One of the sailors died, a ship boy sickened, and the
physician's fever increased upon him. Diego de Arana began to fail. The
ship's master came at supper time and looked us over. "Is there any here
who has any leechcraft?"

Beltran the cook said, "I can set a bone and wash a wound; but it ends
there!"

Cried Fernando from his corner. "Is the plague among us!" The master
turned on him. "Here and now, I say five lashes for the man who says
that word again! Has any man here sense about a plain fever?"

None else speaking, I said that long ago I had studied for a time with
a leech, and that I was somewhat used to care of the sick. "Then you
are my man!" quoth the master, and forthwith took me to the Admiral. I
became Juan Lepe, the physician.

It was, I held, a fever received while wandering through the ravines and
woods of Gomera. Master Bernardo had in his cabin drugs and tinctures,
and we breathed now all the salt of Ocean-Sea, and the ship was clean. I
talked to Beltran the cook about diet, and I chose Sancho and a man that
I liked, one Luis Torres, for nurses. Two others sickened this night,
and one the next day, but none afterward. None died; in ten days all
were recovered. Other ailments aboard I doctored also. Don Diego de
Arana was subject to fits of melancholy with twitchings of the body.
I had watched Isaac the Physician cure such things as this, and now I
followed instruction. I put my hands upon the patient and I strengthened
his will with mine, sending into him desire for health and perception of
health. His inner man caught tune. The melancholy left him and did not
return. Master Bernardo threw off the fever, sat up and moved about. But
he was still weak, and still I tended the others for him.

The _Pinta_ had signaled four men ill. But Garcia Fernandez, the Palos
physician, was there with Martin Pinzon, and the sick recovered. The
Nina had no doctor and now she came near to the Santa Maria and sent a
boat. She had five sick men and would borrow Bernardo Nunez.

The Admiral spoke with Nunez, now nearly well. Then the physician made a
bundle of drugs and medicaments, said farewell to all and kindly enough
to me, and rowed away to the _Nina_. He was a friend of the Pinzons, and
above the vanity of the greater ship. The sick upon the Nina prospered
under him.

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
t