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.

'Then one inspired among us climbed up to the masthead, having in his
teeth a piece of the True Cross set in a silver heart; and called aloud
to the wild weather, "Save, Lord, we perish!" as was said of old by very
sacred persons. To which palpable truth so urgently declared an answer
was vouchsafed, not indeed according to our full desires, yet
(doubtless) level with our deserts. The wind veered to the north; and
though it abated nothing of its force, preserved us from the teeth of
the rocks. Before it now, under bare poles, without need of oars, we
drove to the southward; and while a little light still endured descried
a great mountainous and naked coast rising out of the heaped waters,
which we knew to be the land of Cyprus. Off the western face of this
dark shore, in a little shelter at last, we lay-to and tossed all night.
Next day in fairer weather, hoisting sail, we made a good haven defended
by stout sea-walls, a mole and two lighthouses: these were of a city
called Limasol. Upon my galley, at least, there was one who sang _Lauda
Sion_, whose tune before had been _Adhaesit pavimento_, when he rested
tired eyes upon the clustered spires of a white city, smokeless and
asleep in the early morning light.'

So far without weariness I hope Milo may have conducted the reader. In
relation to the sea you may take him for an expert in the terrors he
describes. Not so in Cyprus. War tempts him to prolixity, to classical
allusion, even to hexameters of astonishingly loose joints. Every stroke
of his hero's sword-arm seems to him of weight. No doubt it was, once;
but not in a chronicle of this sort, where the Cypriote gests must take
a lowly place among others fair and foul of this King-errant. Let me put
Milo on the shelf for a little, and abridge.

I tell you then that the Emperor of Cyprus, by name Isaac, was a
thin-faced man with high cheek-bones. A Greek of the Greeks, he
undervalued what he had never seen, precisely for that reason. When
heralds went up to Nikosia to announce the coming-in of King Richard,
Isaac mumbled his lips. '