As I had told him, before, that there had been a white man living at Tabasco, who had been very good to me, he was not surprised at the story." She took Roger to an apartment in which Cortez, and several of his principal officers, were standing.

As Malinche had told them that he was painted, and disguised as a native, they were not surprised at his appearance; although his height, which was far beyond that attained by Spaniards, somewhat astonished them.
Roger approached the group, and at once fell on one knee before Cortez, took his hand and kissed it.

Cortez raised him, and embraced him warmly.
"I am delighted to find another of my countrymen," he said; "and all the more, since Marina tells me that she knows you well, and that you were most kind and good to her." "Senor," Roger said, in broken Spanish, "I do not understand.

I have forgotten." "You will soon recover it," Cortez said.
"Tell him, Aquilar, that he will soon learn to speak his native language again." The interpreter repeated the words to Roger in the Yucatan dialect, adding that he himself had been a prisoner for eight years among the natives; and that, although a man when captured by them, had with difficulty spoken Spanish when restored to his friends; but it had now quite come back to him.
"You were but a boy when you were wrecked, Marina tells me ?" Cortez said.
"Only a boy," Roger repeated, when Marina translated this to him.
"Do you remember anything of Spain ?" Cortez asked.
Roger shut his eyes, as if considering.
"I seem to have a remembrance," he said, "of a place with many great ships.

It was a city built on a rock rising from the sea.