After Queen Isabella asked Admiral Columbus to describe the island of

After Queen Isabella asked Admiral Columbus to describe the island of Hispaniola (now Haiti), which was newly discovered, he had reached for a sheet of paper, crumpled it, and said, “It looks like that—beyond the mountains, more mountains.”
(A) After Queen Isabella asked Admiral Columbus to describe the island of Hispaniola (now Haiti), which was newly discovered, he had reached
(B) On being asked to describe the new discovery of the island of Hispaniola (now Haiti) by Queen Isabella, Admiral Columbus, reaching
(C) Queen Isabella asked Admiral Columbus to describe the newly discovered island of Hispaniola (now Haiti), then he reached
(D) When asked by Queen Isabella to describe the newly discovered island of Hispaniola (now Haiti), Admiral Columbus reached
(E) After Queen Isabella had asked Admiral Columbus to describe the discovery of the island of Hispaniola (now Haiti), he had reached

Not sure about the use of 'he had reached'.. Pls explain the choice you make..

daagh Sir,
Can you please brief how C is run on, isn't then a conjuction joining both the sentences ?

teaser
Which is conjunction joining the first IC starting with Queen and the second IC, 'then he reached'? I see only a comma.

a. Whole sentence is in simple past tense. Hence, there is no need of ‘had’ in the sentence.
b. We can’t change the sentence to present tense and the correct part following the sentence is in past tense.
c. Need of conjunction ‘then’ is not required.
d. Correct use of tense. Seems correct.
e. Simple past tense should be used instead of Past perfect tense.
Hence, d is the answer.

After Queen Isabella asked Admiral Columbus to describe the island of Hispaniola (now Haiti), which was newly discovered, he had reached for a sheet of paper, crumpled it, and said, “It looks like that—beyond the mountains, more mountains.”

There is another method to know which sentence is correct. Since outside the underlined sentence , "crumpled" and "said" are used in past simple and we know that we need parallel structures , so only C or D could be correct. C has a run on like daagh said. The right answer is D

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