At one point they met a flotilla of Indian canoes, which chased them and captured them, but they escaped.

When they arrived at the end of the easterly point of Jamaica, now known as Morant Point, they had to wait two or three days for calm weather and a favourable wind to waft them across to Espanola, and while thus waiting they were suddenly surrounded and captured by a tribe of hostile natives, who carried them off some nine or ten miles into the island, and signified their intention of killing them.
But they began to quarrel among themselves as to how they should divide the spoils which they had captured with the canoe, and decided that the only way of settling the dispute was by some elaborate trial of hazard which they used.

While they were busy with their trial Diego Mendez managed to escape, got back to the canoe, and worked his way back in it alone to the harbour where the Spaniards were encamped.

The other Spaniard who was with him probably perished, for there is no record of what became of him--an obscure life lost in a brave enterprise.
One would have thought that Mendez now had enough of canoe voyages, but he had no sooner got back than he offered to set out again, only stipulating that an armed force should march along the coast by land to secure his safety until he could stand across to Espanola.

Bartholomew Columbus immediately put himself at the head of a large and well-armed party for this purpose, and Bartolomeo Fieschi, the Genoese captain of one of the lost caravels, volunteered to accompany Mendez in a second canoe.