THE ROMANCE OF MEXICO
towards which Alvarado from his western causeway was also making his devastating way. The canal was defended by the Aztecs, and as night was drawing in Cortés encamped on the bank, deciding to postpone the attack until the next morning. Suddenly a brilliant light shot from a teocalli near the market, and flared high into the midnight sky. Was some devilish rite being celebrated in that blood-stained tower? But no, as the Christians watched they called to each other with shouts of joy that the building itself was in flames! Alvarado must have reached the market-place.
With a will Spaniard and ally laboured at daybreak to fill up the wide canal, and the Aztecs were impotent to stay the work. Soon the cavalry were able to gallop across, and then indeed the Indians, weak and worn as they were, had no choice but flight. Alvarado and his officers hastened to greet and embrace their comrades in the general's division, for they had not met since the beginning of the siege.
Climbing the ruined temple from which waved in triumph the flag of Spain, Cortés gazed at the scene around him. Less than two years before he had stood by the side of Montezuma on the summit of the great teocalli, and had marvelled at the beauty of the rich island city, the crown of all the lovely valley. What a change had those two years wrought! Where palaces had stood, surrounded by green gardens aglow with flowers and cooling fountains, stretched now a black and smoking desert. The gleaming canals, alive with canoes and gay with chinampas, had
