After the first day’s fight I was appointed general over a body of three thousand archers, and was given a banner to be borne before me and a gorgeous captain’s dress to wear.  But what pleased me better was a chain shirt which came from the body of a Spanish cavalier.  For many years I always wore this shirt beneath my cotton mail, and it saved my life more than once, for even bullets would not pierce the two of them.

I had taken over the command of my archers but forty-eight hours, a scant time in which to teach them discipline whereof they had little, though they were brave enough, when the occasion came to use them in good earnest, and with it the night of disaster that is still known among the Spaniards as the noche triste.  On the afternoon before that night a council was held in the palace at which I spoke, saying, I was certain that the Teules thought of retreat from the city, and in the dark, for otherwise they would not have been so eager to fill up the canals in the causeway.  To this Cuitlahua, who now that Montezuma was dead would be emperor, though he was not yet chosen and crowned, answered that it might well be that the Teules meditated flight, but that they could never attempt it in the darkness, since in so doing they must become entangled in the streets and dykes.

I replied that though it was not the Aztec habit to march and fight at night, such things were common enough among white men as they had seen already, and that because the Spaniards knew it was not their habit, they would be the more likely to attempt escape under cover of the darkness, when they thought their enemies asleep.  Therefore I counselled that sentries should be set at all the entrances to every causeway.  To this Cuitlahua assented, and assigned the causeway of Tlacopan to Guatemoc and myself, making us the guardians of its safety.  That night Guatemoc and I, with some soldiers, went out towards midnight to visit the guard that we had placed upon the causeway.  It was very dark and a fine rain fell, so that a man could see no further before his eyes than he can at evening through a Norfolk roke in autumn.  We found and relieved the guard, which reported that all was quiet, and we were returning towards the great square when of a sudden I heard a dull sound as of thousands of men tramping.

‘Listen,’ I said.

‘It is the Teules who escape,’ whispered Guatemoc.

Quickly we ran to where the street from the great square opens on to the causeway, and there even through the darkness and rain we caught the gleam of armour.  Then I cried aloud in a great voice, ’To arms!  To arms!  The Teules escape by the causeway of Tlacopan.’

Instantly my words were caught up by the sentries and passed from post to post till the city rang with them.  They were cried in every street and canal, they echoed from the roofs of houses, and among the summits of a hundred temples.  The city awoke with a murmur, from the lake came the sound of water beaten by ten thousand oars, as though myriads of wild-fowl had sprung suddenly from their reedy beds.  Here, there, and everywhere torches flashed out like falling stars, wild notes were blown on horns and shells, and above all arose the booming of the snakeskin drum which the priests upon the teocalli beat furiously.