Page:Incidents of travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan.djvu/340

 262 with the same helpless beings. Except these, we were left in sole possession of the town.

It was not yet an hour since we had been roused from sleep. We had not been able to procure any definite information as to the character of the approaching force. The alarm was, "La gente viene;" no one knew or thought of more,—no one paid any attention to us,—and we did not know whether the whole army of Carrera was approaching, or merely a roving detachment. If the former, my hope was that Carrera was with them, and that he had not forgotten my diplomatic coat I felt rejoiced that the soldiers had marched out, and that the inhabitants had fled; there could be no resistance, no bloodshed, nothing to excite a lawless soldiery. Again we walked down to the church; old women and little boys gathered around us and wondered that we did not fly. We went to the door of the cura's house; the room was small, and full of old women. We tried to cheer them, but old age had lost its garrulity; they waited their fate in silence. We returned to the house, smoked, and waited in anxious expectation. The enemy did not come, the bell ceased its frightful tolling, and after a while we began to wish they would come, and let us have the thing over. We went out, and looked, and listened; but there was neither sound nor motion. We became positively tired of waiting: there were still two hours to daylight; we lay down, and, strange to say, again fell asleep.