"The ships are burnt!" "Our ships are burnt!" resounded on all sides from the Spanish troops rushing from their quarters in that new Villa Rica de Vera Cruz.
Consternation, fear, and fury gave ever-increasing emphasis to that one wild, startled shout, "Our ships are burnt!"
"Said I not well," muttered the discontented priest Father Juan Diaz, instigator of the former conspiracy—"said I not well that this Cortes was leading us like cattle, for his own renown, to be butchered in the shambles!"
Even Father Olmedo, and Morla, and others of his stamp, eagerly watching for opportunities to earn distinction, felt their hearts sink heavily as they repeated that startled cry, "Our ships are burnt!"
For one half-hour it may have been that Hernando Cortes trembled, and that his friends feared for him, and for themselves.
"But after all," said Juan de Cabrera, recovering his usual off-hand carelessness, "one can but die once, and though, as you yourself said, Captain, one would rather die at the hands of others than one's own friends, or one's own countrymen, still, when the breath is once fairly out of the body, I scarcely suppose one will care much what hand drove it forth."
"That is true," replied Cortes, with a sudden return of his usual resolute energy and undaunted bearing, and as another tumultuous shout rent the air throughout the so-called town of Vera Cruz, the Captain-General strode forth from his hut, and with stentorian tones exclaimed to his mutinous followers—
"What means this uproar, comrades? If you have complaints to make, I am here. Make them to me."
"Our ships are burnt, and by your orders," came the reply, but by no means from all throats now, and from none so loudly as before. Some were cowed in the actual presence of that resolute commander of theirs, others were awed into admiration and fresh attachment by his dauntless attitude.
Still, a certain number there were who yet reiterated that reproachful cry, "Our ships are burnt!"