scout brought back the news that the road to the causeway was clear.
Viva! And still no sound of alarm. The Indian dogs, sure of their quarry and relying on the bridgeless viaduct, underrated the cunning of the Spanish fox. They still slept. It was oply a thousand paces from the palace of Axayacatl to the lake, but to Pedro it seemed an eternity until Margarino's bridge carriers halted at the brink of the first gap separating the city from the viaduct beyond.
The suspense of the vanguard now took a new turn. Suppose, by some miscalculation, that the heavy gangway, which had been constructed in the quarters, did not reach across the twenty-odd feet of water? Or suppose that some unforeseen difficulty in placing it should arise?
Carrying ropes attached to one end, a number of the Indian bearers half-swam, half-forded, the intervening water; and while their fellows on the city side pushed the bridge forward, they hauled and steadied it into position on the dike. The carpenters' calculations had been correct; the timbers reached, with plenty of purchase on either side. It remained only to determine whether they could stand the stress of men, horses, and cannon. Sandoval, Pedro, and the other lances immediately put this to the test. The thudding of horses' hoofs sounded briefly from the bridge.
"Solid as a rock," approved Sandoval. "We'll be pushing ahead to the next gap. Redhead. You can tell the General that all's clear."
"Listen!" de Vargas whispered. "I thought I heard a shout."
They both strained their ears, but the only sound was the shuffle of the foot soldiers crossing the gangway.
"Probably nothing," said Sandoval. "Or it meant nothing—"
He stopped. A long-drawn call somewhere in the darkness was answered by another, then by a third.
''Maldito sea!'' Sandoval growled. "Well—it was too much to hope that we'd get off scot-free. I'll wait for the bridge at the next gap. Speed up the column. We'll have a cloud of hornets at our ears in fifteen minutes. Viva Esparia!"
His detachment marched off down the causeway. Pedro rode back to report to Cortes in the center of the column. No need for further silence or caution. The city was awaking. The first scattered cries had become a general stir, then a hum deepening rapidly in tone. All that mattered now was haste, to get the army across to the causeway and free from the tangle of the city streets and canals. The portable bridge could then be raised, and the gap it had covered would serve as moat between the rear guard and its pursuers.
The voice of Cortes rose somewhere in the darkness, urging speed. "Push on!" shouted the officers. The creeping advance of the column now became a hurried shuffle, the shuffle of people under too heavy loads. Ranks began to lose their form and melt into a solid block of men, guns, and horses, straining forward.
Keeping to one side, Pedro, mounted on Soldan, forced his way against the current back to the quarters, where Alvarado and Velasquez were only beginning to lead the rear guard through the gates. Then, having reassured them about the bridge, he rode again toward the head of the column, which was now crossing to the causeway.
By this time, the silence of the night had reversed itself into a roar bellowing out of the darkness on all sides. The host of hell seemed to be unleashed, whooping, whistling, screaming, drum-beating, conch-blowing. But as an undercurrent could be heard the splashing sound of thousands of paddles on the waters of the lake, converging toward the causeway. And the first gusts of arrows and stones began to rattle and sting.
Then suddenly, above all other noise, rolled a peal of thunder. At least that was the first impression of it. But the thunder became rhythmic, a continued throbbing, like giant heartbeats. Steady, terrible, it roared out a volume of sound to be heard for miles across the waters of the lagoon, conveying in its tones warning, menace, and triumph.
"What the devil!" shouted Pedro, reining Soldan back against the melee that swirled and pushed around the rear end of the bridge. "What the devil's that?"
Someone heard him and yelled. "The big drum on top of the cu . . . remember . . ."
Yes, that was it. Pedro recalled the huge cylinder covered with serpents' skins that stood close to the shrine of Witchywolves on the teocalli, but he had never heard it struck until now. It was more than a drum beat—much more. In the thick night, it became a slow, continuous voice, the voice of the Aztec god of war. It fell like a tocsin on the retreating army. It maddened people with its ceaseless, rhythmic thunder. It became an accompaniment, underlying everything else. Darkness and rain, confusion, fear, and clamor, merged into a storm, which found its tempo and coherence in the surging of the temple drum.
