arrows and Greek fire. There was a pause,
and the galleys seemed less anxious to close again. Then Richard
roared out: "If this ship escapes every one of you men will be hanged!"
After this some men jumped overboard with tackle which they made fast
to the Turkish rudder. They and others then climbed up her sides,
having made ropes fast with grapnels. A furious slashing and stabbing
followed on deck. The Turks below swarmed up and drove the English
overboard. Nothing daunted, Richard prepared to ram her. Forming up
his best galleys in line-abreast he urged the rowers to their utmost
speed. With a terrific rending crash the deadly galley beaks bit home.
The Turk was stove in so badly that she listed over and sank like a
stone. It is a pity that we do not know her name. For she fought
overwhelming numbers with a dauntless courage that nothing could
surpass. As she was the kind of ship then called a "dromon" she might
be best remembered as "the dauntless dromon."

King John, who followed Richard on the throne of England, should be
known as John the Unjust. He was hated in Normandy, which Philip
Augustus of France took from him in 1204. He was hated in England,
where the English lords forced him to sign Magna Charta in 1215. False
to his word, he had no sooner signed it than he began plotting to get
back the power he had so shamefully misused; and the working out of
this plot brought on the first great sea fight with the French.

Looking out for a better king the lords chose Prince Louis of France,
who landed in England next year and met them in London. But John
suddenly died. His son, Henry III, was only nine. So England was
ruled by William Marshal, the great Earl of Pembroke, one of the ablest
patriots who ever lived. Once John was out of the way the English
lords who had wrung from him the great charter of English liberties
became very suspicious of Louis and the French. A French army was
besieging Lincoln in 1217, helped by the English followers of Louis,
when the Earl Marshal, as Pembroke is called, caught this Anglo-French
force between his own army and the garrison, who joined the attack, and
utterly defeated it in a battle the people called the Fair of Lincoln.
Louis, who had been besieging Dover, at once sent to France for another
army. But this brought on the battle of the South Foreland, which was
the ruin of his hopes.

The French commander was Eustace the Monk, a Flemish hireling who had