Three learned men: Doctors Rodrigo, Joseph the Jew, and the Right Reverend Cazadilla, Bishop of Ceuta; three risen, stuffed to the eyes and ears with learning; stuffed so full indeed that eyes and ears are closed with it.

And three men, it would appear, wholly destitute of mother-wit.
After all his preparations this rebuff must have been a serious blow to Columbus.

It was not his only trouble, moreover.

During the last year he had been earning nothing; he was already in imagination the Admiral of the Ocean Seas; and in the anticipation of the much higher duties to which he hoped to be devoted it is not likely that he would continue at his humble task of making maps and charts.

The result was that he got into debt, and it was absolutely necessary that something should be done.
But a darker trouble had also almost certainly come to him about this time.