Then I took a mattock and dug a hole outside the house till I came to water, which in Tenoctitlan is found at a depth of two feet or so. And, having muttered a prayer over him, there in the water I laid the body of our child, burying it out of sight. At the least he was not left for the zapilotes, as the Aztecs call the vultures, like the rest of them.
After that we wept ourselves to sleep in each other’s arms, Otomie murmuring from time to time, ‘Oh! my husband, I would that we were asleep and forgotten, we and the babe together.’
‘Rest now,’ I answered, ‘for death is very near to us.’
The morrow came, and with it a deadlier fray than any that had gone before, and after it more morrows and more deaths, but still we lived on, for Guatemoc gave us of his food. Then Cortes sent has heralds demanding our surrender, and now three-fourths of the city was a ruin, and three-fourths of its defenders were dead. The dead were heaped in the houses like bees stifled in a hive, and in the streets they lay so thick that we walked upon them.
The council was summoned–fierce men, haggard with hunger and with war, and they considered the offer of Cortes.
‘What is your word, Guatemoc?’ said their spokesman at last.
‘Am I Montezuma, that you ask me? I swore to defend this city to the last,’ he answered hoarsely, ‘and, for my part, I will defend it. Better that we should all die, than that we should fall living into the hands of the Teules.’
‘So say we,’ they replied, and the war went on.
At length there came a day when the Spaniards made a new attack and gained another portion of the city. There the people were huddled together like sheep in a pen. We strove to defend them, but our arms were weak with famine. They fired into us with their pieces, mowing us down like corn before the sickle. Then the Tlascalans were loosed upon us, like fierce hounds upon a defenceless buck, and on this day it is said that there died forty thousand people, for none were spared. On the morrow, it was the last day of the siege, came a fresh embassy from Cortes, asking that Guatemoc should meet him. The answer was the same, for nothing could conquer that noble spirit.
‘Tell him,’ said Guatemoc, ‘that I will die where I am, but that I will hold no parley with him. We are helpless, let Cortes work his pleasure on us.’
By now all the city was destroyed, and we who remained alive within its bounds were gathered on the causeways and behind the ruins of walls; men, women, and children together.
Here they attacked us again. The great drum on the teocalli beat for the last time, and for the last time the wild scream of the Aztec warriors went up to heaven. We fought our best; I killed four men that day with my arrows which Otomie, who was at my side, handed me as I shot. But the most of us had not the strength of a child, and what could we do? They came among us like seamen among a flock of seals, and slaughtered us by hundreds. They drove us into the canals and trod us to death there, till bridges were made of our bodies. How we escaped I do not know.
At length a party of us, among whom was Guatemoc with his wife Tecuichpo, were driven to the shores of the lake where lay canoes, and into these we entered, scarcely knowing what we did, but thinking that we might escape, for now all the city was taken. The brigantines saw us and sailed after us with a favouring wind–the wind always favoured the foe in that war–and row as we would, one of them came up with us and began to fire into us. Then Guatemoc stood up and spoke, saying:
‘I am Guatemoc. Bring me to Malinche. But spare those of my people who remain alive.’
‘Now,’ I said to Otomie at my side, ‘my hour has come, for the Spaniards will surely hang me, and it is in my mind, wife, that I should do well to kill myself, so that I may be saved from a death of shame.’