Conqueror of the Seas: The Story of MAGELLAN by Stefan Zweig

Author:Stefan Zweig [Zweig, Stefan]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: KEPLER Inc
Published: 1938-01-31T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8 - Page 173

MUTINY

(2 April 1520 - 7 April 1520)

Trapped up as they were in Port San Julian, which, though well sheltered, was a gloomy place in which to spend the winter, it was inevitable that dissensions between commander and crew should become intensified. Matters grew worse than they had been on the open sea. Nothing can show more clearly Magellan's strength of character than that, in spite of the tension he knew to exist, he did not shrink from a measure which could not fail to foster dissatisfaction. He alone knew that the fleet, in the best event, could not reach the fruitful islands of which he was in search until many months had elapsed, and he therefore put his men on short commons. It was amazingly courageous— at the end of the earth, with hostile subordinates—to anger everyone on the first day by declaring that henceforward the allowance of bread and of wine must be considerably reduced.

In actual fact this energetic step was what subsequently saved the fleet. Never would the circumnavigators have been able to make their hundred days' voyage across the Pacific had not an iron ration been kept in store. But the crew, which had grown indifferent to an adventure they failed to understand, were by no means inclined to accept such restrictions. A sound instinct told the sorely tried sailors that even if their admiral should acquire eternal fame through this voyage, at least three-fourths of themselves were destined to perish miserably from cold and hunger, from toil and hardship, and from the evil fortune of the sea. If there was a shortage of provisions, they grumbled, that was a reason for the return voyage. They had pushed farther south than any ship had been known to travel in the memory of man. When they got home, no one would be able to charge them with having shirked their duty. Some had akeady died of cold. They had signed on, not to navigate the polar seas, but to reach the Moluccas. According to contemporary Spanish historians, Magellan answered these rebellious words with a speech that ill accords with the man's blunt and uncongenial nature, and smacks too much of Plutarch and Thucydides to be credible. He marvelled, we are told, that Castilians should be guilty of such weakness, forgetting that the voyage had been undertaken at the King's orders and for the sake of their country. When he had taken command, he had expected to find among his comrades in the expedition that spirit of valour which had always animated the Spanish nation. For his own part, he was determined rather to die than return to a life of shame. Let them have patience until the winter had gone by. The greater their labour and privation, the greater would be their reward.

Fine speeches have never allayed the pangs of an empty stomach. It was not rhetoric that saved Magellan in this critical hour, but his determination not to yield a jot. He provoked resistance, that he might the better be able to crush it.

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