the Ocean Seas. He begged the queen
to let him go back again at once, with ships and sailors and the power
to do as he pleased in the islands he had found and in the lands he
hoped to find.

They promised him everything, for promising is easy. But Columbus had
once more to learn the truth of the old Bible warning that he had called
to mind years before on the Bridge of Pinos: Put not your trust in
princes.

The king and queen talked very nicely and promised much, but to one
thing King Ferdinand had made up his mind--Columbus should never go back
again to the Indies as viceroy or governor. And King Ferdinand was as
stubborn as Columbus was persistent.

Not very much gold had yet been brought back from the Indies, but the
king and queen knew from the reports of those who had been over the
seas and kept their eyes open that, in time, a great deal of gold and
treasure would come from there. So they felt that if they kept their
promises to Columbus he would take away too large a slice of their
profits, and if they let him have everything to say there it would not
be possible to let other people, who were ready to share the profits
with them, go off discovering on their own hook.

So they talked and delayed and sent out other expeditions and kept
Columbus in Spain, unsatisfied. Another governor was sent over to take
the place of Bobadilla, for they soon learned that that ungentlemanly
knight was not even so good or so strict a governor as Columbus had
been.

Almost two years passed in this way and still Columbus staid in Spain.
At last the king and queen said he might go if he would not go near
Hayti and would be sure to find other and better gold lands.

Columbus did not relish being told where to go and where not to go like
this; but he promised. And on the ninth of May, 1502, with four small
caravels and one hundred and fifty men, Christopher Columbus sailed from
Cadiz on his fourth and last voyage to the western world.

He was now fifty-six years old. That is not an age at which we would
call any one an old man. But Columbus had grown old long before his
time. Care, excitement, exposure, peril, trouble and worry had made
him white-haired and wrinkled. He was sick, he was nearly blind, he was
weak, he was feeble--but his determination was just as firm, his hope
just as high, his desire just as strong as ever. He was bound, this
time, to find Cathay.

And he had one other wish. He had enemies in Hayti; they had la