fic. But the worst
hardships were still before him. Once more a sea of darkness must be
crossed by brave hearts sickening with hope deferred. If the
mid-Atlantic waters had been strange to Columbus and his men, here
before Magellan's people all was thrice unknown.

"They were the first that ever burst
Into that silent sea";

and as they sailed month after month over the waste of waters, the
huge size of our planet began to make itself felt. Until after the
middle of December they kept a northward course, near the coast of the
continent, running away from the antarctic cold. Then northwesterly
and westerly courses were taken, and on the 24th of January, 1521, a
small wooded islet was found in water where the longest plummet-lines
failed to reach bottom. Already the voyage since issuing from the
strait was nearly twice as long as that of Columbus in 1492 from the
Canaries to Guanahani. From the useless island, which they called San
Pablo, a further run of eleven days brought them to another
uninhabited rock, which they called Tiburones, from the quantity of
sharks observed in the neighborhood. There was neither food, nor water
to be had there, and a voyage of unknown duration, in reality not less
than 5,000 English miles, was yet to be accomplished before a trace of
land was again to greet their yearning gaze. Their sufferings may best
be told in the quaint and touching words in which Shakespeare read
them:

"And hauynge in this tyme consumed all theyr bysket and other
vyttayles, they fell into such necessitie that they were inforced to
eate the pouder that remayned therof beinge now full of woormes....
Theyre freshe water was also putrifyed and become yelow. They dyd eate
skynnes and pieces of lether which were foulded abowt certeyne great
ropes of the shyps. But these skynnes being made verye harde by reason
of the soonne, rayne, and wynde, they hunge them by a corde in the sea
for the space of foure or fiue dayse to mollifie them, and sodde them,
and eate them. By reason of this famen and vnclene feedynge, summe of
theyr gummes grewe so ouer theyr teethe [a symptom of scurvy], that
they dyed miserably for hunger. And by this occasion dyed xix. men,
and ... besyde these that dyed, xxv. or xxx. were so sicke that they
were not able to doo any seruice with theyr handes or arms for
feeblenesse: So that was in maner none without sum disease. In three
monethes and xx. dayes, they sayled foure thousande leaques in