But a more perilous diet had to be followed.
They ate the "ox hides that were under the main yard." To eat these hides they had to soak them for some days in the sea, and then cook them on embers.
They ate sawdust; then the vermin on the ships.
A worse condition came. The gums of the men swelled from such food, so that many of them could not eat at all, and nineteen died. Beside those who died, twenty-five fell ill of "divers sicknesses."
Kind-hearted Pigafetta, who was always true to the Portuguese Admiral, formed an intimacy with the poor young giant, presumably with the giant whose wife had been left behind. This giant was imprisoned on the flagship of Magellan.
One day the giant said to him, helplessly:
Our Italian understood that this must be the Patagonian word for bread. So he wrote it down, and the giant saw that he was interested in the meaning of his native words.
So the young giant began to teach the young Italian.
"Her-dem" meant a chief.