My king and queen ordered me to submit and Bobadilla has put me in chains.

I will wear these irons until my king and queen shall order them removed, and I shall keep them always as relics and memorials of my services.
It always makes us sad to see any one in great trouble.

To hear of a great man who has fallen low or of a rich man who has become poor, always makes us say: Is not that too bad?
Columbus had many enemies in Spain.

The nobles of the court, the men who had lost money in voyages to the Indies, the people whose fathers and sons and brothers had sailed away never to return, could not say anything bad enough about "this upstart Italian," as they called Columbus.
But to the most of the people Columbus was still the great Admiral.

He was the man who had stuck to his one idea until he had made a friend of the queen; who had sailed away into the West and proved the Sea of Darkness and the Jumping-off place to be only fairy tales after all; who had found Cathay and the Indies for Spain.