ABSTRACT
LET us leave him building the ships and say how we all went about in that city very much depressed, fearing that at any moment they might attack us; and our friends from Tlaxcala and Doña Marina also told the captain that an attack was probable, and Orteguilla, Montezuma’s page, was always in tears. We all kept on the alert and placed a strong Guard over Montezuma, I say that we were on the alert, but there is no necessity to repeat it so often, for neither by day or night did we ever take off our arms or our gorgets or leggings, and we slept in them. Maybe some will ask when we slept and what our beds were like,—they were nothing but a little straw and a mat, and if one had a curtain, he placed it beneath him, and we slept shod and armed and with all our weapons to hand. The horses stood saddled and bridled all day long, and everything so fully prepared that on a call to arms we stood as though we had already been posted and were waiting for it. Sentinels were posted every night, and there was not a soldier who did not keep watch. There is another thing I must say, but not with the intention of boasting about it, that I grew so accustomed to go about armed, and to sleep in the way I have said, that after the conquest of New Spain I kept to the habit of sleeping in my clothes and without a bed, and I slept thus better than on a mattress.
