Chapter 18
Thirty-Nine Degrees
The North Pacific
To find winds that would carry her east, the San Pedro sailed north to a little over 39 degrees north, about the latitude of northern Japan, and then ran east across the North Pacific. Meanwhile the patache San Lucas, which had left Legazpi’s fleet in 1564, reached Mexico first, on 9 August 1565.
Summer 1565
The *San Pedro* climbs until she is a little over thirty-nine degrees north, the latitude of northern Japan, far beyond where anyone aboard has sailed. Then she turns east, and runs before the westerly wind.
It is cold, and wet, and the ship is crowded. As the weeks pass, more and more of the people aboard fall sick. The log records only the wind, the latitude and the run.
9 August 1565
On 9 August a small ship comes into Navidad, on the coast of Mexico. It is the *San Lucas*, the patache that vanished from Legazpi’s fleet in November.
Her captain, Alonso de Arellano, says he lost the fleet by accident, searched for it among the islands of Mindanao, and left the signs he was ordered to leave there. Then, with his pilot Lope Martín, he sailed home across the Pacific. He is the first to come back, and he says so.
Nobody in Mexico yet knows where Legazpi is, or whether he is alive.
15 September 1565
By 15 September, Espinosa reckons, Cebu lies 1,545 leagues behind them, to the west. The *San Pedro* has been at sea for more than three months, and she has almost crossed the widest ocean on earth from west to east.
Sixteen of the people aboard will die before the voyage ends. Before long, fewer than twenty are well enough to work the ship. Somewhere ahead is land.