Although Victoria remained hundreds of miles distant from the southernmost point of China, Pigafetta heard dramatic stories of the Middle Kingdom from local traders. “The king,” as Pigafetta referred to the emperor, “never allows himself to be seen by anyone. When he wishes to see his people, he rides about the palace on a skillfully made peacock, a most elegant contrivance, accompanied by six of his principal women clad like himself; after which he enters a serpent called a nagha”—the name given to a mythical dragon —“which is as rich a thing as can be seen, and which is kept in the greatest court of the palace. The king and the women enter it so that he may not be recognized among his women. He looks at his people through a large glass which is in the breast of the serpent. He and the women can be seen, but one cannot tell which is the king. The latter is married to his sisters, so that the royal blood may not be mixed with others.”
The emperor, it seemed, had absolute power over all his subjects, and he wielded it with impressive, if fiendish, enthusiasm. “When any seigneur is disobedient to the king, he is ordered to be flayed, and his skin dried in the sun and salted. Then the skin is stuffed with straw or other substance, and placed head downward in a prominent place in the square, with hands clasped above the head, so that he may be seen to be performing zonghu, that is, obeisance.”
Pigafetta’s vivid evocation of Chinese customs reveals his yearning to visit the Middle Kingdom and play the role of diplomat and translator as he had throughout the voyage. Perhaps Magellan, had he been alive, would have made a detour and allowed Pigafetta to fulfill his dream, but Elcano had no such ambitions. China remained tantalizingly remote.
In the early hours of Wednesday, February 11, Victoria weighed anchor and put the island of Timor astern, sailing along a southwesterly course. With Java and, later on, Sumatra barely visible to starboard, she headed for her meeting with destiny at the Cape of Good Hope.
The struggle with the elements was joined within days of leaving Timor as Victoria became the plaything of the unstable weather systems of the southern latitudes. “In order that we might double the Cape of Good Hope, we descended to forty-two degrees on the side of the Antarctic Pole. We were nine weeks”—nine weeks!—“near that cape with our sails hauled down because we had the west and northwest winds on our bow quarter and because of a most furious storm,” Pigafetta explained. He went on to warn, “It is the largest of and most dangerous cape in the world.” And he was right.
Although the Cape of Good Hope was first rounded in 1488 by Bartolomeu Dias and nine years later by Vasco da Gama—both major accomplishments in Portuguese exploration history—it was still considered extremely hazardous and barely navigable even by the most seaworthy of ships and the most experienced of captains. It occupied a nearly mythical place in the Portuguese consciousness as the most fearsome place in the entire world.
Sebastián Elcano had never experienced anything like the fierce, confused winds and riptides of Cabo Tormentoso; doubling it would tax his navigational skills, his patience, and his daring to the utmost. Many of the crew wanted to jump ship at the island of Madagascar rather than risk doubling the cape, said Pigafetta, “because the ship was leaking badly, because of the severe cold, and especially because we had no other food than rice and water; for as we had no salt, our provisions of meat had putrefied.” Doing so meant a life of exile and slavery, because Madagascar was a Portuguese stronghold, with ships flying the Portuguese colors calling there on their way to and from the Indies.
A few brave souls on board Victoria had no use for Madagascar. They retained their principles and allegiance to King Charles, and preferred death to spending the rest of their days marooned off the coast of Africa. They were, said Pigafetta, “more desirous of their honor than of their own life, determined to reach Spain, dead or alive.”
Halfway between Australia and Africa, Victoria began to leak dangerously. Deliverance seemed at hand on March 18, when the crew sighted the prominent hump of what is now known as Amsterdam Island. Elcano hoped to perform urgently needed repairs on the shores of this small volcanic landmass, but after four days of tacking in rough weather and surging seas, he was unable to find a secure anchorage. “We saw a very high island, and we went towards it to anchor, and we could not fetch it; and we struck the sails and lay to until the next day,” Albo recorded in frustration.
Elcano eventually gave up on the idea of reaching Amsterdam Island, and repairs took place in the ocean swells. As the men worked, they might have seen the killer whales or elephant seals, and if they lifted their gaze, they would have seen several species of albatross circling above them, the same benignly smiling bird that Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s imagination transformed into a symbol of hope and innocence corrupted by thoughtless violence.
Once the repairs were completed, Victoria resumed her westerly course. Over the following days and weeks, the crew, hovering on the verge of starvation and dreading the onset of scurvy, steadily ate their way through their supply of rice and awaited whatever destiny had in store.
Fifteen hundred miles east of Amsterdam Island, Trinidad prepared to leave the island of Tidore. On April 6, after more than three months of repairs, she finally weighed anchor and unfurled her sails. The ship carried a full load of spices, one thousand quintals of cloves—fifty tons!—more than enough to justify the expense of the entire voyage.
Magellan’s former flagship was commanded by Gonzalo Gómez de Espinosa, and her pilot was Juan Bautista Punzorol, known to history as the “Genoese pilot,” after the name of the short memoir of the voyage he left behind. Sorely missed was Juan Carvalho, the capable pilot who had become a corrupt Captain General; he had died of unknown causes on February 14.
As the fleet’s alguacil, or master-at-arms, Espinosa had performed as a loyal servant to King Charles, and he had helped Magellan maintain authority over his often rebellious crew. During the mutiny in Port Saint Julian, when Magellan lost control of three of his ships, Espinosa had come to his aid, and as a career soldier, he discharged his dangerous duties without fuss or complaint. But as a captain, Espinosa was hopelessly out of his element. Without Magellan to advise and protect him, it became apparent that he lacked the navigational skills to take his ship through rough weather; beyond his lack of expertise, his character, seemingly so straightforward and loyal, turned ambivalent when he should have been resolute, and naïve where he should have been canny. It was not that he lacked discipline, or the support of the men; the problem was that Espinosa, a soldier, was simply not qualified to command a ship. The challenge of guiding Trinidad halfway around the world, often against the prevailing winds, was beyond him, as it might have been beyond even Magellan, had he lived to face it.