had
with difficulty spoken Spanish when restored to his friends; but it
had now quite come back to him.

"You were but a boy when you were wrecked, Marina tells me?" Cortez
said.

"Only a boy," Roger repeated, when Marina translated this to him.

"Do you remember anything of Spain?" Cortez asked.

Roger shut his eyes, as if considering.

"I seem to have a remembrance," he said, "of a place with many
great ships. It was a city built on a rock rising from the sea. It
had high walls with great guns upon them, which fired sometimes,
with a terrible noise, when vessels came in and out."

When this was translated by Aquilar, Cortez said:

"It was Cadiz, of course. Doubtless the ship he was wrecked in
sailed from that port."

A murmur of assent passed round the other Spaniards.

"Show him a cross, Aquilar. See if he remembers his religion."

Aquilar took out a cross from under his doublet, and held it out
towards Roger, who, after looking at it for a moment, fell on his
knees and kissed it.

"He remembers much, you see," Cortez said. "Father Aquilar, you
will succeed soon in making a good Catholic of him, again.

"Well, gentlemen, I think we may congratulate ourselves upon this
new companion. Every arm is of assistance; and if he is as brave as
he is big and strong, he will prove a doughty comrade. Besides, he
will be able to tell us something of Mexico; although, as Marina
says, he was only once at the capital.

"Question him, Aquilar, and find out from him whether its
magnificence is as great as we hear."

Roger told all he knew of the capital, and said that, although he
himself could not say more than that it was a great city, he had
heard that its population was nearly three hundred thousand; and
that it certainly seemed to him fully three times as large as that
of Tezcuco, where he said there were one hundred thousand people.

"And it stands on an island in a lake?" Cortez asked.

"There are three causeways leading to the land, each wide enough
for six horsemen to ride abreast," Roger replied; "but it would be
a difficult thing to force an entrance, by these, in the face of
Montezuma's army."

"Well, gentlemen," Cortez said, "it is time for us to be going to
the council.

"Marina, do you take your friend to my private apartment, and bid
Juan furnish him with a suit of clothes; and with armor, from that
belonging to our friends who fell in the fights the other day. We
will soon make a true cavalie