“Forward, my friends! Push the dogs! No quarter! Christo y Santiago!”
Behind the line of shields moved the other cavaliers, eager to help when help should be needed.
And then were shown the excellences of the sword in a master’s hand. The best shields of the infidels could not bar its point; it overcame resistance so quietly that men fell, wounded, or slain outright, before they thought themselves in danger; it won the terrace, and so rapidly that the Christians were themselves astonished.
“Ola, compañeros!” said Cortes, who in the fiercest mêleé was still the watchful captain. “Ola! Yonder riseth the second stairway. That the heathen may not use the vantage against us, keep we close to this pack. On their heels! Closer!”
So they mounted the steps of the second stairway, fighting; and the crowd which they kept between them and the enemy on the landing was a better cover even than the fire of the bowmen and arquebusiers. And so the terraces were all taken. Of the eight other Christians who fell under the stones and logs rolled upon them from the heights above, two lived long enough to be shrived by the faithful Olmedo.
The azoteas of the temple has been already described as a broad, paved area, unobstructed except by the sacrificial stones and the sanctuaries of Huitzil’ and Tezca’. A more dreadful place for battle cannot be imagined. The coming and going of worshippers, singly or in processions, and of barefooted pabas, to whom the dizzy height was all the world, had worn its surface smooth as furbished iron. If, as the combat rolled slowly around the terraces, rising higher, and nearer the chiefs and warriors on the summit,—if, in faintness of heart or hope, they looked for a way of escape, the sky and the remote horizon were all they saw: escape was impossible.
With many others disabled by wounds, Io’ ascended to the azoteas in advance of the fight; not in despair, but as the faithful might, never doubting that, when the human effort failed, Huitzil’, the Omnipotent, would defend himself. He passed through the ranks, and with brave words encouraged the common resolve to conquer or die. Stopping upon the western verge, he looked down upon the palace, and lo! there was a rest in the assault, except where the ’tzin fought, with his back to the temple; and the thousands were standing still, their faces upturned,—each where the strange truce found him,—to behold the hunted gods in some majestic form at last assert their divinity. So Io’ knew, by the whisperings of his own faith.
Again he turned prayerfully to the sanctuaries. At that instant Cortes mounted the last step of the last stairway,—after him the line of shields, and all the cavaliers,—after them again, Olmedo with his crucifix! Then was wrought an effect, simple enough of itself, but so timely that the good man—forgetful that the image of Christ dead on the cross is nothing without the story of his perfect love and sorrowful death—found believers when he afterwards proclaimed it a miracle. He held the sacred effigy up to be seen by all the infidels; they gazed at it as at a god unfriendly to their gods, and waited in awe for the beginning of a struggle between the divine rivals; and while they waited, Cortes and his cavaliers perfected their formation upon the azoteas, and the bowmen and arquebusiers began to climb the second stairway of the ascent. The moment of advantage was lost to the Aztecs, and they paid the penalty.
Io’ waited with the rest; from crucifix to sanctuary, and sanctuary to crucifix, he turned; yet the gods nursed their power. At last he awoke; too late! there was no escape. Help of man was not possible, and the gods seemed to have abandoned him.
“Tezcuco! Cholula! Tenochtitlan! Up, up, Tlateloco, up!”