onsidering their
great stature, long swords, and the coats of mail they always
wore beneath their gambesons, none believed them but plain
gentlefolk bent on a pious errand. Indeed, they nicknamed them
Sir Peter and Sir John, and as such they were known throughout
the voyage.

The brethren were seated together in a little place apart in the
bow of the ship, and engaged, Godwin in reading from an Arabic
translation of the Gospels made by some Egyptian monk, and Wulf
in following it with little ease in the Latin version. Of the
former tongue, indeed, they had acquired much in their youth,
since they learned it from Sir Andrew with Rosamund, although
they could not talk it as she did, who had been taught to lisp it
as an infant by her mother. Knowing, too, that much might hang
upon a knowledge of this tongue, they occupied their long journey
in studying it from such books as they could get; also in
speaking it with a priest, who had spent many years in the East,
and instructed them for a fee, and with certain Syrian merchants
and sailors.

"Shut the book, brother," said Wulf; "there is Lebanon at last,"
and he pointed to the great line of mountains revealing
themselves dimly through their wrappings of mist. "Glad I am to
see them, who have had enough of these crooked scrolls and
learnings."

"Ay," said Godwin, "the Promised Land."

"And the Land of Promise for us," answered his brother. "Well,
thank God that the time has come to act, though how we are to set
about it is more than I can say."

"Doubtless time will show. As our uncle bade, we will seek out
this Sheik Jebal---"

"Hush!" said Wulf, for just then some merchants, and with them a
number of pilgrims, their travel-worn faces full of rapture at
the thought that the terrors of the voyage were done, and that
they were about to set foot upon the ground their Lord had
trodden, crowded forward to the bow to obtain their first view of
it, and there burst into prayers and songs of thanksgiving.
Indeed, one of these men--a trader known as Thomas of
Ipswich--was, they found, standing close to them, and seemed as
though he listened to their talk.

The brethren mingled with them while this same Thomas of Ipswich,
who had visited the place before, or so it seemed, pointed out
the beauties of the city, of the fertile country by which it was
surrounded, and of the distant cedar-clad mountains where, as he
said, Hiram, King of Tyre, had cut the timber for Solomon's
Te