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Updated: June 9, 2025
But the physician, Juan Lepe, believed that ports and havens, new lands, and service of an order above this order were even now coloring and thrilling within. When all spring was singing high, the Admiral, having had a letter from the king, said he would go to court. His sons would have had him travel in a litter, but he waved that away.
They would put Juan Lepe among these last, but here was Juan Lepe, one only left of that thirty-eight. The boat approached. I saw the bared head, higher than any other, the white hair, the blue-gray eyes, the strong nose and lips, the whole majestic air of the man, as of a great one chosen. Master Christopherus Don Cristoval el Almirante!
But the letter that counted most to Christopherus Columbus was one to himself from the Queen. Juan Lepe found him with it in his hand. From the wrist yet hung the chain. Tears were running down his cheeks. "You see you see!" he said. "I thank thee, Christ, who taketh care of us all!" They came and took away his chains. But he claimed them from the corregidor and kept them to his death.
Once he said, "When my son was at the University at Salamanca," and again, "My son will go out with Don Nicholas de Ovando." Juan Lepe, sitting in a brown study, roused at that. "If you go, senor, you will find good memories around the name of Las Casas." The young man said, "I will strive in no way to darken them, senor." He might be a year or two the younger side of thirty.
Juan Lepe who had nursed the sick down there in La Navidad knew feebly what it was. He saw in a mist the naked priest, his friend and rescuer, seated upon the sandy floor regarding him with a wrinkled brow and compressed lips, and then he sank into fever visions uncouth and dreadful, or mirage-pleasing with a mirage-ecstasy. Juan Lepe did not die, but he lay ill and like to die for two months.
What a strong wind is life, leaping from continent to continent and crying, "Home wherever I can breathe and move!" This young man was Bartolome, then at Salamanca, at the University. Bartolome de Las Casas, whom Juan Lepe should live to know and work with. But this evening I heard the father talk, as any father of any promising son.
A little off I saw a third, then a fourth. Juan Lepe rubbed his eyes. Before there came no more he had counted seventeen sail. They grew; they were so beauteous. Toward the harbor sailed a fleet. Now I made out the flagship. O Life, thou wondrous goddess of happenings! An hour I sat on cliff edge and watched. They were making in, the lovely white swans.
If they found out all about the land and where were the gold and the spices, was there not use in that, just as much use as wandering forever on the Santa Maria? Mother earth was kind, kind, here, and she didn't have a rod like mother country and Mother Church! They did not say this last, but it was what they meant. "You don't see the rod, that is all," said Juan Lepe.
The Santa Maria swung at anchor and the whole world seemed a just-breathing stillness. There was the watch, but all else slept. The watch, looking at Cuba and the moon on the water, did not observe Felipe when he crept from forecastle with a long, sharp two-edged knife such as they sell in Toledo. Juan Lepe woke from first sleep and could not recover it.
When the breach is made, any may take the fortress! I will leave him and give him what I must but no more! He will send at last another than Bobadilla, but not again, if he can help it, the old Viceroy! Of course there is the Queen, but she has many sorrows these days, and fails, they say, in health." "It may be," said Juan Lepe. "I myself were content for him to rest The Admiral only.
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