“Quetzal’! Go on!”
“He has—” She faltered.
“What?”
“In my pictures, father, there is nothing like them. Fire leaps from their mouths, and smoke, and the air and earth tremble when they speak; and see—ah, how the crowds in the streets go down before them!”
Again she shuddered, and faltered.
“Hear, O king!” said Mualox, who not only recognized the cannon of the Spaniards in the description, but saw their weight at that moment as an argument. “What can the slingers, and the spearmen of Chinantla, and the swords-men of Tenochtitlan, against warriors of the Sun, with their lightning and thunder!”
And he looked at the monarch, sitting with his face covered, and was satisfied. With faculties sharpened by a zeal too fervid for sympathy, he saw the fears of the proud but kindly soul, and rejoiced in them. Yet he permitted no delay.
“Go on, child! Look for the fair-faced god; he holds the battle in his hand.”
“I see him,—I see his white plumes nodding in a group of spears. Now he is at the main gate of the temple, and speaks. Hark! The earth is shaken by another roar,—from the street another great cry; and through the smoke, out of the gate, he leads his band. And the animals,—what shall I call them?”
“Tell us of the god!” replied the enthusiast, himself ignorant of the name and nature of the horse.