In answer, the king gave permission to land at Lisbon, and invited Columbus to court. Columbus may not have wished to go there, but a royal invitation was a command. On entering the king's presence, the great explorer saw many of the noblemen who, years before, had advised their monarch not to aid him. Our Admiral is not to be blamed, therefore, if he took a deep delight in painting his new world in the rosiest colors possible. His story made king and courtiers feel uncomfortably foolish for not having been willing to take the risk Spain had taken. It was a bitter pill for poor King John to swallow, and straightway his scheming old brain began to hatch a pretext for getting the new lands for himself. "Pope Martin V.," he reminded his visitor, "conceded to the Crown of Portugal all lands that might be discovered between Cape Bojador and the Indies, and your new discovery therefore belongs to me rather than to Spain." "Quite right," murmured his courtiers. Then, when Columbus declared he had sailed west and not south, that Spain herself had warned him to keep clear of Portugal's possessions, and that the lands he had discovered were merely Atlantic islands, they all insisted that "the Indies were the Indies, and belonged by papal authority to Portugal!" Oh, those shifting, indiscriminate, fifteenth-century Indies which Europe invented to explain the unknown world! What misunderstandings resulted from the vague term! Columbus, again tactful, stopped boasting now, and merely observed that he had never heard of this papal treaty, and that the monarchs would have to settle it between themselves. Then he took his departure, with every show of kindliness from the king, including a royal escort. The minute he was gone those courtly, crafty heads all got together and told the king that most likely the man was merely a boaster, but, lest he might have discovered territory for Spain, why not hurriedly send out a Portuguese fleet to seize the new islands ere Spain could make good her claim? Some even whispered something about assassination. Let us hope that King John turned a deaf ear to them. At any rate, Columbus was not assassinated, perhaps because he thought it safer to trust to his battered little _Nina_ than to cross Portugal by land. Hurrying aboard, he hoisted anchor and started for Palos. It was on a Friday that Columbus had left Palos; it was likewise on Friday that he had left the Canaries after mending the _Pinta's_ rudder; on Friday he had taken leave of the little settlement of La Navidad away back in Haiti, and now it was on Friday, the 15th of March, that he dropped anchor in the friendly port of Palos.