Now the women have power, and you see they use it.

They are about to die, but before they die they will do as their fathers did, for their strait is sore, and though they have been put aside, the old customs are not forgotten.' 'At the least can we not save these Teules ?' I answered.
'Why should you wish to save the Teules?
Will they save us some few days hence, when WE are in their power ?' 'Perhaps not,' I said, 'but if we must die, let us die clean from this shame.' 'What then do you wish me to do, Teule ?' 'This: I would have you find some three or four men who are not fallen into this madness, and with them aid me to loose the Teules, for we cannot save the others.

If this may be done, surely we can lower them with ropes from that point where the road is broken away, down to the path beneath, and thus they may escape to their own people.' 'I will try,' he answered, shrugging his shoulders, 'not from any tenderness towards the accursed Teules, whom I could well bear to see stretched upon the stone, but because it is your wish, and for the sake of the friendship between us.' Then he went, and presently I saw several men place themselves, as though by chance, between the spot where the last of the line of Indian prisoners, and the first of the Spaniards were made fast, in such a fashion as to hide them from the sight of the maddened women, engrossed as they were in their orgies.
Now I crept up to the Spaniards.

They were squatted upon the ground, bound by their hands and feet to the copper rings in the pavement.

There they sat silently awaiting the dreadful doom, their faces grey with terror, and their eyes starting from their sockets.
'Hist!' I whispered in Spanish into the ear of the first, an old man whom I knew as one who had taken part in the wars of Cortes.