But another sound challenged, without defeating it. It was the roar of Alvarado's cannon, blasting at the city multitude, which pressed the rear guard as it fought slowly toward the bridge. Meanwhile, Cortes's center was crossing to the viaduct, along which it streamed until brought
to a stop by Sandoval's vanguard, halted in front of the second gap. Meanwhile, too, an assault had begun from the canoes massed on both sides of the dike.
No one could see anything—that was the misery of it. It was a battle of blind men. Out of the pitch darkness came stones, arrows, atl-atl javelins, thick as the fine needles of the rain; out of the darkness came clutching hands and the vagueness of white cotton tunics like pale ghosts.
Another misery was the slipperiness of the pavement, which put horses at a disadvantage. As Pedro waited at one end of the bridge for the coming of the rear guard and as the Indian attack began eddying around him, it took all his skill to keep Soldan upright. Now and then a rider went down among lashing hoofs and general confusion.
But one way or another, the center with its troops, horses, baggage, and cannon had now passed, and the first of the rear guard followed on its heels. Pedro could tell this from the war shouts of Alvarado and Velasquez as they drew nearer, and also from the battle that raged around them along the avenue and up from the city canals. At times a salvo of cannon drowned everything else. Then in the lull between could be heard the thick scuffle of hand-to-hand fighting and the rallying cries of the captains. It was as if a furnace were approaching, the hot breath of it already passing across the bridge. Pedro wondered about Garcia, who was marching with this section of the army.
Wheels rumbled slowly over the bridge. The great voice of Alvarado made itself heard a few yards off.
"Give them a push now, gentlemen. Clear a circle about the bridgehead. Margarino, get ready to raise it when I give the word. . . . Captain de Vargas?"
"Here!"
"Tell the General that the rear guard's across and that the bridge is being sent forward."
"Hey, companero!" bellowed a voice somewhere. "Good luck!"
"Buena suerte to you, Juan!"
Crossing the bridge again, Pedro made his way as fast as possible along the crowded dike. Though it was twenty feet wide and extended three quarters of a mile to the second gap, the several thousand troops now on it formed a dense mass hard to penetrate. Moreover, the Indian attack by canoe on both sides of the causeway had grown heavier, the rain of missiles thicker, and a continuous struggle of assault and defense was going on along the entire length on each flank. By dint of persuasion, profanity, and force, Pedro edged forward through the
jostling, swaying column. He could feel a stirring of fear and tried to spread reassurance. The bridge was on its way forward; the march would be soon continued; nothing to be afraid of—they'd reach the mainland in an hour.
Hearing his voice, Catana called to him as he passed.
"Get under cover," he shouted—"under one of the cannon."
"There's where I am, seiior—snug as a hen in a coop . . ."
The noise of the fighting along the embankment cut off her voice.
Finally, a blacker mass in the night, rose the clump of lances that marked the position of Cortes.
"Ha, son Pedro!" returned the General when de Vargas had reported. "That's a right comforting word. I'd begun to wonder about the bridge. Carry the news to Sandoval and then stay with him. There's
nothing more you can do until we're off the causeway. We'll have to untangle the column then. Adios."
De Vargas continued his progress along the causeway until at last he reached the vanguard and found Sandoval, wnth Ochoa still clinging behind him, engaged in a hot skirmish, not only on his flanks but in front where the Aztecs' canoes filled the water of the gap.
"You've come in good time," chafed the young hidalgo. "In another minute, by God, we'd have taken to the water and swum over in spite of these bastards. If I could only see them! Here we've been waiting for an hour with nothing to do but kick them down the embankm.ent and stand their fire. It's cost our Tlascalan friends heavily, poor devdls!"
A javelin glanced from his helmet.
"Hey, arquebusiers!" he yelled. "Shoot all together now. You can't fail to hit, even if you can't sight. Santiago! Vargas! Sandoval!"
Shouts of defiance answered from the lake. "Xiuhtecuhtli!" someone howled, recognizing Pedro's name and adding several epithets in Nahuatl.
A volley from the arquebuses brought forth cries and the sound of splashing bodies.
