But wrath availed me nothing, for I could never come near him,
though once, with ten of my Otomies, I charged into the heart of the
Spanish column after him.
From that rush I alone escaped alive, the ten Otomies were sacrificed to
my hate.
How shall I paint the horrors that day by day were heaped upon the
doomed city? Soon all the food was gone, and men, ay, and worse still,
tender women and children, must eat such meat as swine would have turned
from, striving to keep life in them for a little longer. Grass, the bark
of trees, slugs and insects, washed down with brackish water from
the lake, these were their best food, these and the flesh of captives
offered in sacrifice. Now they began to die by hundreds and by
thousands, they died so fast that none could bury them. Where they
perished, there they lay, till at length their bodies bred a plague,
a black and horrible fever that swept off thousands more, who in turn
became the root of pestilence. For one who was killed by the Spaniards
and their allies, two were swept off by hunger and plague. Think then
what was the number of dead when not less than seventy thousand perished
beneath the sword and by fire alone. Indeed, it is said that forty
thousand died in this manner in a single day, the day before the last of
the siege.
One night I came back to the lodging where Otomie dwelt with her royal
sister Tecuichpo, the wife of Guatemoc, for now all the palaces had been
burnt down.
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