_The Chief Admiral of the Ocean, Vice-Roy and Governor-General of the islands and continent of Asia, and the Indies of my lords, the King and Queen, their Captain-General of the sea, and of their Council._ _"S." "S. A. S." "X. M. Y." "Xpo. FERENS."_[27] HIS PATIENCE AND NOBILITY OF MIND UNDER SUFFERING AND IN THE MIDST OF UNDESERVED INDIGNITIES. The reply of Columbus to Andreas Martin, captain of the caravel conveying him a prisoner to Spain, upon an offer to remove his fetters: _Since the King has commanded that I should obey his Governor, he shall find me as obedient in this as I have been to all his other orders; nothing but his command shall release me. If twelve years' hardship and fatigue; if continual dangers and frequent famine; if the ocean first opened, and five times passed and repassed, to add a new world, abounding with wealth, to the Spanish monarchy; and if an infirm and premature old age, brought on by these services, deserve these chains as a reward, it is very fit I should wear them to Spain, and keep them by me as memorials to the end of my life._ From a letter to the King and Queen: _This country (the Bahamas) excels all others as far as the day surpasses the night in splendor; the natives love their neighbors as themselves; their conversation is the sweetest imaginable, and their faces are always smiling. So gentle and so affectionate are they that I swear to your Highness there is no better people in the world._ From the same: _The fish rival the birds in tropical brilliancy of color, the scales of some of them glancing back the rays of light like precious stones, as they sported about the ships and flashed gleams of gold and silver through the clear water._ Speech of a West Indian chief to Columbus, on his arrival in Cuba: _Whether you are divinities or mortal men, we know not. You have come into these countries with a force, against which, were we inclined to resist, it would be folly. We are all therefore at your mercy; but if you are men, subject to mortality like ourselves, you can not be unapprised that after this life there is another, wherein a very different portion is allotted to good and bad men. If therefore you expect to die, and believe, with us, that every one is to be rewarded in a future state according to his conduct in the present, you will do no hurt to those who do none to you._ SHIPWRECK AND MARRIAGE. From the "Life of Columbus," by his son Hernando: