quarters, and entertained them well.  After a week, however, the Spaniards began to be doubtful of the security of their position, and to strengthen it Cortes conceived and carried out the daring plan of gaining possession of Montezuma’s person.  With his usual audacity he went to the palace, accompanied by some of his cavaliers, and compelled Montezuma to consent to transfer himself and his household to the Spanish quarters.  After this, Cortes demanded that he should recognise formally the supremacy of the Spanish emperor.  Montezuma agreed, and a large treasure, amounting in value to about one and a half million pounds sterling, was despatched to Spain in token of his fealty.  The ship conveying it to Spain touched at the coast of Cuba, and the news of Cortes’s success inflamed afresh the jealousy of Velasquez, its governor, who had long repented of his choice of a commander.  Therefore, in March, 1520, he sent Narvaez at the head of a rival expedition, to overcome Cortes and appropriate the spoils.  But he had reckoned without the character of Cortes.  Leaving a garrison in Mexico, the latter advanced by forced marches to meet Narvaez, and took him unawares, entirely defeating his much superior force.  More than this, he induced most of these troops to join him, and thus, reinforced also from Tlascala, marched back to Mexico.  There his presence was greatly needed, for news had reached him that the Mexicans had risen, and that the garrison was already in straits.

III.—­The Retreat from Mexico

It was indeed in a serious position that Cortes found his troops, threatened by famine, and surrounded by a hostile population.  But he was so confident of his ability to overawe the insurgents that he wrote to that effect to the garrison of Vera Cruz, by the same dispatches in which he informed them of his safe arrival in the capital.  But scarcely had his messenger been gone half an hour, when he returned breathless with terror, and covered with wounds.  “The city,” he said, “was all in arms!  The drawbridges were raised, and the enemy would soon be upon them!” He spoke truth.  It was not long before a hoarse, sullen sound became audible, like that of the roaring of distant waters.  It grew louder and louder; till, from the parapet surrounding the enclosure, the great avenues which led to it might be seen dark with the masses of warriors, who came rolling on in a confused tide towards the fortress.  At the same time, the terraces and flat roofs in the neighbourhood were thronged with combatants brandishing their missiles, who seemed to have risen up as if by magic.  It was a spectacle to appall the stoutest.