fair knock, by St. Dominic! Art thou laid by the heels, now? Sirrah Alguazil, if thou showest but an inch more of thy dudgeon, I will have thee in thine own stocks, – ay, faith, and on thine own block, into the bargain. Forgettest thou the decree? Death, man, very mortal death to any one who draws weapon upon a christian comrade: thy hidalgo blood, (if thou hast any, as thou art ever boasting,) will not save thee. Pho! thou art notoriously known to be a plotter. Why shouldst thou be angry?"
"Hombre! I am not angry now: but, methinks, Corcobado hath the art of inflaming whatever is combustible in man's body. A good friend were he for a poor man, in the winter. Why, thou bitter, misjudging, remorseless, male-shrew, here is my hand, in token I will not maul thee. Why dost thou ever persecute me with thy hints? By and by, men will come to believe thou art in earnest. What dost thou see, that I care not to have exposed? I am a plotter? I grant ye; so Cortes hath called me to my face a dozen times, or more. I am a grumbler? So he avers, and so I allow. I must speak what I think; ay, and I must growl, too. All this is apparent, but it harms me not with the general: he scolds me very oft; but who stands better in his favour?"
"Thou takest the matter too seriously," said Guzman. "Hast thou no suspicion that thy self-commendations are tedious?"
"In such case, hadst thou ever any thyself?" demanded the unrelenting Najara. "Pray, let him go on. Let him draw his dagger, if he will, too. What care I? I have a better fence than the decree."
"Pshaw, man," said Villafana, "why dost thou take a frown so bitterly? I will not quarrel with thee. But I would thou couldst be reasonable in thy fillips: call me a knave openly, if thou wilt; thy insinuations have the air of seriousness. But come; you have robbed the señor Camarga of his diversion with Bernal. Lo you now, if our wrangling have disturbed him a jot! He sits there, like an old horse of a summer's day, patient and uncomplaining; and, all the time, there are gadfly thoughts persecuting his imagination."
"Methinks, señores," said Camarga, "you should be curious to know in what manner the good man records your actions. For my part, I should be well content to be made better acquainted with them; especially with those later exploits, since the retreat from Mexico, of which I have heard only confused and contradictory accounts. Will he suffer us to examine his chronicles?"
"Suffer us!" cried Guzman; "if you do but give him a grain of encouragement, never believe me but he will requite you with pounds of his stupidity. What, have you any curiosity? – Harkee, Bernal, man! – You shall see how I will rouse him, – Bernal Diaz! Historian! Immortality! what ho, señor Del Castillo! Are you asleep? Zounds, sirrah, here are three or four dull fellows, who, for lack of better amusement, are willing to listen to your history."
CHAPTER II
At these words, the worthy thus appealed to, woke from his revery, and staring a moment in some little perplexity at his companions, took up a long copper-headed spear, which rested on the ground at his side, and advanced towards them. Viewed at a little distance, the gravity of his countenance gave him an appearance of age, which vanished on a nearer inspection. In reality, if his own recorded account can be believed, (and heaven forbid we should attach any doubt to the representations of our excellent prototype,) he did not number above twenty-six or twenty-seven years, and was thus, as he chose to call himself, 'a stripling.' Young as he was, however, there was not a man in the army of Cortes who had seen more, or more varied service than Bernal Diaz del Castillo. His exploits in the New World had commenced seven years before, among the burning and pestilential fens of Nombre de Dios, – a place made still more odious to an aspiring youth by the ferocious dissensions of its inhabitants, and that bloodthirsty jealousy of its ruler, which had rewarded with the block the man3 who disclosed to Spain the broad expanse of the Pacific, and led his subaltern, Pizarro, to the shores of Peru. With the two adventurers, Cordova and Grijalva, who had preceded Cortes in the attempt upon the lands of Montezuma, (discovered by the first,) Bernal Diaz shared the wounds and misadventures of both expeditions; and he was among the first to join the standard of Don Hernan, in the third and most successful of the Spanish descents.
The hardships he had endured, the constant and unmitigated suffering to which he had been exposed for seven years, had given him much of the weatherbeaten look of a veteran, which, added to the sombre gravity of his visage, caused him to present, at the first sight, the appearance of a man of forty years or more. His garments were of a dusky red cloth, padded into escaupil, with back and breast-pieces of iron, over which was a long cloak of a chocolate colour, well embroidered, and, though much worn and tarnished, obviously a holiday suit. To these were added a black velvet hat, ornamented with three flamingo feathers, striking up like the points of a trident, with the medal of a saint, rudely wrought in gold, hanging beneath them. His person was brawny, his face full and inexpressive; his dull grey eyes indicated nothing but simplicity and absence of mind, or rather inattentiveness; and it required the presence of many scars of several wounds on his countenance, to convince a stranger that Bernal actually possessed the fortitude to encounter such badges of honour.
He approached the group with a heavy and indolent tread, bearing in his hand a bundle of leaves of maguey paper, such as served the purposes of the native painters and chroniclers of Anahuac, and with which he was fain to supply the want of a better material.
"Dost thou hear, señor Inmortalidad?" cried Don Francisco de Guzman, as the martial annalist took his seat serenely among the Castilians; "art thou deaf, dumb, or still wrapt in thy seventh heaven, that thou answerest not a word to my salutations? Zounds, man, I will not ask thee a second time."
"What is your will?" said Bernal Diaz, "what will you have of me, señores?" he repeated, surveying each member of the group, one after the other. "I did think that this being a day of license and rejoicing to so many of us, I might have an opportunity, not often in my power, of putting down some things in my journal which it will be well to do, before setting out on the circuit of the lake, wherein there may happen some passages to drive from my memory those which are not yet recorded. But, by my faith, you have talked loud and much, and so disturbed my mind, that I have entirely lost some things I intended to say. I would to heaven you would find some other place to your liking, and leave me alone for a few hours."
"Why, thou infidel!" said Guzman, "if thou likest not our company, why dost thou not leave it? Dost thou forget thou hast the power of locomotion? Wilt thou wait for us to depart before thou bethinkest thee of thine own legs? By'r lady! thou art not yet in thy senses!"
"By my faith, so I can!" said the historian, abruptly, as if the idea had just entered his mind: "I will go down to the lake shore, where the sound of the waves will drown your voices. There is something encouraging to contemplation in the dashing of water; but as for men's voices, I could never think well, when they were within hearing. I beg your pardon, all, señores: I will go down."
"What! when here are four fools, who are in the humour of listening to thee for some seven minutes, or so? ay, man, to thy crazy chronicles! When wilt thou expect such another audience? Lo you, the señor Camarga has desired to be made acquainted with your learned lucubrations. Come, stir; open thy lips, exalt thyself, while thou art alive; for after death, there is no saying how short a time thou wilt sleep in cobwebs."
"You jeer me, señor Guzman; you laugh at me, gentlemen," said the soldier, gravely; "and thereby you do yourselves, as well as me, much wrong. Is it so great a thing for a soldier to write a history? The valiant Julius Cæsar of Rome recorded, with his own hand, his great actions in France, Britain, and our own Castile, as I know full well; for when I was a boy at school, I saw the very book; and sorry I am that the poverty of my parents denied me such instruction, as might have enabled me to read it. Then, there was Josephus, the Jewish Captain, who wrote a history of the fall of Jerusalem, as I have heard from a learned priest. Besides, there were many Greek soldiers, who did the same thing, as I have been told; but I never knew much concerning them."
"And hast
Vasco Nuñez de Balboa.
