On these conditions and no others would Christopher Columbus undertake
his perilous journey into unknown seas; and the grandees of Spain walked
indignantly away from him.

"Lord High Admiral!" murmured one. "An office second only to royalty!
This foreigner demands promotion over us who have been fighting and
draining our veins and our purses for Spain this many a year!"
"Governor-General with power to select his own deputies!" murmured
another. "Why, he would be monarch absolute! What proof has he ever
given that he knows how to govern!" "One tenth of all goods acquired by
trade _or any other method_," protested still another. "What other
method has he in mind?--robbery, piracy, murder, forsooth? And then,
when complaints of his 'other method' are made, he alone is to judge the
case! A sorry state of justice, indeed!"

Now, when you see this from the Spaniards' point of view, can you not
understand their indignation? Yet Columbus, too, had cause for
indignation. True, these soldiers of Spain had risked much, but on land,
and aided by powerful troops. _He_ was offering to go with a few
men on a small ship across a vast unexplored sea; and that seemed to him
a far greater undertaking than a campaign against the Moors. His
position was much like that of the modern inventor who resents having
the greater part of the profits of his invention given to those who
promote it. Columbus's friends, the few men who had encouraged him and
believed in him ever since he came to Spain, begged him to accept less,
but he was inflexible. He was prepared to make the biggest journey man
had ever dreamed of, and not one iota less would he take for it. But no
such rewards would Talavera promise, and thus ended the interview for
which Columbus had waited nearly seven years!