“Be it as you will.”
By now, indeed, we understood—all three of us—that if we would save ourselves we must suffer the child to die, and, however great our necessity, this we could not do. So we went up to the house and entered, and there by the fire sat that same man and his wife whom we had found in this room a year ago.
“Who are you?” he cried, springing up. “Pardon, Lady, but in that garb I did not know you.”
“It is best that you should not know us,” said Maya. “We are wanderers who have lost our way out hunting. Give us food, as you are bound to do.”
Then the man and his wife, who were kindly people, made obeisance to us, and set of the best they had before us. We ate, and, after eating, slept, for we were very weary, bidding the man watch and tell us if he saw any stranger approaching the house. Before dawn he woke us, and we rose. A little later he came into my room and told me that a large body of men were in sight of the house. Then I knew that it was finished, and called the others.
“Now, there are three things that we can do,” I said: “fly towards the pass; defend this house; or surrender ourselves.”
“There is no time to fly,” answered the señor, “therefore it is my counsel that we fight.”
“It is your counsel that two men armed with bows” (for our firearms had been taken from us on the pyramid, and we had never been able to recover them) “should engage with fifty. Well, friend, we can try it if you wish, and perhaps it will be as good a way of meeting our deaths as any other.”
“This is folly,” broke in Maya; “there is but one thing to do; yield ourselves and trust to fortune, if, indeed, fortune has any good in store for us. Only I wish that we had done it before we undertook this weary journey.”
As she spoke, by the light of the rising sun we saw a great number of men forming a circle round the house. With them were several captains and lords, and among these I recognised Dimas and Tikal.