at from Mexico_

It was indeed in a serious position that Cortes found his troops,
threatened by famine, and surrounded by a hostile population. But he was
so confident of his ability to overawe the insurgents that he wrote to
that effect to the garrison of Vera Cruz, by the same dispatches in
which he informed them of his safe arrival in the capital. But scarcely
had his messenger been gone half an hour, when he returned breathless
with terror, and covered with wounds. "The city," he said, "was all in
arms! The drawbridges were raised, and the enemy would soon be upon
them!" He spoke truth. It was not long before a hoarse, sullen sound
became audible, like that of the roaring of distant waters. It grew
louder and louder; till, from the parapet surrounding the enclosure, the
great avenues which led to it might be seen dark with the masses of
warriors, who came rolling on in a confused tide towards the fortress.
At the same time, the terraces and flat roofs in the neighbourhood were
thronged with combatants brandishing their missiles, who seemed to have
risen up as if by magic. It was a spectacle to appall the stoutest.

But this was only the prelude to the disasters that were to befall the
Spaniards. The Mexicans made desperate assaults upon the Spanish
quarters, in which both sides suffered severely. At last Montezuma, at
the request of Cortes, tried to interpose. But his subjects, in fury at
what they considered his desertion of them, gave him a wound of which he
died. The position became untenable, and Cortes decided on retreat. This
was carried out at night, and owing to the failure of a plan for laying
a portable bridge across those gaps in the causeway left by the
drawbridges, the Spaniards were exposed to a fierce attack from the
natives which proved most disastrous. Caught on the narrow space of the
causeway, and forced to make their way as best they could across the
gaps, they were almost overwhelmed by the throngs of their enemies.
Cortes who, with some of the vanguard, had reached comparative safety,
dashed back into the thickest of the fight where some of his comrades
were making a last stand, and brought them out with him, so that at last
all the survivors, a sadly stricken company, reached the mainland.

The story of the reconstruction by Cortes of his shattered and
discouraged army is one of the most astonishing chapters in the whole
history of the Conquest. Wounded, impoverished, greatly reduced in
n