Having learned from his scouts that Guaybána was camped with 5,000 to 6,000 men near the mouth of the river Coayúco in the territory between the Yauco and Jacágua rivers, somewhere in the neighborhood of the city which now bears the conqueror's name, he marched with great precaution through forest and jungle till he reached the river. He crossed it during the night and fell upon the Indians with such impetus that they believed their slain enemies to have come to life. They fled in confusion, leaving 200 dead upon the field. The force under Ponce's command was too small to follow up his victory by the persecution of the terror-stricken natives; nor would the exhausted condition of the men have permitted it, so he wisely determined to return to Capárra, cure his wounded soldiers, and await the result of his message to la Española. Oviedo and Navarro, whose narratives of these events are repeated by Abbad, state that the Boriquén Indians, despairing of being able to vanquish the Spaniards, called the Caribs of the neighboring islands to their aid; that the latter arrived in groups to make common cause with them, and that some time after the battle of Coayúco, between Caribs and Boriqueños, 11,000 men had congregated in the Aymacó district. But Mr. Brau[19] calls attention to the improbability of such a gathering. "Guaybána," he says, "had been able, after long preparation, to bring together between 5,000 and 6,000 warriors--of these 200 had been slain, and an equal number, perhaps, wounded and made prisoners, so that, to make up the number of 11,000, at least as many Caribs as the entire warrior force of Boriquén must have come to the island in the short space of time elapsed since the first battle. The islands inhabited by the Caribs--Santa Cruz, San Eustaquio, San Cristobal, and Dominica--were too distant to furnish so large a contingent in so short a time, and the author we are quoting justly remarks that, admitting that such a feat was possible, they must have had at their disposition a fleet of at least 200 canoes, each capable of holding 20 men, a number which it is not likely they ever possessed." There is another reason for discrediting the assertions of the old chroniclers in this respect. The idea of calling upon their enemies, the Caribs, to make common cause with them against a foe from whom the Caribs themselves had, as yet, suffered comparatively little, and the ready acceptance by these savages of the proposal, presupposes an amount of foresight and calculation, of diplomatic tact, so to speak, in both the Boriqueños and Caribs with which it is difficult to credit them. The probable explanation of the alleged arrival of Caribs is that some of the fugitive Indians who had found a refuge in the small islands close to Boriquén may have been informed of the preparations for a revolt and of the result of the experiment with Salcedo, and they naturally came to take part in the struggle.