The mountain eagle, circling with the stars,
Watched the great Admiral swiftly come and go
In his light ship that set at naught the bars
Wrought by a giant foe.
Dull are our years and hard to understand,
We dream no more of mighty days to be,
And we have lost through delving in the land
The wisdom of the sea.
Yet where beyond the sea the sunset burns,
And the trees talk of kings dead long ago,
Malinche sings among the giant ferns--
Ask of the birds--they know!
XI
THE THUNDER BIRDS
"Glory is all very well," said Juan de Saavedra to Pedro de Alvarado as
the squadron left the island of Cozumel, "but my familiar spirit tells
me that there is gold somewhere in this barbaric land or Cortes would
not be with us."
Alvarado's peculiarly sunny smile shone out. He was a ruddy
golden-haired man, a type unusual in Spaniards, and the natives showed a
tendency to revere him as the sun-god. Life had treated him very well,
and he had an abounding good-nature.
"It will be the better," he said comfortably, "if we get both gold and
glory. I confess I have had my doubts of the gold, for after all, these
Indians may have more sense than they appear to have."
"People often do, but in what way, especially?"
"_Amigo_, put yourself in the place of one of these caciques, with white
men bedeviling you for a treasure which you never even troubled yourself
to pick up when it lay about loose.
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