The Fair God; or, The Last of the 'Tzins

Hualpa kissed his hand, and replied, “I thought to make return for your preferments, O ’tzin, by serving you well when you were king; but the service need not be put off so long. I thank the gods for this night’s opportunity. If I come not with the rising of the sun to-morrow, Nenetzin can tell you my story. Farewell!”

With his face to his benefactor, he moved away.

“Have a care for yourself!” said the ’tzin, regarding him earnestly; “and remember there must be no sign of attack until the strangers have advanced to the first causeway. I will look for you to-morrow. Farewell!”

While yet the ’tzin’s thoughts went out compassionately after his unhappy friend, up from their irksome hiding in the cells came the companies he was to lead,—a long array in white tunics of quilted cotton. At their head, the uniform covering a Christian cuirass, and with Christian helm and battle-axe, he marched; and so, through the darkness and the storm, the pursuit began.

CHAPTER XVIII

LA NOCHE TRISTE

The movement of the fugitive army was necessarily slow. Stretched out in the street, it formed a column of irregular front and great depth. A considerable portion was of non-combatants, such as the sick and wounded, the servants, women, and prisoners; to whom might be added the Indians carrying the baggage and ammunition, and laboriously dragging the guns. The darkness, and the rain beaten into the faces of the sufferers by the wind, made the keeping order impossible; at each step the intervals between individuals and between the divisions grew wider and wider. After crossing two or three of the bridges, a general confusion began to prevail; the officers, in dread of the enemy, failed to call out, and the soldiers, bending low to protect their faces, and hugging their arms or their treasure, marched in dogged silence, indifferent to all but themselves. Soon what was at first a fair column in close order became an irregular procession; here a crowd of all the arms mixed, there a thin line of stragglers.

It is a simple thing, I know, yet nothing has so much to do with what we habitually call our spirits as the condition in which we are at the time. Under an open sky, with the breath of a glowing morning in our nostrils, we sing, laugh, and are brave; but let the cloud hide the blue expanse and cover our walk with shadow, and we shrink within ourselves; or worse, let the walk be in the night, through a strange place, with rain and cold added, and straightway the fine thing we call courage merges itself into a sense of duty or sinks into humbler concern for comfort and safety. So, not a man in all the column,—not a cavalier, not a slave,—but felt himself oppressed by the circumstances of the situation; those who, only that afternoon, had charged like lions along that very street now yielded to the indefinable effect, and were weak of heart even to timidity. The imagination took hold of most of them, especially of the humbler class, and, lining the way with terrors all its own, reduced them to the state when panic rushes in to complete what fear begins. They started at the soughing of the wind; drew to strike each other; cursed the rattle of their arms, the hoof-beats of the horses, the rumble of the carriage-wheels; on the houses, vaguely defined against the sky, they saw sentinels ready to give the alarm, and down the intersecting streets heard the infidel legions rushing upon them; very frequently they stumbled over corpses yet cumbering the way after the day’s fight, and then they whispered the names of saints, and crossed themselves: the dead, always suggestive of death, were never so much so to them.

And so, for many squares, across canals, past palaces and temples, they marched, and nothing to indicate an enemy; the city seemed deserted.

“Hist, Señor!” said Duero, speaking with bated breath. “Hast thou not heard of the army of unbelievers that, in the night, while resting in their camp, were by a breath put to final sleep? Verily, the same good angel of the Lord hath been here also.”

“Nay, compadre mio,” replied Cortes, bending in his saddle, “I cannot so persuade myself. If the infidels meant to let us go, the going would not be so peaceful. From some house-top we should have had their barbarous farewell,—a stone, a lance, an arrow, at least a curse. By many signs,—for that matter, by the rain which, driven through the visor bars, is finding its way down the doublet under my breastplate,—by many signs, I know we are in the midst of a storm. Good Mother forfend, lest, bad as it is, it presage something worse!”

At that moment a watcher on the azoteas of a temple near by chanted the hour of midnight.

“Didst hear?” asked Cortes. “They are not asleep! Olmedo! father! Where art thou?”

“What wouldst thou, my son?”

“That thou shouldst not get lost in this Tophet; more especially, that thou shouldst keep to thy prayers.”

