herring boat. So there on the bank we must stay in misery, suffering
many ills from fever, lack of food, and plenitude of water, till at
length the stream ran down.

Three days and nights we waited there, and on the fourth morning I made
shift to cross, losing four men by drowning in the passage. Once over, I
hid my force in the bush and reeds, and crept forward with six men only,
to see if I could discover anything of the whereabouts of the Spaniards.
Within an hour I struck the trail that they had cut through the forest,
and followed it cautiously. Presently we came to a spot where the forest
was thin, and here Cortes had camped, for there was heat left in the
ashes of his fires, and among them lay the body of an Indian who had
died from sickness. Not fifty yards from this camp stood a huge ceiba,
a tree that has a habit of growth not unlike that of our English oak,
though it is soft wooded and white barked, and will increase more in
bulk in twenty years than any oak may in a hundred. Indeed I never yet
saw an oak tree so large as this ceiba of which I write, either in girth
or in its spread of top, unless it be the Kirby oak or the tree that
is called the 'King of Scoto' which grows at Broome, that is the next
parish to this of Ditchingham in Norfolk. On this ceiba tree many
zaphilotes or vultures were perched, and as we crept towards it I saw
what it was they came to seek, for from the lowest branches of the ceiba
three corpses swung in the breeze. 'Here are the Spaniard's footprints,'
I said. 'Let us look at them,' and we passed beneath the shadow of the
tree.

As I came, a zaphilote alighted on the head of the body that hung
nearest to me, and its weight, or the wafting of the fowl's wing, caused
the dead man to turn round so that he came face to face with me. I
looked, started back, then looked again and sank to the earth groaning.
For here was he whom I had come to seek and save, my friend, my brother,
Guatemoc the last emperor of Anahuac. Here he hung in the dim and
desolate forest, dead by the death of a thief, while the vulture
shrieked upon his head. I sat bewildered and horror-stricken, and as
I sat I remembered the proud sign of Aztec royalty, a bird of prey
clasping an adder in its claw. There before me was the last of the
stock, and behold! a bird of prey gripped his hair in its talons, a
fitting emblem indeed of the fall of Anahuac and the kings of Anahuac.

I sprang to my feet with an oath, and lift