Tolta, leaving his men, searched everywhere for another chance to cross the lava, but was driven back, scorched and faint, to the knoll. “Am I to die here like a scorpion encircled by fire?” said he, in a rage at his futile efforts. “Was it for this that I have plotted vengeance, and to possess Beatriz? Juan to escape, and she to die with me the death of a dog; curses upon Pele and her demon crew! Great god of Mexico, if thou art not thyself become a slave to the Christian’s God, save thy servant!” and he shook his fist at the hot lava in the fury of his despair.
CHAPTER XIX.
“This inhuman cavern—
It were too bad a prison-house for goblins.
—— —— —— no place safe but this!”
Coleridge.
Mutual terror forces hostile animals into peaceful companionship. Under its influence the wolf lies down as quietly beside the lamb as if in the kingdom of love. The extremes of faith and education produce in man under threatened, speedy death, much the same outward result. Pohaku’s warriors, bred in cruelty, and believing only in malignant deities, viewed their fast coming fate with sullen indifference. So long as there was hope in their exertions they were ready to show themselves men, but when death looked them right in the face, they were equally ready to proffer their breasts to his stroke without further struggle. Their instincts taught them that as life was beyond their control, so was death. He was a foe they could not conquer, neither should he triumph in their fear. Thus in his ignorance and unbelief the savage meets the great change with an insensibility, which, in its outward calm, rivals the faith of the Christian.
Having abandoned hope, they sat stoically regarding the rising tide of lava,—seldom speaking, for it was a scene in which nature, uniting them by a common feeling, made speech useless. The air grew hotter each second. Puffs of steam issued from the rocks near by. At times a thick cloud of suffocating vapor swept so close to them, that they were obliged to hold their breaths until it passed.