In the centre of the temple, on a rude stone altar, smoked the unquenched fire which had never died since the natal spark had flamed in a Mexican temple two hundred years before. This half a dozen hideously painted priests fed with fragrant barks and gums. Around them five hundred warriors squatted on the ground, and passed the council-pipe, while the priests mumbled and chanted, and a portion of the sacred band drew forth soft and monotonous music from long reed instruments. A rattlesnake, coiled around the right arm of the chief priest, swayed its crest with an undulating motion to the cadences of the music, and its bright eyes seemed to watch every motion with malign intentness, as if it were the guiding spirit of the council. The braves wore no war-paint, for their expedition was not meant to blazon its own purpose; but their faces, so far as they could be seen through the smoke, were distorted with such ferocity and lust of blood that they could dispense with the help of pigments. And so the priests chanted, and the players played their soft melody, and the high-priest stroked his serpent’s hideous head as it curved and swayed to the rhythm of the tune, while the watching Jean was maddened by the delay and the passage of time and opportunity. At last, perhaps mindful of some signal from the high-priest, the snake darted its full length and struck with open mouth as if at some enemy,[C] Big Serpent arose from the seated ranks. [C] The rattlesnake was sacred to the Sun God of the Natchez, and was made to play an important part in their religious ceremonies, and the mummery which entered, too, into their war councils. Something similar exists in the rites of the Moqui Pueblos to-day--a race supposed also to have been of Toltec origin. The Great Sun’s oration to his warriors, spoken in the Indian tongue, was mostly jargon to the listener, but he construed enough of it to unravel the Natchez plot. Under the guise of paying their tribute, they would surprise the fort the next morning. Jean waited for nothing more, but withdrew swiftly, and dashed into the forest. To reach Fort Rosalie as quickly as possible he took his way again through the noisome swamp which formed so much of the short-cut to the French post. He had found his way well towards the heart of that place of gloom and reptilian life. Inspection of every tuft of grass and weed now made progress slow, and Jean looked forward to a few moments of rest on the hummock twenty feet off which projected from the edge of a canebrake. How lucky, he thought, that he had escaped without detection! On top of this thought came the shock of a challenge, which made his heart leap.