The Fair God; or, The Last of the 'Tzins: A Tale of the Conquest of Mexico

by Lew Wallace

  CHAPTER VI

  LOST IN THE OLD CU.

  The page at last awoke from his stupor. With difficulty he recalled hiswandering senses. He sat up, and was confronted everywhere by a darknesslike that in sealed tombs. Could he be blind? He rubbed his eyes, andstrained their vision; he saw nothing. Baffled in the appeal to thatsense, he resorted to another; he felt of his head, arms, limbs, and wasreassured: he not only lived, but, save a few bruises, was sound ofbody. Then he extended the examination; he felt of the floor, and,stretching his arms right and left, discovered a wall, which, like thefloor, was of masonry. The cold stone, responding to the touch, sent itschill along his sluggish veins; the close air made breathing hard; thesilence, absolutely lifeless,--and in that respect so unlike what wecall silence in the outer world, which, after all, is but the timechosen by small things, the entities of the dust and grass and winds,for their hymnal service, heard full-toned in heaven, if not by us,--thedead, stagnant, unresonant silence, such as haunts the depths of oldmines and lingers in the sunken crypts of abandoned castles, awed andoverwhelmed his soul.

  Where was he? How came he there? With head drooping, and hands and armsresting limp upon the floor, weak in body and spirit, he sat a long timemotionless, struggling to recall the past, which came slowly, enablinghim to set the race again with all its incidents: the enemy in rear, theenemy in front; the temple stairs, with their offer of escape; the_azoteas_, the court, the dash into the doorway under thecolonnade,--all came back slowly, I say, bringing a dread that he waslost, and that, in a frantic effort to avoid death in one form, he hadrun open-eyed to embrace it in another even more horrible.

  The dread gave him strength. He arose to his feet, and stood awhile,straining his memory to recall the direction of the door which hadadmitted him to the passage. Could he find that door, he would wait afitting time to slip from the temple; for which he would trust theMother and watch. But now, what was done must needs be done quickly;for, though but an ill-timed fancy, he thought he felt a sensation ofhunger, indicating that he had been a long time lying there; how long,of course, he knew not.

  Memory served him illy, or rather not at all; so that nothing would donow but to feel his way out. O for a light, if only a spark from agunner's match, or the moony gleam of a Cuban glow-worm!

  As every faculty was now alert, he was conscious of the importance ofthe start; if that were in the wrong direction, every inch would be fromthe door, and, possibly, toward his grave. First, then, was he in a hallor a chamber? He hoped the former, for then there would be but twodirections from which to choose; and if he took the wrong one, nomatter; he had only to keep on until the fact was made clear by thetrial, and then retrace his steps. "Thanks, O Holy Mother! In thedarkness thou art with thy children no less than in the day!" And withthe pious words, he crossed himself, forehead and breast, and set aboutthe work.

  To find if he were in a passage,--that was the first point. He laid hishand upon the wall again, and started in the course most likely, as hebelieved, to take him to the daylight, never before so beautiful to hismind.

  The first step suggested a danger. There might be traps in the floor. Hehad heard the question often at the camp-fire, What is done with thebodies of the victims offered up in the heathen worship? Some said theywere eaten; others, that there were vast receptacles for them in theungodly temples,--miles and miles of catacombs, filled with myriads ofbones of priests and victims. If he should step off into a pit devotedto such a use! His hair bristled at the thought. Carefully, slowly,therefore, his hands pressed against the rough wall, his steps short,one foot advanced to feel the way for the other, so he went, and suchwas the necessity.

  Scarcely three steps on he found another dilemma. The wall suddenly fellaway under his hand; he had come to the angle of a corner. He stopped toconsider. Should he follow the wall in its new course? It occurred tohim that the angle was made by a crossing of passages, that he was thenin the square of their intersection; so the chances of finding the rightoutlet were three to one against him. He was more than ever confused.Hope went into low ebb. Would he ever get out? Had he been missed inthe old palace? If hostilities had broken out, as intimated by theprince Io', would his friends be permitted to look for him in the city?The king was his friend, but, alas! his power had been given to another.No, there was no help for him; he must stay there as in his tomb, anddie of hunger and thirst,--die slowly, hour by hour, minute by minute.Already the fever of famine was in his blood,--next to the fact is thefancy. If his organism had begun to consume itself, how long could helast? Never were moments so precious to him. Each one carried off afraction of the strength upon which his escape depended; each one must,therefore, be employed. No more loitering; action, action! In thedarkness he looked to heaven, and prayed tearfully to the Mother.

