The Story of Magellan and The Discovery of the Philippines Part 18

They discovered that the legs of the invaders were exposed, and that they could be wounded there with poisoned arrows.

A poisoned arrow was aimed at Magellan. It pierced him in the leg. He felt the wound, and knew its import.

He gave orders to retreat. A panic ensued, and his men took to flight.

The air was filled with arrows, spears, stones, and mud.

The Spaniards tried to escape to the boat. The islanders followed them and directed their fury to Magellan. They struck him twice on his helmet.

Magellan's thought now was not for himself, but for the safety of his men.

He stood at his own post fighting that they might make safe their retreat.

He thus broke the a.s.sault for nearly an hour, until he was almost left alone.

An Indian suddenly rushed down toward him having a cane lance. He thrust this into his face. Magellan wounded the Indian, and attempted to draw his sword. But he had received a javelin wound in his arm, and his strength failed.

Seeing him falter, the Indian rushed upon him and brought him down to the earth with a rude sword.

The Indians now fell upon him and ran him through with lances.

He tried to rise up, to see if his men were safe. He did not call for a.s.sistance, but to the last sought to secure the safety of his men. In fact, he never seemed to so much as think of himself in the whole contest. It was thus that his life went out, and his heart ceased to beat. He was left dead on the sand, on April 27, 1521. The natives refused to surrender his body. Eight of his own men and four Indians, who had become Christians, perished with him.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The death of Magellan.]

There was one man who was true to the Admiral to the end. He was wounded with him, but survived. He it was that saw that the Admiral had forgotten himself at the hour of the final conflict. It was Pigafetta, the Italian, whose narrative we are following.

This hero of the pen says of him to whom he gave his heart:

"One of his princ.i.p.al virtues was constancy in the most adverse fortune."

"It was G.o.d who made me the messenger of the new heavens and new earth, and told me where to find them," said Columbus. "Maps, charts, and mathematical knowledge had nothing to do with the case."

As sublime an inspiration is seen in the words of Pigafetta in regard to Magellan:

"_No one gave to him the example how to encompa.s.s the globe._" His sight was the inner eye, the pure vision of a consecrated purpose in life.

No hero of the sea has ever been more n.o.ble! His purpose in life was everything; he had the faith of a Christian Knight; he was as nothing to himself, but to others all, and he died giving his own body for a shield to his men. His name will always be a.s.sociated with what is glorious in the history of the Philippines.

Magellan was dead, but a good purpose lives in others. Magellan dead, Del Cano yet lives, and the Italian historian has other scenes to record.

The farol of Magellan will go on; it will never cease to shine, and the cast-out name of the Christian Knight will become a fixed star amid the lights that have inspired the world.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE SPICE ISLANDS.--WONDERFUL BIRDS.--CLOVES, CINNAMON, NUTMEGS, GINGER.--THE SHIPS OVERLOADED.

The ma.s.sacre at Matan caused the Spaniards to lose credit in the eyes of the natives. The King of Seba turned against them, thus throwing a shadow on the glory of Magellan's missionary work. The Spaniards were, however, much to blame for the change that took place in the King's heart.

Their ships were becoming unseaworthy.

They were reduced to two ships, the Victoria and the Trinidad, and these shaped their course for the Moluccas, or Spice Islands, by the way of Borneo. Del Cano began to represent the spirit of Magellan among the crews.

They came to the Bornean city, Brunei, "a collection of houses built on piles over the water, where were twenty-five thousand fires or families." On the sh.o.r.e was the palace of a voluptuous Sultan, its walls hung with brocades of silk. Here was also one of the most curious markets in all the world, carried on at high tide, when there gathered a great army of canoes.

On November 8, 1521, the two ships anch.o.r.ed off Tidor on the Spice Islands, saluting the King of the place with a broadside.

They concluded a treaty of peace with the King, and began to load the two ships with spice, and especially with cloves, a kind of spice at that time regarded as a great luxury in Spain.

