Page:The Mastering of Mexico.djvu/286

248 of the chiefs advanced to a spot where they could talk with him, and with tears in their eyes they said, "Alas! great cacique, your own misfortune, and that of your children, afflict us sorely. We must tell you we have raised one of your kinsmen to be our ruler, and we are forced to carry on the war because we have vowed to our gods not to stop till every teul is killed. To Huitzilopochtli and Tezcatlipoca we pray daily to deliver you safe from our enemy's power, when we shall hold you in greater veneration than before; and we beg you to forgive us now."

They had hardly done this speech when a shower of arrows and darts fell near the monarch. Our men who had stood by to cover him with shields had, while he was speaking, withdrawn their cover. Three stones struck the great Montezuma, one on the head, another on the arm and another on the leg. We carried the unhappy monarch to his apartment, and begged him to have the wounds bandaged, and to take food to strengthen him. But he refused everything. In a little time they came to say he was dead. Cortes wept for him, and no man among us who had come to know him in close relations who did not bemoan him as though he were a father, he was so good.

Cortes now ordered a papa and a cacique among our prisoners to go to the monarch the Mexicans had chosen and say that the great Montezuma was dead,