frightful hour--be it recorded to their honour--and, swimming the breach once more, strove to support their comrades. There stood Alvarado unhorsed and battling, with the savages pressing upon his rear. Escape there seemed none. Canoes and spears teemed on every side, and Cortes and his companions were forced onward. The heroic figure of Alvarado stood up against the grey sky alone--a moment--and then he measured the breach with his eye, whilst-- "Friends and foes in dumb surprise With parted lips and straining eyes Stood gazing,"-- but not "where he sank," for sink he did not.[17] Planting his lance on the wreckage in the waters of the breach, after the manner of a leaping-pole, the heroic Spaniard collected his energies, leapt forward, and passed the chasm at a bound. To this day, in the City of Mexico, the spot exists, and is known as the _puente de Alvarado_. [Footnote 17: It is stated that the Aztecs paused in admiration of this feat, whilst "the Son of the Sun," as they termed Alvarado, from his fair hair and rubicund visage, performed this extraordinary leap; considering it miraculous.] Away off the causeway into the grey dawn of morning passed the remnant of the routed army, wounded, bleeding, starving, their comrades gone, some to death, some to the sacrifice, and annihilation threatening all. Baggage and artillery were gone, not a carbine was left, and Cortes, seating himself upon the steps of a ruined temple on the shore, wept bitter tears of sorrow and vanished fortune. So passed the _Noche Triste_.