Shortly afterward, a sailor “snuffed a candle into a barrel full of gunpowder, but he quickly snatched it out without any harm.” An explosion could have destroyed the ship and claimed many lives. Mishaps like these would never have occurred on Magellan’s watch, and in each case, the undisciplined fleet had been lucky to survive a mistake of its own making, but how long would their luck hold?
Damaged by running aground, Trinidad’s hull needed repairs; in fact, both ships leaked rapidly, and the constant seepage meant that the men had to take exhausting turns at the pumps just to keep them afloat. It became apparent to all that they would have to recondition the fleet for the first time since the painstaking overhaul conducted during the grim winter in Port Saint Julian.
Arriving on the island of Cimbonbon, the armada spent the next forty-two days on repairs. Pigafetta describes their refuge as a “perfect port for repairing ships,” for it was remote from waterborne traffic, and tranquil, but the work itself was difficult to perform efficiently, “as we lacked many things for repairing the ships.” The difficult and exhausting task, made even more taxing by the Indonesian heat, was absolutely necessary if the ships were to be seaworthy. “During that time, each one of us labored hard at one thing or another. Our greatest fatigue, however, was to go barefoot to the woods for wood.” Wandering in the shade, they were attacked by wild boar. They managed to kill one of the beasts as it was swimming across the harbor, pursuing it in a longboat. They also found a wide variety of fish and amphibious life, including “large crocodiles,” giant oysters five or six feet long and weighing hundreds of pounds, and a curious fish with a “head like a hog and two horns. Its body consisted entirely of one bone, and on its back it resembled a saddle. And they are small.” To judge from this description, this might have been the squamipen, or angelfish, the brightly colored, highly compressed fish found in the region.
Another natural marvel to be found on Cimbonbon was worthy of Pliny the Elder’s Natural History: “trees . . . which produce leaves which are alive when they fall and walk. . . . They have no blood, but if one touches them, they run away.” With childlike enthusiasm, Pigafetta managed to capture a specimen. “I kept one of them for nine days in a box. When I opened the box, the leaf went round and round it.” These walking leaves have been identified as phyllium, insects whose flat, broad back resembles a leaf, including scars and stems; it is a remarkable example of camouflage. In flight, or when moving, these insects reveal bright colors, but when they rest in a tree, they melt into the shadows, and avoid the sharp-eyed birds that prey on them.
Once the arduous renovations were completed, the fleet resumed its search for the Spice Islands on September 27. Days later, the fleet sighted a large junk from the island of Pulaoan, bearing the local ruler. “We made them a signal to haul in their sails, and as they refused to haul them in, we captured the junk by force, and sacked it. [We told] the governor if [he] wished his freedom, he was to give us, inside of seven days, four hundred measures of rice, twenty swine, twenty goats, and one hundred and fifty fowls.” The governor tried to mollify the marauders with a liberal tribute of coconuts, bananas, sugarcane, and especially palm wine, all of which had their intended effect. The contrite Europeans returned the firearms and daggers they had taken from the governor, along with tributes of their own, cloth, a flag, a “yellow damask robe,” and other trinkets. “We parted from them as friends,” Pigafetta noted with satisfaction, and the search for the Spice Islands resumed.
Traveling southeast, they came upon a weird outcropping in the ocean. It seemed to Pigafetta that the sea was “full of grass, although the depth was very great.” Passing the outcropping, he thought they were “entering another sea.” Actually, they were still in the vicinity of Mindanao, traveling along its western coast until they arrived at another island Pigafetta calls Monoripa. “The people of that island make their dwellings in boats and do not live otherwise,” he observed of the Bajau, the sea gypsies who were widely scattered throughout the area, adjusting their moorings to avoid the monsoon. Of all the tribes the armada encountered, the Bajau were among the most enigmatic.
They are thought to have flourished well before the armada’s arrival, when the Chinese were exploring the region. The Bajau developed a brisk trade in a Chinese delicacy, trepang, or sea cucumber. This leathery echinoderm, normally a few inches in length, grew to extraordinary dimensions in the area, occasionally as long as three feet. It was considered an aphrodisiac, the ginseng of the sea.
Long after the Chinese presence faded, the Bajau remained. Each anchorage usually served an extended family that spread across several boats, as little as two or as many as six. They fished together, shared food, and maintained relationships with other families through intermarriage. The boats were only thirty feet from stem to stern and six feet amidships, but far more spacious than proas or balanghai. Their living areas were sheltered by poles supporting mats made from palm fronds, and each boat had its clay hearth for cooking.
Bajau fishermen employed handheld lines and spears to catch hundreds of other edible species in addition to trepang. On moonless nights, they fished by lantern. They preserved their catch much as Europeans did, by salting and drying. Their activities were confined almost exclusively to the sea; they owned no land, but they held small islands in common devoted to burials, and when necessary they went ashore for fresh water. They were not at all predatory; when attacked, the Bajau usually fled across the water. More conventional tribes on shore considered the waterborne, nomadic Bajau unreliable and not subject to any one set of laws or beliefs. Over time, many of them became Muslims, but they retained some of their earlier customs. They practiced trance dancing and called on mediums to purge the community of evil spirits or illness. The evil forces were led to a particular boat, which was set adrift in the open sea to wander eternally. The custom might serve as a metaphor for the entire Bajau culture, always adrift.
The crew was tempted to remain among the Bajau because the men heard that on two nearby islands they could find the best cinnamon grown anywhere. Next to cloves, cinnamon was the most valuable spice; the temptation to fill their ships with the fragrant spice proved almost irresistible. “Had we stayed there two days, those people would have laden our ships for us, but as we had a wind favorable for passing points and certain islets which were near the island, we did not wish to delay.”
Just before they left, they got their first, tantalizing look at the fabled cinnamon tree: “It has but three or four small branches and its leaves resemble those of the laurel. Its bark is the cinnamon, and it is gathered twice a year.” In Malay, Pigafetta noted, the unprepossessing tree was called caiu (sweet) mana (wood). The men conducted a quick, probably illicit transaction, exchanging two large knives for about seventeen pounds of cinnamon, worth enough on the docks of Seville to buy an entire ship. They expected to obtain far more cinnamon, along with nutmeg, pepper, mace, and many other precious spices, once they reached their goal.
Just when it seemed that a measure of order had returned to the fleet, they attacked a large proa to obtain information about the whereabouts of the Moluccas. In a bitter struggle, they slaughtered seven of the eighteen men on board the little craft. Pigafetta mentioned the matter only in passing, without remorse. In the past, the needless deaths of the Chamorros and the Patagonian giants had caused sorrow and guilt, but by now he had become desensitized to the business of killing, which he reported with less emotion than he would a passing storm. Pigafetta’s lack of fellow-feeling reflected the entire crew’s frame of mind. It is one of the outstanding ironies of the voyage that the closer they came to fulfilling their mission, the more they lost their sense of mission, which Magellan, for all his faults, had done so much to impart.