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But Juan Lepe was taken from the forecastle, and slept where Nunez had slept, and had his place at the table in the great cabin. He turned from the sailor Juan Lepe to the physician Juan Lepe, becoming "Doctor" and "Senor." The wheel turns and a man's past makes his present.
Juan Lepe waited till the sands had narrowed, till the gray wave foamed under his hand. Then he rose and walked slowly to La Rabida. After compline, talk; Fray Juan Perez, the good man, comfortable in his great chair before the fire. He had hungered always, I thought, for adventure and marvel. Here it happened ? And here it happened ?
But this had fine sand for floor, and a row of calabashes, and wood laid for fire. Here Juan Lepe dropped, for all his head was swimming with weariness. The sun was up, the place glistered. Guarin showed how it was hidden. "I found it when I was a boy, and none but Guarin hath ever come here until you come, Juan Lepe!" He had no fear, it was evident, of Caonabo's coming.
His brows drew together above gray eyes and eagle nose. But for the most part, on Gomera, they were very friendly, and it was a sight to see Admiral and captains and all the privileged of the expedition sit at wine with the commandant. Juan Lepe had no quarrel with any of them. Jayme de Marchena swept this voyage into the Great Voyage.
He looked at me as I spoke, steadily and earnestly. What Juan Lepe said was not the first entry into his mind of something like that. But he was held by that great mass of him that was bound by the thinking of the Venerable. He was free far and far beyond most, but to certain things he clung like a limpet.
Besides Juan Lepe, we now possessed three physicians. They were skillful, they labored hard, we all labored. Men died of the malady, but no great number. But now among the idle of mind and soul and the factious arose the eternal murmur. Not heaven but hell, these new lands! Not wealth and happy ease, but poverty and miserable toil!
I looked up to see if he were in pain again, and met gray-blue eyes as longing as a child's. "What I would," he said, "is that the Lord would give to me forever to sail a great ship, and to find, forever to find! The sea is wider than the land, and it sends its waves upon all lands. Not Viceroy, but the Navigator, the Finder " Juan Lepe also thought that there streamed his Genius.
Juan Lepe said slowly, "Admiral of the Ocean-Sea and Viceroy and Governor of continents and islands in perpetuity, sons and sons' sons after you, and gilded deep with a tenth of all the wealth that flows forever from Asia over Ocean-Sea to Spain, and you and all after you made nobles, grandees and wealthy from generation to generation!
Alonso de Ojeda, Juan Ponce de Leon and Pedro Margarite rode with the Admiral. Others followed on black and bay and white horses. Juan Lepe marched with the footmen. He was glad to find Luis Torres. Before setting out we went to mass in the new church. Candles burned, incense rose in clouds, the friars chanted, the bell rang, we took the wafer, the priest lifted the chalice.
And Pedro Nino had left Cadiz in June, three days after the arrival there of the Nina and the Santa Cruz. "June! They had then a long voyage!" "Long enough! They looked like skeletons! If the Admiral's hair could get whiter, it was whiter." He had letters for the Adelantado from the great brother, having waited in Cadiz while they were written. Juan Lepe had likewise a letter.
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