o.

All was quiet when the Spaniards crept from their refuge to try to
escape along the dyke.

It was a rainy night, and intensely dark; and with their horses' hoofs
and little cannon muffled, the Spaniards moved as quietly as possible
along the narrow bank, which stretched like a tongue from the island
city to the mainland.

[Illustration: CHURCH, PUEBLO OF ISLETA.

_See page 163._]

This dyke was cut by three broad sluices, and to cross them the soldiers
carried a portable bridge. But despite their care the savages promptly
detected the movement. Scarcely had they issued from their barracks and
got upon the dyke, when the boom of the monster war-drum, _tlapan
huehuetl_, from the summit of the pyramid of sacrifice, burst upon the
still night,--the knell of their hopes. It is an awesome sound still,
the deep bellowing of that great three-legged drum, which is used
to-day, and can be heard more than fifteen miles; and to the Spaniards
it was the voice of doom. Great bonfires shot up from the teocalli, and
they could see the savages swarming to overwhelm them.

Hurrying as fast as their wounds and burdens would permit, the Spaniards
reached the first sluice in safety. They threw their bridge over the
gulf, and began crossing. Then the Indians came swarming in their canoes
at either side of the dyke, and attacked with characteristic ferocity.
The beset soldiers fought as they struggled on. But as the artillery was
crossing the bridge it broke, and down went cannon, horses, and men
forever. Then began the indescribable horrors of "The Sad Night." There
was no retreat for the Spaniards, for they were assailed on every side.
Those behind were pushing on, and there was no staying even for that gap
of black water. Over the brink man and horse were crowded in the
darkness, and still those behind came on, until at last the channel was
choked with corpses, and the survivors floundered across the chaos of
their dead. Velasquez, the leader of the vanguard, was slain, and
Spaniard and Tlaxcaltecan were falling like wheat before the sickle. The
second sluice, as well as each side of the dyke, was blocked with
canoes full of savage warriors; and there was another sanguinary melee
until this gap too was filled with slain, and over the bridge of human
corpses the fugitives gained the other bank. Alvarado, fighting with the
rearmost to hold in check the savages who followed along the dyke, was
the last to cross; and before he could