"Look you, I will clear up this mystery. Listen; the story is interesting enough. When the Aztecs quitted Azlin, which signifies 'the country of herons,' to conquer Anahuac, or 'the country between the waters,' their peregrinations were long, extending over several centuries. Disheartened at times by long travel, they halted, founded cities, in which they installed themselves as if they never intended to abandon the place they had chosen; and, perhaps with the object of leaving behind them ineffaceable traces of their passage through the wild countries they traversed, they constructed pyramids. Hence the numerous ruins littering the soil of Mexico, and the teocalis one meets with occasionally,—last and mournful vestiges of a people that has disappeared. These teocalis built on a system of incredible solidity far from crumbling under the strenuous embrace of time, have ended in becoming a part of the ground which supported them, and so completely, that there is often difficulty in recognising them. I can give you no better proof of my assertion than what you have now before you. The elevation you are now ascending is not, as you might suppose, a hill caused by some perturbation of the earth,—it is an Aztec teocali."
"A teocali!" exclaimed Don Pedro, in astonishment.
"It is, indeed," continued the freebooter; "but so many centuries have elapsed since the day it was built, that, thanks to the vegetable matter incessantly conveyed by the winds, nature has apparently resumed her rights, and the Aztec watchtower has become a green hill. You are doubtless aware that the teocalis are hollow?"
"I am aware of it," answered the hacendero.
"It is in the interior of this one I have fixed my dwelling. See, we have reached it. Allow me to show you the way into it."
In fact, the travellers had arrived at a kind of coarse portal—a Cyclopean construction—which gave admittance to a subterranean building, in which a profound obscurity prevailed, forbidding any estimate of its dimensions.
The Tigercat stopped, and gave a peculiar whistle. Immediately a dazzling light broke forth from the interior, and illuminated it in all its vastness.
"Let us enter," said the freebooter, preceding his companions.
Without hesitation Don Pedro prepared to follow, after making a sign to his attendants, warning them to conceal their rising fears.
For a moment the unknown found himself, so to speak, alone with the hacendero, and bending swiftly down, whispered softly in his ear, "Be prudent; you are entering the tiger's den."