live there is hope, but the dead come back no more. Fortune may favour
us yet; still, if you think otherwise, I am ready to die.'

'That I will not suffer, Otomie.'

'Then you must hold your hand, husband, for now as always, where you go,
I follow.'

'Listen,' I whispered; 'do not let it be known that you are my wife;
pass yourself as one of the ladies of Tecuichpo, the queen, your sister.
If we are separated, and if by any chance I escape, I will try to make
my way to the City of Pines. There, among your own people, we may find
refuge.'

'So be it, beloved,' she answered, smiling sadly. 'But I do not know
how the Otomie will receive me, who have led twenty thousand of their
bravest men to a dreadful death.'

Now we were on the deck of the brigantine and must stop talking, and
thence, after the Spaniards had quarrelled over us a while, we were
taken ashore and led to the top of a house which still stood, where
Cortes had made ready hurriedly to receive his royal prisoner.
Surrounded by his escort, the Spanish general stood, cap in hand, and by
his side was Marina, grown more lovely than before, whom I now met for
the first time since we had parted in Tobasco.

Our eyes met and she started, thereby showing that she knew me again,
though it must have been hard for Marina to recognise her friend Teule
in the blood-stained, starving, and tattered wretch who could scarcely
find strength to climb the azotea. But at that time no words passed