Over the Edge of the World: Magellen's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe (51 page)

Pigafetta’s linguistic skills gave him a prominent part to play in the dealings with the locals to obtain provisions. “I went ashore alone to speak to the chief of a city called Amaban to ask him to furnish us with food. He told me that he would give me buffaloes, swine, and goats, but we could not come to terms because he asked many things for one buffalo.” Assessing his surroundings, Pigafetta realized the chief lived in luxury, attended by numerous naked serving women, all of them adorned with gold earrings “with silk tassels pendant from them, as well as amulets of gold and brass.” And the men displayed even more gold jewelry than the women.

While Pigafetta was negotiating, two young crew members deserted; Martín de Ayamonte, an apprentice seaman, and Bartolomé de Saldaña, a cabin boy, swam ashore under cover of darkness and never returned to their ship. They were exceptions to the generally cautious behavior of
Victoria’s
crew in Timor. For example, they refrained from enjoying the charms of the local women, believing they were infected with syphilis—“the disease of St. Job.” They had seen evidence of what they assumed to be syphilis all over the Moluccas, according to Pigafetta, but the greatest concentration occurred here, on this island. The origins of syphilis in this part of the world are a mystery. Portuguese traders or sailors might have carried it with them (syphilis was also known as “the Portuguese disease”), but it is worth noting that the disease was reported in China centuries earlier than in Europe, and that junks regularly plied these waters. It is also possible that the sailors’ diagnosis was mistaken, and they had come across islanders affected with leprosy.

To guarantee cooperation with the islanders, Elcano ordered a party of sailors ashore in search of a bargaining chip: “Since we had but few things, and hunger was constraining us, we restrained in the ship a chief and his son from another village.” With their hostages in hand, the armada’s officers proceeded to negotiate for the food they so desperately needed. The strategy worked exactly as planned, and the recalcitrant islanders delivered a ransom of six buffalo, a dozen goats, and as many pigs to the grateful yet rapacious sailors in exchange for the hostages’ freedom.

O
nce the slaughtered beasts had been loaded,
Victoria
prepared to set sail once more, this time heading for the island of Java, the largest and, to Europeans, the best-known destination in the Indies. Among the crew members, Java possessed a mysterious allure, if only because the Javanese reputedly practiced exotic customs such as
palang
. Pigafetta relished telling the tales he heard of Java, beginning with its funeral rites. “When one of the chief men of Java dies, his body is burned,” he wrote. “His principal wife adorns herself with garlands of flowers and has herself carried on a chair through the entire village by three or four men. Smiling and consoling her relatives who are weeping, she says, ‘Do not weep, for I am going to sup with my dear husband this evening and to sleep with him this night.’ Then she is carried to the fire, where her husband is being burned. Turning toward her relatives, and again consoling them, she throws herself into the fire, where her husband is being burned. If she did not do that, she would not be considered an honorable woman or a true wife to her dead husband.” For all its melodrama, this was a fairly accurate account of a funeral ceremony as practiced on the island of Bali, located little more than a mile east of Java, and in India.

And then there was the role
palang
played in Javanese courtship rites. Magellan’s relative Duarte Barbosa, in his account of the region, had described Javanese
palang
in excruciating detail. “They are very voluptuous,” he wrote of the inhabitants, “and have certain round hawk’s bells sewn and fastened in the head of their penis between the flesh and the skin in order to make them larger. Some have three, some five, and others seven. Some are made of gold and silver and others of brass, and they tinkle as the men walk. The custom is considered quite the proper thing. The women delight greatly in the bells, and do not like men who go without them. The most honored men are those who have the most and largest ones.”

Pigafetta observed that the custom still formed a vital part of Javanese life. “When the young men of Java are in love with any gentlewoman, they fasten certain little bells between their penis and foreskin. They take a position until their sweetheart hears the sound. The sweetheart descends immediately, and they take their pleasure; always with those little bells, for their women take great pleasure in hearing those bells ring from the inside of their vagina. Those bells are all covered, and the more they are covered, the louder they sound.”

