With this broken and lamenting force, with foes still hanging on his rear, and ever flying from his front, Cortes set out to seek a path, by new and unknown mountains, to the distant Tlascala. He turned his eyes but once towards the lake,—the pagan city was hidden among the mists, and the shouts of victorious Mexicans came but faintly to the ear. He beat his breast, and shedding such tears as belong to defeated hopes and the memory of the dead, resumed his post at the head of the fugitives.
CHAPTER LXII.
We draw a curtain over the events of the first five days of flight, wherein the miserable fugitives, contending, at once, with fatigue, famine, and unrelenting foes, stole by night, and through darkling by-ways, along the northern borders of the fair valley, from which they were thus ignominiously, and, as it seemed, for ever, expelled. Of the twenty mounted men, each, like a Red-Cross Knight, in the ancient days of the order, bore a wounded companion on his crupper; and Don Amador, himself, on a jaded beast that had belonged to Marco,—for Fogoso had been lost or killed in the melée,—thus carried the only remaining servant of himself and his knight,—the ancient Baltasar. Other mangled wretches were borne on the backs of Tlascalans, in rudely constructed litters.
In this manner, the ruined and melancholy band pursued its way, by lake-side and hill, over morass and river, ever pursued and insulted by bodies of barbarians, and frequently attacked; till, on the evening of the fifth day, they flung their weary forms to sleep in the City (as it may be called) of Pyramids, among those mouldering and cactus-covered mounds, which the idolatry of a forgotten age reared to the divinity of the greater and lesser luminaries of heaven, on the field Micoatl, that is to say, the Plain of Death. The visitor of San Juan de Teotihuacan still perceives these gigantic barriers, rising among the hundreds of smaller mounds—the Houses of the Stars—which strew the consecrated haunts, and, perhaps, conceal the sepulchres, of a holozoic people.
At sunrise, the Spaniards arose, ascended the mountain of Aztaquemacan, at the north-eastern border of the valley, and prepared, with a joyous expectation, which had not been diminished even by the significant and constantly-repeated threats of the pursuers, to descend into the friendly land of the Tlascalans, by way of the vale of Otumba. For the last two days, the name of this valley had been continually on the lips of the Mexicans, following on the rear; and their cries, as interpreted by Marina, who survived the horrors of the Melancholy Night, intimated, plainly enough, that the work of revenge, so dreadfully commenced upon the lake, was to be consummated in the gorges of the mountains. Nevertheless, the Spaniards, in the alacrity of spirit, which the prospect of soon ending their sufferings in the Land of Bread, produced, forgot these menaces, or regarded them as the idle bravados of impotent fury; and clambered upwards, with increasing hope, until they reached the crest of a ridge, and looked down the slope to the wished-for valley. The sight which they beheld, will be described in another place. It remains, now, to return to an individual, whose fate has long been wrapped in mystery.
At the moment when the Spaniards approached the highest part of the ravine, by which, alone, they could pass, in that quarter, from the vale of Tenochtitlan, there lay, in a wild and savage nook of the mountain, which went shelving upwards on the right hand, and at so short a distance, that had a bugle been winded in the army, it must have reached his ears,—one who had been a companion in many of their battles and sufferings. A number of huge rocks fallen ages ago, and rolled from some distant pinnacle, were heaped together on a broad and inclined shelf, and enclosed a space of ground so regular in form, and yet so rudely bounded by those sprawling barriers, that it looked to the imagination not unlike the interior of some stupendous temple, built by a barbaric people, and overwhelmed, many ages before, by some great convulsion. One side was formed by a cliff, in whose shivered side yawned the entrance of a black and dismal cavern, while the broken masses of rock themselves formed the others. Among, and over these, where they lay in contact with the cliff, there rushed a torrent, which, in the times of drought, might have been a meager and chattering rivulet, making its way, merrily, through gap and hollow, but which, now, swollen by the summer rains, came raving and roaring over the rocks, broken by them into a series of foaming cascades; and, then, shooting over a corner of the enclosure, and, darting through the opposite wall, it went, thundering, down the mountain. A few stunted trees stretched their withered limbs among these savage masses; and the noontide sun, peeping down into the nook, and lighting up a part of the cliff, fell pleasantly on the mosses and Alpine flowers, which ornamented its shelving floor, tinting, with momentary rainbows, the mists that hung over the fall. A sable steed, without bridle or halter, and much the worse for such primitive stabling, but yet, to all appearance, the relic of a once noble war-horse, wandered, at liberty, through the enclosure, cropping the few plants which bedecked it, or drinking from the little pools, at the side of the torrent; while, at the mouth of the cave, at the foot of a wooden crucifix of the rudest description, lay sleeping the figure of his master. A stained and tattered garment of leather, investing his limbs, was not altogether hidden under a black mantle, which partly covered his body. The head of the sleeper lay on his right arm, and this embraced the foot of the cross, so that the grizzly locks, which fell from his forehead, rested against, and almost twined around, the holy wood.
The sunbeam played, unregarded, on his withered cheeks, and flickered over a heap of rusted armour, both of man and horse, which lay hard by, shining, also, with a fierce lustre, upon what appeared a scarlet surcoat, hung, like a banner, on the point of a knightly lance, which rested against the side of the cliff.
Disease, as well as age, had furrowed the cheeks, and wasted the form of the slumberer; famine seemed to have been at work, as well as all other privations incident to a habitation in the desert; and there was, in his whole appearance, such an air of extreme and utter misery, as would have moved the pity of any beholder. Nevertheless, he slept on, regardless of the roaring fall, and heedless of the fierce sunbeam, in such tranquillity as augured, at least, a momentary suspension of suffering.
As the sun stole up to the meridian, another human creature was suddenly added to the scene. The browsing war-horse pricked his ears, and snorted, as if to do the duty of a faithful sentinel, and convey to his master a note of alarm, as certain dried branches crackled among the rocks of the wall, and a stone, loosened as by a footstep, fell, rattling, down their sides, and buried itself in the pool, at the base of the fall. But the anchorite, for such the solitude of his dwelling, the poverty of his raiment, and, more than all, the little rugged cross which he embraced, caused him to appear, heard not these sounds; he slept on, lulled by the accustomed roar of the water-fall; and the steed was left alone, to watch the approach of the stranger.