Meantime the reappearance of the barbarians seemed to cut off the last
hope of escape from Amador and his companion; but the magician,
answering the cavalier's sullen look of despair with a laugh, and
pointing to the little star, which still made its way up the cloudy arch
along with the moon, said, dragging him at the same time towards the
artillery,
"What the spirits say, is true! All this said they, of De Morla.--May he
rest with God--Amen! Fear not; be of good heart:--while the star shines,
there is hope,--and hope for both; for though I have not yet read thy
fate in full, still, while thou art at my side, thou canst be in no
great peril. At the worst, and when the worst comes, it is written, that
eagles shall come down from heaven, and bear me away on their
backs.--Hast thou never a flint and dry tinder, to light me a linstock?
Here hath some knavish gunner left his piece charged, and the grains of
sulphur still heaped up from rimbase to cascable. A good roar now might
do marvels.--Quick! they are upon us.--Fling thee under the wheels, and
look but as dead as thou didst erewhile, till the cut-throats be
passed.--Hah! 'fore God, dost thou hear?" he exclaimed, suddenly leaping
up.--"Kalidon, soho, brave imp! and thou shalt be a-galloping
yet!--Hearest thou that shout, like the clang of a bugle on a
hill-top?--'Tis Cortes! and he cometh!"
It was even as the magician had said. From the moment that De Morla took
the fatal leap, the rowers ceased paddling in their canoes, as if
certain of his fate, or unwilling to follow so feeble a prey, and
remained huddled together, as though they awaited the approach of a more
tempting quarry. They had not perceived the two companions. Just as
Botello was about to creep under a falconet, around whose wheels the
corses lay very thick, the strong voice of Cortes was heard rising over
the din, which, at some quarter or other of the causeway, was kept up
incessantly during the whole conflict. It echoed again, sustained and
strengthened by the voices of a considerable party.
"They approach!" said Botello. "They are a-horse too; I hear the
trampling. God quicken the rear! Methought there were many who followed
me."
"Hark!" cried the cavalier. "The foul knaves desert us! their voices are
weaker; they fly again to the land!"
"Here's that which shall fetch them back, if they be men!" exclaimed
Botello, catching up a port-fuse not yet extinguished, striking it on
his arm to shake off the ashes, and whirling it in the air till it
glowed and almost blazed. "It will show them, there be some living yet;
and, with God's blessing, will scatter yon ambushed heathen like
plashing water-drops. _Ojala!_ and all ye fiends of air and water, of
earth and of hell, that are waiting for pagan souls, carry my hail-shot
true, and have at your prey!"
So saying, the conjurer applied the match. The roar of the explosion was
succeeded not only by the yells of Mexicans, dying in their broken
canoes, or paddling away from so dangerous a vicinity, but by Spanish
shouts, both on the rear and in front.
"On, brave hearts!" cried Cortes; "there be bold knaves yet at the
ordnance!"
The next moment the little band of horse that headed the relief, sprang
into the lake, and swimming aside, so as to avoid the sunken bodies, and
the bales still floating in the ditch, crossed over to the cannon; while
a large body of men, arranged with such order, that they blocked up the
whole causeway from side to side, came marching up from the rear,
fighting as they fled, and still valiantly resisting the multitudes that
pursued both on the dike and in the water.
"Thanks be to God!" cried Don Hernan, rejoiced that so many lived, and
yet appalled at the numbers and ferocious determination of the foes, who
still, like venomous insects following the persecuted herd, pursued
whithersoever the Christians fled. "Art thou alive, De Leon?--Praised be
St. James, who listened to my prayer! Turn ye now, and let us succour
the rest."
"They are in heaven," said De Leon, with a faint voice, for he was
severely wounded, as indeed were all his crew. "Push on, in the name of
God, all who can swim.--The others must perish."
"Hold! stay!" exclaimed Cortes. "Fling the cannon into the
sluice.--Think not of the enemy. Heave over my good falconets: they will
make a bridge for ye all."
