The vessels used in their first onslaught were in the form of canoes, scraped out of the long stem of a beech or willow tree. “This slight and narrow foundation,” says Gibbon, “was raised and continued on either side with planks, till it attained the length of sixty, and the height of about twelve feet. These boats were built without a deck, but with two rudders and a mast, to move with sails and oars, and to contain from forty to seventy men, with their arms and provisions of fresh water and salt fish.”[355] In their first enterprise, and with an insignificant fleet of two hundred vessels, the Russians, under the princes of Kief, passed the Straits without opposition, and occupied for a short time the port of Constantinople, from which, however, they soon retreated. In the second, they do not appear to have met with any better success; and the third, though chosen when the Greeks were greatly harassed, and when the naval powers of the empire were employed against the Saracens, proved most disastrous to the Russians. “Fifteen broken and decayed galleys were boldly launched against the enemy; but instead of the single tube of Greek fire, usually planted on the prow, the sides and stern of each vessel were abundantly supplied with that liquid combustible. The engineers were dexterous; the weather was propitious; many thousand Russians, who chose rather to be drowned than burnt, leaped into the sea; and those who escaped to the Thracian shore were inhumanly slaughtered by the peasants and soldiers.”[356] [Sidenote: A.D. 865.] [Sidenote: A.D. 904.] [Sidenote: A.D. 941.] These attempts at naval invasion continued at long intervals, and with varied success; but the fourth and last, ending in the destruction of twenty-four of the Greek galleys, was brought to a close by treaty. The Greeks found that, though victorious, every advantage lay on the side of the Russians; their savage enemy gave no quarter; their poverty promised no spoil; while their impenetrable retreats deprived the conqueror of the hopes of revenge. The Greeks were, therefore, not unwilling to grant liberal terms to their invaders, the terror these attacks caused being increased by a supposed prophecy. “By the vulgar of every rank,” remarks Gibbon, “it was asserted and believed that an equestrian statue in the square of Taurus was secretly inscribed with a prophecy, how the Russians, in the last days, should become masters of Constantinople,”[357]—a belief which, as we know, was still largely shared in, even so recently as the Crimean war of 1854-6. [Sidenote: The Normans and their expeditions.] [Sidenote: A.D. 918.]