Calavar Part 32

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII.

The distance between the great temple and the palace of Axajacatl was by no means great; though Cortes, for the purpose of prying into many streets, had led his followers against it by a long and circuitous course,--a plan which had been followed by Don Gonzalo, though in another direction. Indeed they were not so far separated, but that a strong bowman or a good slinger might, from the top of the pyramid, drive his missile upon the roof of the garrison, to the great injury of the besieged, as was, afterwards, fully made manifest. The distance, therefore, to be won by the retreating Spaniards, was small; but it took them hours to accomplish it. It seemed as if the infidels, fearing lest their foes might escape out of their hands, if they slackened their efforts for a moment, were resolved to effect their destruction at any cost, while they were still at a distance from succour. They pressed ferociously and rapidly on the fugitives; they gained their front; and thus encompa.s.sed them with a compact ma.s.s of human beings, against which the cavaliers charged, as against a stone wall; slaying and trampling, indeed, but without penetrating it for more than a few yards. Each step gained by the van, was literally carved by the cavalry, as out of a rock; while the utmost exertions of Don Hernan could do nothing more than preserve his rear band in the att.i.tude of a dike, slowly moving before the shocks of a flood, which it could not repel.

In addition to these alarming circ.u.mstances, there were others now developed, of a not less serious aspect. The ca.n.a.ls that, in two or three places, intersected the street, were swarming with canoes, from which the savages discharged their arrows with fatal aim, or sprang, at once, upon the footmen, striking with spear and maquahuitl, and were driven back only after the most strenuous efforts. They had destroyed the bridges, and the ca.n.a.ls could only be pa.s.sed by renewing them with such planks as the infantry could tear from the adjoining houses, and hastily throw over the water,--a work of no less suffering than time and labour. Besides all this, the annoyance which Don Hernan had first dreaded, was now practised by the crafty barbarians. The terraces were covered with armed men, who, besides discharging their darts and arrows down upon the exposed soldiers, tore away, with levers, the stones from the battlements, and hurled them full upon the heads of their enemies.

The sound of drums and conches, the fierce yells, the whistling, the dying screams, the loud and hurried prayers, the neighing of horses--and now and then the shriek of some beast mangled by a rough spear,--the rattling of arrow-heads, the clang of clubs upon iron bucklers, the heavy fall of a huge stone crushing a footman to the earth, the plunging of some wounded wretch strangling in a ditch, and the roar of cannon at the palace, showing that the battle was universal,--these together, now made up such a chorus of h.e.l.lish sounds as Don Amador confessed to himself he had never heard before, not even among the horrors of Rhodes, when sacked by other infidels, then esteemed the most valiant in the world. But to these dismal tumults others were speedily added, when Cortes, raging with a fury that increased with his despair, commanded the footmen to fire every house, whose top afforded footing to the ferocious foe,--a command that was obeyed with good will, and with dreadful effect; for though, from the nature of its materials, and the isolated condition of each structure, it was not possible to produce a general conflagration, yet the great quant.i.ty of cotton robes, of dry mats, and of resinous woods about each house, left it so combustible, that the application of a torch to the door-curtains, or the casting of a fire-brand into the interior, instantly enveloped it in flames. Among these, when they burst through the roofs of light rafters, and the thatching of dried reeds, the pagan warriors perished miserably; or, flinging themselves desperately down, were either dashed to pieces, or transfixed by the lances of the Spaniards.

But the same agent which so dreadfully paralyzed the efforts of the Mexican, brought suffering scarcely less disastrous to the Christian ranks. They were stifled with the smoke, they were scorched by the flames of the burning houses; and, ever and anon, some frantic barbarian, perishing among the fires of his dwelling, and seeking to inflict a horrid vengeance, grasped, even in his death-gasp, a flaming rafter in his arms, and sprang down with it upon his foes, maiming and scorching where he did not kill.

Thus fighting, and thus resisted, weary and despairing, their bodies covered with blood, their garments sometimes burning, the Spaniards at last gained the square that surrounded the palace; and fighting their way through the herds that invested it, (for, almost at the same moment that they had been attacked at the temple, the quarters were again a.s.sailed,) and shouting to the cannoniers, lest they should fire on them, they placed their feet in the court-yard, and thanked G.o.d for this respite to their sufferings.

It was a respite from death, for behind the stone wall they were comparatively secure; but not a respite from labour. The Mexicans abated not a jot of their ardour. The same herds that covered the square at dawn, were again yelling at the gates, and with the same unconquerable fury; and the soldiers, already fainting with fatigue, with famine, and thirst, (for they had taken no refreshment since the preceding evening,) were fain to purchase, painfully, a temporary safety, by standing to the walls, and keeping the savages at bay, as they could.

The artillery thundered, the cross-bows tw.a.n.ged, the arquebuses added their destructive volleys to the other warlike noises; but the Mexicans, disregarding these sounds, as well as the havoc made among their ranks, rushed, in repeated a.s.saults, against the walls, and, sometimes, with such violence, that they drove the besieged from the gate, and entered pell-mell with them into the court-yard. Then, indeed, ensued a scene of murder; for the Christians, flying again to the portal, cut off the retreat of such desperadoes, and slew them within the walls, without loss, and almost at their leisure.

On such occasions, no one showed more spirit in attacking, or more fury in slaying, than the young secretary. The suit of goodly armour sent him by the admiral, and his rapid proficiency in the practice of arms, had inflamed his vanity; and he burned to approve himself worthy the companionship of cavaliers. The native conscientiousness which filled him with horror at the sight of the first blood shed, the first life destroyed, by his hand, had vanished as a dream; for it is the excellence of war, that, while developing our true nature, and remaining, itself, as the link which binds man to his original state of barbarism, it preserves him the delights of a savage, without entirely depriving him of the pleasures of civilization. The right of shedding blood, mankind enjoy in common with brutes; and, doubtless, a conformable philosophy will not frown on the privilege, so long as the loss of it would contract our circle of enjoyments. There is something poetical in the diabolism of a fiend, and as much that is splendid in the ferocity of a tiger; and though these two qualities be the chief elements of heroism, they bring with them such accompaniments of splendour and sentiment, that he would rob the world of half its glory, as well as much of its poetry, who should destroy the race of the great, and leave mankind to the dull innocence of peace.--There are more millions of human beings, the victims of war, rotting under the earth, than now move on its surface.

The pain of wounds had also produced a new effect in the bosom of Lorenzo; for, instead of cooling his courage, it now inflamed his rage, and helped to make him valiant. The mild and feeling boy was quite transformed into a heartless ruffian; and so great had become his love of slaughter, and so unscrupulous his manner of gratifying it, that, once or twice, Don Amador noticed him, and would have censured him sharply, but that his attention was immediately absorbed by the necessity of self-defence. The cavaliers had dismounted, and the neophyte fought at the gates on foot. In the midst of an a.s.sault, in which the defenders had been driven back, but which disgrace they were now repairing, he beheld his ward struggling with a wounded savage, who grasped his knees and hand, but in intreaty, not hostility; and greatly was Don Amador shocked, when he beheld the secretary disengage his arm, and, with a shout of triumph, plunge his steel into the throat of the supplicating barbarian.

"Art thou a devil, Lorenzo?" cried the cavalier, indignantly. "That was a knave's and a coward's blow! Thou shalt follow me no longer."

While he spoke, and left himself unguarded, a gigantic pagan, taking advantage of his indiscretion, leaped suddenly upon him, and struck him such a blow with a maquahuitl, as, but for the strength of his casque, would have killed him outright. As it was, the shock so stunned him, as to leave him for a moment, incapable of defence. In that moment, the savage, uttering a loud yell, sprang forward to repeat the blow, or to drag him off a prisoner; when Fabueno, perceiving the extremity of his patron, and fired with the opportunity of proving his valour, rushed between them, and with a lucky blow on the naked neck of the Mexican, instantly despatched him.

"A valiant stroke, Lorenzo!" said the neophyte, losing somewhat of his heat, as he recovered his wits. "But it does not entirely wipe out the shame of the other. Moderate thy wrath, curb thy fury, and remember that cruelty is the mark of a dastard. Strike me no more foes that cry for mercy!"

As his anger had been changed into approbation, so now were his censures abruptly ended by exclamations of surprise. For at that instant, Fabueno, grasping his arm with one hand, and with the other pointing a little to one side, turned upon him a countenance full of alarm. He looked around, and beheld with amazement, his kinsman, Don Gabriel, entirely unarmed, except with sword and buckler, mingled with the combatants, shouting a feeble war-cry, striking faintly, and, indeed, preserved less by his courage than his appearance, from the bludgeons of the infidels. His grizzly locks (for he was entirely bare-headed,) fell over his hollow and bloodless cheeks, whereon glittered, black and hideous, a single gout of gore. His face was like the face of the dead; and the savages recoiled from before him, as if from a spirit rousing from Mictlan, the world of gloom, to call them down to his dark dwelling.

In a moment the neophyte, followed by Fabueno, and Lazaro, who answered to his call, and Marco, who seemed to have been separated by the melee from his master, was at the side of Calavar. The mind of the knight was wholly gone; and he seemed as if, at the point of death, raised from his couch by the clamours of the contest, and urged into it by the instinct of long habit, or by the goadings of madness.

He submitted patiently, and without words, to the gentle violence of his kinsman, and was straightway carried to his apartment.

CHAPTER x.x.xIX.

