were somewhat dismayed at her words, and yet had a fierce joy in them.
It appeared also that she won her cause, for presently they bowed
in obeisance to her, and turning slowly she swept to my side with a
peculiar majesty of gait that even then I noted. Glancing up at her face
also, I saw that it was alight as though with a great and holy purpose,
and moreover that she looked like some happy bride passing to her
husband's arms.

'Why are you not gone, Otomie?' I said. 'Now it is too late. The
Spaniards surround the teocalli and you will be killed or taken
prisoner.'

'I await the end whatever it may be,' she answered briefly, and we spoke
no more for a while, but watched the progress of the fray, which was
fierce indeed. Grimly the Aztec warriors fought before the symbols of
their gods, and in the sight of the vast concourse of the people who
crowded the square beneath and stared at the struggle in silence. They
hurled themselves upon the Spanish swords, they gripped the Spaniards
with their hands and screaming with rage dragged them to the steep sides
of the roadway, purposing to cast them over. Sometimes they succeeded,
and a ball of men clinging together would roll down the slope and be
dashed to pieces on the stone flooring of the courtyard, a Spaniard
being in the centre of the ball. But do what they would, like some
vast and writhing snake, still the long array of Teules clad in their
glittering mail ploughed its way upward through the storm of spears and
arrows. Minute by minute and step by step they crept on, fighting as
men fight who know the fate that awaits the desecrators of the gods of
Anahuac, fighting for life, and honour, and safety from the stone of
sacrifice. Thus an hour went by, and the Spaniards were half way up
the pyramid. Louder and louder grew the fearful sounds of battle, the