This new champion approached the men in the usual way, inviting attention. He carried in his hand an arrow which was a cubit and a half long.
He tilted it, opened his great mouth to receive it, dropped it into his throat, when, amid muscular contortions, it began to descend. The sailors watched him with amazement as it went down. It disappeared at last, having, as we are told, descended to the "bottom of his stomach." It seemed to cause him no pain.
Presently the quiver began to appear again. The long arrow slowly rose out of the human tube which the man had made of himself, and dropped into his hand at last, the whole being performed by muscular movement.
He must have been delighted at the sensation which this mental control over the muscles of digestion had produced. It was less strange that the arrow should have gone down than that it should have come up again.
Such feats as these entertained the sailors from time to time when they were on shore. Pigafetta was now seeing the "wonders of the world" indeed.
Magellan's mind was given to the more serious problems of the voyage.
The Antarctic pole star now rose to his view. It was cold. Magellan saw that the voyage would be likely to last long.
Not only the Portuguese came to distrust him, but some of the Spanish sailors caught the infection of the deleterious atmosphere. They reasoned differently from the Portuguese.
"The Admiral is a native of Portugal," said they, "and though the Portuguese court rejected him, he will be sure in the end to be true to his own people and King. He will never allow the glory of his discoveries to go to Spain."
Some of them came to him to say that the wind blew cold, that the sea was full of perils, that nothing but disaster could come by pushing on into the sea where they were tending.