The news reached Magellan's ears. He at once sent a messenger with five men bearing hidden arms to summon the traitor captain on board the flagship. Of course he stoutly refused. As he did so, the messenger sprang upon him and stabbed him dead. As the rebellious captain fell dead on the deck of his ship, the dazed crew at once surrendered. Thus Magellan by his prompt measures quelled a mutiny that might have lost him the whole expedition. No man ever tried to mutiny again while he lived and commanded. The fleet had been two whole months in the Port S. Julian without seeing a single native. "However, one day, without any one expecting it, we saw a giant, who was on the shore of the sea, dancing and leaping and singing. He was so tall that the tallest of us only came up to his waist; he was well built; he had a large face, painted red all round, and his eyes also were painted yellow around them, and he had two hearts painted on his cheeks; he had but little hair on his head and it was painted white." The great Patagonian giant pointed to the sky to know whether these Spaniards had descended from above. He was soon joined by others evidently greatly surprised to see such large ships and such little men. Indeed, the heads of the Spaniards hardly reached the giants' waists, and they must have been greatly astonished when two of them ate a large basketful of biscuits and rats without skinning them and drank half a bucket of water at each sitting. With the return of spring weather in October 1520, Magellan led the little fleet upon its way. He was rewarded a few days later by finding the straits for which he and others had been so long searching. [Illustration: FERDINAND MAGELLAN, THE FIRST CIRCUMNAVIGATOR OF THE WORLD. After the engraving by Selma in Navarrete's _Coleccion de los Viages_.] "It was the straight," says the historian simply, "now cauled the straight of Magellans." A struggle was before them. For more than five weeks the Spanish mariners fought their way through the winding channels of the unknown straits. On one side rose high mountains covered with snow. The weather was bad, the way unknown. Do we wonder to read that "one of the ships stole away privily and returned into Spain," and the remaining men begged piteously to be taken home? Magellan spoke "in measured and quiet tones": "If I have to eat the leather of the ships' yards, yet will I go on and do my work." His words came truer than he knew. On the southern side of the strait constant fires were seen, which led Magellan to give the land the name it bears to-day--Tierra del Fuego. It was not visited again for a hundred years. [Illustration: A SHIP OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. From Amoretti's translation of _Magellan's Voyage round the World_.]