him in the demand now made upon him for extraordinary exertion and sagacity. He soon decided upon a course of action; he tried to effect with Narvaez a junction of forces against the Mexicans as a common enemy, or division of the territory between them; in both of which he failed. Narvaez would listen to nothing; he would seize Cortez as a traitor and send him to Cuba.
Then Cortez acted. Leaving but one hundred and forty soldiers as garrison in Mexico, he took two hundred and fifty and started for the coast, passing through Cholula and Tlascala. It was a distance of quite two hundred and fifty miles, but he soon traversed it. With his trained and war-scarred veterans he attacked the forces of Narvaez, encamped in the town of Cempoalla, and defeated them. Two hundred and fifty men captured four times their number! Not many were killed, some were wounded, and Narvaez himself lost an eye. It was a gallant fight on the part of Cortez' men, but the army of Narvaez was disaffected. Cortez had secretly despatched messengers to the principal officers with rich presents; the soldiers had been told of the immense booty awaiting them if they should join him and march with him to Mexico; and last, "our reverend father of the Order of Mercy," Parson Olmedo, had been among them, with the gold of Cortez in his hand and his own oily tongue in his head, both which were used to the best advantage of his commander.
Cortez now commanded nearly two thousand men, eighteen vessels and nearly a hundred horses. He was himself again, with fortune smiling upon him. He prepared troops and expeditions to explore the coast and establish colonies, and was about setting in motion a train of great discoveries when evil news came down from the table-land, from Mexico, two hundred miles away.
Among the captains of Cortez there was one named
