University of Virginia Library

15. CHAPTER XV.

The horsemen pursued along the dike, spearing,
or tumbling into the water, the few who had the
heart to resist; and so great was, or seemed, the
terror of the barbarians, that the victors penetrated
even within the limits of the island, until the turrets
of houses, from which they were separated only by
the lateral canals, darkened them with their shadows.
Upon these were clustered many pagans,
who shot at them both arrows and darts, but with
so little energy, that it seemed as if despondence
or fatuity had robbed them of their usual vigour.
Hence, the excited cavaliers gave them but little attention,
not doubting that they would be soon dislodged
by the infantry. They were even regardless
of circumstances still more menacing; and if a
lethargy beset the infidel that day, it is equally certain
that a species of distraction overwhelmed the
brains of the Spaniards. It seemed as if the great
object of their ambition depended more upon their
following the fugitives to the temple-square than
upon any other feat; and to this they encouraged
one another with vivas and invocations to the
saints. They could already behold the huge bulk
of the pyramid, rising up at the distance of a mile,
as if it shut up the street; and its terraced sides,
thronged with multitudes of men, seemed to prove
to them, that the frighted Mexicans were running

to their gods for protection. It is true, they perceived
vast bodies of infidels blocking up the avenue
afar, as if to dispute their passage beyond the
canalled portion of the island; but they regarded
them with scorn.

They rushed onwards, occasionally arrested by
some flying group, but only for a moment.

There was a place, not far within the limits of
the island, where they found the causeway, for the
space of at least sixty paces, so delved and pared
away on either side, that it scarce afforded a passage
for two horsemen abreast. The device was
of recent execution, for they beheld the mattocks
of labourers still sticking in the earth, as if
that moment abandoned. This circumstance, so
strange, so novel, and so ominous, it might be supposed,
would have aroused them to suspicion. The
passage, as it was, so contracted, broken, and rugged,
looked prodigiously like the Al-Sirat, or bridge
to paradise of the Mussulmans,—that arch, narrow
as the thread of a famished spider, over which it is
so much easier to be precipitated than to pass with
safety. Yet grim and threatening as it was, there
was but one among the cavaliers who raised a
voice of warning. As the Captain-General, without
a moment's hesitation, pushed his horse forward, to
lead the way, and without a single expression of
surprise, the ancient hidalgo, who had twice before
sounded a note of alarm, now exclaimed,—

“For the love of heaven, pause, señor! This is
a trap that will destroy us.”

“Art thou afraid, Alderete?” cried Cortes, looking
back to him, grimly. “This is no place for a
King's Treasurer,” (such was Alderete, the royal
Contador.)—“Get thee back, then, to the first ditch,
and fill it up to thy liking. This will be charge
enough for a volunteer.”

“I will fight where thou wilt, when thou wilt, and
as boldly as thou wilt,” said the indignant cavalier;
“but here play the madman no longer.”

“I will take thy counsel,—rest where I am,—
and, in an hour's time, see myself shut out from the
city by a ditch, sixty yards wide! God's benison
upon thy long beard! and mayst thou be wiser.
Forward, friends! Do you not see? the knaves are
running amain to check us, and recover their unfinished
gap! On! courage, and on! Santiago and
at them!”

It was indeed as Cortes said. The infidels, who
blocked up the streets afar, were now seen running
towards them, with the most terrific yells, as if to
seize, before it was too late, a pass so easily maintained.
The cavaliers, animated by the words of
their leader, were quite as resolute to disappoint
them, and therefore rode across as rapidly as they
could. The pass was not only narrow, but tortuous
and irregular; which increased the difficulties of
surmounting it; so that the Mexicans, running with
the most frantic speed, were within a bowshot, before
Cortes had spurred his steed upon the broader
portion of the dike. But, as if there were something
dreadful to the infidels, in the spectacle of the great
Teuctli of the East, thus again in their stronghold,
they came to a sudden halt, and testified their valour
only by yelling, and waving their spears and
banners.

“Courage, friends, and quick!” cried Cortes.
“The dogs are beset with fear, and will not face
us. Ye shall hear other yells in a moment. Haste,
valiant cavaliers! haste, men of Spain! and make
room for the footmen, who are behind you.”

The screams of the barbarians were loud and
incessant; but in the midst of the din, as he turned
to cheer his cavaliers over the broken passage,
Don Hernan's ears were struck by the sound of a

Christian voice, calling from the midst of the pagans,
with thrilling vehemence,

“Beware! beware! Back to the causey! Beware!”

“Hark!” cried Alderete, who had already passed;
“Our Saint calls to us! Let us return!”

“It is a trick of the fiend!” exclaimed Cortes,
in evident perturbation of mind. “Come on, good
friends, and let us seize vantage-ground; or the
dogs will drive us, singly, into the ditches.”

