cannon were not only
death-dealing weapons but objects of superstitious awe. More potent
than all else together were those frightful monsters, the horses.
Before these animals men, women, and children fled like sheep, or
skulked and peeped from behind their walls in an ecstasy of terror. It
was that paralyzing, blood-curdling fear of the supernatural, against
which no amount of physical bravery, nothing in the world but modern
knowledge, is of the slightest avail."

After touching at various places, in one of which they were lucky
enough to find and release a Spanish captive named Geronimo de Aguilar,
who had been wrecked on the Yucatan coast while on a voyage from the
Spanish settlement in Darien and had been taken captive by the Mayas
and held for several years. The hospitable Mayas had eaten most of the
expedition. There were then but two alive. One had renounced his
religion, married a Maya woman, and had been elected chieftain of the
tribe, and accordingly refused to join Cortes. Aguilar was unfettered
and glad of the opportunity. During his sojourn among the Mayas he had
learned to speak their language fluently.

After landing at Tabasco on Good Friday, there was a great battle with
the warlike inhabitants of that section, a battle which resulted in the
complete {123} discomfiture of the Tabascans. The artillery did much
to bring this about, but was not especially terrifying to the
aborigines because they crowded in such numbers around the Spaniards,
and made such terrific outcries, beating on their drums the while, that
they drowned out the noise of the cannonade; but when Cortes at the
head of the horsemen sallied out from the woods, and fell upon them,
the strange, terrifying spectacle presented by these mail-clad monsters
and demons, took the heart out of the Tabascans, and they abandoned the
contest, leaving, so the chroniclers say, countless numbers dead upon
the field.

They knew when they had had enough, and immediately thereafter, they
sued for peace. Cortes was graciously pleased to grant their request,
and to accept as a peace-offering a score of slaves. Among them was
Malinal. In the allotment of the slaves among the officers, she fell
to the share of Alonzo de Puerto Carrero from whom Cortes speedily
acquired her.

Of all the Indians present with Cortes, Malinal alone could speak two
languages. The Tabascans spoke a sort of degenerate Maya, with which,
as she had lived among them so