Note 610 — Chapter XX · THE CUBAN GOVERNOR IN PURSUIT. 1519-1520.

‘Yd con essos indios, é córtese la madera, y entretanto Dios nos proveerá de gente é socorro: por tanto, poned tal dilaçion que parezca que haçeys algo.’ Oviedo, iii. 507-8; Gomara, Hist. Mex., 138. Bernal Diaz considers this wrong. He knows not what Cortés told Lopez, ‘mas muy secretamente me dixo el Martin Lopez, que de hecho, y apriessa los labrava.’ Montezuma had demanded that ‘no huviesse mas palabras, sino obras.’ Hist. Verdad., 86. Perhaps Lopez did hurry, from personal fear of remaining in the country; or he may have been instructed by Cortés to say so to the soldiers, in order to calm them.