en censer that
was to have received my heart while the priests uttered prayers. Thence
I was supported down the winding road of the pyramid till I came to its
foot, where my captor the cacique took me by the hand and led me through
the people who, it seemed, now regarded me with some strange veneration.
The first person that I saw when we reached the house was Marina, who
looked at me and murmured some soft words that I could not understand.
Then I was suffered to go to my chamber, and there I passed the rest of
the day prostrated by all that I had undergone. Truly I had come to a
land of devils!

And now I will tell how it was that I came to be saved from the knife.
Marina having taken some liking to me, pitied my sad fate, and being
very quick-witted, she found a way to rescue me. For when I had been led
off to sacrifice, she spoke to the cacique, her lord, bringing it to
his mind that, by common report Montezuma, the Emperor of Anahuac, was
disturbed as to the Teules or Spaniards, and desired much to see one.
Now, she said, I was evidently a Teule, and Montezuma would be angered,
indeed, if I were sacrificed in a far-off town, instead of being sent
to him to sacrifice if he saw fit. To this the cacique answered that the
words were wise, but that she should have spoken them before, for now
the priests had got hold of me, and it was hopeless to save me from
their grip.

'Nay,' answered Marina, 'there is this to be said. Quetzal, the god
to whom this Teule is to be offered, was a white man,* and it may well
happen that this man is one of his children. Will it please the god
that his child should be offered to him? At the least, if the god is not
angered, Montezuma will certainly be wroth, and wreak a vengeance on you
and on the priests.'

* Quetzal, or more properly Quetzalcoatl, was the divinity
who is fabled to have taught the natives of Anahuac all the
useful arts, including those of government and policy, he
was white-skinned and dark-haired. Finally he sailed from
the shores of Anahuac for the fabulous country of Tlapallan
in a bark of serpents' skins. But before he sailed he
promised that he would return again with a numerous progeny.
This promise was remembered by the Aztecs, and it was
largely on account of it that the Spaniards were enabled to
conquer the country, for they were supposed to be his
descendants. Perhaps Quetzalcoatl was a Norseman! Vid