"Well?" came the rather impatient query; "but what? Although I have not told the Mexicans themselves such things as should lead them to shut their ways against us, I have let their foes know fairly well that I am ready to aid all complainants to redress their wrongs."
"You have told them so, that is true," said Montoro, once more with a slight smile. "The Tlascalans also admit so much; but, as they say with some astuteness, your deeds are at variance with your words. You have exchanged many valuable gifts with their powerful adversary, you have entertained many of his ambassadors, and you now propose as a friend to visit him in his capital."
"Moreover," put in Father Olmedo, "I learn from your own interpreter, Doña Marina, that they hold us in terrible abhorrence for our hasty and unexplained desecration of the altars of Cempoalla, a place with which they are on terms of peace."
Cortes sprang to his feet angrily.
"That is the best deed I have performed in my life, and it shall receive many a repetition. Preachments are no part of a soldier's duties. It shall be mine to destroy the pollutions of the land; you, father, can take the task of preaching it into purity with such suave slowness as you please. Meantime, to put these rumours respecting those Tlascalans yonder to the test. We will send an embassy forthwith to demand a passage through their territories to Mexico."
"Send me," exclaimed Velasquez de Leon eagerly.
"And me," cried Juan de Cabrera, delighted at the prospect of real action. He preferred using his arms to watching by them, and so did most of his companions.
But Cortes was too politic to accept the offers. The number of his fearless and trusty knights was small enough without risking the lives of any of them needlessly. Some of the chief men among the Cempoallans had accompanied the Spaniards on their march, and of these Cortes chose out four, and sent them to their neighbours, charged with his amicable demand.
Three or four days passed, and those messengers had not returned. Matters began to look serious. Montoro, with his native interpreter, and both in disguise, penetrated some distance one early morning into the unknown dominions. They returned to the camp with the startling intelligence that the ambassadors had been seized as traitors to their country's cause, and renegades from the true faith, and were within a short time to be sacrificed as peace-offerings to the insulted gods.
Instantly the whole camp was astir. The Cempoallans tremblingly anxious to deliver their friends from the indignity of the fate awaiting them; Cortes strongly determined that such a blot should not fall upon his expedition, in the person of his allies.