How Cortés went to where the ship was anchored and how we captured six of the soldiers and mariners who belonged to the ship, and what happened about it.

When, as I have related, we reached Villa Rica, Juan de Escalante came to speak to Cortés and said that it would be as well to go to the ship that night, lest she should set sail and depart, and that he would go and do this with twenty soldiers while Cortés rested himself. Cortés replied that he could not rest, that “a lame goat must not nap,” that he would go in person with the soldiers he had brought with him. So before we could get a mouthful of food we started to march along the coast and on the road we came on four Spaniards who had come to take possession of the land in the name of Francisco de Garay the governor of Jamaica. These men had been sent by a captain named Alonzo Álvarez de Pineda or Pinedo, who a few days before had made a settlement on the Rio Panuco. ¹ These four Spaniards whom we captured were named Guillen de la Loa, who had come as notary, and the witnesses he had brought with him to take possession of the country were Andrés Nuñez, who was a boat builder, another named Master Pedro, he of the harp ¹ from Valencia, and another whose name I cannot now remember.