edly would have been the case had the metal been
ordinary brass.

Fray Antonio, by this time, had returned to us again--looking rather
shamefaced because of the part that he had taken in the fight--and I
eagerly showed him this strange weapon that had been so strangely found;
for Pablo's account of it was simply that, just as his revolver was
emptied upon the Indians charging towards us, when there was no time to
reload, his eyes were caught by the glitter of the sword as it stuck in
a cleft in a rock; whereupon he most gladly seized it--and instantly
used it to good purpose upon the Indian was so close to ending me with
his spear, and subsequently contrived with it to send two more Indians
to their account.

Fray Antonio's knowledge of the matter having a wider practical range
than mine, for he knew well the contents of the several Mexican museums
in which specimens of the primitive weapons are preserved, I thought it
possible that he might be able to match this curious maccuahuitl with an
account of another like it which he somewhere had seen. That there was
no record in the books of this weapon made of metal I knew very well.
But Fray Antonio's surprise over it was greater than my own; and he
certainly found more in it to please him than I did; for this metal
maccuahuitl, supposing it to belong to ancient times, settled in his
favor a controversy that for some time past we had been amicably but
earnestly carrying on. I had adopted the ingenious theory of my friend
Bandelier that the serrated edge of the Aztec sword was accidental;
resulting from the breaking away in use of portions of what at first was
a continuous edge of obsidian. Fray Antonio, on the other hand, had held
firmly to the ordinarily accepted opinion that the sword was such as I
have described above (I must confess regretfully) the primitive weapon
to have been.

My contention therefore was that the sword that Pablo had found was not
an antique; and I fortified my position, as I considered impregnably, by
the fact that while Aztecs, before the Spanish conquest, did make some
slight use of copper and gold, they assuredly had no knowledge whatever
of either brass or steel. And my natural irritation very well may be
imagined, by any one familiar with controversies of this nature, when I
add that Fray Antonio endeavored to cut the ground from under me by
asserting that, inasmuch as the weapon obviously was not made of brass
or steel, my argument was bas