d been
sorted out to be sold as slaves, he suffered the rest of that melancholy
company to depart whither they would. And so they went, though what
became of them I do not know.

That night we spent in the courtyard of the teocalli, but before it was
light I caused the women and children who remained with us, perhaps some
six hundred in all, for very few of the former who were unmarried, or
who being married were still young and comely, had chosen to desert our
refuge, to ascend the pyramid, guessing that the Spaniards would attack
us at dawn. I stayed, however, with the three hundred fighting men that
were left to me, a hundred or more having thrown themselves upon the
mercy of the Spaniards, with the refugees, to await the Spanish onset
under shelter of the walls of the courtyard. At dawn it began, and by
midday, do what we could to stay it, the wall was stormed, and leaving
nearly a hundred dead and wounded behind me, I was driven to the winding
way that led to the summit of the pyramid. Here they assaulted us again,
but the road was steep and narrow, and their numbers gave them no great
advantage on it, so that the end of it was that we beat them back with
loss, and there was no more fighting that day.

The night which followed we spent upon the summit of the pyramid, and
for my part I was so weary that after I had eaten I never slept more
soundly. Next morning the struggle began anew; and this time with better
success to the Spaniards. Inch by inch under cover of the heavy fire
from their arquebusses and pieces, they forced us upward and backward.
All day long the fight continued upon the narrow road that wound from
stage to stage of the pyramid. At length, as the sun sank, a company of
our foes, their advance guard, with shouts of victory, emerged upon the
flat summit, and rushed towards the temple in its centre. All this while
the women had been watching, but now one of them sprang up, crying with
a loud voice:

'Seize them; they are but few.'

Then with a fearful scream of rage, the mob of women cast themselves
upon the weary Spaniards and Tlascalans, bearing them down by the weight
of their numbers. Many of them were slain indeed, but in the end the
women conquered, ay, and made their victims captive, fastening them
with cords to the rings of copper that were let into the stones of the
pavement, to which in former days those doomed to sacrifice had been
secured, when their numbers were so great that the pri