up to believe that to set matters straight you must be harsh and cruel; and so he did as he was used to seeing other people in power do.  Even Queen Isabella did not hesitate to do some dreadful things to certain people she did not like when she got them in her power.  Cruelty was common in those days.  It was what we call the “spirit of the age.”  So you must not blame Bobadilla too much, although we will all agree that it was very hard on Columbus.

So Columbus, as I have told you, sailed back to Spain.  But when the officer who had charge of him and whose name was Villijo, had got out to sea and out of Bobadilla’s sight, he wanted to take the chains off.  For he loved Columbus and it made him feel very sad to see the old Admiral treated like a convict or a murderer.  Let me have these cruel chains struck off, Your Excellency, he said.  No, no, Villijo, Columbus replied.  Let these fetters remain upon me.  My king and queen ordered me to submit and Bobadilla has put me in chains.  I will wear these irons until my king and queen shall order them removed, and I shall keep them always as relics and memorials of my services.

It always makes us sad to see any one in great trouble.  To hear of a great man who has fallen low or of a rich man who has become poor, always makes us say:  Is not that too bad?  Columbus had many enemies in Spain.  The nobles of the court, the men who had lost money in voyages to the Indies, the people whose fathers and sons and brothers had sailed away never to return, could not say anything bad enough about “this upstart Italian,” as they called Columbus.

But to the most of the people Columbus was still the great Admiral.  He was the man who had stuck to his one idea until he had made a friend of the queen; who had sailed away into the West and proved the Sea of Darkness and the Jumping-off place to be only fairy tales after all; who had found Cathay and the Indies for Spain.  He was still a great man to the multitude.

So when on a certain October day, in the year 1500, it was spread abroad that a ship had just come into the harbor of Cadiz, bringing home the great Admiral, Christopher Columbus, a prisoner and in chains, folks began to talk at once.  Why, who has done this? they cried.  Is this the way to treat the man who found Cathay for Spain, the man whom the king and the queen delighted to honor, the man who made a procession for us with all sorts of birds and animals and pagan Indians?  It cannot be.  Why, we all remember how he sailed into Palos Harbor eight years ago and was received like a prince with banners and proclamations and salutes.  And now to bring him home in chains!  It is a shame; it is cruel; it is wicked.  And when people began to talk in this way, the very ones who had said the worst things against him began to change their tone.

As soon as the ship got into Cadiz, Columbus sent off a letter to a friend of his at the court in the beautiful city of Granada.  This letter was, of course, shown to the queen.  And it told all about what Columbus had suffered, and was, so full of sorrow and humbleness and yet of pride in what he had been able to do, even though he had been disgraced, that Queen Isabella (who was really a friend to Columbus in spite of her dissatisfaction with the things he sometimes did) became very angry at the way he had been treated.