CRISIS IN THE ADMIRAL'S LIFE Columbus was not far wrong in his estimate of the effect likely to be produced by his manacles, and when the ships of Villegio arrived at Cadiz in October, the spectacle of an Admiral in chains produced a degree of commiseration which must have exceeded his highest hopes.

He was now in his fiftieth year and of an extremely venerable appearance, his kindling eye looking forth from under brows of white, his hair and beard snow-white, his face lined and spiritualised with suffering and sorrow.
It must be remembered that before the Spanish people he had always appeared in more or less state.

They had not that intimacy with him, an intimacy which perhaps brought contempt, which the people in Espanola enjoyed; and in Spain, therefore, the contrast between his former grandeur and this condition of shame and degradation was the more striking.

It was a fact that the people of Spain could not neglect.

It touched their sense of the dramatic and picturesque, touched their hearts also perhaps--hearts quick to burn, quick to forget.