Columbus hopes the skirmish keeps the 39 men at La Navidad safe

… The Christians, so he says, would have killed many of them if the pilot who went as their captain had not prevented it. The Christians then went back to the caravel with their boat, and when the Admiral learned of it he said that on the one hand it grieved him and on the other not, because they would be afraid of the Christians, because without doubt (he says) the people there are, so he says, given to evildoing, and he believed they were those of Carib, and that they ate men; and because, if the boat he left for the 39 men in the fortress and town of La Navidad should come by there, they would be afraid to do them any harm. And that if they are not of the Caribs, at least they must be their neighbors and of the same customs, and a people without fear, unlike the others of the other islands, who are cowards and without weapons beyond reason. All this the Admiral says, and that he would like to take some of them. They made, so he says, many smoke signals, as they were accustomed to do in that Isla Española.