Page:Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 1.djvu/31

Xuarez la Marcaida, one of the poor but beautiful sisters of his partner in Manicaro, Juan Xuarez, and won such favours from the lady as entitled her to exact the fulfilment of a promise of marriage which she declared he had made her, but with which he refused to comply. The Xuarez family was from Granada and came originally in the suite of Doña Maria de Toledo, wife of the Viceroy Don Diego Columbus to] Hispaniola, where it was hoped the four girls whose only dowry was their beauty might make good marriages among the rich planters. This hope was not realised in San Domingo and they removed to Cuba. Catalina, the eldest, was the most beautiful of all and had many admirers, amongst whom her preference fell upon Cortes, who was ever ready for gallant adventures. The matter was brought before the Governor who summoned Cortes ad audiendum verbum, influenced in Catalina' s favour it was said, by one of her sisters to whose charms he himself was not indifferent. But, in spite of official pressure, Cortes refused to make the reparation exacted of him. Such high words followed that the Governor ordered him to be imprisoned in the fortress under the charge of the alcalde Cristobal de Lagos. His imprisonment was brief, for he managed to escape, carrying off the sword and buckler of his gaoler, and took sanctuary in a church, from which neither the promises nor the threats of Velasquez could beguile him. One day, however, when he unwarily showed himself before the church door, the alguacil Juan Escudero seized him from behind, and, aided by others, carried him on board a ship lying in the harbour. Cortes feared this foreshadowed transportation, and, setting his wits to work, he contrived to escape a second time, dressed in the clothes of a servant who attended him. He let himself down into a small skiff and pulled for the shore, but the strength of the current at that point, where the waters of the Macaguanigua River flow into the sea, was such that his frail craft capsized,