With Mendoza dead, Magellan held the advantage in the life-and-death contest. No sooner had the captain breathed his last than the second longboat rowed into position beside Victoria, discharging its complement of loyalists who stormed the ship. As Magellan had calculated, his guard met with little or no opposition. Stunned by the death of their captain, the crew meekly submitted to Magellan’s men.
As if the sight of the dead officer was not insult enough to the other Castilians, Magellan later paid off Espinosa and his henchmen for this bloody deed in plain view of everyone. “For this [action], the Captain General gave twelve ducats to Espinosa,” recalled Sebastián Elcano, one of the mutineers, “and to the others six ducats each from Mendoza’s and Quesada’s savings.” Was this the price of their lives, the Castilians asked themselves. A few ducats?
To signal Magellan’s triumph, Barbosa flew the Captain General’s colors from Victoria’s mast, announcing to Quesada and the other rebels that the mutiny was ending. Magellan placed Trinidad securely between the two loyal ships, Victoria guarding one side and Santiago, now loyal to Magellan, the other. Together, the three vessels blockaded the inlet to the port; the two rebel holdouts, positioned deeper in the harbor, could not escape.
Magellan expected Quesada to recognize that resistance was futile. The mutiny had failed, and he would soon have to bargain not for better rations or a swift return to Spain, but for his very life. But Quesada refused to give up. Concepción and San Antonio remained at the other end of the harbor, offering no clue about the mutineers’ intentions. To prevent them from slipping past the blockade at night, Magellan readied his flagship for combat. He doubled the watch and gave an order to “make a plentiful provision of much darts, lances, stones, and other weapons, both on deck and in the tops.” To win the men’s cooperation, he allowed them the pleasure of ample food. At the same time, he warned them not to let the two delinquent ships escape from the harbor into the open sea.
While the others were distracted, Magellan entrusted a seaman with a perilous assignment. Under cover of darkness, he was to sneak on board Quesada’s ship, Concepción, where he would loosen or sever the anchor cable so that she would slip her mooring. Magellan calculated that the strong nocturnal ebb tide would draw her toward the blockade guarding the mouth of the harbor, giving him just the pretext he needed for launching a surprise attack. He was prepared to greet her with all the firepower he could muster.
Late that night, Concepción drifted mysteriously across the harbor. Because no one knew of Magellan’s subterfuge, she appeared to be dragging her anchor. It was only a matter of time before she came within range of the flagship and touched off a battle at sea.
Aboard Concepción, the rebellion was beginning to falter. Ginés de Mafra, held hostage along with Mesquita, noticed that Quesada, the leader of the mutiny, was experiencing pangs of remorse, but he could not persuade his followers to end their rebellion now. “He summoned his crew and asked them that in case they could not get away with what they had begun, what should be done to avoid falling into the hands of Magellan.” The other mutineers merely offered to “follow his decisions obediently.”
Quesada’s only hope, a faint one, was to slip past the blockade and escape. “He gave the order to weigh the anchor, but this did not turn out well for him, as the current brought his ship down the river to the flagship, something that neither Quesada nor those in the ship could help because of the fury of the waters,” de Mafra recalled, without realizing what manner of subterfuge had placed the ship in jeopardy.
Quesada patrolled the quarterdeck, bearing sword and shield, hoping to regain control of the ship or, failing that, to slip past Magellan unnoticed. Instead, he sailed straight into a trap.
As Concepción approached the flagship, Magellan shouted, “Treason! Treason!” and ordered his men to ready their weapons. “Once Quesada’s ship passed by his,” de Mafra continued, “[Magellan] ordered that it be shot, which made those who had offered to sacrifice their lives lose their ferocity and hide below.”
Suddenly, Trinidad opened fire on the approaching vessel, hurling cannonballs onto her decks. “Quesada, armed, stayed on deck, receiving some spears that were hurled at him from the flagship’s topsail, an attitude suggesting he wished to be killed. Magellan, realizing how slight the opposition offered by those in the nao was, boarded the skiff with several of his men.” Before Quesada’s men could offer resistance, Trinidad’s loyal seamen grappled Concepción to her side and rushed aboard as Victoria performed the same maneuver on the hapless ship’s starboard side.
“Who are you for?” the attackers cried as they swarmed across Concepción’s cramped decks.
“For the King,” came the response, “and Magellan!”
The mutineers’ volte-face may have saved their lives, because Magellan’s guard made straight for Quesada and his inner circle, who offered little resistance. The guard freed Mesquita, the deposed captain (and Magellan’s cousin), along with the pilot, Ginés de Mafra. The coup was generally bloodless, and de Mafra was the only one who came close to harm when a ball fired from Trinidad passed between his legs as he sat in fetters below deck, shortly before he was freed.
With Quesada and his inner circle under arrest, and Concepción returned to Magellan’s control, the midnight mutiny of Port Saint Julian came to an ignominious conclusion. Even Juan de Cartagena, aboard San Antonio, gave up hope of carrying out a mutiny. When the flagship drew alongside San Antonio, and Magellan demanded Cartagena’s immediate surrender, the rebellious Castilian meekly complied and was confined in irons in Trinidad’s hold.
That morning, the Captain General had controlled two ships; now he ruled all five. Despite their overwhelming numbers, the mutineers had lost, and Magellan had emerged from the ordeal more powerful than before. His expedition, whose fate had been in grave doubt, would continue.
Now that the Easter Mutiny was finally at an end, Magellan meted out punishment to the guilty parties. The mutineers were about to discover that defying Magellan was even more perilous than the most ferocious storm at sea. To begin, Magellan instructed one of his men to read an indictment of Mendoza as a traitor. The Captain General then ordered his men to draw and quarter Mendoza’s body. This complicated and grotesque procedure usually began with hanging the victim, then cutting him down while he was only partly strangled. The executioner or an assistant would make an incision in the victim’s abdomen, remove his intestines, and, incredibly, burn them in front of the half-dead victim. When he finally expired, his head and limbs were severed from his body, parboiled with herbs to preserve them and repel birds, and finally displayed to the public. In a variation, the victim’s arms and legs were attached to four horses, who were made to walk in opposite directions, slowly tearing the victim’s limbs from his body.