What was done in camp and the judgment which Cortés delivered after our ambassadors had departed to go to His Majesty with all the gold and letters and narratives.

Within four days of the departure of our proctors to present themselves before our Lord the Emperor, as I have already narrated, (as it seems that men’s hearts are of many kinds and are swayed by different thoughts,) some of the friends and dependents of Diego Velásquez, named Pedro Escudero, Juan Cermeño, and Gonzalo de Umbria a pilot, and Bernaldino de Coria, who was afterwards a settler in Chiapas, the father of a certain Centeno and a priest named Juan Diaz, and certain sailors who called themselves Peñates ¹ , natives of Gibraltar ² , who bore Cortés ill will, some of them because he had not given them leave to return to Cuba when he had promised to do so, others because they had not received their shares of the gold which had been sent to Spain, and the Peñates on account of the flogging they had received in Cozumel for stealing salt pork from a soldier named Barrio, as I have already related. These men determined to seize a small ship and sail in her to Cuba to give notice to Diego Velásquez and advise him how at Havana he might be able to seize our proctors on the estate of Francisco de Montejo, with all the gold and the messages, for it appears that they [the conspirators] had been advised by other persons in our camp that they [the proctors] would go to that estate and they [the other persons] had even written to Diego Velásquez that he would have an opportunity of capturing them. Thus, these men, whom I have named, had already got their stores in the ship, such as cassava bread, oil, fish, water, and made other preparations, and the time being past midnight, were ready to embark, when one of them (it was a certain Bernaldino de Coria) seems to have repented of his wish to return to Cuba, and went to report the matter to Cortés. When Cortés heard of it and learned how many there were and why they wished to get away, and who had given counsel and held the threads of the plot, he ordered the sails, compass and rudder to be removed at once from the ship, and had the men arrested, and their confessions taken down. They all told the truth, and their confessions involved in their guilt others who were remaining with us, but Cortés kept this quiet at the time as there was no other course open to him. The sentence which Cortés delivered was that Pedro Escudero and Juan Cermeño should be hanged; that the pilot Gonzalo de Umbria, should have his feet cut off, and the sailors, Peñates, should receive two hundred lashes each, and Father Juan Diaz, but for the honour of the church, would have been punished as well; as it was he gave him a great fright. I remember that when Cortés signed that sentence, he said with great grief and sighs : “Would that I did not know how to write, so as not to have to sign away men’s lives !”—and it seems to me that that saying is common among judges who have to sentence men to death, and is a quotation taken from that cruel Nero at the time when he showed signs of being a good Emperor.