Normally a careful observer, Pigafetta could not resist telling tales when the mood came over him. In the same breath as his description of
palang
, he conjured Amazons, among the most persistent of all the illusions of Neverland, and perhaps the hardest for the lonely sailors who roamed the world to give up. Pigafetta lent at least partial credence to an account he heard about Amazons on a neighboring island kill their male offspring and raise only females. And any man found exploring the island would be attacked instantly. Needless to say, the survivors of so many shipwrecks, mutinies, ambushes, and other disasters elected not to risk the wrath of the Amazons they believed to be in their midst.

A
lthough
Victoria
remained hundreds of miles distant from the southernmost point of China, Pigafetta heard dramatic stories of the Middle Kingdom from local traders. “The king,” as Pigafetta referred to the emperor, “never allows himself to be seen by anyone. When he wishes to see his people, he rides about the palace on a skillfully made peacock, a most elegant contrivance, accompanied by six of his principal women clad like himself; after which he enters a serpent called a
nagha
”—the name given to a mythical dragon— “which is as rich a thing as can be seen, and which is kept in the greatest court of the palace. The king and the women enter it so that he may not be recognized among his women. He looks at his people through a large glass which is in the breast of the serpent. He and the women can be seen, but one cannot tell which is the king. The latter is married to his sisters, so that the royal blood may not be mixed with others.”

The emperor, it seemed, had absolute power over all his subjects, and he wielded it with impressive, if fiendish, enthusiasm. “When any seigneur is disobedient to the king, he is ordered to be flayed, and his skin dried in the sun and salted. Then the skin is stuffed with straw or other substance, and placed head downward in a prominent place in the square, with hands clasped above the head, so that he may be seen to be performing
zonghu,
that is, obeisance.” Pigafetta’s vivid evocation of Chinese customs reveals his yearning to visit the Middle Kingdom and play the role of diplomat and translator as he had throughout the voyage. Perhaps Magellan, had he been alive, would have made a detour and allowed Pigafetta to fulfill his dream, but Elcano had no such ambitions. China remained tantalizingly remote.

I
n the early hours of Wednesday, February 11,
Victoria
weighed anchor and put the island of Timor astern, sailing along a southwesterly course. With Java and, later on, Sumatra barely visible to starboard, she headed for her meeting with destiny at the Cape of Good Hope.

The struggle with the elements was joined within days of leaving Timor as
Victoria
became the plaything of the unstable weather systems of the southern latitudes. “In order that we might double the Cape of Good Hope, we descended to forty-two degrees on the side of the Antarctic Pole. We were nine weeks”—nine weeks!—“near that cape with our sails hauled down because we had the west and northwest winds on our bow quarter and because of a most furious storm,” Pigafetta explained. He went on to warn, “It is the largest of and most dangerous cape in the world.” And he was right. Although the Cape of Good Hope was first rounded in 1488 by Bartolomeu Dias and nine years later by Vasco da Gama—both major accomplishments in Portuguese exploration history—it was still considered extremely hazardous and barely navigable even by the most seaworthy of ships and the most experienced of captains. It occupied a nearly mythical place in the Portuguese consciousness as the most fearsome place in the entire world.

Sebastián Elcano had never experienced anything like the fierce, confused winds and riptides of Cabo Tormentoso; doubling it would tax his navigational skills, his patience, and his daring to the utmost. Many of the crew wanted to jump ship at the island of Madagascar rather than risk doubling the cape, said Pigafetta, “because the ship was leaking badly, because of the severe cold, and especially because we had no other food than rice and water; for as we had no salt, our provisions of meat had putrefied.” Doing so meant a life of exile and slavery, because Madagascar was a Portuguese stronghold, with ships flying the Portuguese colors calling there on their way to and from the Indies.

A few brave souls on board
Victoria
had no use for Madagascar. They retained their principles and allegiance to King Charles, and preferred death to spending the rest of their days marooned off the coast of Africa. They were, said Pigafetta, “more desirous of their honor than of their own life, determined to reach Spain, dead or alive.”

