Garden, palace, Nenetzin,—everything but the motionless figure by the tank faded from Hualpa’s mind. Fear came upon him; and no wonder: there, almost within reach, at midnight, unattended, stood what was to him the positive realization of power, ruler of the Empire, dispenser of richest gifts, keeper of life and death! Guilty, and tremulously apprehensive that he had been discovered, Hualpa looked each instant to be dragged from his hiding.
The space around the tank was clear, and strewn with shells perfectly white in the moonlight. While the adventurer sat fixed to his seat, watching the king, watching, also, a chance of escape, he saw something come from the shrubbery, move stealthily out into the walk, then crouch down. Now, as I have shown, he was brave; but this tested all his courage. Out further crept the object, moving with the stillness of a spirit. Scarcely could he persuade himself at first that it was not an illusion begotten of his fears; but its form and movements, the very stillness of its advance, at last identified it. In all his hunter’s experience, he had never seen an ocelot so large. The screams he had heard were now explained,—the monster had escaped from the menagerie!
I cannot say the recognition wrought a subsidence of Hualpa’s fears. He felt instinctively for his arms,—he had nothing but a knife of brittle itzli. Then he thought of the stories he had heard of the ferocity of the royal tigers, and of unhappy wretches flung, by way of punishment, into their dens. He shuddered, and turned to the king, who still gazed thoughtfully over the wall of the tank.
Holy Huitzil’! the ocelot was creeping upon the monarch! The flash of understanding that revealed the fact to Hualpa was like the lightning. Breathlessly he noticed the course the brute was taking; there could be no doubt. Another flash, and he understood the monarch’s peril,—alone, unarmed, before the guards at the gates or in the palace could come, the struggle would be over; child of the Sun though he was, there remained for him but one hope of rescue.
As, in common with provincials generally, he cherished a reverence for the monarch hardly secondary to that he felt for the gods, the Tihuancan was inexpressibly shocked to see him subject to such a danger. An impulse aside from native chivalry urged him to confront the ocelot; but under the circumstances,—and he recounted them rapidly,—he feared the king more than the brute. Brief time was there for consideration; each moment the peril increased. He thought of the ’tzin, then of Nenetzin.
“Now or never!” he said. “If the gods do but help me, I will prove myself!”
And he unlooped the mantle, and wound it about his left arm; the knife, poor as it was, he took from his maxtlatl; then he was ready. Ah, if he only had a javelin!
To place himself between the king and his enemy was what he next set about. Experience had taught him how much such animals are governed by curiosity, and upon that he proceeded to act. On his hands and knees he crept out into the walk. The moment he became exposed, the ocelot stopped, raised its round head, and watched him with a gaze as intent as his own. The advance was slow and stealthy; when the point was almost gained, the king turned about.
“Speak not, stir not, O king!” he cried, without stopping. “I will save you,—no other can.”
From creeping man the monarch looked to crouching beast, and comprehended the situation.