to gain time by discussion and delay—­a cruel game for our Christopher, who knew his days on earth to be numbered, and who struggled in that web of time in which mortals try to hurry the events of the present and delay the events of the future.  Meanwhile Philip of Austria and his wife Juana, Isabella’s daughter, had arrived from Flanders to assume the crown of Castile, which Isabella had bequeathed to them.  Columbus saw a chance for himself in this coming change, and he sent Bartholomew as an envoy to greet the new Sovereigns, and to enlist their services on the Admiral’s behalf.  Bartholomew was very well received, but he was too late to be of use to the Admiral, whom he never saw again; and this is our farewell to Bartholomew, who passes out of our narrative here.  He went to Rome after Christopher’s death on a mission to the Pope concerning some fresh voyages of discovery; and in 1508 he made, so far as we know, his one excursion into romance, when he assisted at the production of an illegitimate little girl—­his only descendant.  He returned to Espanola under the governorship of his nephew Diego, and died there in 1514 —­stern, valiant, brotherly soul, whose devotion to Christopher must be for ever remembered and honoured with the name of the Admiral.

From Segovia Columbus followed the Court to Salamanca and thence to Valladolid, where his increasing illness kept him a prisoner after the Court had left to greet Philip and Juana.  He had been in attendance upon it for nearly a year, and without any results:  and now, as his infirmity increased, he turned to the settling of his own affairs, and drawing up of wills and codicils—­all very elaborate and precise.  In these occupations his worldly affairs were duly rounded off; and on May 19, 1506, having finally ratified a will which he had made in Segovia a year before, in which the descent of his honours was entailed upon Diego and his heirs, or failing him Ferdinand and his heirs, or failing him Bartholomew and his heirs, he turned to the settlement of his soul.

His illness had increased gradually but surely, and he must have known that he was dying.  He was not without friends, among them the faithful Diego Mendez, his son Ferdinand, and a few others.  His lodging was in a small house in an unimportant street of Valladolid, now called the “Calle de Colon”; the house, .No. 7, still standing, and to be seen by curious eyes.  As the end approached, the Admiral, who was being attended by Franciscan monks, had himself clothed in a Franciscan habit; and so, on the 20th May 1506, he lay upon his bed, breathing out his life.

. . .  And as strange thoughts Grow with a certain humming in my ears, About the life before I lived this life, And this life too, Popes, Cardinals, and priests, Your tall pale mother with her talking eyes And new-found agate urns fresh as day . . .

. . . we do not know what his thoughts were, as the shadows grew deeper about him, as the sounds of