CHAPTER III.
LA VIRUELA.
A long interval behind the rear-guard--indeed, the very last of thearmy, and quite two hours behind--came four Indian slaves, bringing aman stretched upon a litter.
And the litter was open, and the sun beat cruelly on the man's face; butplaint he made not, nor motion, except that his head rolled now right,now left, responsive to the cadenced steps of his hearers.
Was he sick or wounded?
Nathless, into the city they carried him.
And in front of the new palace of the king, they stopped, less weariedthan overcome by curiosity. And as they stared at the great house,imagining vaguely the splendor within, a groan startled them. Theylooked at their charge; he was dead! Then they looked at each other, andfled.
And in less than twice seven days they too died, and died horribly; andin dying recognized their disease as that of the stranger they hadabandoned before the palace,--the small-pox, or, in the language whichhath a matchless trick of melting everything, even the most ghastly,into music, _la viruela_ of the Spaniard.
The sick man on the litter was a negro,--first of his race on the newcontinent!
And most singular, in dying, he gave his masters another servantstronger than himself, and deadlier to the infidels than swords ofsteel,--a servant that found way everywhere in the crowded city, andrested not. And everywhere its breath, like its touch, was mortal;insomuch that a score and ten died of it where one fell in battle.
Of the myriads who thus perished, one was a KING.