Page:The Mastering of Mexico.djvu/282

244 yells that we were scoundrels and cowards. I do not know how I so coolly tell what passed. Three or four of us who had served in Italy swore over and over again that neither against the artillery of the French, nor against the Turk himself, had they ever seen such furious fighting.

On that day they killed ten or twelve more of our men and none of us escaped without a wound. During the night we resolved that in two days' time as many of us as should be able should sally out with moving towers. These engines, of wood strongly put together, we so built that five and twenty men could move along under each of them. They had loopholes through which heavy guns could be fired, and with them, too, were musketeers and crossbowmen, and horsemen who were to charge at full gallop.

Our enemies, however, not only attacked our quarters in ten and twelve, but In twenty different points at once, so that what with building our towers, repairing breaches in the wall and beating off assailants who fixed ladders to our walls, we had enough to do. No one of us should survive that day, they shouted, but all of us should be sacrificed—our hearts torn from our bodies, our blood drawn from our veins and offered to their gods, our arms and legs eaten at their feasts, and the rest of our bodies thrown to the caged tigers, lions and snakes