ing up behind them the gaps in the causeway,
that they might easily, if necessary, effect a retreat. They were
taught the necessity of this precaution by a terrible repulse which
they at one time encountered. Guatemozin, with a quick military eye,
perceiving that the causeway occupied by one of the divisions of the
Spaniards was impassable behind the Spaniards from trenches unfilled,
and broken bridges, and the ruins of barricades, ordered the Mexican
troops to retire, to lure the Spaniards forward. He then collected an
enormous force, dispatching some in canoes along shallows which the
brigantines could not approach, and then, at a signal from the great
alarm drum on the summit of the temple, whose doleful tones could be
heard for miles, the whole mass, with frantic rage, stimulated by
hope, rushed upon the foe. The sudden assault, so impetuous, and
sustained by such vast numbers, was quite successful. The Spaniards
were driven back in confusion, horsemen and infantry crowding upon
each other, till multitudes were forced, pell-mell, horses, and
cannon, and men, into the chasms. Here the natives, in their light
canoes, fell furiously upon them. More than twenty Spaniards were
killed outright, and forty, mangled and bleeding, fell alive into the
hands of the victors. There was no possible escape for the captives
from their doom. They were to be sacrificed to the gods.

This was an awful reverse, and the Spaniards were horror-stricken in
contemplating the fate of their captured comrades. The capital was
that night illuminated with great brilliance, and the splendor of the
great pyramidal temple, blazing with innumerable torches, gleamed far
and wide over the lake. It was an awful spectacle to the Spaniards,
for they well knew the scenes which were transpiring on that lofty
altar of idolatry. The preparations for the sacrifice could be
distinctly seen, and the movements of the sacrificial priests. The
white bodies of the victims could also be clearly discerned as they
were stripped naked for the torture and the knife; and when the awful
torture was applied, the shrieks of the wretched sufferers pierced the
still night air, and penetrated the camp of the Spaniards. They
listened appalled to those cries of agony, imagining that they could
distinguish each victim by the sound of his voice.

This awful scene is thus described by Diaz:

"On a sudden, our ears were struck by the horrific sound of
the great drum, the t