  The better to understand his situation, and what he did, it may be wellenough to say here, that the steps by which he descended into thecourt-yard faced the west; and as, from the court, he took shelter in adoor to his right, the passage must have run due north. When, uponrecovery from the fainting-spell, he started to regain the door, he wasstill in the passage, but unhappily followed its continuation northward;every step, in that course, consequently, was so much into instead ofout of the labyrinth. And now, to make the situation worse, he weaklyclung to the wall, and at the corner turned to the right; after whichhis painful, toilsome progress was to the east, where the chances weresure to be complicated.

  If the reader has ever tried to pass through a strange hall totallydarkened, he can imagine the young Spaniard in motion. Each respiration,each movement, was doubly loud; the slide and shuffle of the feet,changing position, filled the rock-bound space with echoes, which, by acooler head than his, might have been made tell the width and height ofthe passage, and something of its depth. There were times when thesounds seemed startlingly like the noise of another person close by;then he would stop, lay hand on his dagger, the only weapon he had, andlisten nervously, undetermined what to do.

  In the course of the tedious movement, he came to narrow apertures atintervals in the wall, which he surmised to be doors of apartments.Before some of them he paused, thinking they might be occupied; butnothing came from them, or was heard within, but the hollowreverberations usual to empty chambers. The crackle of cement underfootand the crevices in the wall filled with dust assured him that a longtime had passed since a saving hand had been there; yet the evidencesthat the old pile had once been populous made its present desertion allthe more impressive. Afterwhile he began to wish for the appearance ofsomebody, though an enemy. Yet farther on, when the awful silence anddarkness fully kindled his imagination, and gave him for companionshipthe spirits of the pagans who had once--how far back, who couldsay?--made the cells animate with their prayers and orgies, the yearningfor the company of anything living and susceptible of association becamealmost insupportable.

  Several times, as he advanced, he came to cross passages. Of thedistance made, he could form no idea. Once he descended a flight ofsteps, and at the bottom judged himself a story below the level of thecourt and street; reflecting, however, that he could not have clomb themon the way in without some knowledge of them, he again paused forconsideration. The end of the passage was not reached: he could not saythe door he sought was not there; he simply believed not; still heresolved to go back to the starting-point and begin anew.

  He set out bravely, and proceeded with less caution than in coming.Suddenly he stopped. He had neglected to count the doors andintersecting passages along the way; consequently he could not identifythe starting-point when he reached it. Merciful God! _he was now indeed_LOST!

  For a time he struggled against the conviction; but when the conditionwas actually realized, a paroxysm seized him. He raised his handswildly, and shouted, _Ola! Ola!_ The cry smote the walls near by untilthey rang again, and, flying down the passage, died lingeringly in themany chambers, leaving him so shaken by the discordance that he
cowerednearly to the floor, as if, instead of human help, he had conjured ademon, and looked for its instant appearance. Summoning all hisresolution, he again shouted the challenge, but with the same result; noreply except the mocking echoes, no help. He was in a tomb, buriedalive! And at that moment, resulting doubtless from the fever of mindand body, he was conscious of the first decided sensation of thirst,accompanied by the thought of running water, cool, sweet, and limpid; asif to add to his torture, he saw then, not only that he was immuredalive, but how and of what he was to die. Then also he saw why hisenemies gave up the pursuit at the passage-door. Lost in the depths ofthe Cu, out of reach of help, groping here and there through thedarkness, in hours condensing years of suffering, dead, finally, ofhunger and thirst,--was he not as much a victim as if formally butcheredby the _teotuctli_? And if, in the eyes of the heathen god, sufferingmade the sacrifice appreciable, when was there one more perfect?

  "No, no," he cried, "I am a Christian, in care of the Christian's God. Iam too young, too strong. I can walk; if need be, run; and there arehours and days before me. I will find the door. Courage, courage! Andthou, dear, blessed Mother! if ever thou dost permit a shrine in thechapel of this heathen house, all that which the Senor Hernan mayapportion to me thou shalt have. Hear my vow, O sweet Mother, and helpme!"

  How many heroisms, attributed to duty, or courage, or some high passion,are in fact due to the utter hopelessness, the blindness past seeing,the fainting of the soul called despair! In that last motive what mightyenergy! How it now nerved Orteguilla! Down the passage he went, and withalacrity. Not that he had a plan, or with the mind's eye even saw theway,--not at all. He went because in motion there was soothing to hisvery despair; in motion he could make himself believe there was still ahope; in motion he could expect each moment to hail the welcome door andthe glory of the light.