heard again a kind of
talk that I had heard before. Partly because I had shipped as Juan Lepe
an Andalusian sailor and had had my forecastle days, and partly because
men rarely fear to speak to a physician, and partly because in the
great whole there existed liking between them and me, they talked and
discussed freely enough what any other from the other end of ship could
have come at only by formal questioning. Now many of the seamen wanted
to know when we were returning to Palos, and another number said that
they would just as soon never return, or at least not for a good while!
But they did not wish to spend that good while upon the ship. It was a
good land, and the heathen also good. The heathen might all be going to
burn in hell, unless Fray Ignatio could get them baptized in time, and
so numerous were they that seemed hardly possible! Almost all might have
to go to hell. But in the meantime, here on earth, they had their uses,
and one could even grow fond of them--certainly fond of the women. The
heathen were eager to work for us, catch us coneys, bring us gold, put
hammocks for us between trees and say "Sleep, senor, sleep!" Here even
Tomaso Passamonte was "senor" and "Don." And as for the women--only the
skin is dark--they were warm-hearted! Gold and women and never any cold
nor hunger nor toil! The heathen to toil for you--and they could be
taught to make wine, with all these grapes dangling everywhere? Heathen
could do the gathering and pressing, and also the gold hunting in rocks
and streams. Spain would furnish the mind and the habit of command. It
were well to stay and cultivate Hispaniola! The Admiral and those who
wanted to might take home the ships. Of course the Admiral would come
again, and with him ships and many men. No one wanted, of course, never
to see again Castile and Palos and his family! But to stay in Hispaniola
a while and rest and grow rich,--that was what they wanted. And no one
could justly call them idle! 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.

But there had eventually to be colonies, and I knew that the Admiral was
revolving in his head the leaving in t