“Back! back!” shouted the cavaliers behind—
“We are ambushed! We are surrounded!”

Their further exclamations were lost in a tempest
of discordant shrieks, coming from the front
and the rear, from the heavens above, and, as they
almost fancied, from the earth beneath. They
looked northward, towards the pyramid,—the
whole broad street was filled with barbarians,
rushing towards them with screams of anticipated
triumph; they looked back to the lake,—the causeway
was swarming with armed men, who seemed
to have sprung from the waters; to either side, and
beheld the canals of the intersecting streets lashed
into foam by myriads of paddles; while, at the same
moment, the few pagans, who had annoyed them
from the housetops, appeared transformed, by the
same spell of enchantment, into hosts innumerable,
with spirits all of fury and flame.

“What says the king of Castile? What says
the king of Castile now?” roared the exulting infidels.

“Santiago! and God be with us!” exclaimed
Cortes, waving his hand, with a signal for retreat,
that came too late: “Cross but this devil-trap
again, and—”

Before he could conclude the vain and useless
order, the drum of the emperor sounded upon the
pyramid. It was an instrument of gigantic size

and horrible note, and was held in no little fear,
especially after the events of this day, by the
Spaniards, who fabled that it was covered with the
skins of serpents. It was a fit companion for the
horn of Mexitli; which latter, however, being a
sacred instrument, was sounded only on the most
urgent and solemn occasions.

The first tap,—or rather peal, for the sound
came from the temple more like the roll of thunder
than of a drum,—was succeeded by yells still more
stunning; and while the cavaliers, retreating, struggled,
one by one, to recross the narrow pass, they
were set upon with such fury as left them but little
hope of escape.

If the rashness of Cortes had brought his friends
into this fatal difficulty, he now seemed resolved to
atone his fault, by securing their retreat, even although
at the expense of his life. It was in vain
that those few cavaliers who had succeeded in
reaching him, before the onslaught began, besought
him to take his chance among them, and recross,
leaving them to cover his rear.

“Get ye over yourselves,” he cried, with grim
smiles, smiting away the headmost of the assailants
from the street: “If I have brought ye among
coals of fire, heaven forbid I should not broil a little
in mine own person. Quick, fools! over and
hasten! over and quick! and by and by I will follow
you.”

For a moment, it seemed as if the terror of his
single arm would have kept the barbarians at bay.
But, waxing bolder, as they saw his attendants
dropping one by one away, they began to close
upon him, and his situation became exceedingly
critical. He looked over his shoulder, and perceived
that his followers threaded their way along
the broken dike with less difficulty than he at first
feared. The very narrowness of the passage left

but little foothold for the enemy; and their attacks,
being made principally from canoes, were not such
as wholly to dishearten a cavalier, whose steed was
as strongly defended by mail as his own body. Encouraged
by this assurance, the Captain-General
still maintained his post, rushing ever and anon
upon the closing herds, and mowing right and left
with his trusty blade, while his gallant charger
pawed down opposition with his hoofs. Thus he
fought, with the mad valour that made his enemies
so often deem him almost a demigod, until satisfied
that his own attempt to cross the pass could no
longer embarrass the efforts of his followers.
Then, charging once more upon the pagans, and
even with greater fury than before, he wheeled
round with unexpected rapidity, and uttering his
famous cry, “Santiago and at them!” dashed boldly
at the passage.

Seven pagans sprang upon the path. They
were armed like princes, and the red fillets of the
House of Darts waved among their sable locks.

“The Teuctli shall have the tribute of Mexico!”
shouted one, flourishing a battle-axe that seemed
of weight sufficient, in his brawny arm, to dash out
the charger's brains at a blow. The words were
not understood by Cortes; but he recognized at
once the visage of the Lord of Death.

“I have thee, pagan!” he cried, striking at the
bold barbarian. The blow failed; for one of the
others, springing at the charger's head with unexampled
audacity, seized him by the bridle, so that
he reared backwards, and thus foiled the aim of his
rider. The next moment, the Spanish steel fell upon
the neck of the daring infidel, killing him on the
spot; yet not so instantaneously as to avert a disaster,
which it seemed the object of his fury to produce.
His convulsive struggles, as he clung, dying, to the
rein, drove the steed off the narrow ledge; and

thus losing his foothold, the noble animal rolled
over into the deep canal, burying the Captain-General
in the flood.

“The general! save the general!” shrieked the
only Christian, who, in this horrible melée, (for the
battle was now universal,) beheld the condition of
Cortes, and who, although on foot, and bristling
with arrows that had stuck fast in his cotton-armour,
and resisted by other weapons at every step,
had yet the courage to run to the rescue. It was
Gaspar Olea. His visage was yet wan, and expressive
of the unusual horror preying upon his mind;
yet he rushed forward, as if he had never known a
fear. He exalted his voice, while crying for assistance,
until it was heard far back upon the causeway;
yet he reached the place of Don Hernan's
mischance alone. The scene was dreadful: the
nobles had flung themselves into the flood, and were
dragging the stunned and strangling hero from the
steed, which lay upon its side on the rugged and
shelving edge of the dike, unable to rise, and perishing
with the most fearful struggles; while, all the
time, the elated infidels expressed their triumph with
shouts of frantic joy.

