The Aztec Treasure-House by Thomas A. Janvier

While yet we were a long way off from the city, we heard faintly the yells of triumph with which the watchers above the water-gate gave notice to those within the walls of the return of the victorious army; and from all the boats of our flotilla there went up a shrill chorus of answering yells. Our barge was the first to pass through the water-gate, out from which we had come so gallantly so short a time before, and thence went onward across the basin to the very pier that we had started from with such high hopes to gather the forces for the rebellion that had come to so sorry an end.

All the water-side was black with the crowd that had gathered to watch our landing; but, considering that these people were there to welcome a victorious army, it seemed to me that they were strangely still and dull. There was, to be sure, no lack of yelling, but it came for the most part from a company of priests clustered on the pier where we landed, and from the soldiers and oarsmen in the boats -- not from the townsfolk at large. And when we were marched upward through the city -- following the same street that we had fought our way along when last we traversed it -- I saw in the crowd so many sullen and dejected faces that it seemed to me there still was in that city a good deal of material for the making of another mutiny.