fill up the
canals in the causeway. To this Cuitlahua, who now that Montezuma
was dead would be emperor, though he was not yet chosen and crowned,
answered that it might well be that the Teules meditated flight, but
that they could never attempt it in the darkness, since in so doing they
must become entangled in the streets and dykes.

I replied that though it was not the Aztec habit to march and fight at
night, such things were common enough among white men as they had seen
already, and that because the Spaniards knew it was not their habit,
they would be the more likely to attempt escape under cover of the
darkness, when they thought their enemies asleep. Therefore I counselled
that sentries should be set at all the entrances to every causeway.
To this Cuitlahua assented, and assigned the causeway of Tlacopan to
Guatemoc and myself, making us the guardians of its safety. That night
Guatemoc and I, with some soldiers, went out towards midnight to visit
the guard that we had placed upon the causeway. It was very dark and a
fine rain fell, so that a man could see no further before his eyes
than he can at evening through a Norfolk roke in autumn. We found and
relieved the guard, which reported that all was quiet, and we were
returning towards the great square when of a sudden I heard a dull sound
as of thousands of men tramping.

'Listen,' I said.

'It is the Teules who escape,' whispered Guatemoc.

Quickly we ran to where the street from the great square opens on to
the causeway, and there even through the darkness and rain we caught the
gleam of armour. Then I cried aloud in a great voice, 'To arms! To arms!
The Teules escape by the causeway of Tlacopan.'

Instantly my words were caught up by the sentries and passed from post
to post till the city rang with them. They were cried in every street
and canal, they echoed from the roofs of houses, and among the summits
of a hundred temples. The city awoke with a murmur, from the lake came
the sound of water beaten by ten thousand oars, as though myriads of
wild-fowl had sprung suddenly from their reedy beds. Here, there, and
everywhere torches flashed out like falling stars, wild notes were blown
on horns and shells, and above all arose the booming of the snakeskin
drum which the priests upon the teocalli beat furiously.

Presently the murmur grew to a roar, and from this direction and from
that, armed men poured towards the causeway of Tlacopan. Some came on
foot, bu