Page:Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 1.djvu/170

150 neighbourhood to look for something to eat; and the Captain, seeing that the Indians did not return as they had promised, sent four captains with more than two hundred men to hunt round about the town, and see if they could find anything to eat. While these were engaged in searching, they met many Indians who immediately shot arrows at them, wounding twenty Spaniards, and had not the Captain been immediately advised of this, so as to go, as he did, to their assistance, they would probably have killed more than half the Christians. So we all retreated to our camp, where the wounded were cared for, and those who had fought obtained some rest.

The Captain, seeing how wrongly the Indians had acted, in that, instead of bringing us food as they had agreed, they had wounded us with their arrows, and made war upon us, ordered ten of the horses and mares we had on board to be brought, and all the people to be prepared, because he thought that those Indians, encouraged by the advantage they had obtained the day before, would fall upon us hoping to injure us. On the next day when all was thus prepared, he sent certain captains with three hundred men, to the place where the battle had been fought the day before, to learn if the Indians were still there or what had become of them. A little later, he sent two other captains, with a rear-guard and another hundred men, and the said Captain Fernando Cortes went secretly to one side with ten men on horseback. Proceeding in this order, those who went ahead met a great number of warriors coming to attack us in our camp, and, if we had not gone out that day to encounter them on the road, we should probably have found ourselves in great distress.

When the captain of artillery, who went ahead, made certain requirements before the notary, of the warriors whom he met, giving them to understand through the