H
alfway between Australia and Africa,
Victoria
began to leak dangerously. Deliverance seemed at hand on March 18, when the crew sighted the prominent hump of what is now known as Amsterdam Island. Elcano hoped to perform urgently needed repairs on the shores of this small volcanic landmass, but after four days of tacking in rough weather and surging seas, he was unable to find a secure anchorage. “We saw a very high island, and we went towards it to anchor, and we could not fetch it; and we struck the sails and lay to until the next day,” Albo recorded in frustration.

Elcano eventually gave up on the idea of reaching Amsterdam Island, and repairs took place in the ocean swells. As the men worked, they might have seen the killer whales or elephant seals, and if they lifted their gaze, they would have seen several species of albatross circling above them, the same benignly smiling bird that Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s imagination transformed into a symbol of hope and innocence corrupted by thoughtless violence.

Once the repairs were completed,
Victoria
resumed her westerly course. Over the following days and weeks, the crew, hovering on the verge of starvation and dreading the onset of scurvy, steadily ate their way through their supply of rice and awaited whatever destiny had in store.

F
ifteen hundred miles east of Amsterdam Island,
Trinidad
prepared to leave the island of Tidore. On April 6, after more than three months of repairs, she finally weighed anchor and unfurled her sails. The ship carried a full load of spices, one thousand quintals of cloves—fifty tons!—more than enough to justify the expense of the entire voyage.

Magellan’s former flagship was commanded by Gonzalo Gómez de Espinosa, and her pilot was Juan Bautista Punzorol, known to history as the “Genoese pilot,” after the name of the short memoir of the voyage he left behind. Sorely missed was Juan Carvalho, the capable pilot who had become a corrupt Captain General; he had died of unknown causes on February 14.

As the fleet’s
alguacil.
or master-at-arms, Espinosa had performed as a loyal servant to King Charles, and he had helped Magellan maintain authority over his often rebellious crew. During the mutiny in Port Saint Julian, when Magellan lost control of three of his ships, Espinosa had come to his aid, and as a career soldier, he discharged his dangerous duties without fuss or complaint. But as a captain, Espinosa was hopelessly out of his element. Without Magellan to advise and protect him, it became apparent that he lacked the navigational skills to take his ship through rough weather; beyond his lack of expertise, his character, seemingly so straightforward and loyal, turned ambivalent when he should have been resolute, and naïve where he should have been canny. It was not that he lacked discipline, or the support of the men; the problem was that Espinosa, a soldier, was simply not qualified to command a ship. The challenge of guiding
Trinidad
halfway around the world, often against the prevailing winds, was beyond him, as it might have been beyond even Magellan, had he lived to face it.

Espinosa decided to leave behind four men to operate a trading post on the island of Tidore. The post would store cloves and serve as a symbol of Spanish rule in the Spice Islands. The four men stationed there were, Ginés de Mafra recalled, “Juan de Campos and Luis de Molino and a Genoese and a certain Guillermo Corco.” While serving time at their remote outpost, they picked up alarming intelligence: “Some Indian merchants who had come there to buy cloves told them that a Portuguese armada was coming from India to the Moluccas because they had learned of the Castilians’ presence there.” They, too, wanted to establish an outpost, but more than that, they planned to seize control of the spice trade. The four men left behind suddenly found themselves vulnerable to both Portuguese marauders and to the island’s residents, whose loyalties could be purchased or transferred with a show of force.

Setting sail, Espinosa backtracked and followed an easterly course through waters the fleet had already explored, past Gilolo and Morotai, and into the Philippine Sea, all the way to the island of Komo, where
Trinidad
took on more provisions. From this point on, stout easterly headwinds got the better of his navigational skills, and he took a more northerly course. The choice proved disastrous. Although he now understood how large the Pacific Ocean was, his ideas about the location of landmasses in the Northern Hemisphere were deeply flawed. He mistakenly believed that Asia was connected to the American continent, and that misunderstanding led him to assume that if he sailed far enough north, he would catch benign westerly winds. But soon after his departure, the monsoon season started in earnest, bringing with it a seemingly endless succession of storms and drenching rains.