Of course they did not understand him.  Even Louis, the interpreter, who knew a dozen languages and who tried them all, could not make out what these “Indians” said.  But from their signs and actions and from the sound of the words they spoke, Columbus understood that Cathay was off somewhere to the southwest, and that the gold he was bound to find came from there.  The “Indians” had little bits of gold hanging in their ears and noses.  So Columbus supposed that among the finer people he hoped soon to meet in the southwest, he should find great quantities of the yellow metal.  He was delighted.  Success, he felt, was not far off.  Japan was near, China was near, India was near.  Of this he was certain; and even until he died Columbus did not have any idea that he had found a new world—­such as America really was.  He was sure that he had simply landed upon the eastern coasts of Asia and that he had found what he set out to discover—­the nearest route to the Indies.

The next day Columbus pulled up his anchors, and having seized and carried off to his ships some of the poor natives who had welcomed him so gladly, he commenced a cruise among the islands of the group he had discovered.

Day after day he sailed among these beautiful tropic islands, and of them and of the people who lived upon them he wrote to the king and queen of Spain:  “This country excels all others as far as the day surpasses the night in splendor.  The natives love their neighbors as themselves; their conversation is the sweetest imaginable; their faces smiling; and so gentle and so affectionate are they, that I swear to Your Highness there is not a better people in the world.”

Does it not seem a pity that so great a man should have acted so meanly toward these innocent people who loved and trusted him so?  For it was Columbus who first stole them away from their island homes and who first thought of making them slaves to the white men.

CHAPTER VII.  HOW A BOY BROUGHT THE ADMIRAL TO GRIEF.

Columbus kept sailing on from one island to another.  Each new island he found would, he hoped, bring him nearer to Cathay and to the marble temples and golden palaces and splendid cities he was looking for.  But the temples and palaces and cities did not appear.  When the Admiral came to the coast of Cuba he said:  This, I know, is the mainland of Asia.  So he sent off Louis, the interpreter, with a letter to the “great Emperor of Cathay.”  Louis was gone several days; but he found no emperor, no palace, no city, no gold, no jewels, no spices, no Cathay—­only frail houses of bark and reeds, fields of corn and grain, with simple people who could tell him nothing about Cathay or Cipango or the Indies.

So day after day Columbus kept on his search, sailing from island to island, getting a little gold here and there, or some pearls and silver and a lot of beautiful bird skins, feathers and trinkets.