ests feared
lest they should escape. I and the soldiers with me watched this sight
wondering, then I cried out:

'What! men of the Otomie, shall it be said that our women outdid us in
courage?' and without further ado, followed by a hundred or more of my
companions, I rushed desperately down the steep and narrow path.

At the first corner we met the main array of Spaniards and their allies,
coming up slowly, for now they were sure of victory, and so great was
the shock of our encounter that many of them were hurled over the edge
of the path, to roll down the steep sides of the pyramid. Seeing the
fate of their comrades, those behind them halted, then began to retreat.
Presently the weight of our rush struck them also, and they in turn
pushed upon those below, till at length panic seized them, and with a
great crying the long line of men that wound round and round the pyramid
from its base almost to its summit, sought their safety in flight. But
some of them found none, for the rush of those above pressing with ever
increasing force upon their friends below, drove many to their death,
since here on the pyramid there was nothing to cling to, and if once
a man lost his foothold on the path, his fall was broken only when his
body reached the court beneath. Thus in fifteen short minutes all that
the Spaniards had won this day was lost again, for except the prisoners
at its summit, none of them remained alive upon the teocalli; indeed so
great a terror took them, that bearing with them their dead and wounded,
they retreated under cover of the night to their camp without the walls
of the courtyard.

Now, weary but triumphant, we wended back towards the crest of the
pyramid, but as I turned the corner of the second angle that was perhaps
nearly one hundred feet above the level of the ground, a thought struck
me and I set those with me at a task. Loosening the blocks of stone that
formed the edge of the roadway, we rolled them down the sides of the
pyramid, and so laboured on removing layer upon layer of stones and
of the earth beneath, till where the path had been, was nothing but a
yawning gap thirty feet or more in width.

'Now,' I said, surveying our handiwork by the light of the rising moon,
'that Spaniard who would win our nest must find wings to fly with.'

'Ay, Teule,' answered one at my side, 'but say what wings shall WE
find?'

'The wings of Death,' I said grimly, and went on my upward way.

It was near midni