the houses like bees stifled in a hive, and in the streets they lay so
thick that we walked upon them.

The council was summoned--fierce men, haggard with hunger and with war,
and they considered the offer of Cortes.

'What is your word, Guatemoc?' said their spokesman at last.

'Am I Montezuma, that you ask me? I swore to defend this city to the
last,' he answered hoarsely, 'and, for my part, I will defend it. Better
that we should all die, than that we should fall living into the hands
of the Teules.'

'So say we,' they replied, and the war went on.


At length there came a day when the Spaniards made a new attack and
gained another portion of the city. There the people were huddled
together like sheep in a pen. We strove to defend them, but our arms
were weak with famine. They fired into us with their pieces, mowing us
down like corn before the sickle. Then the Tlascalans were loosed upon
us, like fierce hounds upon a defenceless buck, and on this day it is
said that there died forty thousand people, for none were spared. On
the morrow, it was the last day of the siege, came a fresh embassy from
Cortes, asking that Guatemoc should meet him. The answer was the same,
for nothing could conquer that noble spirit.

'Tell him,' said Guatemoc, 'that I will die where I am, but that I will
hold no parley with him. We are helpless, let Cortes work his pleasure
on us.'