After emerging into the Pacific Ocean, Magellan's three ships voyaged for ninety-six days without stopping at any land, and the crews went for no days (from the Straits of Magellan to the Ladrone Islands) without getting any kind of fresh food. "We ate", wrote Antonio Pigafetta, "biscuit which was no longer biscuit, but powder of biscuits swarming with worms and stinking terribly because it had been befouled by rats. We drank yellow water which had been putrid for many days. We also ate ox hides that covered the top of the mainyard to prevent the mast from chafing the shrouds, which had become exceedingly hard because of its exposure to sun, rain, and wind. These pieces of hide were soaked in sea water for four or five days and then placed for a few minutes on top of glowing charcoal and afterwards eaten." But in their hunger the men often ate sawdust, and as to the rats that were caught, they were sold at a high price. Scurvy soon broke out, and the gums of the men's jaws swelled so that some could not eat at all, and therefore died of starvation--nineteen in all, amongst them a giant Patagonian captured in South America to be carried back to Spain. And thus they sailed some 12,000 miles across the Pacific Ocean. "Truly it was very pacific," wrote Pigafetta, "for during that time we suffered no storm. We saw no land except two desert islands on which were found nothing but birds and trees." The water round them swarmed with sharks. But that they were favoured with such good weather, and sailed a steady 180 to 210 miles a day, they "would all have died of hunger in that exceeding vast sea". But Magellan held on with a tenacity which leaves Columbus behind in resolution, for Columbus reached land on his first voyage after only thirty-six days of anxious expectancy, whereas it was the ninety-seventh day of Magellan's long agony before a land was reached which was likely to be of use as a place of refreshment.