Page:Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 2.djvu/63

 many women and children, while its slopes were covered with warriors who at once began yelling loudly, sending up smoke signals, discharging their slings, and throwing stones and darts, so that in approaching them we sustained much injury. Although we saw they did not dare to wait for us on the field, it appeared to me that, even though our road led us elsewhere, it was cowardly to go on without giving them a lesson, lest also our friends should suspect we did it out of cowardice; and I began, therefore, to reconnoitre about the hillock. It was about a league in circumference and certainly was so strong that it seemed madness to assail it; but although I might have laid siege to it and obliged them to give themselves up from sheer want, I could not spare the time to do this. Being thus perplexed, I determined to assault its slopes at the places I had examined, and gave orders to Cristobal Corral, lieutenant of sixty foot soldiers whom I had always in my company, to attack them with his infantry and ascend its steepest sides with certain musketeers and archers to follow him; and to Rodriguez de Villafuerte and to Francisco Verdugo that the> with their men and certain archers and musketeers should mount on another side; and to the captains Pedro Dircio and Andres de Monjaraz to assault it from another side with some few archers and musketeers; and that upon hearing a musket-shot all should resolve to mount, winning either victory or death.

Immediately on the discharge of the musket, they began the ascent, and won two slopes of the hillock from the adversaries, but were unable to get any higher because, such were the steepness and ruggedness of the rock that they could not sustain themselves neither with feet nor hands. The Indians with their hands hurled many rocks from above, and these in rolling broke into pieces which scattered, doing infinite damage; and the attack of our enemies was so fierce that they killed two