The one man by whom these calamities could have been obviated, Vasco Nuñez de Balboa, was by the governor's orders restrained from action and confined, virtually a prisoner, within the walls of Antigua. While courageous and daring enough in the field, he yet possessed an excessive regard for his sovereign and his representatives, hence his servile submission to the persecutions of Pedrarias. He has remained silent for a long while beneath the governor's opprobrium and calumnies; now let him speak in his own behalf. While the ravage of Tubanamá was in progress, and his warriors were raging around the settlement, he approached the bishop one day as he emerged from the rude chapel that served as church and cathedral. "Your lordship," he said, "I can endure this no longer! My patience, beneath the insults and indignities which the governor has heaped upon me, has reached its limit. Even the king, were he to know all that has occurred in this colony since that base usurper came here, could not but sustain me in rebelling against his authority. He has, as you know, kept me here in durance, while others have been intrusted with expeditions that have invariably returned in disaster. In justice to the survivors of this once-flourishing colony, which I alone placed on a basis of prosperity, but which Pedrarias has reduced to lamentable ruin, I demand that I be established in power again. If not here at Darien, then on the coast of the great sea, of which so little has been learned since I discovered it." His eyes flashed, his breast heaved with deep emotion, and the bishop saw that he was at last aroused from his lethargy--that the lion within him was crouching for a spring. He heard him through without interruption, then said, soothingly: "My son, it is even so as thou hast said. I have beheld these things with grief and inward rage; but, as thou knowest, Don Pedro hath been appointed by the king, and, though he be technically a usurper, still he is supported by the crown. Had but Arbolancha arrived a few weeks sooner than he did all might have been in thy favor; but now--now the king's eyes have been opened too late to bestow upon thee thy deserts. But patience, my son, for yet a little while. To-day, this very morning, will I see the governor and plead thy cause." The good bishop quickly redeemed his pledge, and within an hour was in the presence of the governor and his lady. Without a moment's delay he plunged into the subject of which he was so full, representing to Pedrarias that "by keeping the finest capacity in the land in idleness and obscurity he was injuring none more than himself, thus losing the fruits which the friendship of Vasco Nuñez would produce for him."