We struggled to our feet in wellnigh total darkness—for outside the bars a curtain had been dropped that shut off almost wholly the light of day—and I am confident that no one room ever contained two angrier people than Rayburn and Young were then; for their very strength and hardihood made them the more ragingly resent being thus tumbled about as though they were bales or boxes rather than men. Rayburn's language was not open to the charge of weakness; but the words in which Young gave vent to his feelings were so startlingly vigorous that even a Wyoming cow-boy would have been surprised by them; yet I must confess that at the moment—so greatly was my own anger aroused—I thought his observations exceedingly appropriate to the occasion that called them forth, and I even was disposed to envy him the command of a technical vocabulary that enabled him to express so adequately his righteous wrath. However, I was for once well pleased that Fray Antonio did not understand English.
But our anger quickly was swallowed up in anxious grief as we discovered, when our eyes had become somewhat accustomed to the very faint light, that only we four were in the room together; and a great dread fell upon us because of the imminent peril to Pablo which this separation of him from the rest of us implied. Assuredly there was strong reason why he should be an especial object of Itzacoatl's fear and hatred. He and El Sabio together were the visible sign which told that the prophecy touching the Priest Captain's downfall was about to be fulfilled; and, more than this, Pablo's simple statement of the condition of affairs among the modern Mexicans—showing that the crisis in their fate that Chaltzantzin had foretold, and for which he had so well prepared, long since had come and gone—would be far more convincing to the masses of the Aztlanecas than would be any exhibition of these same facts that we could make to them; for we were aliens among them, while Pablo was of their own race and class. That we all were like to be done to death by this barbarous theocrat we did not for a moment doubt; but it was plain enough that every motive of self-interest must prompt him to put Pablo and the poor ass most summarily out of the way. And as the logic of these facts irresistibly presented itself in my mind a keen and heavy sorrow overcame me, for I could not shirk the conviction that, whoever might strike the blow that killed him, I myself was the cause of this poor boy's death. Fray Antonio could not see my face in that shadowy prison, yet his fine nature divined the pain that I suffered and the cause of it, and he sought to comfort me with his sympathy. He did not speak, but he came close beside me and tenderly laid his hand upon my shoulder; and his loving touch, telling of his sorrow for me and with me, did bring a little cheer into my heavy heart.
Meanwhile the commotion outside increased greatly, and even through the thick folds of the curtain we could hear plainly the clanking of arms, and the heavy tread of men, and sharply given words of command. We pressed close to the bars and tried to push, the curtain aside that we might see out into the court-yard; but the bars were so near together that our hands would not pass between them, and we therefore could gather only from the sounds which we heard what was going on outside. But the sounds were unmistakable. There could be no doubt whatever that a vigorous assault upon the building was in progress, and those within it vigorously were defending it; and we knew that the cause of the fighting certainly must be ourselves. Already, it would seem, the prophecy of the Priest Captain's downfall was assuming a tangible reality; for this rising in arms against him could mean nothing less than that his high-handed refusal to permit us to be carried before the Council of the Twenty Lords had fairly brought matters to a crisis, and that the long-threatened revolution actually had been begun.
XXIII.
A RESCUE.
That the two parties should be thus battling for possession of us gave us a gleam of hope for the saving of our lives. While we remained prisoners, in the ward of the Priest Captain, we knew that our death was inevitable; inasmuch as the witness which we bore against him, if suffered to be published, must of necessity bring his authority to an end. But should we pass into the ward of the Council, there was every reason why we should be cherished and protected; because, in their behalf, we would be witnesses to the justice of their rebellion against Itzacoatl's rule. Nor would this feeling of amity towards us be confined to the leaders of the revolt; for we had perceived the substantial nature of the reasons which Tizoc had given us in support of his assurance that the hope of deliverance from oppression which our coming brought would raise up around us a host of friends. Therefore we knew that upon the issue of the battling that we heard the sounds of so loudly, and yet that might as well have been a thousand miles away for all that we could see of it, our fate must depend.
And knowing this, it was a hard trial of our nerves and tempers to be forced to remain there idle in the dark, without the chance to strike in our own behalf a single blow. Young strode backward and forward in such a fashion, and the mutterings beneath his breath were so like growls, that the likening of him to a wild beast in a cage, while trite, is strictly accurate. Rayburn, not less resolute, but more self-contained, pressed close against the bars and never stirred, save that now and then he cracked his thumbs and fingers together with such vigor that the sound was like a pistol-shot. And even I, who am not naturally of a blood-thirsty disposition, found the need of walking briskly about our prison in order to quiet a little my strong longing to be outside with a weapon in my hands wherewith I could crack some skulls open. Indeed, among us all, only Fray Antonio maintained an outward show of calm.
Thus far, all the sounds which we had heard had come to us from the direction of the front of the house, whence we inferred that the fight was being waged, greatly to the disadvantage of the assailants, through the grating by which the entrance was closed. But suddenly there was an outcry of alarm close by us in the court-yard, and then the sound of hurrying feet there, and then a roar of shouting mingled with the fierce clash of arms—so that we knew that the assailants, either by beating in the grating or by scaling the roof, had got inside. They and the defenders were engaged, hand to hand, almost within arm's-length of us. We could hear loudly the yells with which every stroke was accompanied, and the clang of metal striking upon metal, and the dull, crushing sound of the blows which went home truly and carved through flesh and bone—and we could see no more of it all than if we were dreaming, and these sounds of savage warfare were but the imaginings of our brains! One man, being, as we supposed, pursued by another from the central part of the court-yard—where, as it seemed, the fight raged most hotly—made a stand just outside the curtain that overhung the bars whereby we were pent in; and we could hear him panting as he struck and parried there, and then the splitting of his flesh and the crash of his bones as a tremendous blow overcame his guard, and the soft, deep groan that he gave as his life left him. His body fell against the curtain and dragged it a little; and presently, as I stood there by the bars, I found that my feet were in a pool of blood.
It was only a moment or two after this that the sounds of conflict very sensibly diminished, and we heard a rush made, and the confused tread of feet upon the stairs that led upward to the temple, and then came so jubilant a shouting that we knew that to one side or the other had come victory.