The ensuing conversation helped Andrew back on his feet again at the time, though, remembered, certain things rose in a cloud of silver bubbles to fret him. He had always known his father's business interests wide, but now, for the first time, he saw them unroll before him like a parti-colored map on the dark table, and it made him proud. Even down in that strange, hot, spicy peninsula so lately Spain's, his father's eyes saw the long rows of indigo, cut down in the moment of flowering, and counted the profit of traffic with swamp Indians, hidden like alligators in the marshes, and the yield of fields of sugar cane he had never seen in the flesh. It appeared that his father had had some dealings already with this Scotch Dr. Hilary Gentian who had brought his mixed cargo of Minorcans, Greeks and Italians to colonize the hammock-lands below St. Augustine. "An ingenious man, sir, but pressed for money--and the men in London never understand that. They think a colony grows as easily as a thistle patch, once it's seeded--'tis more like an asparagus-bed--you can't expect returns for the first few years." Yet there had been some returns already--the indigo alone had brought in three thousand pounds during the last year. "Then there are his sugar works--and the hemp and maize and barilla. But they began with over two thousand souls to feed and were much harassed by sickness, I understand. You must be free with your glass, boy, when you reach there--they say a free glass wards off the fevers." Andrew listened dazzled, seeing the strange landscape rise before him with its blue sea and its tufted palms and its smell of alien blossoms. And yet the deep-seated reason, if there were one, for his immediate departure remained unexplained to him. Dr. Gentian had been warned of his probable arrival--that made Andrew blink a little--his father had never really mentioned the project before. He was to remain at New Sparta for a number of months at least--half-guest, half-apprentice in the ways of such a plantation, always his father's agent. "I would have you write me most fully of all that comes to your mind--particularly as to whether such a venture as Dr. Gentian's might be profitably copied by other gentlemen of sufficient fortune." Now what had his father meant by that? Surely he could not be thinking of transferring part of his interests to the distant Floridas? But there was more. "Also, sir, and most particularly, I would have you note the temper of the colony toward these scatterbrains your brother admires so greatly. I have heard that of all the colonies the Floridas alone feel no whistle-belly grievance against the Crown. If that be so--and these Gadarene swine that call themselves sons of Liberty start running their path to the sea--" "But, sir, you cannot really think that--"