The wounded footmen seized upon the guns, with the energy of despair;
and flinging over the ropes to that company of their fellow infantry who
had followed Don Hernan, and now stood on the opposite side, the pieces
were pushed and dragged into the water, and, together with the mass of
corses already deposited in that fatal chasm, made such a footing for
the infantry as enabled many to pass in safety. Among these was Don
Amador de Leste, his hand grasped by the faithful magician, who
perceived that he was sunk into such sluggishness of despair, that he
must have perished, if left to himself.
It is not to be supposed that this passage was effected without
opposition and loss. On the contrary, the barbarians redoubled their
exertions; and while many rested at a distance, shooting whole clouds of
arrows, others pushed their canoes boldly up to the gap, and there slew
many taken at such disadvantage.
Nevertheless, the passage was at last effected, and the footmen, joining
themselves to their fellows, and forming, as before, twenty deep,
followed the horsemen towards the shore.
"Hold!" shouted Botello, when the party was about to start. "Save your
captain, ye knaves of the rear!--Save De Leon! the valiant Velasquez!"
A few, roused by this cry, and heedless of the shafts shot at them,
rushed back to the brink, and beheld the wounded and forgotten captain,
in the water, struggling in the arms of two brawny barbarians, who
strove to drag him into a canoe. While his followers stood hesitating,
not knowing how to give him aid, the little vessel, agitated by his
struggles, which were tremendous, suddenly overset, and captive and
capturers fell together into the water. The two warriors were presently
seen swimming towards a neighbouring canoe; and De Leon, strangling
under the flood, heaved not his last groan on the gory block of
sacrifice.
The fugitives paused not to lament; they resumed their march, and gained
the last ditch.
The events of that march, and of the passage of that ditch, are, like
the others, a series of horrors. Enough has been narrated to picture out
the dreadful punishment of men who acknowledged no rights but those of
power, and preferred to rob a weak and childish race with insult and
murder, rather than to subdue them, as could have been done, by the arts
of peace. In the sole incident which remains to be mentioned, we record
the fate of an individual whose influence had been felt through most of
the events of the invasion, in many cases beneficially, but, in this,
disastrously enough. This was the enchanter, Botello,--a man just shrewd
enough to deceive himself; which is, in other words, to say, that he
mingled in his own person so much cunning with so much credulity, that
the former was ever the victim of the latter. The devoutness of his own
belief in the efficacy of his arts, was enough to secure them the
respect and reverence of the common herd, as well as of better men, in
an age of superstition. How much confidence was given to them by Cortes,
does not clearly appear in the older historians; but it is plain, he
turned them to great advantage, and had the art sometimes to make the
stars, as well as Kalidon of the Crystal, furnish revelations of his own
hinting; and, it is suspected, not without grounds, that this very
nocturnal flight, projected originally under the impression that the
barbarians would not go into battle after night-fall, and, when the
later events of the siege had disproved this hope, still persisted in
from the persuasion that no Mexican would handle a weapon on the day of
an emperor's burial, was conceived in the brain of the general before it
was counselled by the lips of Botello.
At all events, the enchanter did not, this night, manifest any doubt in
his own powers. With a strange and yet natural inconsistency, he seemed
to rejoice over the slaughter of his countrymen, as over the
confirmation of his predictions. Twice or thrice, at least, he muttered,
and once even in the thick of combat, to Don Amador, by whose side he
ever walked, at the head of the retreating party,--
"I said, this night we should retreat--we have retreated: I said, there
should be death for many, and safety for some--the many are at rest,
(God receive their souls, and angels carry them to the seats of
bliss!)--and some of us are saved."
"Be not over-quick in thy consummations," said Amador. "We are here now
at the third ditch, which is both wide and deep, and no bodies to bridge
it; and seest thou not how the yelling curs are paddling in to oppose
us?"
