Aboard Cabrillo's Galleon by Christine Echeverria Bender

experience I could never survive a second time. Never. What do you want to know?”
    â€œEverything.”
    He took a deep breath and began, his lids half-closing in reflective contemplation. “When I was seventeen I signed up to sail with the Loaísa expedition as the assistant to our ship’s scribe. Quite soon, old though I was, I became Juan Sebastian de Elcano’s cabin boy. Just as most young men, I was familiar with the fame of the man who had completed Magellan’s voyage, but I did not meet him until a week before departure. My admiration for that man quickly grew into a great fondness.” Cabrillo merely nodded, encouraging Urdaneta to continue.
    â€œHe had an extraordinary ability to accurately read the character of a man, and this made him a very skillful leader. With him as the fleet’s pilot-major and captain over all six of the flagship’s consort vessels, things went well enough as we crossed the Atlantic and descended the coast of South America. Captain Elcano led us through Magellan’s strait, which many thought impossible once we were there, fighting for every mile against its treacheries. We did reach the Pacific Ocean, however, but only after scurvy had claimed Captain-General Loaísa’s life. Captain Elcano became our commander, though he was also beginning to show signs of illness. Not long afterward, to my horror and grief, he grew too weak to stand.”
    Urdaneta raised his eyes to Cabrillo, and they still reflected the pain of that loss. “I acted as a witness when he signed his will. By then, he barely had strength enough to lift the quill. He had already suffered through scurvy during his voyage with Magellan, and he had no more reserve to defeat it. I was with him at the very last. That cursed disease took him from us when we needed him so badly, even more badly than we knew at the time.”
    Cabrillo pushed Urdaneta’s cup closer to his elbow, encouraging him to drink. His friend wrapped a hand around the vessel but did not lift it from the table as he went on. “Scurvy ruthlessly killed many more men and badly weakened those of us who dared to hold onto our lives. All the while we tried to hold off starvation with nothing more than spoiled food and tainted drinking water, and there was very little of either. When the storms hit, those endless storms, we had no choice but to work the pumps night and day in order to remain afloat. Many more men died laboring at those pumps. When they fell, we merely rolled their bodies aside, stepped into their places, and kept pumping. Ship after ship went down despite our pitiful efforts; their men sinking under the waves without the strength even to scream.”
    At these words, these terrible memories, Urdaneta’s head lowered for a moment. When it lifted slowly he seemed to notice the cup in his hand, and he took a couple of swallows of wine. Setting the cup down and bracing himself with a deep breath, his tongue forced the words from his mouth. “Only one of our seven ships reached the Moluccas, and I shall always wonder why ours alone was spared. And yet, once there, rather than finding the rest and pure food we longed and prayed for, we few survivors were captured by the Portuguese.
    â€œI was their prisoner for seven years before I was finally able to escape. Seven eternal years. Please do not ask me to describe how they treated us, Juan. That, I cannot do. Not yet.”
    He paused for another drink. “Afterward, for several more years I sailed at length around those islands in boats too small for the Portuguese to bother. I learned the Malay language and I traded. In the end, six years ago now, I managed to return to Lisbon aboard a Portuguese ship. I slipped away from them again and got back into Spain in February of 1537. Shortly following my return, I met your old commander, Alvarado. Did he tell you that it took him over a year to convince me to face the sea again, so I could