And about that time Sandoval, at the head of his advanced guard, rode from the street out on the open causeway. Farther on, but at no great distance, he came to the first canal. While there, waiting for the bridge to be brought forward, he heard from the lake to his right the peal long and loud of a conch-shell. His heart, in battle steadfast as a rock, throbbed faster; and with raised shield and close-griped sword, he listened, as did all with him, while other shells took up and carried the blast back to the city, and far out over the lake.

In the long array none failed to interpret the sound aright; all recognized a signal of attack, and halted, the slave by his prolong, the knight on his horse, each one as the moment found him. They said not a word, but listened; and as they heard the peal multiply countlessly in every direction,—now close by, now far off,—surprise, the first emotion, turned to dismay. Flight,—darkness,—storm,—and now the infidels! “May God have mercy on us!” murmured the brave, making ready to fight. “May God have mercy on us!” echoed the timid, ready to fly.

The play of the wind upon the lake seemed somewhat neutralized by the density of the rain; still the waves splashed lustily against the grass-grown sides of the causeway; and while Sandoval was wondering if there were many, who, in frail canoes, would venture upon the waste at such a time, another sound, heard, as it were, under that of the conchs, yet too strong to be confounded with wind or surging water, challenged his attention; then he was assured.

“Now, gentlemen,” he said, “get ye ready; they are coming. Pass the word, and ride one to Magarino,—speed to him, speed him here! His bridge laid now were worth a hundred lives!”

As the yells of the infidels—or, rather, their yell, for the many voices rolled over the water in one great volume—grew clearer their design became manifest.

Cortes touched Olmedo:—

“Dost thou remember the brigantines?”

“What of them?”

“Only, father, that what will happen to-night would not if they were afloat. Now shall we pay the penalty of their loss. Ay de mi!” Then he said aloud to the cavaliers, Morla, Olid, Avila, and others. “By my conscience, a dark day for us was that in which the lake went back to the heathen,—brewer, it, of this darker night! An end of loitering! Bid the trumpeters blow the advance! One ride forward to hasten Magarino; another to the rear that the division may be closed up. No space for the dogs to land from their canoes. Hearken!”

The report of a gun, apparently back in the city, reached them.

“They are attacking the rear-guard! Mesa spoke then. On the right hear them, and on the left! Mother of God, if our people stand not firm now, better prayers for our souls than fighting for our lives!”

A stone then struck Avila, startling the group with its clang upon his armor.

“A slinger!” cried Cortes. “On the right here,—can ye see him?”

They looked that way, but saw nothing. Then the sense of helplessness in exposure smote them, and, knightly as they were, they also felt the common fear.

“Make way! Room, room!” shouted Magarino, rushing to the front, through the advance-guard. His Tlascalans were many and stout; to swim the canal,—with ropes to draw the bridge after them,—to plant it across the chasm, were things achieved in a moment.

“Well done, Magarino! Forward, gentlemen,—forward all!” so saying, Sandoval spurred across; after him, in reckless haste, his whole division rushed. The platform, quivering throughout, was stancher than the stone revetments upon which its ends were planted; calcined by fire, they crumbled like chalk. The crowd then crossing, sensible that the floor was giving way under them, yelled with terror, and in their frantic struggle to escape toppled some of them into the canal. None paused to look after the unfortunates; for the shouting of the infidels, which had been coming nearer and nearer, now rose close at hand, muffling the thunder of the horses plunging on the sinking bridge. Moreover, stones and arrows began to fall in that quarter with effect, quickening the hurry to get away.

Cortes reached the bridge at the same time the infidels reached the causeway. He called to Magarino; before the good captain could answer, the waves to the right hand became luminous with the plashing of countless paddles, and a fleet of canoes burst out of the darkness. Up rose the crews, ghost-like in their white armor, and showered the Christians with missiles. A cry of terror,—a rush,—and the cavaliers were pushed on the bridge, which they jammed deeper in the rocks. Some horses, wild with fright, leaped into the lake, and, iron-clad, like their riders, were seen no more.

On the further side, Cortes wheeled about, and shouted to his friends. Olmedo answered, so did Morla; then they were swept onward.

