rless to help them, and their distress and fury may be imagined.

For five days the horrible scenes went on, the Mexicans feasting,
singing, and dancing, while their priests predicted that in eight days
the war-god, appeased by these sacrifices, would overwhelm their enemies
and deliver them into their hands. These prophecies had a great effect
upon the native allies of Cortes, who withdrew from him in immense
numbers. But the general treated their superstition with cheerful
contempt, and only bargained with the deserters to remain close by and
see what would happen. When the ninth day came, and the city was still
seen to be beset on every side, they ceased to believe in the oracle,
and returned, with their anger against the Mexicans rekindled, and their
confidence in the Spaniards greatly strengthened. At this time another
vessel loaded with stores and ammunition touched at Vera Cruz, and her
cargo was seized and sent on to Cortes by the governor. With his
strength thus renewed the Spanish general resumed active operations.
This time not a step was taken in advance without securing the entire
safety of the army, once and for all, by solidly building up the dykes,
filling every canal, and pulling down every house, so that slowly and by
degrees a bare open space was made, which took in more and more of the
town, till at last the unhappy Aztecs, after many desperate sallies,
were shut into the portion of the city which lay between the northern
and western causeways. Here famine and pestilence did their awful work
unchecked. The ordinary articles of food were long exhausted, and the
wretched people ate moss, insects, grass, weeds, or the bark of trees.
They had no fresh water. The dead were unburied, the wounded lay in
misery, yet all the endeavours of Cortes to induce Guatemozin and his
chiefs to submit were useless. Though the two divisions of the army had
proceeded with their work of destruction until they could join their
forces, and seven-eighths of the city lay in ruins, though the banner of
Castile floated undisturbed from the smouldering remains of the
sanctuary on the teocalli of the war-god, still the Aztecs defied the
conquerors, and fiercely rejected their overtures of peace.

Hundreds of famishing wretches died every day, and lay where they fell,
for there was no one to bury them. Familiarity with the spectacle made
men indifferent to it. They looked on in dumb despair waiting for their
own turn to come. There