They were silent awhile. Then the ’tzin took the lance, and looked at the long, straight blade admiringly; under its blue gleam lay the secret of its composition, by which the few were able to mock the many, and ravage the capital and country.
“Dread nothing; it will conquer,” he said, handing the weapon back.
Hualpa kissed his hand, and replied, “I thought to make return for your preferments, O ’tzin, by serving you well when you were king; but the service need not be put off so long. I thank the gods for this night’s opportunity. If I come not with the rising of the sun to-morrow, Nenetzin can tell you my story. Farewell!”
With his face to his benefactor, he moved away.
“Have a care for yourself!” said the ’tzin, regarding him earnestly; “and remember there must be no sign of attack until the strangers have advanced to the first causeway. I will look for you to-morrow. Farewell!”
While yet the ’tzin’s thoughts went out compassionately after his unhappy friend, up from their irksome hiding in the cells came the companies he was to lead,—a long array in white tunics of quilted cotton. At their head, the uniform covering a Christian cuirass, and with Christian helm and battle-axe, he marched; and so, through the darkness and the storm, the pursuit began.
CHAPTER XVIII
LA NOCHE TRISTE
The movement of the fugitive army was necessarily slow. Stretched out in the street, it formed a column of irregular front and great depth. A considerable portion was of non-combatants, such as the sick and wounded, the servants, women, and prisoners; to whom might be added the Indians carrying the baggage and ammunition, and laboriously dragging the guns. The darkness, and the rain beaten into the faces of the sufferers by the wind, made the keeping order impossible; at each step the intervals between individuals and between the divisions grew wider and wider. After crossing two or three of the bridges, a general confusion began to prevail; the officers, in dread of the enemy, failed to call out, and the soldiers, bending low to protect their faces, and hugging their arms or their treasure, marched in dogged silence, indifferent to all but themselves. Soon what was at first a fair column in close order became an irregular procession; here a crowd of all the arms mixed, there a thin line of stragglers.
It is a simple thing, I know, yet nothing has so much to do with what we habitually call our spirits as the condition in which we are at the time. Under an open sky, with the breath of a glowing morning in our nostrils, we sing, laugh, and are brave; but let the cloud hide the blue expanse and cover our walk with shadow, and we shrink within ourselves; or worse, let the walk be in the night, through a strange place, with rain and cold added, and straightway the fine thing we call courage merges itself into a sense of duty or sinks into humbler concern for comfort and safety. So, not a man in all the column,—not a cavalier, not a slave,—but felt himself oppressed by the circumstances of the situation; those who, only that afternoon, had charged like lions along that very street now yielded to the indefinable effect, and were weak of heart even to timidity. The imagination took hold of most of them, especially of the humbler class, and, lining the way with terrors all its own, reduced them to the state when panic rushes in to complete what fear begins. They started at the soughing of the wind; drew to strike each other; cursed the rattle of their arms, the hoof-beats of the horses, the rumble of the carriage-wheels; on the houses, vaguely defined against the sky, they saw sentinels ready to give the alarm, and down the intersecting streets heard the infidel legions rushing upon them; very frequently they stumbled over corpses yet cumbering the way after the day’s fight, and then they whispered the names of saints, and crossed themselves: the dead, always suggestive of death, were never so much so to them.