"I am ever bound to thee," said the general, with a manner in which an attempt at mockery was mingled with a natural touch of superstition, "for the extreme interest thou seemest to cherish in my fate and again I say to thee, I will immediately converse with thee on that subject. But at present, señor nigromante, I warn thee, it will be but wisdom, to confine thy rhapsodies within the limits of answers to such interrogatories as I shall propose thee.—Where lies thy master, the outcast and arch-rebel, my enemy?"
"My master is in heaven!" said Botello, with a devout and lofty earnestness, "and there is no outcast and rebel but he that dwelleth in the pit, under the foot of Michael; and he is the enemy!"
"Sirrah! I speak to thee of the knave Cortes," cried the general, angrily. "When wert thou last at his side? and where?"
"At midnight,—on the river of Canoes, where he has rested, as thou knowest, for a night and a day."
"Ay!" said the Biscayan fiercely; "within a league of my head-quarters, whither my clemency has suffered him to come."
"Whither God and his good star have drawn him," said the magician.
"And whence I will drive him to the rocks of the mountains, or the mangroves of the beach, ere thou art cured of thy wounds!"
"Lo! my wounds are healed!" said Botello; "the hand that inflicted them is stiff and cold, and Hernan Cortes yet lies by the river! Ay, the holy unguent, blessed of the fat of a pagan's heart, hath dried the blood and glued the skin; and yet my captain, whose fate I have seen and spoken, even from the glory of noon to the long and sorrowful shadows of the evening, marshals his band within the sound of thy matin bell; and wo be to his foeman when he is nearer or further!"
"Prattling fool," said the commander, "if thou hadst looked to the bright moon to-night, thou wouldst have seen how soon the cotton-trees of the river should be strung with thy leader and companions, and with thyself, as a liar and an impostor, in their midst!"
"I looked," said the veteran, tranquilly, "and saw what will be seen, but not by all. There was thunder in the temple, and peace by the river, and more wailing than comes from the lips of the Penitent Knight."