"Bodies enow!" cried the enchanter. "To-morrow, at midday, when the sun
is hottest, ye shall see corses lying along on both sides of the causey,
like the corks of a fisherman's net; and at the ditches, they will come
up like ants out of the earth, when a dead caterpillar falls at their
door. Yet say I, we shall be saved, and thou shalt see it; for I
remember how thou didst carve the back of that knave that lay on me in
the streets of Mexico; and I will carve a dozen for thee in like manner,
ere dawn, on this causeway."
"Boast no more: such confidence offends heaven; for thy life hangs here
as loosely as another's."
"The star! the star!" cried Botello, "the dim little star! is it not
shining? The morning comes after it, and the eagles are waking on the
hills. They will snuff the battle, they will shriek to the vultures, to
the crows, and the gallinazas, and down will they come together to the
lake-side and the lake. At eventide, ye will see dead men floating about
in the wind, and on the breast of each a feeding raven; but devils shall
be perched on the corses of the heathen!"
"Heaven quit me of thy wild words, for they sound to me unnatural and
damnable, as though spoken by one of those same demons thou thinkest
of.--Speak no more.--Look to thy life; for it is in jeopardy."
"Hast thou not seen me in the battle? and, lo you now, I have not a
scratch!" said the enthusiast. "I have fought on the dike, when there
were twelve men of us, good men, bold and true: eleven were slain, but
here am I untouched by flint, unbruised by stone, unhurt by arrow. I
fought three screeching infidels in the water, hard by to where two
valiant cavaliers were pulled off their horses, and so smothered; and
yet strangled I my heathens, without horse to help, or friend to say God
speed me. The life that is charmed is invulnerable; the star shines, the
eagle leaves her nest, and Kalidon-Sadabath laughs in the
crystal.--Viva! Lo now, how Sandoval, the valiant, will scatter me yon
imps in the boats! He spurs into the water; Catalan the Left-handed,
Juan of Salamanca, Torpo the Growler, Ferdinand of Bilboa, and De Olid
the Devil's Ketch, they spring after him!--There they go! Dance,
Kalidon! thy brothers shall have souls, to be fetched up from the mud as
one rakes up clams of a fish-day. Crowd hell with damned
heathens:--there be more to follow!"
Never before had such life possessed the spirits of Botello. He stood on
the edge of the causey, shouting loud vivas, as the bold cavaliers
rushed among the canoes that blocked up the sluice. The novice, though
shocked at such untimely exultation, was not able to avoid it; for he
was enfeebled, and Botello held him with a fast and determined gripe.
"Unhand me, conjurer," he cried, "and I will swim the ditch."
"Tarry a little, till the path be made clear: thou wilt be murdered
else."
"I shall be murdered, if I remain here; and so wilt thou.--Hah! did that
shaft hurt thee?"
"Never a jot; how could it? There flies not the arrow this night, there
waves not the bludgeon, that can shed my blood."
"Art thou besotted?--God forgive thee!--this is impiety."
The magician held his peace; for about this time, the Mexicans, knowing
that this band, diminished, disordered, and divided by the ditch into
two feeble parties, was the sole remaining fragment of oppression, and
determined that no invader should escape alive, rushed upon the causeway
on all sides with such savage violence as seemed irresistible. Those who
had not yet crossed, broke in affright, and flung themselves into the
sluice with such speed, that, in a few moments, Don Amador began to
think that he and Botello were the only Christians left.
"Why dost thou hold me, madman?" he cried. "Let me free."
"Hark! dost thou not hear?--there are Christian men behind us," said
Botello.--"Courage! What if these devils be thicker than the thoughts of
sin in man's heart, fiercer than conscience, deadlier than remorse; yet
shall we pass them unharmed.--Patience! 'Tis the voice of a Spaniard, I
tell thee, and behind!"
"It is in front:--hark! 'tis Don Hernan!"
"It is behind, and it is the cry of Alvarado! Let us return, and give
him aid. Ho, ye that fly! return! the Tonatiuh is shouting behind us:
will ye desert him?--Return, return!"
