_Fifth_: That in fitting out all expeditions for trade or discovery
he should be allowed to furnish one eighth of the cost and receive one
eighth of the profit.
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.
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