Alone, and in peril of being forced down the side of the dike, Cortes held his horse to the place. The occasional boom of guns, a straggling fire of small arms, and the unintermitted cries of the infidels, in tone exultant and merciless, assured him that the attack was the same everywhere down the column. One look he gave the scene near by,—on the bridge, a mass of men struggling, cursing, praying; wretches falling, their shrieks shrill with despair; the lake whitening with assailants! He shuddered, and called on the saints; then the instinct of the soldier prevailed:—

“Ola, comrades!” he cried. “It is nothing. Stand, if ye love life. Stand, and fight, as ye so well know how! Holy Cross! Christo y Santiago!”

He spurred into the thick of the throng. In vain: the current was too strong; the good steed seconded him with hoof and frontlet; now he prayed, now cursed; at last he yielded, seeing that on the other side of the bridge was Fear, on his side Panic.

When the signal I have described, borne from the lake to the city, began to resound from temple to temple, the rear-guard were yet many squares from the causeway, and had, for the most part, become merely a procession of drenched and cowering stragglers. The sound alarmed them; and divining its meaning, they assembled in accidental groups, and so hurried forward.

Nenetzin and Marina, yet in company, were also startled by the noisy shells. The latter stayed not to question or argue; at her word, sharply spoken, her slaves followed fast after the central division, and rested not until they had gained a place well in advance of the non-combatants, whose slow and toilsome progress she had shrewdly dreaded. Not so Nenetzin: the alarm proceeded from her countrymen; feared she, therefore, for her lover; and when, vigilant as he was gallant, he rode to her, and kissed her hand, and spoke to her in lover’s phrase, she laughed, though not understanding a word, and bade her slaves stay with him.

Last man in the column was Leon, brave gentleman, good captain. With his horsemen, he closed upon the artillery.

“Friend,” he said to Mesa, “the devil is in the night. As thou art familiar with wars as Father Olmedo with mass, how readest thou the noise we hear?”

The veteran, walking at the moment between two of his guns, replied,—

“Interpret we each for himself, Señor. I am ready to fight. See!”

And drawing his cloak aside, he showed the ruddy spark of a lighted match.

“As thou seest, I am ready; yet”—and he lowered his voice—“I shame not to confess that I wish we were well out of this.”

“Good soldier art thou!” said Leon. “I will stay with thee. A la Madre todos!”

The exclamation had scarcely passed his lips when to their left and front the darkness became peopled with men in white, rushing upon them, and shouting, “Up, up, Tlateloco! O, O luilones, luilones!”[53 - Bernal Diaz, Hist. de la Conq.]

“Turn thy guns quickly, Mesa, or we are lost!” cried Leon; and to his comrades, “Swords and axes! Upon them, gentlemen! Santiago, Santiago!”

The veteran as promptly resolved himself into action. A word to his men,—then he caught a wheel with one hand, and swung the carriage round, and applied the match. The gun failed fire, but up sprang a hissing flame, and in its lurid light out came all the scene about: the infidels pouring into the street, the Tlascalans and many Spaniards in flight, Leon charging almost alone, and right amongst the guns a fighting man,—by his armor, half pagan, half Christian,—all this Mesa saw, and more,—that the slaves had abandoned the ropes, and that of the gunners the few who stood their ground were struggling for life hand to hand; still more, that the gun he was standing by looked point-blank into the densest ranks of the foe. Never word spoke he; repriming the piece, he applied the match again. The report shook the earth, and was heard and recognized by Cortes out on the causeway; but it was the veteran’s last shot. To his side sprang the ’tzin: in his ear a war-cry, on his morion a blow, and under the gun he died. When Duty loses a good servant Honor gains a hero.

The fight—or, rather, the struggle of the few against the many—went on. The ’tzin led his people boldly, and they failed him not. Leon drew together all he could of Christians and Tlascalans; then, as game to be taken at leisure, his enemy left him. Soon the fugitives following Alvarado heard a strange cry coming swiftly after them, “O, O luilones! O luilones!”

And through the rain and the night, doubly dark in the canals, Hualpa sped to the open lake, followed by nine canoes, fashioned for speed, each driven by six oarsmen, and carrying four warriors; so there were with him nine and thirty chosen men, with linked mail under their white tunics, and swords of steel on their long lances,—arms and armor of the Christians.