While descending the river the officers ordered a certain Biscayan named Machin to prepare the food for the governor and then to pass it to Lope Duarte, one of the confederates of Domingo de Irala, and guilty, like the rest, of complicity in his arrest. He came from Spain as solicitor to Domingo de Irala and to attend to his affairs. While the governor journeyed in this fashion, arsenic was administered to him three times; but as an antidote against this poison he carried with him a bottle of oil and a piece of the horn of a unicorn. When he felt unwell he made use of these remedies; day and night his sufferings were great. But it pleased God that he escaped safely. He entreated the officers, Alonso Cabrera and Garcia Vanegas, to allow his own servants to cook for him, as he would take his meals from nobody else. To this they replied that he would have to take his food from whomsoever they chose; if he did not take it from the persons commissioned to give it him, he might die of hunger, it mattered little to them. He abstained from food several days, but hunger at length compelled him to take what they gave him. The insurgents had promised several persons to take them on board the caravel (afterwards destroyed) to Spain if they would support their faction and help them to arrest the governor and not oppose them.