Before Amador could remonstrate, the lunatic, for at this moment, more
than any other, Botello seemed to deserve the name, had dragged him to
the top of the dike, where he stood exposed to the view and the shots
of the foe. A thousand arrows were aimed at the pair.
"Thou art a dead man!" said Amador.
"Dost thou not see the star?" cried the magician, impatiently. "Not a
bird hath yet flapped her wing, not an eagle hath fled from her cliff;
and my star, my star----"
As he spoke, he let go his hold of the cavalier, to point exultingly at
the diminutive luminary. At that very instant, an arrow, aimed close at
hand, struck the neophyte on the breast, entering the mail at a place
rent by blows of a previous day, and, without wounding him, forced its
way out through links hitherto uninjured.
"Hah!" said the cavalier, as the arm of Botello fell heavily on his
shoulder.--"Art thou taught wisdom and humility, at last? Let us
descend, and swim."
As he moved, he became sensible that the shaft was still sticking in his
hauberk. He grasped the feathered notch--the head was in the
astrologer's heart. The stout wood snapped, as Botello fell. It struck
him in the moment of his greatest hope. He dropped down a dead man.
While Amador stood confounded and struck with horror, he was seized, he
knew not by whom, and suddenly found himself dragged through the water.
Before he could well commend his soul to heaven, for he thought himself
in the hands of the enemy, he beheld himself on firm land, while the
voice of Cortes shouted in his ear,--
"Rouse thee, and die not like a sleeper! Hold me by the hand, and my
good horse shall drag thee through the melee--I would sooner that my arm
were hacked off than that thou shouldst sleep in the accursed lake:
enough of thy blood rests in it, with Don Gabriel."
"Ay," thought the unhappy cavalier, "enough of my blood, and all of my
heart. Don Gabriel, De Morlar, Lazaro, Lorenzo, and--ay, and Leila!
Better that I were with them!"
A sudden cry from beyond the ditch interrupted his griefs.
"Pause, pause!" cried the voice. "Leave me not!--I am nigh!--I am
Alvarado!"
The cavaliers looked back at these words, and beheld a man come flying,
as it were, through the air over the ditch, perched on the top of a long
Chinantlan spear, the bottom of which was hidden in the water. He fell
quite clear of the sluice, after making a leap which even his comrades,
who had not individually seen it, held impossible for mortal man, and
which, even to this day, has preserved to the spot the name of the
Salto, or leap, of Alvarado.
The appearance of the Tonatiuh was hailed with shouts of joy; and the
Spaniards, receiving it as a good omen, closed their ranks, and slowly,
for every inch was contested, fought their way to the shore. When they
trode upon the firm ground, the little star had vanished in the gray
beams of morning; and a thick mist rising up from the water like a
curtain, concealed from the eyes of the fugitives, along with the
accursed signal-fire, the fatal towers and temples of Mexico.
Thus closed a night of horror and wo, memorable as the _Noche Triste_,
or Melancholy Night, of Mexican history, and paralleled perhaps, in
modern days, if we consider the loss of the retreating army as compared
with its numbers, only by the famous and most lamentable passage of the
Berezina. More than four thousand Tlascalans, and five hundred
Spaniards, were left dead on the causeway, or in the lake. Of the
prisoners, but two or three escaped; two sons and as many daughters of
Montezuma, with five tributary kings, as well as many princes and
nobles, perished. All the cannon were utterly lost, left to rust and rot
in the salt flood that had so often resounded to their roar; and of more
than an hundred proud war-steeds that champed the bit so fiercely at
midnight, scarce twenty jaded hacks snuffed the breath of morning.
With this broken and lamenting force, with foes still hanging on his
rear, and ever flying from his front, Cortes set out to seek a path, by
new and unknown mountains, to the distant Tlascala. He turned his eyes
but once towards the lake,--the pagan city was hidden among the mists,
and the shouts of victorious Mexicans came but faintly to the ear. He
beat his breast, and shedding such tears as belong to defeated hopes and
the memory of the dead, resumed his post at the head of the fugitives.