Don Amador was greatly shocked and grieved, that his imprudent obstinacy had so nearly again recalled the distraction of his kinsman. But it needed not many expressions of gentleness and submission, to divert the current of his thoughts. The appearance of the young and devoted follower had come to the spirit of the penitent knight, like a cool breeze over the temples of a fevered man; and having once been roused from his gloom, he could not be long insensible to the excitement of his presence. He cast an eye of kindness and affection on the youth, and obeying, as one who had been long accustomed to such control, the humble suggestion of Marco, he turned to the tents of the encampment. * * * * * CHAPTER XVII. The sun had not yet set, when the ray, stealing through the vapours that gathered among the distant peaks, beheld the senor Cortes and his little army crossing the River of Canoes. A quarter-league above his encampment was the very ford which had given him passage, when, with a force short of five hundred men, and a few score of wild Totonacs, taken with him less as warlike auxiliaries than as beasts of burthen and hostages for the fidelity of their tribe, he set out to cross mountains of snow and fire, rocky deserts and foaming rivers, in the invasion of an empire, whose limits, as well as its resources and power, were utterly unknown. Here the stream was more shallow than at that spot where it had been the fate of Don Amador to ford it; the flood had also in a measure subsided; and while the mounted individuals passed it with ease, the waters came not above the breasts of the footmen. Don Amador rode at the side of his knight, and though chafing with discontent at the thought that he should share no part in the brave deeds of the coming night, and be but a looker-on, while strangers were robbing him of his vengeance, yet did he conceal his troubles, lest the exhibition of them should give new pain to his unhappy kinsman. The three attendants were behind, and Fabueno, though evidently regarding the knight Calavar with a deep and superstitious awe, rode not far from his patron. The rivulet was crossed, and the hardy desperadoes who were now marching with spears to attack a foe of five times their own number, fortified with cannon on an eminence, gathered about their leader as he sat his horse on the bank, as if expecting his final instructions and encouragement. He surveyed them not only with gravity but with complacency, and smiling as if in derision of their weakness,--for they did not number much over two hundred and fifty men,--he said, with inimitable dryness:-- "My good friends and companions! you are now about to fight a battle, the issue of which will depend very much on your own conduct; and I have to inform you, that if, as seems reasonable enough, you are vanquished, there is not a man of you that shall not hang at some corner of Zempoala to-morrow!"