they considered their territory.

[Chapter 6]: Anahuac.

It was now six months since Roger was wrecked on the coast of Tabasco, he spoke the native language with perfect fluency, and had learned all that was known as to the nations round Tabasco. Malinche was his chief source of information. She herself did not belong to the country, but, as she told Roger, to a tribe that had been conquered by far mightier people, called Aztecs, who lived farther to the west.

It was from them, she said, that the people of Tabasco obtained their gold; which was there very plentiful, and was thought but little of, as being useful only for ornaments, drinking cups, and similar purposes. They dwelt in a city named Mexico, standing in the midst of a lake. There were kindred peoples near them, and the country generally was called Anahuac. All were subject to the Aztecs, and their armies had gradually conquered all the surrounding peoples.

They possessed great temples, compared to which those of Tabasco were as nothing. Their gods were very powerful, and all prisoners taken in war were sacrificed to them. They had rich mantles and clothing, and the Tabascans were but savages, in comparison.

Being asked how it was that she, who was a native of such a nation, came to be a slave among the Tabascans, she replied with tears that she had been sold. Her father had been a rich and powerful cazique, of Painalla, on the southeastern borders of the Mexican kingdom. He had died when she was very young, and her mother had married again, and had a son. One night her mother had handed her over to some traders, by whom she had been carried away. She had learned, from their conversation, that her mother desired her son to inherit all her possessions; and that she had, therefore, sold her to these traders. The daughter of one of her slaves had died that evening, and she intended to give out that Malinche was dead, and to celebrate her funeral in the usual way. The traders had brought her to Tabasco, and sold her to the cazique of that town.

"But this mother of yours must be an infamous woman, Malinche," Roger said indignantly, "thus to sell away her own daughter to be a slave!"

"Girls are not much good," Malinche said, sadly. "They cannot fight, and they cannot govern a people. It was natural that my mother should prefer her son to me, and should wish to see him a cazique, when he grew up."