If Pigafetta had desired above all things to see the wonders of the ocean world, he must again have been gratified here at some of the presents sent to the ships by the natives. Columbus had brought to Spain gorgeous parrots or macaws. But the King of Batchian sent to him a bird whose plumage surpa.s.sed anything that he had ever seen.

"It is the bird of Paradise," said the agent of the royal almoner.

The Italian did not doubt it. He wished to learn the history of this superb inhabitant of the air.

He did in a way that excited his wonder beyond measure.

The bird, after the Mohammedan account, was born in Paradise. It came down from Heaven where dwelt departed souls, who had died true to the Moslem faith.

These birds were found dead, and they had no feet. If Pigafetta inquired the cause of this, he doubtless was answered:

"They do not need feet; they never alight on the ground."

But as greatly as the Chevalier must have wondered, he was not induced to accept the Moslem faith.

They overcrowded the ships while receiving the favors of the Sultan of Tidor.

An account of their voyage about the Spice Islands, "most delightful to read," as we are told in the t.i.tle, was written by one Maximilia.n.u.s Transylva.n.u.s, from which we gather the following incidents (Hakluyt Society) of great pearls and strange men:

"They came to the sh.o.r.es of the Island of Solo, where they heard that there were pearls as big as dove's eggs, and sometimes as hen's eggs, but which can only be fished up from the very deepest sea. Our men brought no large pearl, because the season of the year did not allow of the fishery. But they testify that they had taken an oyster in that region, the flesh of which weighed forty-seven pounds. For which reason I could easily believe that pearls of that great size are found there; for it is clearly proved that pearls are the product of sh.e.l.lfish. And to omit nothing, our men constantly affirm that the islanders of p.o.r.ne told him that the King wore in his crown two pearls of the size of a goose's egg.

"Hence they went to the Island of Gilo, where they saw men with ears so long and pendulous that they reached to their shoulders. When our men were mightily astonished at this, they learnt from the natives that there was another island not far off where the men had ears not only pendulous, but so long and broad that one of them would cover the whole head if they wanted it (_c.u.m exusu esset_). But our men, who sought not monsters but spices, neglecting this nonsense, went straight to the Moluccas, and they discovered them eight months after their Admiral, Magellan, had fallen in Matan. The islands are five in number, and are called Tarante, Muthil, Thidore, Mare, and Matthien; some on this side some on the other, and some upon the equinoctial line.

"One produces cloves, another nutmegs, and another cinnamon. All are near to each other, but small and rather narrow."

The world to-day thinks little of spices, for commerce has made common the luxuries of the Indian Ocean. Cloves, nutmegs, allspice, cinnamon, ginger are found in every home in all civilized lands, and even children make few inquiries about them.

This was not so in the early days of the Viceroys of India. Spices which were gathered and sold by Arabian merchants, were held in Europe as a gift of Arabia, and esteemed to be the greatest, or among the greatest of luxuries. A ship laden with spices was hailed in the ports of the Iberian peninsula as next to a ship freighted with gold, as the Golden Hynde was welcomed in the days of Sir Francis Drake. It used to be said that the odors of the spice ships from the East Indies could be breathed through the breezes that wafted them toward the land.

The princ.i.p.al Spice Islands were the Moluccas, or the islands of the East India Archipelago between Celebes on the west and New Guinea on the east, Timor on the south and the open Pacific Sea on the north. They are distributed over a wide ocean area. Of these the Moluccas form the princ.i.p.al group. Here are the paradises of the seas.

It was to these islands where could be procured the products of "Araby the Blessed" that Magellan had hoped to find a new way. There were brighter sh.o.r.es than Spain, and to these he sought the shortest routes over which ships could travel.

The Peruvian adventurers wished to find gold; the voyagers to the Antilles, magical waters and new productions of the earth; but Magellan's dream was of the spiceries of the Indian seas. They all found what they sought, except Ponce de Leon, who hoped to find the Fountain of Eternal Youth.