Then the beam came again, and, with a great crash, tore away the side of the manta. The gun rolled backward, and burst through the opposite wall of the room. The veteran disappeared.
By this time all eyes were turned to the scene. The bowmen and arquebusiers in the column exerted themselves to cover their unfortunate comrades. Upon the neighboring houses a few infidels, on the watch, yelled joyously,—“The ’tzin! the ’tzin!” From them the shout, spread through the cowering army, became, indeed, a battle-cry significant of success.
To me, good reader, the miracles of the world, if any there be, are not the things men do in masses, but the sublimer things done by one man over the many; they testify most loudly of God, since without him they could not have been. I am too good a Christian to say this of a heathen; nevertheless, without the ’tzin his country had perished that morning. Back to the roofs came the defenders, into the street poured the companies again; no leisure now for the cavaliers. With the other manta Ordas moved on gallantly, but the work was hard; at some houses he failed, others he dared not attack. From front to rear the contest became a battle. In the low places of the street and pavement the blood flowed warm, then cooled in blackening pools. The smoke of the consuming houses, distinguishable from that of the temples, collected into a cloud, and hung wide-spread over the combat. The yells of Christians and infidels, fusing into a vast monotone, roared like the sea. Twice Mesa went to the front,—the cavaliers had need of him,—twice he returned to the rear.
The wrath of the Aztecs seemed especially directed against the Tlascalans tugging at the ropes of the manta; as a consequence, their quilted armor was torn to rags, and so many of them were wounded, so many killed, that at every stoppage the wheels were more difficult to start; and to make the movement still more slow and uncertain, the carcasses of the dead had to be rolled or carried out of the way; and the dead, sooth to say, were not always Aztecs.
Luis Marin halted to breathe.
“Ola, compañero! What dost thou there?”
“By all the saints!” answered Alvarado, on foot, tightening his saddle-girth. “Was ever the like? It hath been strike, strike,—kill, kill,—for an hour. I am dead in the right arm from finger to shoulder. And now here is a buckle that refuseth its work. Caramba! My glove is slippery with blood!”
And so step by step,—each one bought with a life,—the Christians won their way to the first bridge: the floor was gone! Cortes reined his horse, bloody from hoof to frontlet, by the edge of the chasm. Since daybreak fighting, and but a square gained! The water, never so placid, was the utmost limit of his going. He looked at the manta, now, like that of Avila, a mocking failure. He looked again, and a blasphemy beyond the absolution of Olmedo, I fear, broke the clenching of his jaws,—not for the machines, or the hopes they had raised, but the days their construction lost him. As he looked, through a rift in the cloud still rising along the battle’s track, he saw the great temple; gay banners and gorgeous regalia, all the splendor of barbaric war, filled that view, and inspired him. To the cavaliers, close around and in waiting, he turned. The arrows smote his mail and theirs, yet he raised his visor: the face was calm, even smiling, for the will is a quality apart from mind and passion.
“We will go back, gentlemen,” he said. “The city is on fire,—enough for one day. And hark ye, gentlemen. We have had enough of common blood. Let us go now and see of what the heathen gods are made.”
His hearers were in the mood; they raised their shields and shouted,—