To Rayburn and Young, who had observed wonderingly Tizoc's extraordinary conduct, I rapidly translated what he had said; and explained how serious our situation appeared in the light of this new development.
"Well, it certainly is cold weather for this Priest Captain fellow," Young commented, "if we've got hold of his boss miracle; and I guess you're about right, Professor—he'll want t' take it out of our hides. Just poke up th' Colonel t' telling all he knows about this old dodger. Th' Colonel's got his tongue pretty well greased just now with his own prime old Bourbon—pass me that jar, Rayburn, I don't mind if I have another whack at it myself—and we may get something out of him that will be useful. Try it on, Professor, any way. Here's luck, gentlemen."
That Young's tongue also was a little greased, as he put it, by this very agreeable beverage was quite evident; but his wits were sharpened rather than dulled by the drink, and his present suggestion evidently was a very good one. As for Tizoc, his disposition towards us obviously was most soft and friendly; and as his mind slowly absorbed the fact that, somehow or another, the Priest Captain had made a fool of him with a miracle that was not really a miracle at all, his choler rose in a manner most favorable to our purposes. Yet this very feeling of resentful anger—showing a growing irreverence of one to whom all the traditions of his people gave reverence second only to that due to the gods themselves—was startling evidence of the menace that our presence was to the theocratic ruler's temporal and spiritual power. Therefore it was with a keen curiosity that we listened—and Tizoc needed, to induce him to talk freely, but little of the poking-up that Young had suggested—to what was told us concerning the strange people among whom we had come by ways so perilous, and of their chieftain, the Priest Captain Itzacoatl—with whom, as no spirit of prophecy was needed to tell us, we were destined soon to engage in a conflict that must be fought out to the very death.
XIX.
THE SEEDS OF REVOLT.
For the sake of brevity I shall summarize here the statement that Tizoc made to us, and for the sake of clearness I shall add to it some facts of minor importance which came to our knowledge later—thus at once exhibiting the whole of the troublous condition of affairs that stirred dangerously the people dwelling in the Valley of Aztlan at the time of our coming among them.
At this period the political situation, as I may term it, was exceedingly critical. Three powerful factions were in existence; and peace was preserved only by the generally diffused belief that open revolt, on the part of either one, would be crushed instantly by a temporary coalition of the other two. The beginning of this unpleasantly volcanic condition of affairs dated back six cycles—that is to say, a little more than three hundred years—and was the direct result of a violation of the law set forth by the wise King Chaltzantzin when the colony was founded, by which it was ordained that all among the Aztlanecas who, on coming to maturity, were weaklings or cripples, should be put to death.
Being once suggested, the repeal or the modification of this law found many advocates. Naturally, the change was urged most strongly by all those whose sons and daughters were sickly or malformed, and so were doomed to die in the very blossom of their years. It was urged by the nobles because the more astute among them perceived the possibility of so manipulating it that it would result in the creation of a distinctively servile class; and the priests urged it because they also perceived a way by which it might be made to provide more victims for sacrifice to the gods. And so it came to pass, through the influence of these diverse elements operating together towards a common end, that the law which Chaltzantzin had promulgated was set aside, and a law was made that embodied the provisions demanded by the nobles and the priests, whereby should be created a new social class; which class, because of the infirmities of those composing it, received the name of Tlahuicos—"men turned towards the earth." Thereafter, the sickly and the crippled were not slain upon reaching maturity, but then passed out from the class into which they were born and became servitors. And when the first cycle was ended after the making of this new law, and thenceforward every year, one in every ten among the Tlahuicos was taken by lot to be sacrificed to the gods—for the priests craftily had gained the barbarous concession that they demanded by placing the first fulfilment of it at a time so far in the future that all concerned in the granting of it would be dead in the course of nature before it became operative. Yet to the end that those of noble birth might be saved from the ignominy of servitude, it was provided that children which by reason of natural infirmity were doomed to become slaves, might be saved from that fate upon coming to maturity by being then surrendered by their parents to the priests for sacrifice. Other grace there was none. Excepting between death and slavery, there was no choice for the weak or the malformed.
As time passed on, the Tlahuicos, marrying among themselves, had greatly increased in numbers; and so far from remaining a weakling race, they had become, by reason of their frugal mode of living and of the wholesome, hearty labor in which they constantly were engaged, exceptionally hale and strong; the weak and crippled among them being mainly those who each year, because of such infirmities, were added to their number from the higher ranks of the community. And thus was collected together material as dangerous as it was inflammable; for the fresh additions to the Tlahuicos kept constantly alive in the whole body a spirit of moody discontent, that time and again, at the season when the lots were cast by which one in every ten was doomed to death, was fanned into armed mutiny. These revolts ever had as their single object escape from the valley; which fact made evident enough the need for the elaborate system of defensive works by which the outlet of the valley was barred.