e many kind expressions of love and respect,
truly considering that the Interest of the Inca might be advantageous
to him, both in War and Peace. And with this satisfactory answer
Gomez Perez returned both to the Inca and to his companions." The
refugees were delighted with the news and got ready to return to king
and country. Their departure from Uiticos was prevented by a tragic
accident, thus described by Garcilasso.

"The Inca, to humour the Spaniards and entertain himself with them,
had given directions for making a bowling-green; where playing one day
with Gomez Perez, he came to have some quarrel and difference with this
Perez about the measure of a Cast, which often happened between them;
for this Perez, being a person of a hot and fiery brain, without any
judgment or understanding, would take the least occasion in the world
to contend with and provoke the Inca .... Being no longer able to
endure his rudeness, the Inca punched him on the breast, and bid him
to consider with whom he talked. Perez, not considering in his heat
and passion either his own safety or the safety of his Companions,
lifted up his hand, and with the bowl struck the Inca so violently on
the head, that he knocked him down. [He died three days later.] The
Indians hereupon, being enraged by the death of their Prince, joined
together against Gomez and the Spaniards, who fled into a house,
and with their Swords in their hands defended the door; the Indians
set fire to the house, which being too hot for them, they sallied out
into the Marketplace, where the Indians assaulted them and shot them
with their Arrows until they had killed every man of them; and then
afterwards, out of mere rage and fury they designed either to eat
them raw as their custome was, or to burn them and cast their ashes
into the river, that no sign or appearance might remain of them; but
at length, after some consultation, they agreed to cast their bodies
into the open fields, to be devoured by vulters and birds of the air,
which they supposed to be the highest indignity and dishonour that
they could show to their Corps." Garcilasso concludes: "I informed
myself very perfectly from those chiefs and nobles who were present
and eye-witnesses of the unparalleled piece of madness of that rash
and hair-brained fool; and heard them tell this story to my mother
and parents with tears in their eyes." There are many versions of
the tragedy. [4] They all agree that a Spaniard murdered