"Captain General, I am loyal, and the Spanish sailors are loyal; it is your own men who plot in dark corners to bring your plans to naught."
In the shadow of one of the tall castles of another ship sit a band of idle men. They are Portuguese.
One of them, who seems to lead the minds of the others, is whittling, and after a long silence says:
"We do not know where we are going, and wherever we are going, we are Portuguese and are slaves to Spain."
"Ay, ay," returned an old Portuguese sailor, "and when we go back again, should that ever be, the profit to us will be little at the India House."
"Right," answered a number of voices, and one ventured to say:
"Magellan, after all, may be mad, like his old companion, the astronomer. Both came from the same place in Portugal."
Some of the officers had schemes of their own.
But the ships crept on and on, along the Brazilian coast, where the flag of Spain and the farol guided them in the track of the Admiral they followed. Night after night the lantern of the flagship gleamed in the air, moving toward cooler waters under the Southern Cross.
And in Magellan's heart was a single purpose, and he anticipated the joy of a great discovery, as a revelation that would answer the prophetic light that shone like a star in his own spiritual vision. On, and on!
THE FIRST GIANT.--THE ISLANDS OF GEESE AND GOSLINGS.--THE DANCING GIANTS.
The narrative of Pigafetta, the Knight of Rhodes, has much curious lore in regard to giants. At a place on the coast, formerly called Cape St. Mary, the first of these giants appeared.
He was a leader of a tribe "who ate human flesh." The lively Knight of Rhodes informs us that this man, who towered above his fellows, "had a voice like a bull."
He came to one of the captains' ships and asked--of course in sign language; for a man may have a "voice like a bull" and yet fail to be understood in cannibal tongues--if he might come on board the ship and bring his fellows with him.
He left a quantity of goods on the shore. While he was negotiating at the ships, his people on the shore, who seem to have been unusually wise and prudent, began to remove the stores of goods from exposure to danger to a kind of castle at some distance.