After much search and persuasion, a surgeon was found and induced to visit the knight. He despatched his questions almost in a word, for he was a fighting Bachelor, and burned with impatience to return to the contest. He mingled hastily a draught, which he affirmed to be of wondrous efficacy in composing disordered minds to sleep, gave a few simple directions, and excusing his haste in the urgency of his other occupations, both military and chirurgical, he immediately departed.

"Marco!" said the neophyte, when the draught was administered, and Don Gabriel laid on the couch, "thou deservest the heaviest punishment for leaving thy master an instant, though, as thou sayest, while fast asleep. Remain by him now, and be more faithful. As for thee, Lorenzo,"

he continued, to the secretary, who stood panting at his side, "there is good reason thou shouldst share the task of Marco, were it only to repose thee a little; but more need is it, that thou suffer thy blood to cool, and reflect, with shame, that thou hast, this day, cancelled all thy good deeds, by killing a prostrate and beseeching foe. Remain, therefore, to a.s.sist Marco; and by-and-by I will come to thee, and declare whether or not thou shalt draw thy sword again to-day."

And thus leaving his kinsman to the care of the two followers, and beckoning Lazaro along, Don Amador returned to the court-yard and the conflict.

The history of the remainder of the day (it was now noon,) is a weary tale of blood. Wounds could not check, nor slaughter subdue, the animosity of the besiegers; and the Spaniards, tired even of killing, hoped no longer for victory over men who seemed to fight with no object but to die, and who rushed up as readily to the mouth of a cannon, whose vent was already blazing under the linstock, as to the spears that bristled with fatal opposition at the gates.

But night came at last, and with it a hope to end the sufferings that were already intolerable. The hope was vain. The barbarians, apparently incapable of fatigue, or perhaps yielding their places to fresh combatants, continued the a.s.sault even with increasing vigour and boldness. They rushed against the court-wall with heavy beams,--rude battering-rams,--with which they thought to shake it to its foundations, and thus deprive the Christians of their greatest safeguard. In certain spots they succeeded; and the soldiers cursed the day of their birth, as the ruins fell crashing to the ground, and they saw themselves reduced to the alternative of filling the breaches with their bodies, or remaining to perish where they stood. It is true, that in this kind of defence, as well as under other urgent difficulties, they received good and manly aid from their numerous allies, the Tlascalans, who fought, during the whole day, with a spirit and cheerfulness that put many a repining Castilian to shame. But these, though battling equally for their lives, were incapable of withstanding long the unexampled violence of the a.s.saults; and it was soon found that the naked bodies of the Tlascalans offered but slight impediment to the frenzied Mexicans.

The Spaniards, in the expedient used to drive the citizens from their house-tops, had taught them a mode of warfare which they were not slow to adopt. The palace was of a solid structure, and seemed to bid defiance to flames. But the same cedars that finished the interior of meaner houses, formed its floors and ceilings; every chamber was covered with mats, and most of them were hung with the most inflammable kind of tapestry. In addition to this, the five thousand Tlascalans, who had been left with Alvarado, and who slept in the court-yard, besides strewing the earth with rushes--their humble couches--had constructed along the walls of the palace itself, many rude arbours, or rather kennels, of reeds from the lake, to shelter them from the vicissitudes of the rainy season, which had, already, in part, set in. And, to crown all, the cavaliers, whose horses, as they well knew, were each worth a thousand Tlascalans, had caused stalls to be constructed for them, wherein they were better protected from the weather, than their fellow-animals, the allies. With these arrangements, the Mexicans were well acquainted.

No sooner, therefore, had they succeeded in beating down several breaches in the wall, and found that they could sometimes drive the besieged from them, than they made trial of the expedient. They rushed together against the walls in a general a.s.sault, waving firebrands and torches, which those who forced their way through the breaches, applied to the stalls and arbours, or scattered over the beds of the Tlascalans.

The dying incendiary, pierced with a dozen spears, ended his life with a laugh of joy, as he beheld the flames burst ruddily up to his brand.

The misery of the Spaniards was now complete. They were parched with thirst. The sweet fountains of Chapoltepec gushed only over the square of the temple. A well, dug by Alvarado, in his extremity, furnished a meager supply of water, and that so brackish, that even the brutes turned from it in disgust, till forced to drink, by pangs that would allow them to be fastidious no longer. The nearest ca.n.a.l, conducting the briny waters of Tezcuco, was shut out by ramparts of savages. The Spaniards, with one universal voice, sent up a cry of despair, as they beheld the flames run over the court, the stalls, the kennels, and up the palace walls, and knew not how to extinguish them. The cry was answered from without, with such yells of exultation, as froze their blood; and in the glare of the sudden conflagration, they saw the barbarians rushing again to the attack, darting through the breaches, and leaping over the walls.

