after charge they made to keep back the advancing foe, through the shower of blinding missiles, against the line of bristling lances, amidst the whirling swords and clubs, until not a rider but felt his arm droop and his body grow faint with loss of blood. Sandoval himself had a number of wounds. "For God's sake make haste and retire," he cried to his foot-soldiers, "or we shall all be lost!"
Finally the passage was clear, and they fell back along the causeway, still fighting, and now exposed to the canoe sallies. On reaching his quarters, Alvarado turned two cannon against the swarm which sought to scale the camp, and this with the fusillade procured a much needed respite.[1] It was time, for the increasing darkness would soon have added fresh dangers to the retreat. Sandoval had already hurried away with a solitary companion to seek the camp of Cortés and calm his fears.[2] With a similar object Andrés de Tápia had been sent with three horsemen from Fort Xoloc to Alvarado's camp, where he arrived with some scars from marauding stragglers. Not wishing to discourage the soldiers, he reduced the losses of his party to quite a small number, and made light of the matter.
By this time the enemy had retired, but from the city rose their shouts of triumph, and every temple was ablaze with fires to celebrate the victory. The summit of the Tlatelulco pyramid, the highest of them all, was the scene of great commotion, and soon the sombre notes of the melancholy drum called to it attention. A number of instruments now added their discordant notes, in clash and blast, and a procession
- ↑ The artillerists being all disabled or dead, Pedro Moreno de Medrano, afterward a settler at Puebla, took their place. Id.
- ↑ Bernal Diaz writes as if Sandoval gained the camp at an early hour, rode over to Fort Xoloc, and came back in time to aid in Alvarado's retreat. But he would never have ventured to leave his command and his comrade in their danger; nor does it seem likely that he could have ridden the long distance to Xoloc and back in time to join in Alvarado's conflict, even if Cortés' defeat took place before 'misa mayor,' as he assumes. Hist. Verdad., 146-8. This author is here very confused, assuming, for instance, that Sandoval was fighting from his own camp instead of coöperating near Alvarado.
