"THE ADMIRAL WAS MAD!"
Grave as was the act of treachery that the jealousy of Gormez led him to
commit, he was true to the two marooned priests who had opposed the
daring schemes of Magellan.
"We must not leave them to perish," he said.
So with Mesquita in irons he steered his ship toward the lonely islands
where the crew had passed the winter.
They found Carthagena and his brother monk still living, and never could
two men have been more glad to escape from exile. To live among naked
giants, whom they could not civilize, must have become a horror to them.
But their lives had been spared, though their biscuits and wine, we
fancy, were gone.
"The Admiral has gone mad," said the men who had come to rescue them.
"He knows not the way to the Moluccas, nor to anywhere."
The marooned men asked them where they were now going.
"To Spain," was the answer. "We have come to rescue you. Our Captain has
never forgotten you. He will need you as witnesses. You must testify
that the Admiral is mad."
They were ready to testify that.
The ship sailed back to Spain.
The tales that they carried back to beautiful Seville caused a great
disappointment in Spain. They must have stricken the heart of the wife
of Magellan.
Gormez related there that the Admiral had become mad; that he had
marooned the two priests whom they had brought back as witnesses of the
truth of what he asserted; that Magellan had sailed into winter seas,
and quite lost his reason, and knew not where he was going.
Then he told a terrible story of the execution of the mutinous
Spaniards, friends of the King, at St. Julian. He said:
"His cousin, Mesquita, our captain, advised these crimes, and so we put
him in irons, and have brought him back to receive justice in Spain."
Mesquita protested his innocence and tried to gain credence for his
case. But no one cared to listen to him. The court and the popular
feeling were against him. He was consigned to a prison. It was useless
for him to protest, and to say that Magellan had made a great discovery;
that he had found straits which were leading to the South Sea, and which
were likely to prove that the ocean that Balboa had beheld was
continuous.
He was placed in a lonely dungeon, and there brooded over his wrongs and
dreamed.
He had one hope; it was that Magellan would return triumphant, a second
Columbus or Vasco da Gama. If that day were to come, he would be
released, and the court would honor him, and he would be hailed as a
hero.
"I have been made a prisoner by treachery," he said to a few men. "I
believe that the day of my vindication will one day dawn."
Cardinal Ximenes died. Juana still watched by the tomb of her husband,
and took no interest in the world. Charles V was entering upon his
career as a conqueror who was to subdue the Roman world to his will.
As for Magellan in Spain he was to be but little more remembered now.
Spain believed the story of the jealous Gormez, and the mariners of
Seville said:
"The Admiral was mad!"
In the common view the mad Admiral had gone down in Antarctic seas. Like
Faleiro, his friend, who had been sent to the mad house, it was thought
that his brain had become unsettled, and that his bright visions had
failed.
The two mutineers ate bread and drank wine again in the convent bowers
of Seville.
Gormez had schemes of his own. He desired the authority of the throne to
make an expedition to the Spice Islands, which he believed he could find
by sailing West. Strangely enough, as we have said, this jealous,
treacherous man was afterward made a pilot in an expedition that visited
Florida, Cape Cod, and Massachusetts Bay. But he did not find the way to
the Spice Islands on the voyage.
Mesquita, still believing in the success of the expedition of Magellan,
said to a few whom he could reach:
"Magellan is not mad. He executed those who had planned to murder him.
He had to put to death these men for the sake of the expedition. He will
return again!"
Few believed his story, and fewer his prophecy.
Still there were some who hoped that the prisoner's prophecy might prove
true. Columbus was deemed mad, and quelled a mutiny, but he returned
again. Vasco da Gama faced doubt and destruction, but he returned again.
There were not wanting some who asked, "Will Magellan ever return
again?" Such usually received the answer, "The Admiral was mad!"
The poor wife of Magellan, who had hoped much from him for the sake of
her child, as well as for Spain, heard these reports in an agony of
grief. But she still hoped. She must have believed in her husband's
destiny.