With a final rush we succeeded in forcing the enemy through the narrow opening in the rampart, and so down the steps beyond; but as we pursued them across the next terrace, keeping close at their heels so that they might not have time to form again, many of our wounded fell out from the ranks and dropped by the way—and we had left behind us a dozen or more of our dead on the ground where the fight had been.
Our tactics of rapid pursuit of the force that we had defeated served us well at the next rampart; for the men whom we pursued and we ourselves came to it almost in one body, and thus threw into such confusion the fresh force that was waiting for us that, without any long fighting about it, we drove right through them and went on downward; and in the same dashing fashion we carried the rampart beyond. However, when those men whom we had pushed aside from our path so easily got over their surprise at being so lightly handled, they formed in our rear and came hurrying after us; the result of which was that as we approached the last of the ramparts that we had to pass through, where was gathered the largest body of men that we had yet encountered, we found ourselves fairly wedged in between two bodies of the enemy and outnumbered four to one. Here, too, the passage through the rampart had been closed by the metal bars that were in readiness for that purpose. Setting these in place was no real barrier to our passage, for, being intended to close the portal against assailants from below, the fastenings which held them were on the side nearest to us. But to remove them it was necessary that we should fight our way through the crowd—with no possibility of driving the enemy before us, as we had done upon the upper terraces, since here the way was closed. What we did was literally to cut a path through the throng; and over the men who fell dead or wounded beneath our blows we made our advance. There was a curious creeping, uneasy sensation in the region of my stomach as I trod thus on the bodies of wounded men who were not dead yet, and felt them moving, and heard their groaning; and I was conscious of a feeling of relief when a body that I trod upon did not squirm beneath my foot, and so by its stillness assured me that I was standing only on dead flesh that had no feeling in it.
Very slowly did we go forward, for while the living barrier that we had to deal with was not at the outset more than twenty feet, or thereabouts, in thickness, hacking it down took us a tediously long time. While still we faced a dozen or more very desperate fighters, who held us off most resolutely from the metal bars which closed the way, a pang of dread and sorrow went through me as I perceived that Fray Antonio, who a moment before had been close beside me, had disappeared. That he might the better restrain his longing to take part in the fighting he had remained in the centre of our men; and it was hard to understand how, in that position, harm could have come to him, for missiles had no share in the work that was going forward, which was a fiery struggle hand to hand.
As I looked for him in the throng—so far as I could do this and at the same time keep up my guard against the man whom at that moment I was fighting with—I saw some signs of uneasy movement among the enemy in advance of us, and several of them evidently made an effort to reach down as though to get at something that was on the ground; which effort was wholly futile, for they were wedged so tightly together by our pressure upon them that reaching downward was impossible. By a lucky blow, I just then finished the man with whom I was contending, and so had a moment's breathing spell; and at that instant I saw one of the enemy, whose back was ranged against the bars, rise up in the air as though a strong spring had been loosed beneath him, and then fall sidewise upon the heads and shoulders of his fellows. And then, in the place thus made vacant, the cowled head of Fray Antonio instantly appeared—whereby I guessed, what afterwards I knew certainly, that he had crawled along the ground through the press until he reached the place that he aimed at, and then had risen up beneath one of the enemy with such sudden violence that he fairly had sent the man spinning upward into the air. What his purpose was I saw in a moment, for no sooner did he stand upright than he had his hands upon the metal bars, and then I heard the clinking together of stone and metal as he lifted them bodily away.
XXIV.
THE AFFAIR AT THE WATER-GATE
Rayburn gave a great roar of gladness as the clinking sound made him turn and he saw what was going forward; and Young and I joined him in lusty Anglo-Saxon cheering, while our allies, in the savage fashion natural to them, vented their joy in shrill yells. In the midst of which cheering and yelling we pushed forward so hotly that the enemy, disconcerted by this sudden shifting of fortune in our favor, and the men directly in front of us being most seriously incommoded by their comrade lying sprawled out and kicking upon their heads and shoulders, seemed suddenly to lose heart so completely that we had no difficulty in cutting them down. Even had they not been too closely wedged in to turn upon Fray Antonio, our strong dashing upon them would have compelled them to leave him unharmed in order to defend themselves; and so it was that, by the time we had cut a path to the portal, the monk had released the whole tier of bars from their fastenings, and the way was free.
As we sprang down the steps—with Fray Antonio, once more in the guise of a non-combatant, safe in the midst of our company—we heard a great outcry from below, and saw a considerable body of men marching up towards us steadily from the water-side; but the alarm that sight of them gave us was only momentary, for their shouts, and the shouts of our men in answer, showed us that these were friends come to our support. However we had no great need of them, for those of the enemy whom we left alive behind us seemed suddenly to have grown sick of fighting, and made no attempt to follow after us down the stairs. Yet the coming of this supporting force, to be just in the matter, no doubt was the saving of us; for more than half of the men who had been with us when we started on our march down through the city had been slain by the way, and nearly all in our company were more or less disabled by wounds. Tizoc and Young and Rayburn had come through it all without as much as a scratch, and because of their extraordinary strength these three were almost as fresh as when the fighting began; but the rest of us were sorely weary, and our breathing was so heavy and so tremulous that each breath was like a long-drawn sob. Truly, then, we were glad to fall in in advance of the supporting column and so make our way, with a strong rear-guard for our protection, across the bit of level land that lay between us and the lake.
At the water-side boats were in readiness for us, and here we found also the members of the Council who had ordered, and who were the recognized leaders of, the revolt. There was still more fighting ahead of us, for the necessity of sending back the relief party had prevented the seizing of the water-gate; and this was a matter that had to be attended to quickly, for we could see bodies of men coming down several of the streets in pursuit of us, and unless we escaped outside the wall before they overtook us there was a strong and dismal probability that our whole plan would fail. Therefore, we tumbled aboard the boats with all possible rapidity, and while the pursuing parties still were far in our rear we shoved off from the shore.