"Santiago! Ochoa!" yelled the small boy, who was covering himself with a buckler.
"Keep firing," Sandoval ordered. "At least, for one of us, they'll pay with ten of theirs. Why in hell didn't we make our retreat by day! That's Botello's doing, and a damned bad horoscope. . . . Shoot all together. ... I wish that blasted drum would burst!"
The minutes passed, spun themselves into a quarter of an hour, half an hour, three quarters of an hour. The assault from the lake grew heavier and harder to throw back. The Narvaez companies, weighed
down by their gold, began to crack. And the harried column swayed from side to side shouting for the bridge. But no bridge came.
"I'll ride back and see what's up," Pedro said.
But at that moment something new happened. It came with the rapidity of a cold wind sweeping forward along the column. It came at first like disembodied fear, a moan rising to a cry, swollen into a tempest of panic.
. There was no bridge! Crushed down into the embankments by the passing of the army, it could not be raised. Margarino and his men were slain, Alvarado's cannon captured. A horde of Aztecs from the city were on the causeway. The rear guard had been swallowed up. The Aztecs were on all sides. No hope. Sdlvese el que pueda!
And at once the army, as an army, vanished. It became a frantic mob, elbowing, yelling, trampling, shouldering.
"Adelante!" yelled Sandoval. "Follow me! Hang on, Ochoa!"
He slithered with his great war horse down the ten-foot steep shoulder of earth and stone into the water. The others, horse and foot, plunged after him. A tumult of splashing, grappling with canoes, oaths, blows, and shouts, sounded in the darkness.
Gripped by a fear such as he had never known, Pedro was on the point of following, when a second, greater fear drove the first one out. Catana! Where was she in the crush? What would become of her?
Turning Soldan against the torrent, spurring him, crashing a foot or two forward at a time, he managed at least to hold his own not far from the edge of the opening.
"Catana!" he kept shouting. "Catana!"
No longer like individual human beings, but merely as particles of a mass plunging helplessly from the lips of a chute, the column was emptying itself into the gap. Weighted with their gold, men sank like stone or struggled vainly, for a moment, in a tangle of baggage and bodies. Horses rolled from the embankment on top of them; while on either side of the breach the relentless canoes plied spears and clubs and arrows. A long-drawn scream rose from the water—a scream compounded of every cry which human lungs can give. And the death chute still volleyed its particles into the gap.
"Catana!"
For a moment Pedro was aware of Cortes's voice somewhere to the left. His world might have gone mad and be crashing around him, but the great captain remained true to himself.
"This way, you fools! Head toward me! The water's fordable here . . ."
But his voice might have been ten times as powerful—the fear-crazed mob could not hear it; or, if a few heard, they were swept along by the rush of the others.
"Catana!"
Doom! Doom! Doom! Doom! pulsed the great drum of the War Gk)d, roaring across the water. If it would only stop its beating inside one's head!
By now the gap had been horribly filled up. The hundreds of oncoming survivors, Spaniards and Tlascalans, could wade, floundering across on a dreadful footing of bodies, to the second segment of the causeway. They dribbled forward, so to speak, out of the pitched battle that raged on the first segment. For the Aztecs from the city and from the canoes had gained too firm a foothold to be shaken off. They occupied the dike on even terms with the fugitives, infiltrating the ranks, interlocked pell-mell, so that the causeway had become a solid writhing of agonized life fighting for itself.
LX
A SUDDEN RAGE took posscssion of Pedro. It had more to do with despair than with courage, but he was unconscious of either. Spurring Soldan and guiding him along the edge of the dike, where he could be surer of riding down enemies than friends, he pushed back into the melee nearest him, swinging at ghostly figures with his heavy sword.
"Santiago! Vargas!"
Holding his buckler and Soldan's reins with his left arm and hand, half-wheeling in his saddle to give greater force to the down stroke of his sword, he kept blindly on. Minutes? A half hour? An hour? Time had stopped for him. Drugged by action, he forged ahead with no purpose but fighting—
Then all at once he realized that he could see. The night was no longer pitch-black. Forms emerged: Soldan's neck and head, shadowy bodies in the tangle of the battle.
