Page:The Mastering of Mexico.djvu/100

70 With him Teuhtlilli brought very clever painters, such as they had in Mexico, and to show the great Montezuma what we were like he commanded the painters to picture true to facts Cortes and all the chief officers, the soldiers, also, and the ships and horses. Donna Marina and Aguilar, even our two dogs, the cannon and balls—in short, everything they saw belonging to us. Alvarado and other horsemen, Cortes now advised, should tie bells to their horses and mount and gallop at full speed before the caciques. Our captain himself mounted and said, "It would be a capital thing if we could gallop across these sand dunes, but they would see that we stick in the sand. When the tide is low let us go out to the beach and gallop two by two." Alvarado led on his spirited and very swift sorrel mare, while the Mexicans looked on.

Then our gunners loaded the cannon with an unusually heavy charge of powder, so as to give volume of sound when they fired, and Cortes, making as if he would speak to the caciques, took them and a number of chieftains where they might have good view of the firing. The air was very still when the cannon went off, and the stone balls went crashing along the sand dunes and echoes repeated the din. The Indians were terribly startled and ordered their painters to paint that, too, that Montezuma might see.