Orellana and his followers, though in appearance sufficiently patient and submissive, meditated a severe revenge for all these inhumanities. As these Indians have great intercourse with Buenos Ayres in time of peace, Orellana understood Spanish, and affected to converse with such of the English prisoners as could speak that language, seeming very desirous of being informed how many Englishmen there were on board, and of having them pointed out to him. As he knew the English were as much enemies to the Spaniards as he was, he had doubtless an intention of disclosing his purposes to them, and making them partners in the scheme he had projected for revenging his wrongs and recovering his liberty; but, having sounded them at a distance, and not finding them so precipitate and vindictive as he expected, he proceeded no farther with them, but resolved to trust alone to the resolution of his ten faithful followers, who readily engaged to observe his directions and to execute his commands. Having agreed on the measures to be pursued, they contrived to provide themselves with Dutch knives, sharp at the point, which, being the common knives used in the ship, they procured without difficulty. They also employed their leisure in secretly cutting thongs from raw hides, of which there were great numbers on board, and in fixing to each end of these thongs the double-headed shot of the small quarter-deck guns; by which they formed most mischievous weapons, in the use of which, by swinging round the head, the Indians about Buenos Ayres are extremely expert, being trained to it from their infancy. When these things were in good forwardness, the execution of their scheme was perhaps precipitated by a particular outrage committed upon Orellana, who was ordered aloft by one of the officers, and being incapable of doing so, the officer, who was a brutal fellow, beat him with such violence, under pretence of disobedience, that he left him bleeding on the deck, and quite stupified with wounds and bruises. This certainly increased his thirst of revenge, so that within a day or two he and his followers began to execute their desperate resolves in the following manner.