"My patrimony is worn out," said De Morla, without regarding the sudden revery of his friend; "and I give it to my younger brothers. By peace or war, somehow or other, this land of Mexico will be, one day, conquered; and, then, a principality in Anahuac will count full as nobly as a sheep-hill in Castile. I abide by Don Hernan. But let us be gone to the treasury: I hear the ingots chinking, and thou hast not yet looked upon our spoils."
The exchequer thus alluded to, and to which De Morla speedily conducted his friend, was the sleeping apartment of the general. Of the wealth that was there displayed,—the stores of golden vessels and of precious stones, as well as of ingots melted from the tribute-dust long since wrung from the unhappy Montezuma,—it needs not to speak. The whole treasury of an avaricious king, a predecessor of the late captive, walled up in former days, and discovered by a happy chance, was there displayed among the meaner gleanings of conquest. An hundred men, as Don Amador entered, were grasping at the glittering heaps, while the voice of Don Hernan was heard gravely saying,—
"The king's fifth, here partitioned and committed to the trust of his true officers, we must defend with our lives; but while granting to all Christian men in this army, free permission to help themselves here as they like, I solemnly warn them of the consequences, should we, as mayhap my fear may prove true, be attacked this night, while making our way through the city. The richest man shall thereby purchase the quickest death.—The wise soldier will leave these baubles, till we come back again to reclaim them. This night, I will insure the life of none who carries too rich a freight in his pockets."
He spoke with a serious emphasis, and some of the older veterans, raising their heads, and eyeing his countenance steadfastly for a moment, flung down the riches they had grasped, and silently retired from the apartment. But many others bore about their persons a prince's ransom.
CHAPTER LVII.
At midnight, the Mexican spy, looking over the broken wall, beheld in the court-yard which it environed, a scene of singular devotion;—or rather he caught with his ears—for the grave was not blacker than that midnight—the smothered accents of supplication. The Christians were upon their knees, listening, with a silence broken only by the fretful champing of steeds, and the suppressed moans of wounded men, to a prayer, pronounced in a whispering voice, wherein the father Olmedo implored of Heaven to regard them in pity, to stupify the senses of their enemies, and surround his servants with the shields of mercy, so that, this night, they might walk out of the city which was their prison-house, and from the island which had been their charnel, oppressed no more by the weight of His anger.
The prostrate soldiers, to that moment, full of confident hope, and not anticipating the danger of any opposition, hearkened with solicitude to the humble and earnest supplication; and when the padre besought the deity to endow their arms with strength, and their hearts with courage, to sustain the toils, and perhaps the perils, of retreat, they were struck with a vague but racking fear. The petition which was meant to embolden, deprived them of hope; and they rose from their vain devotions, in unexpected horror.
The gloom that invested the ruinous palace, prevailed equally over the pagan city. No torch shone from the casements or house-tops, no taper flickered in the streets; and the urns of fire on the neighbouring pyramid, the only light visible,—save, now and then, a ghastly gleam of lightning bursting up from the south,—burned with a dull and sickened glare, as if neglected by their watchers. A silence, in character with the obscurity, reigned over the slumbering city; and when, at last, the steps of those who bore the ponderous bridge, and the creaking of artillery wheels, were-heard ringing and rolling over the square, the sounds smote on the hearts of all like the tolling of distant funeral bells.
The plan of retreat, determined after anxious deliberation, and carefully made known to all, was adopted with readiness, as these footsteps and this rolling sound of wheels,—the only signals made,—were heard; each man knew his place, and, without delay, assumed it. In little more than half an hour, the whole train of invaders, Christian principals and Tlascalan abettors, was in motion, creeping, with the slow and stealthy pace of malefactors, over the street that led to the dike of Tacuba. Few glances were sent back to the palace, as those dim sheets of lightning, flashing up over the path they were pursuing, revealed obscurely, ever and anon, its broken and deserted turrets. Its gloomy pile associated nothing but the memory of disaster and grief. Fearful looks, however were cast upon the dusky fabrics on either side of the street, as if the fugitives apprehended that each creak of a wheel, each clattering of horses' hoofs, or the rattling of armour, might draw the infidel from his slumbers; and many an ear was directed anxiously towards the van, in fear lest the trumpet should, at last, be sounded, with the signal of enemies already drawn up, a thousand deep, on the path they were treading. But no sounds were heard, save those which denoted the continued progress of their own bands; no wakeful barbarian was seen lurking in the streets; and hope again slowly returned to the bosoms of the tremblers.