6 Cortés and Cannon Before Cortés lops off a messenger’s hands and has another trampled, before the branding and burning, there is wonderment and, for a moment, endearment as Cortés dances, off beat, around the long neck of his field piece. Stroking it, he whispers into its mouth, then cocks his ear to the darkness. He does this several times, then orders his men to lie on the ground in homage to the iron. Clapping his cracked hands, he speaks in a tongue of corkscrew and wing, telling the Totonacs to bring themselves closer. And like well-meaning friends, bearing glinting quetzal feathers and silver cactus milk, they laugh, pretending to understand, believing him wild with love for the enormous, hollow thing he has hauled from the hull of his ship. ...