stigation into
Arana's affairs, raided his house and ordered him to be arrested by his
namesake and confined in a cell in La Fuerza. To this, however, Captain
Melchior de Arana demurred. It was not that he did not regard the
accountant as worthy of arrest. But he held that it was beneath his
dignity to arrest a mere civilian and beneath the dignity of the Fort to
serve as a prison for him. The arrest, he said, should be made by the
sheriff, and the prisoner should be confined in the civil jail. At this
the Governor was furious and he retaliated by sending the sheriff to
arrest Captain Melchior de Arana and to confine him not in the military
fortress but in the civil jail. A little later, however, he had the
Captain transferred to a cell in La Fuerza. Then he made his
brother-in-law, Juan de Ferrer, Captain of the Fort in Melchior's place.

In his strenuous dealings with the royal accountant the Governor appears
merely to have anticipated the King himself. At any rate, a very little
while after he had begun his investigation of Pedro de Arana the
instructions came to him from Madrid that he should pursue precisely
that course. This naturally encouraged him to renewed zeal in the
prosecution. And the result was that in March, 1582, he removed Arana
from the office of royal accountant and appointed Manuel Diaz
temporarily to fill his place. At this Arana made his way to Hispaniola,
there to appeal to the Supreme Court against the Governor. He did more
than appeal. He made grave charges against Luzon and got the court to
order an investigation. The court appointed as chief inquisitor into
Luzan's affairs Garcia de Torquemada, who went to Cuba in April, 1583,
taking Arana along with him. Diaz made no attempt to maintain his title
to the office, but, regarding discretion as the better part of valor,
left Havana and repaired to his plantation in the Far West. But the
Governor and also Rojas, the Royal Treasurer, who sided with him against
Arana, stood their ground.

In the meantime, early in 1582, the King became dissatisfied with the
fast and loose game which was being played at Havana, and chiefly at La
Fuerza, and determined to take matters into his own hand. He did so by
appointing a Captain-General to be Commander of the Fortress, who should
be independent of the Governor of Cuba. This involved some awkward
complications. The Governor, Luzan, had been regularly commissioned as
Captain-General as well as Governor. And the