Thus exclaiming, Sandoval caught at the matted hair of the priest and pulled up his head so that Huetzin had a fair view of the fear-distorted features. As he glanced at them the young Toltec uttered a great cry and sprang forward.
SANDOVAL PULLED UP HIS HEAD.
"Aye, well do I know him!" he exclaimed. "He is the murderer of thousands, and thrice have I been in his clutches. From me has he taken father, mother, and sister! There (pointing to the mutilated body of Tlalco) is a specimen of his work. With his own hand did he slay Tlahuicol and Tiata! He is Topil, the chief-priest, the chief curse of Anahuac. Let me at him, that I may hurl him to everlasting damnation! Let me at him, I say! He is mine!"
"Gently, lad, gently!" interposed Sandoval, in a tone whose very softness intimated his rage. "To hurl him over the brink would be a kindness. 'Twould be too sweet a death for him. I have a better plan. Leave him to me, and I promise you thou shalt be satisfied."
With this he again grasped the long hair of Topil's head, and dragged the screaming wretch back into the shrine from which he had brought him. There, lifting him with a quick jerk to his feet, he drove him up the stairway to its top, hastening his movements with many a sword-prick in his bare legs. When Topil emerged on the roof, he was sixty feet above the platform where the combat had raged, and standing on the summit of a wooden tower. Sandoval bound his prisoner's wrists firmly together, behind him, and then fastened one of his ankles, by a copper censer chain that he had found in the temple, to a projecting timber, so that the priest, while allowed a certain freedom of motion, could by no possibility escape. There Sandoval left him, and, descending, closed the only avenue of escape behind him. Seizing a burning brand from an altar, he set fire to the woodwork of the temple in a dozen places. It was like tinder, and in a minute the red flames were greedily licking the slender tower on all sides. The screams of the miscreant, dancing in torment on its summit, attracted the attention of the multitudes below, and they, still trembling from the destruction of their god, were compelled to gaze helplessly upon the awful but well-merited fate of their chief-priest. Even after he was hidden from sight by a towering screen of flame and smoke, his voice could be heard in frantic appeals to the impotent gods.
When Cortes and the slender remnant of his victorious band descended from this memorable battle-field, the Aztec throngs shrunk from them as though they were plague-stricken, and they passed unmolested to their own quarters. That night the Spaniards again sallied forth, and, carrying blazing brands in every direction through the sleeping city, destroyed over three hundred houses.
On the following day, Cortes, thinking that by these reverses and by the overthrow of their principal god, the Aztecs must be sufficiently humbled to submit, called a parley. As the principal nobles and their followers assembled in the great square, he addressed them, through the voice of Marina, from the same turret on which Montezuma had received his death-wound.
"Men of Tenochtitlan," he said, "you have seen your gods trampled in the dust, their priests destroyed, your warriors slain by thousands, and your dwellings burned. All this you have brought upon yourselves. Yet, for the affection I bore the king whom you murdered, I am willing to forgive you, if you lay down your arms, renounce the hideous religion that offers no hope for your salvation, and resume the allegiance to his most Catholic majesty of Spain sworn by your king. If you refuse these things, then will I make your beautiful city a heap of smouldering ruins, as barren of human life as the fire-crowned summit of yon sky-piercing mountain. What say you? Shall it be peace with immunity from further suffering, or shall it be war to the death, and utter ruin?"
Then answered Cuitlahua, the newly crowned king: "It is true, O Malinche, that thou hast destroyed one of our temples, broken the image of a god, and slain many of my people. Many more will doubtless fall beneath thy terrible sword. But we are satisfied so long as for the blood of every hundred, we can shed that of one white man. Look on our roofs and terraces, our streets and squares. They are thronged with Aztec warriors, as far as thine eye can reach. Our numbers are scarcely diminished. Yours are lessening every hour! You are perishing with hunger, and thirst, and sickness! Your provisions are failing! We will see to it that you get no more. You have but little water! You must soon fall into our hands. The bridges are removed, and you cannot escape! Truly, O Malinche, is the vengeance of the outraged gods about to descend on thee."