CHAPTER XVII.
THE PURSUIT BEGINS.
In the afternoon the king Cuitlahua, whose sickness had greatly increased, caused himself to be taken to Chapultepec, where he judged he would be safer from the enemy and better situated for treatment by his doctors and nurses. Before leaving, however, he appointed a deputation of ancients, and sent them, with his signet and a message, to Guatamozin.
The ’tzin, about the same time, changed his quarters from the teocallis, now but a bare pavement high in air, to the old Cû of Quetzal’. That the strangers must shortly attempt to leave the city he knew; so giving up the assault on the palace, he took measures to destroy them, if possible, while in retreat. The road they would move by was the only point in the connection about which he was undecided. Anyhow, they must seek the land by one of the causeways. Those by Tlacopan and Tepejaca were the shortest; therefore, he believed one or the other of them would be selected. Upon that theory, he accommodated all his preparations to an attack from the lake, while the foe were outstretched on the narrow dike. As sufficient obstructions in their front, he relied upon the bridgeless canals; their rear he would himself assail with a force chosen from the matchless children of the capital, whose native valor was terribly inflamed by the ruin and suffering they had seen and endured. The old Cû was well located for his part of the operation; and there, in the sanctuary, surrounded by a throng of armed caciques and lords, the deputies of the king Cuitlahua found him.
If the shade of Mualox lingered about the altar of the peaceful god, no doubt it thrilled to see the profanation of the holy place; if it sought refuge in the cells below, alas! they were filled by an army in concealment; and if it went further, down to what the paba, in his poetic madness, had lovingly called his World, alas again! the birds were dead, the shrubs withered, the angel gone; only the fountain lived, of Darkness a sweet voice singing in the ear of Silence.
So the ’tzin being found, this was the message delivered to him from the king Cuitlahua:—
“May the gods love you as I do! I am sick with the sickness of the strangers. Come not near me, lest you be taken also. I go to Chapultepec to get ready for death. If I die, the empire is yours. Meantime, I give you all power.”
Guatamozin took the signet, and was once more master, if not king, in the city of his fathers. The deputies kissed his hand; the chiefs saluted him; and when the tidings reached the companies below, the cells rang as never before, not even with the hymns of their first tenants.
While yet the incense of the ovation sweetened the air about him, he looked up at the image of the god,—web of spider on its golden sceptre, dust on its painted shield, dust bending its plumes of fire; he looked up into the face, yet fair and benignant, and back to him rushed the speech of Mualox, clear as if freshly spoken,—“Anahuac, the beautiful,—her existence, and the glory and power that make it a thing of worth, are linked to your action. O ’tzin, your fate and hers, and that of the many nations, is one and the same!” and the beating of his pulse quickened thrice; for now he could see that the words were prophetic of his country saved by him.
Then up the broad steps of the Cû, into the sanctuary, and through the crowd, rushed Hualpa; the rain streamed from his quilted armor; and upon the floor in front of the ’tzin, with a noise like the fall of a heavy hammer, he dropped the butt of a lance to which was affixed a Christian sword-blade.
“At last, at last, O ’tzin!” he said, “the strangers are in the street, marching toward Tlacopan.”