The fight—or, rather, the struggle of the few against the many—went on. The ’tzin led his people boldly, and they failed him not. Leon drew together all he could of Christians and Tlascalans; then, as game to be taken at leisure, his enemy left him. Soon the fugitives following Alvarado heard a strange cry coming swiftly after them, “O, O luilones! O luilones!”
And through the rain and the night, doubly dark in the canals, Hualpa sped to the open lake, followed by nine canoes, fashioned for speed, each driven by six oarsmen, and carrying four warriors; so there were with him nine and thirty chosen men, with linked mail under their white tunics, and swords of steel on their long lances,—arms and armor of the Christians.
Off the causeway, beyond the first canal, he waited, until the great flotillas, answering his signal, closed in on the right hand and left; then he started for the canal, chafing at the delay of his vessels.
“Faster, faster, my men!” he said aloud; then to himself, “Now will I wrest her from the robber, and after that she will give me her love again. O happy, happy hour!”
He sought the canal, thinking, doubtless, that the Christians would find it impassable, and that in their front, as the place of safety, they would most certainly place Nenetzin. There, into the press he drove.
“Not here! Back, my men!” he shouted.
The chasm was bridged.
And marvelling at the skill of the strangers, which overcame difficulties as by magic, and trembling lest they should escape and his love be lost to him after all, he turned his canoe,—if possible, to be the first at the next canal. Others of his people were going in the same direction, but he out-stript them.
“Faster, faster!” he cried; and the paddles threshed the water,—wings of the lake-birds not more light and free. Into the causeway he bent, so close as to hear the tramp of horses; sometimes shading his eyes against the rain, and looking up, he saw the fugitives, black against the clouds,—strangers and Tlascalans,—plumes of men, but never scarf of woman.
Very soon the people on the causeway heard his call to the boatmen, and the plash of the paddles, and they quickened their pace.