In August 1519, five ships left Seville. They opened into the Atlantic, and very soon even the faint outline of the earth disappeared from the eyes of the sailors. In modern terms, it was like a spaceship leaving the edge of our solar system.

There was fear. The captain of the ship decided to go his own way and ended up in chains. The captain of another ship was sentenced to death for raping the cabin boy.

Magellan was the leader. He would never let it get out of hand. He was tormented by the feat of Columbus twenty-seven years ago, when he himself was then only twelve. He was tormented by the feat of Vasco Núñez de Balboa six years earlier, who had crossed the Straits of Panama and entered the Pacific—the first European to do so.

The sailors saw the crippled leg of Magellan, the “medal” for the battle he fought with the Moroccans in the year when Balboa crossed Panama.

In the middle of the ocean, they were horrified to see a strange blue flame stretching over the masts. Fires of St. Elmos (“our” St. Nicholas): a hole of transcendental nature or a corona discharge that produces a glowing plasma during a strong electric field in the atmosphere.

In the middle of the ocean, they were horrified to see a strange blue flame stretching over the masts.

The sailors of 1519 saw the body of the saint and fell on their knees to pray. The world was still unknown and full of monsters. The earth was still foreign. They didn’t know it, but they were astronauts who didn’t have a button to press to rely on the reliability of the technology.

In the south of Brazil they were carved. Between them. Or they sailed along the rivers, thinking that it was the ocean. They were shipwrecked with a metallic taste of blood in their mouths: their teeth were falling out from scurvy.

In November 1520, the three surviving ships finally crossed the Pacific Ocean. In March 1521, few poor people reached the land: Guam, then the Philippines. Magellan, who set out to prove that the Earth is round, got lost there. The locals attacked. The captain was dismembered.

Only one ship has reached the Moluccas, Indonesia’s aromatic archipelago of nutmeg and cloves.

Earlier, on the outskirts of South America, two nebulae were noticed in the sky, the two galaxies closest to the Earth. Today their names commemorate the dismembered captain: the Small and Large Clouds of Magellan. After all, the Earth was round. Even for this, blood had to be shed.