The next morning, at sunrise, was fixed for his death. He was to be sacrificed upon the altar, on the summit of the great Teocallis—an offering to Quetzalcohuatl, the first great prince of the Aztecs. I at once determined to save the life of the stranger, if I could do so, even at the hazard of my own. But fate ordained it otherwise. I retired earlier than usual, and lay silent and moody, revolving on the best means to accomplish my end.
Midnight at length arrived; I crept stealthily from my bed, and opened the door of my chamber, as lightly as sleep creeps over the eyelids of children. But——
[Here the MS. is so blotted, and saturated with saltwater, as to be illegible for several pages. The next legible sentences are as follows.—Ed.]
Here, for the first time, the woods looked familiar to me. Proceeding a few steps, I fell into the trail leading toward the modern village of Palenque, and, after an hour's walk, I halted in front of the cabilda of the town.
I was followed by a motley crowd to the office of the Alcalde, who did not recognize me, dressed as I was in skins, and half loaded down with rolls of MS., made from the bark of the mulberry. I related to him and M. de Bourbourg my adventures; and though the latter declared he had lost poor Armand and his five companions, yet I am persuaded that neither of them credited a single word of my story.
Not many days after my safe arrival at Palenque, I seized a favorable opportunity to visit the ruins of Casa Grande. I readily found the opening to the subterranean passage heretofore described, and after some troublesome delays at the various landing-places, I finally succeeded in reaching the very spot whence I had ascended on that eventful night, nearly three years before, in company with the Aztec Princess.
After exploring many of the mouldering and half-ruined apartments of this immense palace, I accidentally entered a small room, that at first seemed to have been a place of sacrifice; but, upon closer inspection, I ascertained that, like many of those in the "Living City," it was a chapel dedicated to the memory of some one of the princes of the Aztec race.
In order to interpret the inscriptions with greater facility, I lit six or seven candles, and placed them in the best positions to illuminate the hieroglyphics. Then turning, to take a view of the grand tablet in the middle of the inscription, my astonishment was indescribable, when I beheld the exact features, dress and panache of the Aztec maiden, carved in the everlasting marble before me.