Page:Travels in Mexico and life among the Mexicans.djvu/89

Rh ". . . the night-eyed insect tribes Waked to their portion of the circling hours";—

the stars came out and smiled down on us.

A flat stone, that had once formed a portion of the wall, served as a table, and stones for seats, that had been carved a thousand years ago with patient art. Soon the Consul left me to my enforced labor of skinning birds, and sought his hammock in the inner room, whither I did not follow him till well past midnight, sitting up purposely to tempt the ghosts and note the noises of the night. They have a charm for me, these nocturnal sounds, and many a tropic night I have lain awake, beneath rustling palms and waving plantain leaves, striving to analyze the myriad voices in the trees. But there were few here; man, beast, and bird seemed to have deserted the dead city, and to have left it to silence.

As I finally rose to retire, a noise like the distant roar of the sea came down to me, caused by the hundreds of bats and vampires swooping through the resounding arch above. Entering the inner doorway, with the flaring candle shaded by my hand, there stared me in the face the bloody imprint of the red hand, that mystery to antiquarians, and the yawning hole, dug by some vandal, to satisfy himself the walls were solid.

The rumors prevailing among the Indians that there were tigers lurking in these ruins, and that the sublevados sometimes extended their nocturnal raids as far as Uxmal, induced us to carry our fire-arms to bed with us, and each had a gun leaning against the wall within reach, and a revolver hanging at the head of the hammock.

It was not long after I had extinguished the candle, that I was dreaming of Indians, and their natural concomitants, murder and bloodshed. That red hand haunted me: an enormous savage stood by my hammock, with a hand dripping with blood which he was about to imprint on my face—when I awoke, and found it morning.