Page:The Mastering of Mexico.djvu/362

322 in Mexico. So now, when he saw our troops coming and getting into the houses in which his caciques dwelt, he ordered put on board these canoes the gold, jewels and other property they could carry away, and he and his family took to flight. When Sandoval heard that Guatemoc had fled, he stayed the soldiers in their destruction of the houses and ordered Garcia Holguin, an intimate of his and master of a fast sloop manned by good rowers, to follow the monarch and take him, but without violence or injury.

Holguin flew in pursuit. It pleased God that he should overtake several canoes, and one that from the beauty of its workmanship and awnings and seat he knew must be the monarch's, and he signaled the boats to stop. But they would not, and so Holguin told his men to level crossbows and muskets at them; which, when Guatemoc saw he cried in fear, "Do not shoot. I am cacique of Mexico. I beg you not to touch my wife or my relatives, but carry me at once to Malinche." Greatly rejoiced, Holguin with much respect embraced the monarch and, spreading mats and cloths in the poop of his sloop, took the Mexican and his wife and thirty chiefs with him. But he touched nothing whatever in the canoe, but brought it in along with the sloop.

Cortes, who had stood on the summit of the temple, as I said, and watched Sandoval's movements, now