Page:The Mastering of Mexico.djvu/248

212 does me no harm. I tell all this that it may be known how we, the true conquistadores, lived and how wonted we were to arms and keeping guard.

From our watch in the great city of Mexico we have now to turn our thoughts back a little. When Diego Velasquez, the governor of Cuba, learned that we had sent agents to our king, with all the gold we had received—the gold sun, the silver moon, and many jewels and the metal from the mines—he also heard that the bishop of Burgos, who favored him, had treated our agents badly. The bishop, report went, then sent help to Velasquez, and advised and even commanded him to fit out an expedition against us and have us captured—promising that he, the bishop, would fully support Velasquez before our king.

With such backing the governor of Cuba got together a fleet of nineteen ships, carrying fourteen hundred soldiers, above twenty cannon, and stores of powder, balls and gun-flints. Then they also had eighty horsemen, ninety crossbowmen and seventy musketeers. Fat and heavy as he was, Velasquez had in the warmth of his wrath visited every town in Cuba to hasten the provisioning of the ships, and to invite settlers to join Panfilo de Narvaez and have the honor of taking Cortes and the rest of us prisoners, or at least blowing out our brains. After such a send-off Narvaez sailed across the sea with