id what I could for him then waited until the access was
over. It passed, and he took again his pen.

I said, "You advise that there be made a market for Carib slaves,
balancing thus the negroes the Portuguese are bringing in, and providing
a fund for our needs--"

He said, "They are eaters of men's flesh, intractable and abominable,
not like the gentler people we find hereabouts! It is certain that
before long, fleet after fleet coming, our two thousand here growing
into many thousands, more cities than Isabella arising, commerce and
life as in Europe beginning--Well, these fiercer, Caribal islands will
be overrun, taken for Spain! What better to do with their people? I do
not wish to slay them and eat them!"

"Slaves--"

"How many Moors in Castile and Arragon, slaves and none the worse
for it, being baptized, being kindly enough entreated! And now the
Portuguese bring Negroes, and are they the worse off, being taken from
a deep damnation? Long ago, I have read, the English were taken to Rome
and sold in the market place, and the blessed Gregory, seeing them,
cried, 'Christ shall be preached in their nation!' Whereupon he sent
Augustine and all England was saved.--Look you, this world is rude and
worketh rudely! But it climbs in the teeth of its imperfections!"

"I do not doubt that," I said. "When it wills to climb."

"I do but lay it before the Sovereigns," he answered. "I do not know
what they will think of it there. But truly I know not what else to do
with these Asiatics when they withstand us! And even in slavery they
must gain from Christians! What matters masters when they find the True
Master?"

Juan Lepe brooded still while the pen scratched and scratched across the
page. The noise ceased. 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. Here he was able,
but there played the Fire. But he, like many another, had bound himself.
Don Cristoval Colon--Viceroy--and eighths and tenths!

CHAPTER XXX

TWELVE of our ships went home to Spain.

February wheeled by. March was here, and every day the sun sent us more
heat.

The Indians around us still were friendly--women