Page:Romance of History, Mexico.djvu/131

 Watch was kept through the night, which passed, however, quietly away.

At dawn the camp was astir. When all was ready for the march Cortés gave his directions. The mounted men were to ride three abreast, and to strike always at the faces of the foe. The little army had advanced but a short distance when two Indians were seen approaching in a state of evident terror and exhaustion. They were the Totonac envoys who had escaped in the night from the sacrificial cage into which they had been ruthlessly flung. Breathlessly they warned the Teules that a Tlascalan army was close at hand.

And now shrill and high rose the whistling Indian war-cry, and a flight of arrows startled the foremost ranks of the Spaniards. Fierce and sudden was the Tlascalan attack, and suspiciously sudden their retreat. But the blood of the Spaniards was up. "St. Jago and at them!" cried the cavaliers, and furiously pursuing they found themselves the next moment in a narrow, rugged glen difficult for horses and impracticable for guns. Attacked on every side, they strove to escape from this death-trap and cut their way onward to the entrance of the pass. But there they found, to their dismay, an angry sea of gleaming helmets and waving banners! To advance seemed certain death, but to retreat was impossible.

In vain the cavalry hurled themselves against the dense ranks of the Tlascalans, who had learned to aim their blows at the horses. They succeeded in killing one, and captured the rider alive to serve as a victim for sacrifice. Around the fallen man the fight raged 105