The soldiers had been subsiding into quietness before, now they were hushed into an intense expectancy that seemed as though it could be felt. The words with which their attention was rewarded were few enough.
"You ask me, Don Pedro de Alvarado, if those two of our Spanish brethren yonder are to die. I say yes, if any of you, their brethren, will shoot them. Montoro, may I crave that private audience with you that I lost this afternoon?"
Juan de Cabrera sprang forward with raised hands, and shoulders almost up to his ears. Even the Indians forgot their apprehensions and laughed. He bestowed a most horrible-looking, wide-mouthed grin upon them, and then drew his face to an almost impossible length, as he continued his way to Cortes, groaning out—
"Oh, General! don't you please to need a private audience with me also? That fellow, Don Gonzalo there, is quite beside himself with longing to try the new gun he hath just received from the armourer. I shiver with fear."
"Then take a doze of sleep to cure thee," was the laughing reply, "and get Father Olmedo to shrive thee first for thy sin of disobedience. I had needs be a schoolmaster rather than a general, to rule great overgrown boys like thee."
Then Cortes turned to a quieter region of the temple, and with his officers held deep counsel as to next proceedings. Although he spared his two followers from the mingled motives of prudence, friendship, and admiration, he felt somewhat bitterly that their romantic act of generosity had greatly complicated the position of affairs. Yesterday he had feared enmity, now he was sure of it.
"As strongly as we hold to our faith," he said gravely, "so I have ere now discovered do they hold to theirs. As resolutely as we would avenge an insult to our Lord, so will these heathen endeavour to avenge the insult put upon their gods of wood and clay. We must be prepared."
As the dawn grew full, Cortes, with his usual decisive energy, determined suddenly to know the worst at once; not to act on the defensive as he had first planned, but to issue forth immediately, and complete the desecration, already so boldly begun, of the heathen altars of Cempoalla.
"We have come hither," he exclaimed in animated tones to his followers, "to burn the idols of this polluted land, and to raise the sacred standard of the cross. Let us delay the glorious task no longer. In the name of the Holy Faith I go."
"In the name of the Holy Faith lead on, we follow you," shouted back the small, undaunted army with one acclaim; and in another minute, in firm, close array, the Spaniards had issued forth from their enclosure.