’"Oh, sire,” says Berengere, “I am acquainted with this lady.  She has nothing to fear from me.”

’Queen Joan said nothing, being afraid of her brother.  So Madame Jehane kissed the hands of the pair of queens, meekly kneeling to each in turn; and so far as I know she did them faithful service through all the mischances of a voyage whereon every woman and every other man was horribly sick.

’Having made the Pharos in favourable weather, and kept Mount Gibello and the wild Calabrian coast upon our lee (as is fitting), we stood out for the straight course over the immense waste of water.  Now was no more land to be seen at either hand; but the sky fitted close upon the edges of the sea like a dome of glass on a man’s forehead.  There was neither cover from the sun nor hiding-place from the prying concourse of the stars; the wind came searchingly, the waters stirred beneath it, or, being driven, heaped themselves up into towers of ruin.  The cordage flacked, the strong ribs creaked; like a beast over-burdened the whole ship groaned, wallowing in a sea-trough without breath to climb.  So we endured for many days, a straggling host of men, ordinarily capable, powerless now beneath that dumb tyrant the sky.  Where else could be our refuge?  We all looked to King Richard—­by day to his royal ensign, by night to the great wax candle which he always had lighted and stuck in a lantern.  His commands were shouted from ship to ship over two miles or more of sea; if any strayed or dropped behind we lay-to that he might come up.  But very often, after a day’s idle rolling, we knew that the sea had claimed some boatload of our poor souls, and went on.  The galleys kept touch with the dromonds, enclosing them (as it were) within the cusps of a new moon, and so driving them forward.  To see this light of our King’s moving, now fast, now slow, now up, now down, restlessly over the field of the night, was to remember the God of the Israelites, who (for their sakes and ours) became a pillar of fire at that season, and transformed himself into a tall cloud in the daytime.  Busy as it was, this point of light, it only figured the unresting spirit of the King, careful of all these children of his, ordering the hosts of the Lord.

’Storms drove us at length on to the island of Crete, where Minos once had his kingly habitation, and his wife died of pleasure.  Again they drove us, more unfortunately, out of our course upon the inhospitable coasts of Rhodes, where the salt wind suffers no trees to live, nor safe anchorage to be, nor shelter from the ravage of the sea.  In this vexed place there was no sign of land but a long line of surf beating upon a rocky shore, the mist of spray and blown sand, spars of drowned ships, innumerable anxious flocks of birds.  Here was no roadstead for us; yet here, but for the signal providence of heaven, we had likely all have perished (as many did perish), miserably failing at once of purpose, the sacraments of Christ, and reasonable beds.  The fleet was scattered wide, no ship could see his neighbour; we called on the King, on the Saviour, on the Father of all.  But deep answered to deep, and the prayer of so many Christians, as it appeared, skilled little to change the eternal purposes of God.