Page:The Mastering of Mexico.djvu/280

242 not let his charges go, they would have seized him, thrown him into a canoe and carried him off for sacrifice. Our captain and those of us soldiers used to Indian fighting were very depressed when we heard this, for we well knew with what vast crowds they always enter battle, and that we should have to run greatest risk of losing life in hunger, or in fighting in a strongly fortified city.

Cortes promptly ordered Ordas with four hundred soldiers, mostly crossbowmen and musketeers with a few horsemen, to see what truth there was in the soldier's tale, and if they could settle the trouble without fighting, to do so. Ordas had hardly reached the middle of the street when squadrons of Mexicans on the level, and many more on housetops, attacked his little troop so furiously that they killed eight of his men at first onset and wounded many.

If the body of warriors falling on Ordas was vast, the many at the same time attacking our quarters and assailing us with lances, arrows and slings was greater, and they at once wounded more than forty of our men. True, our cannon, muskets, crossbows and lances made havoc in their ranks, yet they fought with the more fury and closed their lines the more firmly, nor could we push them back one inch. It was only after a good deal of fighting that Ordas and his men were able step by step to force a passage to our quarters, his company less by fourteen