us, separating us from the Council's messenger and from
Tizoc; the barge-master placed himself at the head of them, and in
sharp, quick tones gave the order to march; and the whole force, with
ourselves in the centre of it, went off the pier at a round pace, and
thence along a street that led towards the city's heart. Evidently
acting under orders, the men broke their platoons and closed in around
us; and I was well convinced that this unsoldierly marching was adopted
to the end that El Sabio might not be seen.

Fray Antonio agreed with me that the Priest Captain was carrying matters
with a dangerously high hand in thus opposing the will of the Council
with armed force. This act of his, if Tizoc had correctly represented to
us the excited condition of popular feeling, was quite sufficient in
itself to stir into violent activity the slumbering fires of mutiny. But
whether the revolt that we now believed must surely come would come in
time to be of service to ourselves, we could not but look upon as a very
open question.

"If this old scoundrel is as sharp as he seems to be," Rayburn said,
"and if he keeps things up in the way he's begun, it's about all day
with us. His play should be to get rid of us as quick as he can manage
it; and I should judge, from the cards that he's put down, that that's
precisely the way he means to manage the game. It's not much comfort to
us to know that after he's cleaned us out somebody else will rake his
pile."

As we talked, we went on rapidly through the city; and even the danger
that we were in, and the excitement that attended this sudden shifting
of our fortunes, could not prevent me from studying with a lively
curiosity the many evidences of an advanced civilization that I beheld.
The plan of the city, as I had discerned while we were approaching it,
was that of a wide-open fan. From the Treasure-house, on the height in
the centre, twelve broad streets radiated outward, of which three on the
northern side and three on the southern ended against the great
enclosing wall, and six came down through openings in the walls along
the several terraces directly to the water-front. All of these streets
were well paved with large smooth blocks of stone, and were led up the
faces of the terraces by wide and easy stairs. The transverse streets
were true semicircles, starting from and ending at the face of the
cliff, and were carried along the outer edges of the terraces, just
inside their facin