Page:The Mastering of Mexico.djvu/175

Rh get in only by a narrow causeway; there is no food for you to eat, and all his troops are under arms to oppose you."

However unpleasant this message might have been to Cortes, he received the ambassadors with kindness and accepted their presents. He marvelled, he went on to tell them, how their lord, Montezuma, who was so great a prince and had named himself our friend, could so often change his mind, one day saying one thing, the next countermanding it. Would it be right for us, after we, in carrying out the commands of our king, had come so near the city to turn back? We had no choice left. In one way or another we must enter. From now on Montezuma must send no more such messages as this, for Cortes was bound to see him and to set forth the whole purpose for which he had come. Then, after we had told our errand, if our stay in the city annoyed him, we would return. As to what they said about there being little food in Mexico, we were used to scant diet.

With this answer Cortes sent the ambassadors back. But we, for our part, became more thoughtful. We were mortals and feared death, and the cages in which they fattened victims, and their threats that they would seize and sacrifice us before their idols. Now, doubly on guard in the thickly populated country, we made short days' marches, arranged the manner we should enter the great city.