The Story of Magellan and The Discovery of the Philippines Part 13

Grave as was the act of treachery that the jealousy of Gormez led him to commit, he was true to the two marooned priests who had opposed the daring schemes of Magellan.

"We must not leave them to perish," he said.

So with Mesquita in irons he steered his ship toward the lonely islands where the crew had pa.s.sed the winter.

They found Carthagena and his brother monk still living, and never could two men have been more glad to escape from exile. To live among naked giants, whom they could not civilize, must have become a horror to them.

But their lives had been spared, though their biscuits and wine, we fancy, were gone.

"The Admiral has gone mad," said the men who had come to rescue them.

"He knows not the way to the Moluccas, nor to anywhere."

The marooned men asked them where they were now going.

"To Spain," was the answer. "We have come to rescue you. Our Captain has never forgotten you. He will need you as witnesses. You must testify that the Admiral is mad."

They were ready to testify that.

The ship sailed back to Spain.

The tales that they carried back to beautiful Seville caused a great disappointment in Spain. They must have stricken the heart of the wife of Magellan.

Gormez related there that the Admiral had become mad; that he had marooned the two priests whom they had brought back as witnesses of the truth of what he a.s.serted; that Magellan had sailed into winter seas, and quite lost his reason, and knew not where he was going.

Then he told a terrible story of the execution of the mutinous Spaniards, friends of the King, at St. Julian. He said:

"His cousin, Mesquita, our captain, advised these crimes, and so we put him in irons, and have brought him back to receive justice in Spain."

Mesquita protested his innocence and tried to gain credence for his case. But no one cared to listen to him. The court and the popular feeling were against him. He was consigned to a prison. It was useless for him to protest, and to say that Magellan had made a great discovery; that he had found straits which were leading to the South Sea, and which were likely to prove that the ocean that Balboa had beheld was continuous.

He was placed in a lonely dungeon, and there brooded over his wrongs and dreamed.

He had one hope; it was that Magellan would return triumphant, a second Columbus or Vasco da Gama. If that day were to come, he would be released, and the court would honor him, and he would be hailed as a hero.

"I have been made a prisoner by treachery," he said to a few men. "I believe that the day of my vindication will one day dawn."

Cardinal Ximenes died. Juana still watched by the tomb of her husband, and took no interest in the world. Charles V was entering upon his career as a conqueror who was to subdue the Roman world to his will.

As for Magellan in Spain he was to be but little more remembered now.

Spain believed the story of the jealous Gormez, and the mariners of Seville said:

"The Admiral was mad!"

In the common view the mad Admiral had gone down in Antarctic seas. Like Faleiro, his friend, who had been sent to the mad house, it was thought that his brain had become unsettled, and that his bright visions had failed.

The two mutineers ate bread and drank wine again in the convent bowers of Seville.

Gormez had schemes of his own. He desired the authority of the throne to make an expedition to the Spice Islands, which he believed he could find by sailing West. Strangely enough, as we have said, this jealous, treacherous man was afterward made a pilot in an expedition that visited Florida, Cape Cod, and Ma.s.sachusetts Bay. But he did not find the way to the Spice Islands on the voyage.

Mesquita, still believing in the success of the expedition of Magellan, said to a few whom he could reach:

"Magellan is not mad. He executed those who had planned to murder him.

He had to put to death these men for the sake of the expedition. He will return again!"

Few believed his story, and fewer his prophecy.

Still there were some who hoped that the prisoner's prophecy might prove true. Columbus was deemed mad, and quelled a mutiny, but he returned again. Vasco da Gama faced doubt and destruction, but he returned again.

There were not wanting some who asked, "Will Magellan ever return again?" Such usually received the answer, "The Admiral was mad!"

The poor wife of Magellan, who had hoped much from him for the sake of her child, as well as for Spain, heard these reports in an agony of grief. But she still hoped. She must have believed in her husband's destiny.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE PACIFIC.--THE DEATH OF THE GIANTS.

The four ships glided along the wonderful straits which Magellan named the "Virgins," but which will always bear his own name. The scenery continued wild and fierce, and in some places overawing and sublime; they sailed amid domes of crystal and almost under the roofs of a broken world. They still moved slowly--the scenery growing more and more wonderful.

The air grew bright again. The ships were in the sea. They had entered a sea broad and glorious, but which Magellan could have hardly dreamed to be nearly ten thousand miles long, and more than that wide! Its waters were placid--an ocean plain. Columbus had heard of this vast sea, and Balboa had seen it from the peak of Darien.

All the joy that Magellan had antic.i.p.ated in his visions of years now burst upon him.

"The Pacific!"

This was the name that came to him as he surveyed the new ocean world.

He was the discoverer of the South Pacific, which was continuous with the ocean discovered by Balboa. What did it contain? Whither might he sail over the new serenity of waters?

His soul had stood against his own country; his name had been cast out by his countrymen. But in the splendors of the sunset sea he had found his faith to be reality. It is said that the sailors wept when they beheld the Pacific.

We may fancy the joy of Del Cano.

We may imagine how the heart of Pigafetta, the young Italian, which had always been true to the Admiral, must have overflowed with delight when the Pacific opened before his eyes! There is a strong heart beat in the happiness of one who has been true to a successful man in the hour of his need.

He may have sung the song that cheered Columbus and his men--the mariners' hymn to the Virgin:

"Gentle Star of Ocean!

Portal of the sky!

Ever Virgin Mother Of the Lord most high!"

"Wednesday, the 20th of November, 1520," says the original narrative, "we came forth out of the same strait, and entered the Pacific Sea."

The ships sailed on into the calm mystery of the ocean, the soul of Magellan glowing. But though the Admiral had risen superior to so many obstacles, there were others to be met. The sea was indeed placid and full of promise, but starvation now stared him in the face, and after the spectre of Treason had departed that of Famine appeared.

Day after day the sun arose on the same serenity of sea. One month pa.s.sed, and still there spread before the ships the same infinite ocean.

Another month pa.s.sed, and another, and twenty days more.