John
de Ullua I would get to be entertained as a soldier, and so go home
into Spain in the same fleet; and, therefore, secretly one evening
late, the moon shining fair, I conveyed myself away, and riding so for
the space of two nights and two days, sometimes in, and sometimes out,
resting very little all that time, upon the second day at night I came
to the town of Vera Cruz, distant from the port of St. John de Ullua,
where the ships rode, but only eight leagues; and here purposing to
rest myself a day or two, I was no sooner alighted but within the space
of one half hour after I was by ill hap arrested, and brought before
justices there, being taken and suspected to be a gentleman's son of
Mexico that was run away from his father. So I, being arrested and
brought before the justices, there was a great hurly-burly about the
matter, every man charging me that I was the son of such a man,
dwelling in Mexico, which I flatly denied, affirming that I knew not
the man; yet would they not believe me, but urged still upon me that I
was he that they sought for, and so I was conveyed away to prison. And
as I was thus going to prison, to the further increase of my grief, it
chanced that at that very instant there was a poor man in the press
that was come to town to sell hens, who told the justices that they did
me wrong, and that in truth he knew very well that I was an Englishman,
and no Spaniard.
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