"Santiago! Vargas!"
An eagle-hooded warrior close by was locked in struggle with a Spaniard. In the faint light Pedrp could make out the curving beak above the Indian's forehead and the steel cap of the Castlllan. Then a broad-shouldered corslet intervened, and at the next glimpse the Aztec was down while Broad-shoulders held his comrade around the waist, evidently supporting him. But—God in heaven!
"Catana!" Pedro shouted. "Catana! Juan!"
At that instant, Soldan reared, striking out with his forefeet, then screamed and sank, stabbed from beneath. But Pedro was clear of the saddle. In a moment he had reached Catana and Garcia, who stood back to back with a small knot of other Spaniards in what was apparently a forlorn hope.
Catana, half-leaning against Garcia, looked up, her face haggard. Evidently, in the rout, she had stuck to her refuge under the cannon. She gave a little cry of recognition and said something that Pedro did not catch.
"Why are you waiting here?" he yelled. "Fall back, join the column."
"What column?" Garcia roared. "We've been cut off for this half hour. It's a case of holding on till we drop. Look around you."
For the first time since the berserker mood had gripped him, Pedro took in the situation. A few scattered groups of Spaniards were making a last stand here and there. Otherwise, the Aztecs held this part of the causeway, and retreat was cut off. The Spanish dead lay everywhere, their packs broken and the fatal gold scattered about them. It was this that gave the particular group where Pedro found himself a respite from attack, for the Aztec plundering of the Spanish bodies had begun.
"There're no more of us," Garcia went on. "Juan Velasquez is dead. Alvarado lost his horse and fell back with the last of the column. We were caught and couldn't make it."
"Por Dios we will make it!" Lifting his vizor, Pedro cupped his hands and put all the strength of his lungs behind them. "Santiago and Spain! Rally on us, cavaliers! This way for retreat! March all together! This way! Espana! Espana!''
The summons had its effect, all the more as Garcia lent his mighty voice to it. Singly or in small squads, the remaining fighters began edging in that direction. One by one, they hacked their way through until at last the original group had grown to twenty swords, forming a compact circle. Upon this, the storm raged, but could not break it.
"Now, fall
back, gentlemen. Foot by foot. No hurry. Thrust at their faces. Blind the dogs. Give them a shout. Santiago! Espana!''
Daunted by the fierce cry, which they had learned to dread, the Aztecs yielded ground, and some twenty yards were gained.
"We cut them like cheese, sirs. If they can't stand up to your voices, what will they make against steel! Let's show them what a Spanish rear guard can do with the help of Santiago!"
He struck the right note. A dram of aguardiente through their parched lips would not have had so great an effect. Foot by foot, yard by yard, they advanced, though now and then one crumpled and fell, and the circle grew smaller.
"Look you, sirs, we've reached the first gap. Now, across with you. Garcia and I will hold them at the edge. But keep together."
Through a sheet of missiles from the causeway, hard-pressed by the Indian dugouts that did not hesitate to ram them and capsize in an effort to break the ring, somehow they got across, staggering and stumbling on the ghastly bottom, dragging up the opposite embankment to the second segment of the dike. But ten only were now left, and they at the point of exhaustion.
Happening to glance around, Pedro saw Catana swaying back and forth in the tussle, corpse-pale with fatigue, but still handling buckler and sword.
Sometimes the enemy fell back to re-form for the next rush, and the little band made relatively good speed. Perhaps because of the effort itself, the pounding of his pulses, the strain of every muscle, certain fragments of the causeway stamped themselves sharply on Pedro's mind.
In the growing dawn, he caught sight of his friend, Francisco de Morla, lying dead, a broken sword in one hand; and further off Master Botello, outstretched between the legs of his horse, giving the lie to his horoscope; near him lay Cervantes the fester with a gaping mouth, as if frozen in a last grimace—magician and fool on the same level.
Dead men everywhere, well-known faces and many less familiar who had come with Narvaez. They were tripped and trampled over by the little company plowing its way on. But the third and last gap of the causeway was now in sight.
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