Don Amador was greatly shocked and grieved, that his imprudent obstinacy had so nearly again recalled the distraction of his kinsman. But it needed not many expressions of gentleness and submission, to divert the current of his thoughts. The appearance of the young and devoted follower had come to the spirit of the penitent knight, like a cool breeze over the temples of a fevered man; and having once been roused from his gloom, he could not be long insensible to the excitement of his presence. He cast an eye of kindness and affection on the youth, and obeying, as one who had been long accustomed to such control, the humble suggestion of Marco, he turned to the tents of the encampment.
CHAPTER XVII.
The sun had not yet set, when the ray, stealing through the vapours that gathered among the distant peaks, beheld the señor Cortes and his little army crossing the River of Canoes. A quarter-league above his encampment was the very ford which had given him passage, when, with a force short of five hundred men, and a few score of wild Totonacs, taken with him less as warlike auxiliaries than as beasts of burthen and hostages for the fidelity of their tribe, he set out to cross mountains of snow and fire, rocky deserts and foaming rivers, in the invasion of an empire, whose limits, as well as its resources and power, were utterly unknown. Here the stream was more shallow than at that spot where it had been the fate of Don Amador to ford it; the flood had also in a measure subsided; and while the mounted individuals passed it with ease, the waters came not above the breasts of the footmen. Don Amador rode at the side of his knight, and though chafing with discontent at the thought that he should share no part in the brave deeds of the coming night, and be but a looker-on, while strangers were robbing him of his vengeance, yet did he conceal his troubles, lest the exhibition of them should give new pain to his unhappy kinsman. The three attendants were behind, and Fabueno, though evidently regarding the knight Calavar with a deep and superstitious awe, rode not far from his patron.
The rivulet was crossed, and the hardy desperadoes who were now marching with spears to attack a foe of five times their own number, fortified with cannon on an eminence, gathered about their leader as he sat his horse on the bank, as if expecting his final instructions and encouragement. He surveyed them not only with gravity but with complacency, and smiling as if in derision of their weakness,—for they did not number much over two hundred and fifty men,—he said, with inimitable dryness:—
"My good friends and companions! you are now about to fight a battle, the issue of which will depend very much on your own conduct; and I have to inform you, that if, as seems reasonable enough, you are vanquished, there is not a man of you that shall not hang at some corner of Zempoala to-morrow!"
A murmur running through the whole crew, marked the disgust of all at this unsavoury exordium.
"The reasons for this opinion," continued the leader, gravely, "both as to the probable fate of the battle and of yourselves in the event of your being beaten, I shall have no trouble in speaking; only that, like one who knows how to use the butt as well as the blade of his lance, I shall discourse first of the hinder part of my argument; that is to say, of the very great certainty with which a gibbet shall reward every man who, this night, handles his weapon too tenderly. Know, then, my good brothers, that, at this moment, though you very loyally and truly avow yourselves the soldiers of his majesty, our king and master, it hath somehow entered into the head of the general Narvaez, the lieutenant of his majesty's governor, to consider you as villain rebels and traitors;—an imputation so exceedingly preposterous and eccentric, that, were we in a Christian land, you should not be required to deny it; but, standing as you do, with no better present judge than your accuser, it is certain your innocence could not be made apparent to his majesty, until after the gallinazas had picked the last morsel from your bones; at which time, as I think you will agree with me, a declaration of your true loyalty would not be a matter of much consequence to any of you."
Again a murmur, accompanied by sundry ferocious looks and savage interjections, testified the discontent of the adventurers.
"What I say, is the truth," continued Cortes, adopting the scowl which darkened the visages of all, extending his drawn sabre above his head, and speaking with a fierce and resolute indignation: "In the face of that heaven, which has seen us, for its honour and glory, devote ourselves to pain and peril, landing friendless and unaided, save by its own divine countenance, on the shores of bitter and murderous barbarians, overthrowing their bloody idols, and even in the chief sanctuaries of their diabolic superstition, on the palaces of their emperors and the pyramids of their gods, erecting the standard of the crucified Saviour,—I say, even in the face of that heaven that has seen us do these things that will immortalize us on earth and glorify us in heaven, the man Narvaez has dared to call us traitors to our king and faith, has denounced us more as infidel Moors, than as Christian Spaniards, and declaring war upon us with sword, fire, and free rope, has sworn to give us to the death of caitiffs and felons!"