he result was that soon after
landing in Mexico, Narvaez was wounded and made captive by Cortez, and
practically all his men, with their stores, munitions, arms and ships,
who had been sent out to subdue Cortez, became loyal followers of that
resourceful conquistador. In fact, we may judiciously reckon that Cortez
owed his success in the conquest of Mexico to the reenforcements which
he thus received from the expedition which had been sent against him.

Later, it is true, some members of Narvaez's party became a source of
serious peril to Cortez. This was at the beginning of the year 1521,
after the death of Montezuma and the _noche triste_, and at the time
when Cortez was planning to return to the city of Mexico as its
conqueror. A number of Narvaez's men entered into a conspiracy to
assassinate Cortez, and at their head was one Villafana, who had been a
very close friend and earnest partisan of Velasquez. Because of that
relationship, it was suspected by Cortez that the man had been incited
to undertake the crime by Velasquez himself. Of this there was, however,
no proof, and no attempt was made to fasten responsibility or odium upon
Velasquez; which we may be sure would have been done had any real ground
for it been discovered. By interesting coincidence, the conspiracy was
made, detected and punished at the very time when, as we shall see,
Velasquez was being removed from the Governorship of Cuba.

Villafana modelled his plans upon those of the slayers of Julius Caesar.
All the conspirators were to approach Cortez in public, and one of them
was to approach him with what should purport to be a letter from his
father, Martin Cortez, just arrived on a vessel from Spain. The moment
he took the letter and began to read it, all were to rush upon him and
stab him with their knives. Cortez detected the plot just in time. He
personally went with guards to Villafana's apartments and arrested him,
while others took the other conspirators into custody. Villafana was put
to death, and the others were imprisoned. Then Cortez, with
characteristic resourcefulness, turned the incident to account for his
own profit, by making it the pretext for continually thereafter
surrounding himself with an armed body guard of his most trusted
soldiers.

Velasquez returned to Santiago to find affairs in a sad plight. Small
pox, measles and other epidemics were raging, and disastrous tropical
hurricanes had swept the island, destroying crops and