While the host lay thus at the Canebrake of Starlings there came to the king another messenger from England, [Sidenote: _May 29-31_] his vice-chancellor, John of Alençon, with such an alarming account of the state of affairs in both England and Normandy that after much anxious thought he told the other princes and barons that he really must and would go home. They hereupon held a council among themselves, and promptly answered this announcement by another: whatever he might do or say, wherever he might go, they all would proceed forthwith to Jerusalem. Someone who was present at their council carried a report of its outcome to the pilgrims of lower rank, “and they danced for joy till past midnight”; “there was no man high or low, young or old, who was not wild with delight, except the king himself; but he went to bed in a feverish state of perturbation and perplexity”;[914] for he knew that unless he went home he was like to lose his lands,[915] yet it was virtually impossible for him to withdraw from the Crusade in the face of this unanimous resolve. How the resolve should be carried into effect, was the next question. The Christians had now secured the entrances to three of the five natural openings from the plain into the hill-country. There was clearly nothing to be gained by proceeding further up the Wady el Hesy. From their present encampment they could easily reach one of the two openings which they had not yet approached, the Wady el Afranj. At the western end of this valley, on the border-line of the Shephelah and the plain—“at the foot of the hills, where the fields begin,” as William of Tyre[916] describes it—stood a fortress with a town or village clustering round it, called by the Arabs Beit Djibrin and by the Franks Ibelin of the Hospital; the latter title, derived from its owners the Knights of Saint John, being added to distinguish it from the other Ibelin, on the coast further north. Its site was probably that of the ancient Eleutheropolis, and it was a central point whence roads radiated in all directions, to Gaza, to Hebron, to Blanchegarde and Toron of the Knights (Natroun), to Bethlehem and Jerusalem. When—probably on June 1—the host left the Canebrake of Starlings, its destination was apparently understood to be Ibelin. The pilgrims seem to have proceeded along the border of the plain to a point—probably Galatia—whence a road ran eastward to Ibelin and westward to Ascalon.[917] [Sidenote: _June_] Here they halted and spent two or three days, “suffering a fierce persecution and strange martyrdom” from swarms of minute flies which stung them in every exposed part with such poisonous effect that “they all looked like lepers,” but buoyed up above all troubles by their confident hope of reaching Jerusalem at last. One alone sat gloomily in his tent apart, absorbed in ceaseless thought; and that one was the king.[918] [Sidenote: _June 3_]