Ned awoke from his second night on the pyramid before dawn was complete. There was silvery light in the east over the desolate ranges, but the west was yet a dark blur. He looked down and saw that nearly all the soldiers were still asleep, while those who did not sleep were as motionless as if they were. In the half light the lost city, the tumuli and the ruins of the old buildings took on strange and fantastic shapes. The feeling that he was among the dead, the dead for many centuries, returned to Ned with overpowering effect. He thought of Aztec and Toltec and people back of all these who had built this city. The Mexicans below were intruders like himself. He shook himself as if by physical effort he could get rid of the feeling and then went to the water palm in which he cut another gash. Again the fountain gushed forth and he drank. But the palm was a small one. There was too little soil among the crevices of the ancient masonry to support a larger growth, and he saw that it could not satisfy his thirst more than a day or two. But anything might happen in that time, and his courage suffered no decrease. He retreated toward the center of the platform as the day was now coming fast after the southern fashion. The whole circle of the heavens seemed to burst into a blaze of light, and, in a few hours, the sun was hotter than it had been before. Many sounds now came from the camp below, but Ned, although he often looked eagerly, saw no signs of coming departure. Shortly after noon there was a great blare of trumpets, and a detachment of lancers rode up. They were large men, mounted finely, and the heads of their long lances glittered as they brandished them in the sun. Ned's attention was drawn to the leader of this new detachment, an officer in most brilliant uniform, and he started. He knew him at once. It was the brother-in-law of Santa Anna, General Martin Perfecto de Cos, a man in whom that old, cruel strain was very strong, and whom Ned believed to be charged with the crushing of the Texans. Then he was right in his surmise that Mexican forces for the campaign were gathering here on the banks of the Teotihuacan! More troops came in the afternoon, and the boy no longer had the slightest doubt. The camp spread out further and further, and assumed military form. Not so many men were lounging about and the tinkling of the guitars ceased. Ned could see General de Cos plainly, a heavy man of dark face, autocratic and domineering in manner. Night came and the boy went once more to the palm. When he struck with his machete the water came forth, but in a much weaker stream. In reality he was yet thirsty after he drank the full flow, but he would not cut into the stem again. He knew that he must practice the severest economy with his water supply.