Cortes and Sandoval had likewise similar toils to go through day and night. On the land side they were incessantly attacked by immense bodies of the enemy, and from the lake by innumerable armed canoes. Cortes on one occasion marched with his division along the causeway, to force a very broad and deep opening, which the Mexicans had strengthened by means of a palisade and mound, defended by a large body of troops. Cortes finding it was impossible to pass across this opening but by swimming, ordered his men to make the attempt; but they were so vigorously assailed by the enemy from the entrenchments, and those stationed on the house-tops, who literally showered down stones upon them, while the canoes attacked them from each side of the opening, that a great number of his men were wounded, and a few killed. Here the brigantines were rendered totally useless, by the large stakes which had been driven into the water. Cortes and the whole of his troops were often on the brink of destruction; as it was, he had four men killed, and above thirty wounded. At length, by dint of hard fighting, he succeeded in forcing this formidable point; but the day was already so far advanced, that there was no time left to fill up the wide aperture, and he therefore sounded a retreat, in which he had again to fight his way through dense crowds of the enemy, who wounded the whole of his men, and the greater part of the Tlascallans. Quauhtemoctzin now determined to adopt a new plan of operation, and this he commenced on St. John's day, in the summer month, the very day we made our second entry into Mexico, after the defeat of Narvaez. This day, it seems, the monarch had purposely fixed upon to attack the three divisions at the same moment with the whole of his armed force, both by land and water. It was his firm resolve to destroy us all at once, and his idols encouraged him to make the attempt. The attack was to commence before break of day, when it was yet dark, and the Mexicans had provided against the possibility of our obtaining any assistance from the brigantines, by driving numbers of additional stakes into the water. They now fell upon us with such fierceness and determination, that they would certainly have stormed our camp itself, if the one hundred and twenty men who had the watch had not been veterans in service. We were certainly very nigh our destruction, and had fifteen men wounded, of whom two died within the space of eight days. The two following nights the enemy sallied out in a similar manner, but we each time repulsed them with considerable loss. Cortes and Sandoval were likewise attacked in the same way.