For a while the seven consulted together, then their spokesman answered.

’Otomie, and you, Teule, we have followed your counsels for many years and they have brought us but little luck.  We do not blame you, for the gods of Anahuac have deserted us as we have deserted them, and the gods alone stand between men and their evil destiny.  Whatever misfortunes we may have borne, you have shared in them, and so it is now at the end.  Nor will we go back upon our words in this the last hour of the people of the Otomie.  We have chosen; we have lived free with you, and still free, we will die with you.  For like you we hold that it is better for us and ours to perish as free men than to drag out our days beneath the yoke of the Teule.’

‘It is well,’ said Otomie; ’now nothing remains for us except to seek a death so glorious that it shall be sung of in after days.  Husband, you have heard the answer of the council.  Let the Spaniards hear it also.’

So I went back to the wall, a white flag in my hand, and presently an envoy advanced from the Spanish camp to speak with me—­not de Garcia, but another.  I told him in few words that those who remained alive of the people of the Otomie would die beneath the ruins of their city like the children of Tenoctitlan before them, but that while they had a spear to throw and an arm to throw it, they would never yield to the tender mercies of the Spaniard.

The envoy returned to the camp, and within an hour the attack began.  Bringing up their pieces of ordnance, the Spaniards set them within little more than an hundred paces of the gates, and began to batter us with iron shot at their leisure, for our spears and arrows could scarcely harm them at such a distance.  Still we were not idle, for seeing that the wooden gates must soon be down, we demolished houses on either side of them and filled up the roadway with stones and rubbish.  At the rear of the heap thus formed I caused a great trench to be dug, which could not be passed by horsemen and ordnance till it was filled in again.  All along the main street leading to the great square of the teocalli I threw up other barricades, protected in the front and rear by dykes cut through the roadway, and in case the Spaniards should try to turn our flank and force a passage through the narrow and tortuous lanes to the right and left, I also barricaded the four entrances to the great square or market place.

Till nightfall the Spaniards bombarded the shattered remains of the gates and the earthworks behind them, doing no great damage beyond the killing of about a score of people by cannon shot and arquebuss balls.  But they attempted no assault that day.  At length the darkness fell and their fire ceased, but not so our labours.  Most of the men must guard the gates and the weak spots in the walls, and therefore the building of the barricades was left chiefly to the women, working under my command and that of my captains.  Otomie herself took a share in the toil, an example that was followed by every lady and indeed by every woman in the city, and there were many of them, for the women outnumbered the men among the Otomie, and moreover not a few of them had been made widows on that same day.