'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