Page:Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 1.djvu/313

Rh it seemed as if they did not feel it, for when one discharge would sweep away ten or twelve men, more would immediately fill their places, as if it had done no harm at all. Leaving the necessary guard, such as could be spared, in the fort, I again made a sortie, and captured some bridges, and burnt some houses, killing many of the defenders; but they were so numerous that, although we did them a good deal of damage, we made very little impression on them. We had to fight all day long, while they fought by hours, because they relieved one another, and even thus they had more than enough men. That day, they also wounded some fifty or sixty Spaniards, although none of them died; and I fought until nightfall, retiring only from sheer fatigue into the fort. Seeing the great damage the enemy did us, and how they wounded and killed us at will, and that, although we did much injury amongst them, it was hardly perceptible on account of their number, we spent that whole night and the next day in making three engines of wood, each accommodating twenty men, so that they could not hurt us throwing stones from the roofs, for the engines were covered with planks. Inside there were archers and musketeers, and others armed with pikes, pickaxes and bars of iron for making breaches in the houses, and knocking down the barricades which the Indians had made in the streets. While these machines were being made, the combat with our adversaries did not cease, for whenever we went out of the fort, they would strive to enter, being repulsed only with great difficulty, Montezuma, who with one of his sons and many other chiefs who had been captured at the beginning, was still a prisoner, asked to be carried to the roof of the fort where he could speak to the captains and the people, and cause the war to cease. I had him taken thither, and when he reached the parapet on the top of the fort, intending to speak to the people who were fighting there,