A world lit only by fire_ the medieval m - William Manchester [130]
Knowing he would need as many hands as possible once he resumed the voyage, Magellan spared all but Quesada, Cartagena, and a Spanish priest who had fomented the rebellion. There was only one execution; Quesada, guilty of murder, had to die. Because he was an aristocrat, he was spared the garrote. But there was also blood on the hands of his servant, Luis de Molino. Molino protested that he had only been obeying orders, and Magellan, giving that weight, told him that he would be permitted to live provided he swung the blade decapitating his master—a grisly choice, though it cannot have taken Molino long to make it. As was customary in that time, the bodies of both treacherous captains, Mendoza and Quesada, were drawn and quartered, after which the reeking, bleeding quarters were displayed on poles, the theory being that the spectacle would intimidate any men too dull to have learned the wages of mutiny.
That left Cartagena, who had held high office under the king, and the priest, an anointed man of God. The capitán-general could not bring himself to shed the blood of either. Yet carrying them around the world in irons was impractical. Therefore they were to be imprisoned until the fleet departed Puerto San Julián and then left behind. As the five vessels sailed on August 24, the two marooned men were abandoned on the frigid shore with a thin ration of wine and food. Magellan had declared that he was leaving their fate to a merciful God, but in the sixteenth century the quality of divine mercy had proved to be strained and brackish. During the wretched days that lay ahead for the castaways they may have envied their drawn and quartered co-conspirators.
But at that point Magellan’s prospects did not appear to be much brighter. In quelling the mutiny he had, in a sense, increased the odds against himself. If he reappeared in Seville discredited by failure, it was doubtful that Spanish authorities would accept his version of the violent interlude in San Julián. The gruesome deaths of three Castilian noblemen and a priest would certainly be investigated, and it was by no means certain that the dons’ mild suplica would be seen as justification for execution. The capitán-general might well find himself on trial for murder. Only if he returned a conqueror could he expect amnesty, and as weeks wore on conquest had seemed more elusive than ever. The armada was down to four ships now; Santiago, sent on an exploring mission, had been lost in a storm. Mighty gales tossed them daily; the weather was growing steadily worse. To the west, snowcapped mountains were clearly visible. They began to see “seawolves,” or seals, and penguins, which they called “ducks without wings” (“patos sin alas”). After anchoring below fifty degrees south latitude, Magellan decided to hibernate for another eight weeks, until he could be certain that winter was spent. By now he must have been close to total despair. Every hope had died glimmering. The possibility of redemption seemed very remote. During a year at sea he had covered nearly nine thousand miles, suppressed a bloody uprising, explored every indentation in what seemed to be an endless coast of rocks and sand, and found absolutely nothing.
His desolation was ironic, for during those eight fearful, brooding weeks, from August 26 to October 18, he was only 150 miles —two sailing days—from immortality.
ON SUNDAY, October 21, 1520, a day of high, harsh, howling winds, lookouts clinging to the fleet’s topmasts sighted a steep eminence which, as they approached, was perceived as a wall of naked white cliffs. Closing, they saw that these formed a cape, beyond which lay an immense bay of black water. The day was St. Ursula’s. In remembrance of her, Magellan christened the peninsula Cabo de los Vírgenes. But his officers, still dreaming of the south seas, were unimpressed. The sound, all four pilots agreed, was a fjord similar to those which had been observed in Norway. “We all believed,” Don Antonio Pigafetta wrote afterward,