The two vessels then continued their voyage, but had not advanced far beyond the island of Tercera when they fell in with the redoubted French corsair Jean Florin, who attacked and took both vessels, carrying Avila with the crews to France.
About this same time Jean Florin captured another vessel, bound from St. Domingo, having on board above 20,000 pesos, besides a quantity of pearls, sugar, and a great number of cow hides. With these valuable prizes the corsair returned to France a wealthy man, and made the king and the lord high admiral of France splendid presents out of the things he had captured; and the whole of France was amazed at the treasures we thus forwarded to our emperor. This very circumstance even created a great desire in the mind of the French king to take possession of part of the Caribbee islands; and it was upon this occasion he exclaimed that our emperor could carry on the war with him solely with the riches he drew from the West Indies! And yet at that time the Spaniards had not subdued or even discovered Peru. The king of France on this occasion also sent word to our great emperor, that as he and the king of Portugal had divided the world between themselves, without offering him any part of it, he should like them to show him our father Adam's will, that he might convince himself whether he had really constituted them the sole heirs to these countries. As long as they refused to comply with this, he would consider himself justified to possess himself of everything he could on the high seas: and indeed it was not long before he again sent out Jean Florin with a small fleet, who took considerable prizes at sea, between Spain and the Canaries; but as he was returning home with them to France he fell in with three or four Biscay men of war, who attacked him with such determination, that after a severe engagement he was obliged to surrender, with the whole of his vessels, and he, with his captains, was brought in a prisoner to Seville. These prisoners were then immediately sent to the emperor, who, however, on the first intelligence of their capture, ordered them to be tried, when they were found guilty, and the whole of them were hung in the harbour of Pico.
Such was the miserable end of Jean Florin, who carried off to France all the gold we had intended for our emperor! As for Avila, he was detained a close prisoner in one of the French fortresses, as the king of France expected a large ransom for a man who had been commissioned to convey so vast a treasure from the new world to Spain; but Avila by some means or other succeeded in bribing the commandant of the fortress, and secretly sent intelligence to Spain of the object of his mission; he even managed to forward Cortes' despatches, with all his papers and our letters, either into the hands of the licentiate Nuñez, who was a cousin of Cortes, and reporter of the royal council of Madrid, or into those of Cortes' father or of Diego de Ordas. These papers were instantly despatched to his majesty in Flanders, without their being at all noticed to the bishop of Burgos, who had not been able to hide his pleasure when he heard that all the gold, with our despatches, had fallen into the hands of the French corsair.
From this moment we had nothing further to fear from the bishop, for his majesty now received full particulars of all the circumstances; and though he felt grieved at the loss of so much gold, yet he was in one sense pleased it had fallen into the hands of the French king, for it would convince that monarch we should never let our emperor want for money to wage war with him. He also sent peremptory orders to the bishop of Burgos to aid Cortes in every way with regard to the affairs of New Spain; adding, that he was shortly coming to Spain himself, in order to investigate the dispute between Cortes and the governor of Cuba. When news of the capture of Avila, with the loss of the whole treasure we sent by him, reached New Spain, we all felt exceedingly grieved; but Cortes immediately collected all the gold and silver he could, which had recently been brought in from the province of Mechoacan, and of this he ordered a cannon to be cast, which he intended as a present to the emperor, and gave to it the name of phœnix.
The government of the township of Quauhtitlan was also carried on in the name of Avila until the arrival, three years after, of his brother Gil Gonsalez in New Spain, who was deputed by Avila to take the sole government of his Indian property, as he himself was determined never again to cross the sea, though he had obtained the appointment of treasurer of Yucatan.
But all this is rather foreign to my narrative, and I will rather relate what happened to Sandoval and the other officers whom Cortes sent out to form settlements in the provinces. But so many circumstances happened in the meantime, that I was obliged to break the thread of my history, and they were certainly too important to withhold from the curious reader. There was the arrival of Christobal de Tapia in Vera Cruz, which obliged Cortes to recall Sandoval and Alvarado from their expeditions into the provinces, in order that they might assist him with their excellent support and counsel in a matter of so much importance. Then there was the insurrection in the province of Panuco, and the mission to our emperor; and so it happened that my narrative became rather confused.
CHAPTER CLX.
How Sandoval arrives in the town of Tustepec, what he did there; his march to the river Guacasualco, and what further happened.
As soon as Sandoval arrived in the township of Tustepec, messengers of peace came to him from every part of the province, and there were only a few Mexican chiefs who durst not make their appearance, on account of the sixty Spaniards, with their wives, (all of Narvaez's corps,) who had been massacred in this place. It was two months after this tragical affair that I arrived at Tustepec with Sandoval, and I took up my quarters in a kind of tower, which had been a temple. In this same tower my unfortunate countrymen had sought refuge when they were attacked by the inhabitants, and had defended themselves until hunger, thirst, and wounds put an end to their existence. I selected this tower, which was very high, to rid myself of the moschitoes, which swarmed in this neighbourhood, and plagued us all day long; besides which, I was here in the immediate vicinity of Sandoval's quarters, which rendered mine doubly convenient to me.