Then she passed through the hole swiftly, for Otomie was agile and strong as an ocelot, and mounting the stool I made shift to follow her as well as my hurts would allow. In the end I was able to throw myself upon the sill of the window, and there I was stretched out like a dead cat till she drew me across it, and I fell with her to the ground on the further side, and lay groaning. She lifted me to my feet, or rather to my foot, for I could use but one of them, and we stared round us. No one was to be seen, and the sound of revelry had died away, for the crest of Popo was already red with the sunlight and the dawn grew in the valley.
“Where to?” I said.
Now Otomie had been allowed to walk in the camp with her sister, the wife of Guatemoc, and other Aztec ladies, and she had this gift in common with most Indians, that where she had once passed there she could pass again, even in the darkest night.
“To the south gate,” she whispered; “perhaps it is unguarded now that the war is done, at the least I know the road thither.”
So we started, I leaning on her shoulder and hopping on my right foot, and thus very painfully we traversed some three hundred yards meeting nobody. But now our good luck failed us, for passing round the corner of some buildings, we came face to face with three soldiers returning to their huts from a midnight revel, and with them some native servants.
“Whom have we here?” said the first of these. “Your name, comrade?”
“Good-night, brother, good-night,” I answered in Spanish, speaking with the thick voice of drunkenness.
“Good morning, you mean,” he said, for the dawn was breaking. “Your name. I don’t know your face, though it seems that you have been in the wars,” and he laughed.
“You mustn’t ask a comrade his name,” I said solemnly and swinging to and fro. “The captain might send for me and he’s a temperate man. Your arm, girl; it is time to go to sleep, the sun sets.”
They laughed, but one of them addressed Otomie, saying: