Page:The Mastering of Mexico.djvu/345

Rh stand! Do you turn your backs?" But his cries were in vain. Each sought to save his own life. Nothing remained but retreat.

On this narrow causeway the Mexicans now took sixty-six soldiers captive, killed eight horses, wounded Cortes in the leg, and after a fight in which it seemed for a time they would succeed, they, yelling and calling us cowards, finally pursued our soldiers to their very camp. There, after a little delay, they cast in three heads of our countrymen, crying that these were from men with Sandoval and Alvarado whom, with all their teules, they had put to death.

We, under Alvarado, likewise advanced along our causeway and with like confidence of victory, when many squadrons of Mexicans rushed upon us and hurled In front of us five bloody heads of Spaniards they had captured from Cortes' division. "So we shall kill you," they shouted, "just as we have killed Malinche and Sandoval and all their troops." Saying this they fell on us so furiously that crossbows and muskets availed nothing, and we began to retreat. Our friends, the Tlaxcalans, crediting the shout of triumph uttered with the hurling of the five bleeding heads, and thinking Malinche and Sandoval and all their teules had been killed, fled off the causeway in terror."

As we retreated we could hear the beating of the drum which stood near the idols Huitzilopochtli and