By Right of Conquest; Or, With Cortez in Mexico. Henty George Alfred
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of fruit, cakes made from maize flour, dishes of meat of various kinds, little trinkets of gold, baskets containing beans and many other eatable seeds, and a ground powder of brownish hue, of whose uses Roger was ignorant, but which he afterwards discovered to be cocoa, which furnished the most popular beverage of the natives.
Not until it was quite dark did the stream of visitors cease. Then the old slave dropped a hanging across the door, and one of the young ones brought forward to Roger, who was utterly worn out with the fatigues of the day, a bowl of steaming cocoa, and some cakes of fruit. Roger found the cocoa extremely palatable, and wholly unlike anything he had ever before tasted; and it seemed to invigorate him greatly.
After drinking, he spread some of the quilted mats upon the floor, and threw himself down upon them. The old woman had lighted a lamp, and withdrawn with the younger ones to an apartment behind; which served as their sleeping place, as well as kitchen.
Now that he was alone and had time to think, Roger broke down entirely. Was it possible that it was but this morning he was on board ship, with his father and friends; and that now all were gone, gone forever, and he was in a strange land, cut off from all hope of return, surrounded by people who, if they were friendly today, might yet, for aught he knew, slay him on the morrow?
For the time, however, his own fate occupied him but little. His thoughts turned almost exclusively upon his father. Upon their voyages together, his kindness and care for him, the high hopes they had cherished when they started upon their voyage, and above all upon his parting words, and the last gesture of farewell, just as the ship struck.
For hours Roger lay and sobbed. At last he heard a slight movement in the room and, looking up, saw one of the young slave girls regarding him with a look of deep pity. To her, as to everyone else, Roger had appeared as a supernatural being, come from they knew not whence; but the lad's sobs had touched her human feelings, and shown her that he had sorrows, like herself. Her look brought a feeling of comfort and companionship to Roger's heart; and as, on seeing that she was observed, she turned timidly to retire, he held out his hand to her.
She approached and knelt down beside him and, taking his hand, pressed it to her forehead. She was a girl of some fourteen years old, already, according to Mexican ideas, a woman.
"What is your name?" Roger asked.
The girl looked at him wonderingly, but shook her head. Roger thought a moment, and then touched himself on the breast.
"Roger," he said.
He repeated the word several times. Then he touched her lips and repeated "Roger," and, seeing what was expected, she repeated the word in a soft voice.
He nodded again, touched himself and said "Roger," and then touched her. She now saw what he meant. It was his own name he had spoken, and he now asked for hers.
"Malinche," she said, in her soft Indian voice.
"Malinche," he repeated, "you are a kind-hearted girl. I can see that, Malinche; and I hope we shall understand each other better, one of these days. I suppose you are a servant or a slave, and are not in a much better condition than myself. Now you had better go, and sleep."
He patted her on the shoulder, pointed to the door by which she had entered, closed his eyes as if in sleep, and then said, "Good night, Malinche."
The girl uttered some words he did not understand; but as they ended with Roger, and with a nod of her head she stole silently away, he supposed that it was something equivalent to his own "Goodnight."
Greatly comforted by this little incident, he rolled up one of the rugs as a pillow, laid his head upon it, and was almost instantaneously asleep. He woke with a feeling of surprise. The events of the previous day seemed to him but a dream, and he looked round, expecting to see the bulkhead of the little cabin he had occupied, on board the Swan. But the first glance assured him of the reality of the dream, and that he was alone, among a strange people.
He sprang at once to his feet, pulled aside a cloth that hung before an opening that served as a window, and let the rays of the sun stream in.
"I want some water, old dame," he said, in a loud voice.
The old woman at once entered. Roger made signs, by rubbing his hands together, and passing them over his face and head, that he wanted water. This the old woman brought, in a basin formed of the half of an immense gourd, and a soft cotton cloth with which to dry himself. Then she brought in a small pot, filled with something which looked to him like fat, but which he afterwards found was extracted from a vegetable, and put it down by the side of the water.
"I suppose that this is some sort of soap," Roger said to himself, and found on trial, to his great satisfaction, that it made an excellent lather.
After a good wash he felt greatly refreshed, and now attired himself completely in Mexican costume, a pile of garments of all sorts having been placed in one corner of the room. When he had finished the two girls entered, with a tray containing cocoa, fruits, and bread. He was about to address Malinche by her name; but the girl kept her eyes fixed upon the ground, and it struck him that she did not wish her late visit to him to be known, as it might bring upon her a scolding from the old woman; whose voice he had more than once heard, on the previous afternoon, raised in shrill anger.
He therefore began afresh, first naming himself, and then touching Malinche's companion.
She did not at first understand, but Malinche said something in a low tone, and she then replied, "Nishka."
Roger repeated the name, and then touched Malinche, who at once gave her name.
He next pointed to the contents of the bowl, and the girls replied together, "Coca."
Roger repeated the word several times, and then, in the same manner, learned the native names of the cakes and fruit.
The old woman, hearing the voices, now came into the room. The girls spoke eagerly to her in their language, and when Roger touched her, she at once answered, "Quizmoa."
"That is pretty well, for a first lesson," Roger said. "Now I will eat my breakfast. I suppose that, if anyone in this place did not have a stare at me yesterday, they will be coming today."
Visitors, indeed, soon began to arrive; and it was more than a week before the curiosity of the crowd was at all satisfied. But even this did not bring what Roger considered a terrible annoyance to an end; for the news had spread rapidly, through all the country round, of the strange white being who had come to Tabasco, and parties of visitors kept on arriving, some of them from a great distance.
Roger, however, had made a good use of his tongue. He kept one or other of the girls always near him, and by touching the articles brought to him as presents, the garments and arms of his visitors, and the various objects in his room, he soon learned their names.
Almost every day the chief sent for him, for a talk; but as neither party could understand the other, these conversations generally ended by a sudden loss of temper, on the part of the cazique, at being unable to obtain the information he required as to the origin of his visitor, and the object with which he had come to his country.
Having acquired a large number of the names of objects, Roger, for a time, came to a standstill. Then it struck him that by listening to what the old woman said to the girls, and by watching what they did, he might make a step farther.
In this way he soon learned "bring me," "fetch me," and other verbs. When the old woman was present, the two girls were silent and shy; but as Quizmoa was fond of gossiping, and so was greatly in request among the neighbors, who desired to learn something of the habits of the white man, she was often out; and the girls were then ready to talk as much as Roger wished. For a time it seemed to him that he was making no progress whatever with the language and, at the end of the first month, began almost to despair of ever being able to converse in it; although by this time he had learned the name of almost every object. Then he found that, perhaps as much from their gestures as from their words, he began to understand the girls; and in another month was able to make himself understood, in turn. After this his progress was extremely rapid.
As soon as Malinche learned, from him, that he belonged to a great nation of white people, living far away across the sea, and that he had been