“Courage, captain! be of good heart, señor!”
exclaimed the Barba-Roxa, striking down one of
the captors at a single blow: “Courage! for we
have good help nigh,” he continued, attacking a
second with the same success: “Courage, señor,
courage!”

No Mexican helm of dried skins, and no breastplate
of copper, could resist the machete of a man
like Gaspar. Yet his first success was caused rather
by the Mexicans being so intently occupied
with their captive, that they thought of nothing else,
than by any miraculous exertion of skill and prowess.
He slew two, before they dreamed of attack,
and he mortally wounded a third, ere the others

could turn to drive him back. A fourth rushed
upon him, before he could again lift up his weapon,
and grasping him in his arms, with the embrace of
a mountain bear, leaped with him into the canal.

There were now but two left in possession of
Cortes; yet his resistance even against these was
ineffectual. His sword had dropped from his hand;
a violent blow had burst his helmet, and confounded
his brain; and he had been lifted from the water,
already half suffocated. Yet he struggled as he
could, and catching one of his foes by the throat, he
succeeded in overturning him into the water, and
there grappled with him among the shallows. The
remaining barbarian, yelling for assistance, flung
himself upon the pair; and though twenty Spaniards,
headed by Bernal Diaz and the hunchback,
were now within half as many paces, Cortes would
have perished where he lay, had not assistance
arose from an unexpected quarter.

Among the vast numbers who came crowding
from the city over the broken passage, were several
who knew, by the cry of the seventh noble, that
Malintzin was in his hands; and they rushed forward,
to insure his capture. The foremost and
fleetest of these was distinguished from the rest by
a frame of towering height; and, had there been a
Spaniard by to notice him, would have been still
more remarkable from the fact, that he uttered all
his cries in good, expressive Castilian. He bore a
Spanish weapon, too, and his first act, as he flung
himself into the ditch where Cortes was drowning,
was to strike it through the neck of the uppermost
noble. His next was to spurn the other from the
breast of the general, whom he raised to his feet,
murmuring in his ear,

“Be of good heart, señor! for you are saved.”

What more he would have said and done can

only be imagined; for, at that moment, the Barba-Roxa
rushed out of the ditch, followed close at
hand by the hunchback, Bernal Diaz, and others,
and seeing his commander, as he thought, in the
hands of a foeman, he lifted his good sword once
again, and smote him over the head, crying,

“Down, infidel dog! and viva for Spain and our
general!”

At this moment, there rushed up a crew of fresh
combatants, Spaniards from the rear and infidels
from the front. But before they closed upon him
entirely, the Barba-Roxa caught sight of the man
he had struck down, and beheld, in his pale and
quivering aspect, the features of Juan Lerma.

The unhappy wretch, thus beholding the beloved
youth, with his own eyes, a leaguer and helpmate of
the infidel, and punished to death, as it seemed, by
his hand, set up a scream wildly vehement, and
broke from the group of Spaniards, who now surrounded
Cortes, endeavouring to drag him in safety
over the pass. The exile had been seen by others
as well as Gaspar, and many a ferocious cry of
exultation burst from their lips, as they saw him
fall.

Meanwhile, Gaspar, distracted in mind, and dripping
with blood, for he had not escaped from the
ditch and the fierce embrace of his fourth antagonist,
without many severe wounds, endeavoured to
retrace his steps to the spot where Juan had fallen.
It was occupied by infidels, who drove him into the
ditch, where his legs were grasped by a drowning
Mexican, who raised himself a little from the water,
and displayed, between his neck and shoulder, a
yawning chasm, rather than a wound, from which
the blood, at every panting expiration of breath,
rolled out hideously in froth and foam. It was the
Lord of Death, thus struck by Juan Lerma, as he
lay upon the breast of Cortes, and now perishing,

but still like a warrior of the race of America. He
clambered up the body of Gaspar, for it could hardly
be said, that he rose upon his feet; and seeing that
he grasped a Christian soldier, he strove to utter
once more a cry of battle. The blood foamed
from his lips, as from his wound; and his voice was
lost in a suffocating murmur. Yet, with his last
expiring strength, he locked his arms round the
neck of the Spaniard, now almost as much spent as
himself, and falling backwards, and writhing together
as they fell, they rolled off into the deep
water, where the salt and troubled flood wrapped
them in a winding-sheet, already spread over the
bosoms of thousands.