straightway rang out through the gloomy silence of the temple a
thunderous braying that seemed fairly to shake the walls. There was no
mistaking the voice of the friend who with this triumphant blast
welcomed me; and as I heard it there came into my heart a sudden glow of
hope that Pablo, and that even Fray Antonio also, might still be alive.
And this hope was destined to be immediately and most joyfully realized,
for as we rose to our feet again I saw the lad standing, with El Sabio
beside him, not a dozen feet away from me; and a little beyond them was
the monk, his face all lighted up with a bright look of happiness and
love. And seeing these three once more standing alive and well before me
was the most amazing and also the very gladdest sight that ever met my
eyes.

It was a sore trial to me that I could not immediately hold converse
with Pablo and with Fray Antonio, and so come to know through what
adventures they had passed, and by what miracles their lives had been
saved; but the ceremony in which our captors were engaged was but half
completed, and the better to assure our orderly conduct during its
continuance we were kept asunder in the procession that then was
formed--the object of which procession, as my knowledge of the Aztec
customs led me rightly to infer, was that the ceremonial of triumph
might be ended by leading us thrice around the sacrificial stone. And in
truth I dreaded less the fate which this leading us about the altar of
sacrifice implied was in store for us than I did the close association,
made necessary by the ceremony, with the direful stench which that vile
altar exhaled.

At the edge of the amphitheatre, where already the evil odor was almost
overpowering, the soldiers who had charge of us relinquished us--as it
seemed to me, most thankfully--to a company of the temple priests;
whereof the chief was a round, fat little man, whose shortness of legs
very obviously was accompanied by a corresponding shortness of wind. He
was, in truth, a most hopelessly undignified little personage; yet he
did his best to assume a look of dignity as he waddled down the steps in
advance of us, and he manfully endeavored to conceal the difficulties
encountered by his short fat legs in the course of this descent. And I
was glad enough that we had his absurd performances to distract our
minds a little from the dismalness of our surroundings, and especially
from the queasiness that again beset our stomachs as