and dragged from the room,
all the household following us except Marina and the cacique. Now I
found myself in a great square or market place bordered by many fine
houses of stone and lime, and some of mud, which was filling rapidly
with a vast number of people, men women and children, who all stared at
me as I went towards the pyramid on the top of which the fire burned. At
the foot of this pyramid I was led into a little chamber hollowed in its
thickness, and here my dress was torn from me by more priests, leaving
me naked except for a cloth about my loins and a chaplet of bright
flowers which was set upon my head. In this chamber were three other
men, Indians, who from the horror on their faces I judged to be also
doomed to death.

Presently a drum began to beat high above us, and we were taken from the
chamber and placed in a procession of many priests, I being the first
among the victims. Then the priests set up a chant and we began the
ascent of the pyramid, following a road that wound round and round its
bulk till it ended on a platform at its summit, which may have measured
forty paces in the square. Hence the view of the surrounding country was
very fine, but in that hour I scarcely noticed it, having no care for
prospects, however pleasing. On the further side of the platform were
two wooden towers fifty feet or so in height. These were the temples of
the gods, Huitzel God of War and Quetzal God of the Air, whose hideous
effigies carved in stone grinned at us through the open doorways. In
the chambers of these temples stood small altars, and on the altars
were large dishes of gold, containing the hearts of those who had been
sacrificed on the yesterday. These chambers, moreover, were encrusted
with every sort of filth. In front of the temples stood the altar
whereon the fire burned eternally, and before it were a hog-backed block
of black marble of the size of an inn drinking table, and a great carven
stone shaped like a wheel, measuring some ten feet across with a copper
ring in its centre.

All these things I remembered afterwards, though at the time I scarcely
seemed to see them, for hardly were we arrived on the platform when I
was seized and dragged to the wheel-shaped stone. Here a hide girdle
was put round my waist and secured to the ring by a rope long enough
to enable me to run to the edge of the stone and no further. Then a
flint-pointed spear was given to me and spears were given also to the
two