It is unnecessary to detail the ingenious methods I devised to ascertain this fact. It is sufficient for the present purposes of this narrative to state, that, during the day, I was abundantly satisfied with the truth of my surmise; and that, before night, I learned another fact, equally important, that the hieroglyphics were written in the royal tongue, and could be read only by those connected by ties of blood with the reigning family.
There was at first something ludicrous in the idea of communicating thought by sound emitted in the way indicated above. In my wildest dreams, the notion of such a thing being possible had never occurred to my imagination. And when the naked fact was now demonstrated to me every moment, I could scarcely credit my senses. Still, when I reflected that night upon it, after I retired to rest, the system did not appear unnatural, nor even improbable. Birds, I knew, made use of the same musical tongue; and when but a boy, on the shores of the distant Albemarle, I had often listened, till long after midnight, to the wonderful loquacity of the common mocking-bird, as she poured forth her summer strains. Who has not heard the turtle dove wooing her mate in tones that were only not human, because they were more sadly beautiful? Many a belated traveler has placed his hand upon his sword-hilt, and looked suspiciously behind him, as the deep bass note of the owl has startled the dewy air. The cock's crow has become a synonym for a pæan of triumph.
Remembering all those varieties in sound that the air is capable of, when cut, as it were, by whistling, I no longer doubted that a language could easily be constructed by analyzing the several tones and giving value to their different modulations.
The ludicrousness of the idea soon gave place to admiration, and before I had been domiciliated in the palace of the Princess a month, I had become perfectly infatuated with her native language, and regarded it as the most beautiful and expressive ever spoken by man. And now, after several years have elapsed since its melodious accents have fallen upon my ears, I hesitate not to assert that for richness and variety of tone, for force and depth of expression, for harmony and sweetness—in short, for all those characteristics that give beauty and strength to spoken thought—the royal tongue of the aboriginal Americans is without a rival.
For many days after my mysterious appearance in the midst of the great city I have described, my fate still hung in the balance. I was examined and re-examined a hundred times as to the mode of my entrance into the valley; but I always persisted in making the same gestures, and pointed to the sky as the region whence I had descended. The guards stationed at every avenue of entrance and exit were summoned to the capital, and questioned closely as to the probability of my having passed them unawares; but they fully exculpated themselves from all blame, and were restored to their forfeited posts.
Gradually the excitement in the city subsided, and one by one the great nobles were won over to credit the story of my celestial arrival in their midst, and I believed the great object of my existence in a fair way to be accomplished.
Every facility was afforded me to learn the royal tongue, and after a little more than a year's residence in the palace, I spoke it with considerable fluency and accuracy.
But all my efforts hitherto were vain to obtain a key to the hieroglyphics. Not only was the offense capital to teach their alphabet to a stranger, but equally so to natives themselves, unconnected with the blood royal. With all my ingenuity and industry, I had not advanced a single letter.
One night, as I lay tossing restlessly upon my bed, revolving this insoluble enigma in my mind, one of the mosaic paving-stones was suddenly lifted up in the middle of the room, and the figure of a young man with a lighted taper in his hand stood before me.
Raising my head hastily from the pillow, I almost sank back with astonishment when I recognized in the form and features of my midnight visitor, Pio the Carib boy.