ion wagons, heavy guns,
bales of rich stuffs scattered over the waters, chests of solid ingots,
and bodies of men and horses, till over this dismal ruin a passage was
gradually formed, by which those in the rear were enabled to clamber to
the other side. Cortes, it is said, found a place that was fordable,
where, halting, with the water up to his saddle girths, he endeavoured
to check the confusion, and lead his followers by a safer path to the
opposite bank. But his voice was lost in the wild uproar, and finally,
hurrying on with the tide, he pressed forward with a few trusty
cavaliers, who remained near his person, to the van; but not before he
had seen his favorite page, Juan de Salazar, struck down, a corpse, by
his side. Here he found Sandoval and his companions, halting before the
third and last breach, endeavouring to cheer on their followers to
surmount it. But their resolution faltered. It was wide and deep; though
the passage was not so closely beset by the enemy as the preceding ones.
The cavaliers again set the example by plunging into the water. Horse
and foot followed as they could, some swimming, others with dying grasp
clinging to the manes and tails of the struggling animals. Those fared
best, as the general had predicted, who traveled lightest; and many were
the unfortunate wretches, who, weighed down by the fatal gold which they
loved so well, were buried with it in the salt floods of the lake.
Cortes, with his gallant comrades, Olid, Morla, Sandoval, and some few
others, still kept in the advance, leading his broken remnant off the
fatal causeway. The din of battle lessened in the distance; when the
rumor reached them, that the rearguard would be wholly overwhelmed
without speedy relief. It seemed almost an act of desperation; but the
generous hearts of the Spanish cavaliers did not stop to calculate
danger, when the cry for succour reached them. Turning their horses'
bridles, they galloped back to the theatre of action, worked their way
through the press, swam the canal, and placed themselves in the thick of
the melee on the opposite bank.

The first grey of the morning was now coming over the waters. It showed
the hideous confusion of the scene which had been shrouded in the
obscurity of night. The dark masses of combatants, stretching along the
dike, were seen struggling for mastery, until the very causeway on which
they stood appeared to tremble, and reel to and fro, as if shaken by an
earthquake