Bright with luxuriant vegetation, graceful with little fruit-trees, and homelike with the pretty little wooden hut of the owner, these moving islands were a feature in the glorious landscape, quite sufficiently noteworthy to excuse Cabrera for letting his attention be diverted by them for a few minutes from more important objects. Even the warlike Velasquez was momentarily charmed into an amused pleasure with the novel sight.
"I tell thee what it is, Juan," he said, laughing. "Our General will thus have small trouble in rewarding his faithful followers with lands and homes. He has but to turn off a score or two of those redskin beggars yonder and put us on, and there we are."
"Yea, verily," exclaimed Montoro in a tone of indignant scorn. "There ye would be. Fresh examples of the base, thievish instincts of the Spanish nation."
Velasquez started forward with flashing eyes, and his sword half-drawn. But Cabrera dragged him back, muttering hurriedly—
"Nonsense, Leon. Thou mightest as well wish to fight that enthusiast, Bishop Las Casas, for taking the Indians' part, as this monk-soldier here. Let him be. He returns to Spain, he tells me, with the next despatches. See yonder. What is Hernando Cortes regarding thus intently?"
"Thy magic islands, perchance," was the reply.
But Cortes had no eyes just then for the mere prettinesses of the majestically-beautiful scene lying stretched out beneath his feet, nor even for the great volcano Popocatapetl towering above it all. His eyes were fixed upon the approaches to that great capital of the powerful empire of Mexico, within which he meant to rest that coming night. As he gazed upon the city, and its approaches, his face told nothing of the nature of his intent thought, but in his heart there was the full confession that his determination was one bold almost to madness.
On the east of Tenochtitlan there was no access but by water. On the other three sides the entrances were by causeways. That of Iztapalapan, built out from the mainland to the city, on the south. That of Tepejacac on the north, which, running through the heart of the city as its principal street, met the southern causeway. And lastly, the dike of Tlacopan, connecting the island city with the continent on the west.[10]
This last causeway, which a short time hence Cortes and his companions were to have the bitterest reasons for remembering, was about two miles in length. All the three were built in the same substantial manner, of lime and stone, were defended by drawbridges, and were wide enough for ten or twelve horsemen to ride abreast.
"But still," as Cortes told himself in the secresy of his own heart, and as some of the more thoughtful of his men also told themselves as they now looked down upon it for the first time, "wide as that causeway was, some thousands of determined enemies upon it in their rear, the thousands of the great city's inhabitants driving them in front, that long causeway might well become the death-blow of them and their exalted hopes."