both of us won through safely we saw each other no more that night. With
us and after us came the long array of Spaniards and Tlascalans,
and from every side the Aztecs poured upon them, clinging to their
struggling line as ants cling to a wounded worm.

How can I tell all that came to pass that night? I cannot, for I saw
but little of it. All I know is that for two hours I was fighting like
a madman. The foe crossed the first canal, but when all were over the
bridge was sunk so deep in the mud that it could not be stirred, and
three furlongs on ran a second canal deeper and wider than the first.
Over this they could not cross till it was bridged with the dead. It
seemed as though all hell had broken loose upon that narrow ridge of
ground. The sound of cannons and of arquebusses, the shrieks of agony
and fear, the shouts of the Spanish soldiers, the war-cries of the
Aztecs, the screams of wounded horses, the wail of women, the hiss of
hurtling darts and arrows, and the dull noise of falling blows went up
to heaven in one hideous hurly-burly. Like a frightened mob of cattle
the long Spanish array swayed this way and that, bellowing as it swayed.
Many rolled down the sides of the causeway to be slaughtered in the
water of the lake, or borne away to sacrifice in the canoes, many were
drowned in the canals, and yet more were trampled to death in the mud.
Hundreds of the Aztecs perished also, for the most part beneath the
weapons of their own friends, who struck and shot not knowing on whom
the blow should fall or in whose breast the arrow would find its home.

For my part I fought on with a little band of men who had gathered about
me, till at last the dawn broke and showed an awful sight. The most of
those who were left alive of the Spaniards and their allies had crossed
the second canal upon a bridge made of the dead bodies of their fellows
mixed up with a wreck of baggage, cannon, and packages of treasure. Now