In a moment the neophyte, followed by Fabueno, and Lazaro, who answered to his call, and Marco, who seemed to have been separated by the melée from his master, was at the side of Calavar. The mind of the knight was wholly gone; and he seemed as if, at the point of death, raised from his couch by the clamours of the contest, and urged into it by the instinct of long habit, or by the goadings of madness.
He submitted patiently, and without words, to the gentle violence of his kinsman, and was straightway carried to his apartment.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
After much search and persuasion, a surgeon was found and induced to visit the knight. He despatched his questions almost in a word, for he was a fighting Bachelor, and burned with impatience to return to the contest. He mingled hastily a draught, which he affirmed to be of wondrous efficacy in composing disordered minds to sleep, gave a few simple directions, and excusing his haste in the urgency of his other occupations, both military and chirurgical, he immediately departed.
"Marco!" said the neophyte, when the draught was administered, and Don Gabriel laid on the couch, "thou deservest the heaviest punishment for leaving thy master an instant, though, as thou sayest, while fast asleep. Remain by him now, and be more faithful. As for thee, Lorenzo," he continued, to the secretary, who stood panting at his side, "there is good reason thou shouldst share the task of Marco, were it only to repose thee a little; but more need is it, that thou suffer thy blood to cool, and reflect, with shame, that thou hast, this day, cancelled all thy good deeds, by killing a prostrate and beseeching foe. Remain, therefore, to assist Marco; and by-and-by I will come to thee, and declare whether or not thou shalt draw thy sword again to-day."
And thus leaving his kinsman to the care of the two followers, and beckoning Lazaro along, Don Amador returned to the court-yard and the conflict.
The history of the remainder of the day (it was now noon,) is a weary tale of blood. Wounds could not check, nor slaughter subdue, the animosity of the besiegers; and the Spaniards, tired even of killing, hoped no longer for victory over men who seemed to fight with no object but to die, and who rushed up as readily to the mouth of a cannon, whose vent was already blazing under the linstock, as to the spears that bristled with fatal opposition at the gates.
But night came at last, and with it a hope to end the sufferings that were already intolerable. The hope was vain. The barbarians, apparently incapable of fatigue, or perhaps yielding their places to fresh combatants, continued the assault even with increasing vigour and boldness. They rushed against the court-wall with heavy beams,—rude battering-rams,—with which they thought to shake it to its foundations, and thus deprive the Christians of their greatest safeguard. In certain spots they succeeded; and the soldiers cursed the day of their birth, as the ruins fell crashing to the ground, and they saw themselves reduced to the alternative of filling the breaches with their bodies, or remaining to perish where they stood. It is true, that in this kind of defence, as well as under other urgent difficulties, they received good and manly aid from their numerous allies, the Tlascalans, who fought, during the whole day, with a spirit and cheerfulness that put many a repining Castilian to shame. But these, though battling equally for their lives, were incapable of withstanding long the unexampled violence of the assaults; and it was soon found that the naked bodies of the Tlascalans offered but slight impediment to the frenzied Mexicans.
The Spaniards, in the expedient used to drive the citizens from their house-tops, had taught them a mode of warfare which they were not slow to adopt. The palace was of a solid structure, and seemed to bid defiance to flames. But the same cedars that finished the interior of meaner houses, formed its floors and ceilings; every chamber was covered with mats, and most of them were hung with the most inflammable kind of tapestry. In addition to this, the five thousand Tlascalans, who had been left with Alvarado, and who slept in the court-yard, besides strewing the earth with rushes—their humble couches—had constructed along the walls of the palace itself, many rude arbours, or rather kennels, of reeds from the lake, to shelter them from the vicissitudes of the rainy season, which had, already, in part, set in. And, to crown all, the cavaliers, whose horses, as they well knew, were each worth a thousand Tlascalans, had caused stalls to be constructed for them, wherein they were better protected from the weather, than their fellow-animals, the allies. With these arrangements, the Mexicans were well acquainted.