In this strait, beset at once by two foes, equally irresistible, equally pitiless, they struck about them blindly and despairingly, cursing their fate, their folly, and the leader who had seduced them from their island homes, to die a death so ign.o.ble and so dreadful.

For a moment, the spirit of the general sunk, and turning to Don Amador, whose fate it was again to be at his side, he said, with a ghastly countenance, rendered hideous by the infernal glare,--

"We die the death of foxes in a hole, very n.o.ble friend! Commend thy soul to G.o.d, and choose thy death; for we have no water to quench this h.e.l.l!"

"G.o.d help my kinsman and father, and all is one!" said Amador, with a desperate calmness. "The flames are hot, but the grave is cold."

"_The grave is cold!_" shouted Cortes, with the voice of a madman. "Live in my heart for ever! Cold grave, moist earth! and Santiago, who strikes for a true Christian, speaks in thy words!--What ho, mad Spaniards!" he continued, shouting aloud, and running as he spoke round the palace; "earth quenches flames, like water! Swords and hands to the task; and he works best, who delves as at the grave of his foeman!"

If there was obscurity in the words of the general, it was dispelled by his actions; for, dashing the rushes aside, he loosened the damp soil with his sabre, and flung the clods l.u.s.tily on the nearest flames. Loud and joyous were the shouts of his people, as hope dawned upon them with the happy idea; and, in a moment, the hands of many thousand men were tearing up the earth of the court, and casting it on the flames, while the savages, confidently expecting the result of their stratagem, intermitted their efforts for awhile, leaving the gates and breaches nearly unguarded.

It is probable, that even this poor resource, in the hands of so great a mult.i.tude of men, toiling with the zeal of desperation, might have sufficed to quell the flames. But, as if heaven had at last taken pity on their sufferings, and vouchsafed a miracle for their relief, there came, almost at the same moment, the pattering of rain-drops, which were quickly followed by a heavenly deluge; and as the flames vanished under it, the Christians fell upon their knees, and, with devout ardour, offered up thanks to the Providence, that had so marvellously preserved them.

They sprang from their knees, with bolder hearts, as the Mexicans again advanced to the a.s.sault. But this was the last attack. As if satisfied with the toils of the day, or commanded by some unknown ruler, the barbarians, uttering a mournful scream, suddenly departed.--They were heard during the night; and in the morning, when the waning moon shone dimly through the rack, were seen stirring about the square, but in no great numbers; and as they did not attempt any annoyance, but seemed engaged in dragging away the dead, Don Hernan forbade his sentinels to molest them.

The guards were set, and the over-worn soldiers retired, at last, to throw their wounded bodies on their pallets. But throughout the whole night, the noises of men repairing the breaches, and constructing certain military engines, a.s.sured those who were too sore or too fearful to sleep, that the leader they had cursed was sacrificing a second night to the duties of his station.

CHAPTER XL.

Don Amador sought out the apartment of his kinsman, with a troubled heart. A deep dejection, in part the effect of extreme fatigue, but caused more by the strange and melancholy events of the last twenty-four hours, weighed upon his spirits, and had increased, ever since the spectacle of the divinity, notwithstanding the bustle and excitement of the conflicts which ensued.

In the pa.s.sage, before he had yet reached the chamber, he stumbled upon Fabueno. The secretary looked confused and abashed, as if caught in a dereliction of duty; but before the cavalier could upbraid him, he commenced his excuses.

'The opiate was strong; the knight was in a deep slumber,' he said; 'and, as Marco was sitting at his side, he thought he might leave him for a moment, to discover wherefore the soldiers had ceased fighting. He hoped his n.o.ble patron would pardon him: he would presently return.'

"Seek thy pleasure now, Lorenzo," said the novice, with a heavy sigh.

"Return when thou wilt,--or not at all, if thou preferrest to rest with thy companions of last night. I will now, myself, watch by Don Gabriel."

His head sunk upon his breast, as he went on, for his heart was full of painful reflections. Near the door of the chamber, he was roused by a step, and looking up, he beheld the padre Olmedo approaching.

"Holy father, it rejoices me to see thee," he said "I had, indeed, thoughts to seek thee out, and claim thy benevolent counsels and aidance, but that I deemed me there were many among the wounded, and perchance the dying, who had stronger claims on thy good offices."

"Thou art not hurt, my son?"

"I have a scratch, made by the unlucky spear of a friend, but no harm from the enemy," said the cavalier. "I had indeed a blow also on the head, that made my brain ring; but both, I had quite forgotten. I am well enough in body, reverend father; and perhaps may be relieved in mind, if thou wilt vouchsafe me thy ghostly counsels."

The good Bartolome, making a gesture of a.s.sent, followed the youth into the chamber.