After these events, and leaving that region pacified, the Spaniards descended the river and returned to Darien, posting a guard of thirty men, commanded by an officer, Hurtado,[1] to hold that province.  Hurtado descended the Rio Negro to rejoin his leader, Vasco Nunez, and his companions.  He was using one of those large native barques and had with him twelve companions, a captive woman, and twenty-four slaves.  All at once four uru, that is to say, barques dug out of tree trunks, attacked him on the flank, and overturned his boat.  The Spaniards had been tranquilly sailing along without dreaming of the possibility of an attack, and their barque being suddenly overturned all those whom the natives could catch were massacred or drowned, except two men, who grasped some floating tree trunks and, concealing themselves in the branches, let themselves drift, unseen by the enemy, and thus managed to rejoin their companions.

[Note 1:  Furatado quodam decurione.  Licet decurione more romano non sint addicti praecise quindecim milites quos regat, centurionique centum viginti octo, centuriones tamen ultro citroque centenarium numerum, et ultro citroque denum, decurionem est consilium appellare; nec enim hos servant ordines hispani ex amussim, cogimurque nomine rebus et magistratibus dare.  Thus Peter Martyr for the second time vindicates his knowledge of Roman military terms and his usage of them.  His explanation is extraneous to the narrative.]

Warned of the danger by those two men who had escaped death, the Spaniards became suspicious of everything.  They were alarmed for their safety, and remembered that they only escaped a similar calamity at Rio Negro because they had received the reinforcement of thirty men on the night before the attack.  They held frequent councils of war, but in the midst of their hesitations they reached no decision.  After careful investigation they finally learned that five caciques had fixed a day for the massacre of Christians.  These five were:  Abibaiba, who lived in the swampy forest; Zemaco, who had been driven from his home; Abraibes and Abenamacheios, the river chiefs; and Dobaiba, the cacique of the fishermen, living at the extremity of the gulf called Culata.  This plan would have been carried out, and it was only by a miracle, which we are bound to examine with leniency, that chance disclosed the plot of the caciques.  It is a memorable story and I will tell it in a few words.

This Vasco Nunez, a man of action rather than of judgment, was an egregious ruffian, who had obtained authority in Darien by force rather than by consent of the colonists; amongst the numerous native women he had carried off, there was one of remarkable beauty.  One of her brothers, who was an officer much favoured by the cacique Zemaco, often came to visit her.  He likewise had been driven out of his country, but as he loved his sister warmly, he spoke to her in conversation in the following words: