I saw Cortes ride up on a white horse and richly dressed.  The meeting was too far away for me to overhear what passed, but I noted that several officers addressed Cortes angrily, and that their speeches were loudly cheered by the soldiers.  At length the great captain answered them at some length, and they broke up in silence.  Next morning after I had breakfasted, four soldiers came into my prison and ordered me to accompany them.

‘Whither?’ I asked.

‘To the captain, traitor,’ their leader answered.

‘It has come at last,’ I thought to myself, but I said only: 

‘It is well.  Any change from this hole is one for the better.’

‘Certainly,’ he replied; ‘and it is your last shift.’

Then I knew that the man believed that I was going to my death.  In five minutes I was standing before Cortes in his private house.  At his side was Marina and around him were several of his companions in arms.  The great man looked at me for a while, then spoke.

’Your name is Wingfield; you are of mixed blood, half English and half Spanish.  You were cast away in the Tobasco River and taken to Tenoctitlan.  There you were doomed to personate the Aztec god Tezcat, and were rescued by us when we captured the great teocalli.  Subsequently you joined the Aztecs and took part in the attack and slaughter of the noche triste.  You were afterwards the friend and counsellor of Guatemoc, and assisted him in his defence of Tenoctitlan.  Is this true, prisoner?’

‘It is all true, general,’ I answered.

’Good.  You are now our prisoner, and had you a thousand lives, you have forfeited them all because of your treachery to your race and blood.  Into the circumstances that led you to commit this horrible treason I cannot enter; the fact remains.  You have slain many of the Spaniards and their allies; that is, being in a state of treason you have murdered them.  Wingfield, your life is forfeit and I condemn you to die by hanging as a traitor and an apostate.’

‘Then there is nothing more to be said,’ I answered quietly, though a cold fear froze my blood.

‘There is something,’ answered Cortes.  ’Though your crimes have been so many, I am ready to give you your life and freedom upon a condition.  I am ready to do more, to find you a passage to Europe on the first occasion, where you may perchance escape the echoes of your infamy if God is good to you.  The condition is this.  We have reason to believe that you are acquainted with the hiding place of the gold of Montezuma, which was unlawfully stolen from us on the night of the noche triste.  Nay, we know that this is so, for you were seen to go with the canoes that were laden with it.  Choose now, apostate, between a shameful death and the revealing to us of the secret of this treasure.’

For a moment I wavered.  On the one hand was the loss of honour with life and liberty and the hope of home, on the other a dreadful end.  Then I remembered my oath and Otomie, and what she would think of me living or dead, if I did this thing, and I wavered no more.