ed
their former threats. Seeing no other alternative but retreat or war,
Cortes ordered three guns to be placed in each vessel, and divided the
musketeers and cross-bows among them. We who had been here before
recollected a narrow path which led from the point of Palmares, through
some marshes and across several brooks to the town of Tabasco, of which we
informed Cortes; who accordingly detached early next morning 100 soldiers
under Alonzo de Avila, with orders to march into the rear of the town by
that path; and, as soon as he heard the discharge of artillery, he was to
attack the town on that side, while the main body did the same on the
other side. Cortes then proceeded up the river with the vessels, intending
to disembark as near as possible to the town; and as soon as the enemy saw
us approaching, they sallied out in their canoes from among the mangroves,
and a vast multitude collected against us at the place where we meant to
land, making a prodigious noise of trumpets, horns, and drums. Before
commencing the attack, Cortes ordered Diego de Godoy, a royal notary, to
make a formal demand of liberty to supply ourselves with wood and water,
and to listen to what we had to communicate in the service of GOD and our
king, protesting that in case of violence, they should be held responsible
for all the mischief that might follow. But, after all this was explained
to them, they remained inflexibly determined to oppose us. They made the
signal with their drums to commence a general attack, and immediately
assailed us with a flight of arrows. They then closed round us in their
canoes, fighting with lances and bows and arrows, and we had great
difficulty to force our way to the shore, fighting up to our middles in
the water, and struggling to extricate ourselves from deep mud, in which
Cortes lost one of his buskins, and had to land barefooted. As soon as we
got on dry ground, Cortes placed himself at our head, calling out _St
Jago_, and we fell upon the enemy with great violence, whom we forced to
retreat within some circular entrenchments which they had constructed of
large timber. We soon drove them from these works, and made our way into
the town by certain small gateways, forcing them before us up the main
street to a second barricade, where they withstood us manfully, calling
out _al calachioni_, or _kill the captain_. While engaged at this
barricade, de Avila and the party which had marched from Point Palmares,
came up