Page:Young Folks History Of Mexico.pdf/210

 204 noted, requested permission, through the new interpreter Aguilar, to land to procure wood and water, and to speak with their caciques, to whom he had "matters of the greatest importance, and of a holy nature, to communicate; but to this they only replied in the same manner as before."

The next morning, after mass, Cortez approached to land his men, when the enemy in canoes sallied out from the mangroves along the banks in prodigious numbers and making a fearful din with their horns and timbrels. Seeing this, Cortez ordered a halt, and then, demanding the Indians to give their attention, he caused the royal notary to read a requisition for them to supply the Spaniards with wood and water and to lay down their arms and become good Christians, and to allow the priests to land and speak to them concerning the service of God. If they should refuse this reasonable request, which was made in the king's name, then they would be responsible for all the mischief that resulted. This was read in Spanish and amidst the din and tumult of the horns and timbrels, so that it is possible that the Indians heard nothing of it, and if they did certainly did not understand a word. But it mattered not to Cortez, he had complied with the law, he was not fighting to please the Indians so much as to justify himself as an apostle of the faith in the eyes of the king and prelates in Spain. The old historian seemed astonished that the Indians paid no attention to this royal and ecclesiastical mandate. "All this," he says, "being duly explained to them, produced no effect; they seemed as determined to oppose us as they were before." Having satisfied his conscience in this way, and having in this manner thrown all the blame of the affair upon the ignorant Indians, Cortez then unfurled his banner, with its cheerful emblem of torment, the blue and white flames, and ordered his soldiers to "at them, and show the unchristian dogs no mercy."