Inch by inch under cover of the heavy fire from their arquebusses and pieces, they forced us upward and backward.
All day long the fight continued upon the narrow road that wound from stage to stage of the pyramid.

At length, as the sun sank, a company of our foes, their advance guard, with shouts of victory, emerged upon the flat summit, and rushed towards the temple in its centre.

All this while the women had been watching, but now one of them sprang up, crying with a loud voice: 'Seize them; they are but few.' Then with a fearful scream of rage, the mob of women cast themselves upon the weary Spaniards and Tlascalans, bearing them down by the weight of their numbers.

Many of them were slain indeed, but in the end the women conquered, ay, and made their victims captive, fastening them with cords to the rings of copper that were let into the stones of the pavement, to which in former days those doomed to sacrifice had been secured, when their numbers were so great that the priests feared lest they should escape.

I and the soldiers with me watched this sight wondering, then I cried out: 'What! men of the Otomie, shall it be said that our women outdid us in courage ?' and without further ado, followed by a hundred or more of my companions, I rushed desperately down the steep and narrow path.
At the first corner we met the main array of Spaniards and their allies, coming up slowly, for now they were sure of victory, and so great was the shock of our encounter that many of them were hurled over the edge of the path, to roll down the steep sides of the pyramid.