Then they severed the cruel bonds and lifted him tenderly into the open air, where the sightless face instinctively turned toward the glowing noonday sun. Here Huetzin moistened his blackened lips and bathed his face with water that was at the same time mingled with his own scalding tears of fierce indignation, love, and pity. While he was thus engaged, his white comrades, filled with a furious rage, tore the grinning war-god from his blood-soaked throne and rolled the senseless image out on the broad arena which had but just been the scene of so terrible a battle.
"The hour of the false God has come!" cried Huetzin in the Toltec tongue: "The white conquerors are about to hurl him from his loftiest temple! Now is thy victory gained, O Tlalco! for the power of Aztec priesthood is broken forever! Oh, that my father could have lived to see this day! Oh, that Tiata might have seen it! The gods of the Toltecs, thy gods and my gods, O Tlalco, be praised that thou and I are permitted to share in this their glorious triumph!"
As he uttered these words in a tongue understood only by the dying man, the face of the youth was transfigured, the wrath of battle passed from it and it shone with the light of an all-absorbing enthusiasm.
"Lift me in thy strong arms," whispered Tlalco, "and make for me the holy sign."
As Huetzin lifted him and gently touched him on forehead, breast, and each shoulder, there came an exultant shout from the soldiers, a sound of crashing, splintering, and rending, as the ponderous image of the god thundered down to the bottom of the vast pyramid and a great cry of terror and consternation rose from the multitudes below. At the same moment the tortured features of him whom Huetzin supported, became radiant with the glory of the immortal gods, to whom his glad spirit was already winging its triumphant flight.
CHAPTER XXX.
MONTEZUMA'S SUCCESSOR DEFIES THE CONQUERORS
As Huetzin rose to his feet, after laying gently down the lifeless body of the Toltec martyr, he beheld Sandoval patiently waiting to attract his attention. The young Spaniard stood with one mail-shod foot resting on the neck of a writhing Aztec priest, who strove in vain to free himself from its weight.
"Here is a vermin," spoke Sandoval, "who bears a certain look of familiarity and who, I imagine, must be accounted of some consequence among his own diabolical crew. Yet I cannot place him and have persuaded him to come to thee for recognition. I found him, squatted like a toad in a hole, after yon image was dragged from its pedestal. He seems not to be wounded, nor do I believe he appeared in the fight at all. Now, lift thy head, vermin, that a man may gaze on thy devil's face!"