Page:Romance of History, Mexico.djvu/296

 "The treasure you hope to win," they cried, "is buried where you will never find it!"

Brave as the men were the Aztec women, nursing the sick, and aiding the warriors by supplying them with stones and arrows. Two ladies of high rank remained three days and nights up to their necks in the water among the reeds, and this is but an instance of the unspeakable sufferings which tenderly nurtured women heroically endured. In the ever-narrowing Aztec quarters the dead bodies soon lay so thick that "a man could not set his foot down unless on the corpse of an Indian." Yet the courage of Guatemozin never failed, and his subjects, catching his noble spirit, felt with him that death even in such dreadful forms was indeed better far than submission to the false strangers. 256