to fill up these water-ways with stones from the razed buildings around them—a work on which they spent two days under a galling fire of stones and arrows. After much exhausting labor communication was opened again with the western causeway, and the cavalry went back and forth over a solid road. It was the only path to the mainland, the Aztecs having broken up every other dyke. But the Spaniards were no longer penned up.
The Aztecs now called for a truce. They promised, if they were forgiven, to raise the blockade and replace the bridges. Meanwhile, they requested that their chief priest, who had been captured in the storming of the temple, should be set at liberty to lead them in their negotiations. This was gladly done.
There seemed now to be some prospect of peace, and Cortez, who had scarcely eaten or slept since the outbreak began, sat down to take some refreshment, when a messenger came in hot haste to say that the Aztecs were attacking the garrison and that several men on guard in the street they had cleared had been killed. Cortez sprang on his horse and galloped to the spot, followed by a few horsemen, who drove the enemy right and left into the side-streets. The foot-soldiers were panic-struck and did not follow immediately, and by the time they rallied a surging; mob of Indians had closed in behind Cortez and those who were with him. Canoes loaded with warriors swarmed on each side of the causeway, which was crowded with Indians.
Turning to go back, Cortez reached the bridge nearest the city, but found that it had been shifted, so that the horsemen, pushed from behind, had fallen in the chasm, which was far deeper here, out in the lake, than the shallow canals he had been filling up. The infantry, amid
