to disqualify the Admiral in his position as Viceroy.  In all these affairs his right-hand man was Roldan, whose loyalty to Columbus, as we foresaw, had been short-lived.  Roldan collects evidence; Roldan knows where he can lay his hands on this witness; Roldan produces this and that proof; Roldan is here, there, and everywhere—­never had Bobadilla found such a useful, obliging man as Roldan.  With his help Bobadilla soon collected a sufficient weight of evidence to justify in his own mind his sending Columbus home to Spain, and remaining himself in command of the island.

The caravels having been made ready, and all the evidence drawn up and documented, it only remained to embark the prisoners and despatch them to Spain.  Columbus, sitting in his dungeon, suffering from gout and ophthalmic as well as from misery and humiliation, had heard no news; but he had heard the shouting of the people in the streets, the beating of drums and blowing of horns, and his own name and that of his brothers uttered in derision; and he made sure that he was going to be executed.  Alonso de Villegio, a nephew of Bishop Fonseca’s, had been appointed to take charge of the ships returning to Spain; and when he came into the prison the Admiral thought his last hour had come.

“Villegio,” he asked sadly, “where are you taking me?”

“I am taking you to the ship, your Excellency, to embark,” replied the other.

“To embark?” repeated the Admiral incredulously.  “Villegio! are you speaking the truth?”

“By the life of your Excellency what I say is true,” was the reply, and the news came with a wave of relief to the panic-stricken heart of the Admiral.

In the middle of October the caravels sailed from San Domingo, and the last sounds heard by Columbus from the land of his discovery were the hoots and jeers and curses hurled after him by the treacherous, triumphant rabble on the shore.  Villegio treated him and his brothers with as much kindness as possible, and offered, when they had got well clear of Espanola, to take off the Admiral’s chains.  But Columbus, with a fine counterstroke of picturesque dignity, refused to have them removed.  Already, perhaps, he had realised that his subjection to this cruel and quite unnecessary indignity would be one of the strongest things in his favour when he got to Spain, and he decided to suffer as much of it as he could.  “My Sovereigns commanded me to submit to what Bobadilla should order.  By his authority I wear these chains, and I shall continue to wear them until they are removed by order of the Sovereigns; and I will keep them afterwards as reminders of the reward I have received for my services.”  Thus the Admiral, beginning to pick up his spirits again, and to feel the better for the sea air.

The voyage home was a favourable one and in the course of it Columbus wrote the following letter to a friend of his at Court, Dona Juana de la Torre, who had been nurse to Prince Juan and was known by him to be a favourite of the Queen: