“For the coming of the bridge, Señor.”
“Bastante! Take what thou hast, and gallop to the next canal. I will do thy part here.”
And dripping from the plunge in the lake, chilled by the calamity more than by the chill wind, and careless of the stones and arrows that hurtled about him, he faced the fight, and waited, saying simply,—“O good Mother, hasten Magarino!”
Never prayer more hearty, never prayer more needed! For the central division had passed, and Alvarado had come and gone, and down the causeway to the city no voice of Christian was to be heard; at hand, only the infidels with their melancholy cry, of unknown import, “O, O luilones! O, O luilones!” Then Magarino summoned his Tlascalans and Christians to raise the bridge. How many of them had died the death of the faithful, how many had basely fled, he knew not; the darkness covered the glory as well as the shame. To work he went. And what sickness of the spirit, what agony ineffable seized him! The platform was too fast fixed in the rocks to be moved! Awhile he fought, awhile toiled, awhile prayed; all without avail. In his ears lingered the parting words of Cortes, and he stayed though his hope was gone. Every moment added to the dead and wounded around him, yet he stayed. He was the dependence of the army: how could he leave the bridge? His men deserted him; at last he was almost alone; before him was a warrior whose shield when struck gave back the ring of iron, and whose blows came with the weight of iron; while around closer and closer circled the white uniforms of the infidels; then he cried,—
“God’s curse upon the bridge! What mortals can, my men, we have done to save it; enough now, if we save ourselves!”
And drawn by the great law, supreme in times of such peril, they came together, and retired across the bridge.
Then rose the cry, “Todo es perdido! All is lost! The bridge cannot be raised!” And along the causeway from mouth to mouth the warning flew, of such dolorous effect as not merely to unman all who heard it, but to take from them the instincts to which life so painfully intrusts itself when there is no judgment left. Those defending themselves quitted fighting, and turned to fly; except the gold, which they clutched all the closer, many flung away everything that impeded them, even the arquebuses, so precious in Cortes’ eyes; guns dragged safely so far were rolled into the lake or left on the road; the horses caught the contagion, and, becoming unmanageable, ran madly upon the footmen.
When the cry, outflying the fugitives with whom it began, reached the thousands at the second canal, it had somewhere borrowed a phrase yet more demoralizing. “The bridge cannot be raised! All is lost! Save yourselves, save yourselves!” Such was its form there. And about that time, as ill-fortune ordered, the infidels had gathered around the fatal place until, by their yells and missiles there seemed to be myriads of them. Along the causeway their canoes lay wedged in, like a great raft; and bolder grown, they flung themselves bodily on the unfortunates, and strove to carry them off alive. Enough if they dragged them down the slope,—innumerable hands were ready at the water’s edge to take them speedily beyond rescue. Momentarily, also, the yell of the fighting men of Tenochtitlan, surging from the city under the ’tzin, drew nearer and nearer, driving the rear upon the front, already on the verge of the canal with barely room for defense against Hualpa and his people. All that held the sufferers passive, all that gave them endurance, the virtue rarer and greater than patience, was the hope of the coming of Magarino; and the announcement, at last, that the bridge could not be raised, was as the voice of doom over their heads. Instantly, they saw death behind them, and life nowhere but forward,—so always with panic. An impulse moved them,—they rushed on, they pushed each with the might of despair. “Save yourselves, save yourselves!” they screamed, at the same time no one thought of any but himself.
To make the scene clear to the reader, he should remember that the causeway was but eight yards across its superior slope; while the canal, about as wide, and crossing at right angles, was on both sides walled with dressed masonry to the height, probably, of twelve feet, with, water at least deep enough to drown a horse. Ordinarily, the peril of the passage would have been scorned by a stout swimmer; but, alas! such were not all who must make the attempt now.
The first victims of the movement I have described were those in the front fighting Hualpa. No time for preparation: with shields on their arms, if footmen, on their horses, if riders,—a struggle on the verge, a cry for pity, a despairing shriek, and into the yawning chasm they were plunged; nor had the water time to close above their heads before as many others were dashed in upon them.