Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
merely piercing their shields, made of strips of wood unbound, and
their arms . . . When those people saw that we fired the hackbuts in
vain . . . they fired at us so many arrows and lances of bamboo tipped
with iron, and pointed stakes hardened by fire, and stones that we
could hardly defend ourselves . . .
But as a good captain and a knight he still stood fast with some
others, fighting thus for more than an hour and, as he refused to retire
further, an Indian threw a bamboo lance in his face, and the captain
immediately killed him with his lance, leaving it in his body. Then, try-
ing to lay hand on his sword, he could draw it out but halfway, be-
cause of a wound . . . that he had in his arm. Which seeing, all those
people threw themselves on him, and one of them with a large javelin
. . . thrust it into his leg, whereby he fell face downward. On this, all at
once rushed upon him with lances of iron and of bamboo and . . . they
slew our mirror, our light, our comfort and our true guide.
1
From that moment onwards an attempt at circumnavigation,
which had not formed part of Magellan's plans, was inevitable. To
accomplish what their dead leader had set out to achieve eighteen
months before, a remnant of his followers would have to attempt
something he had never contemplated - a long sea journey home
through enemy-patrolled waters. By an ironical twist of fate the first
circuit of the globe which is for ever associated with the name of
Ferdinand Magellan would probably never have been attempted if
Magellan had survived that skirmish in the Philippines and contin-
ued to lead the expedition. He dared not have sailed his tiny, vul-
nerable fleet westward across the Indian Ocean for, over the last
twenty years the Portuguese had made themselves the masters of
that ocean, establishing bases around its borders from the Cape to
Malacca. And Ferdinand Magellan was a renegade Portuguese, who,
after twelve years or more of faithful service to his king, had sold
himself to the ruler of Spain and was now seeking to weaken Por-
