The main English fleet, leaving England and Normandy, had gone southward along the coast of France and Spain. The lands they passed in sight of were strange to the navigators, so little was known of the geography of even the countries of Europe. At Lisbon they could not resist the temptation to help the Portuguese Christians in a war with the Saracens, nor of indulging a less laudable sort of prowess, which Hovenden describes: “Disembarking from their ships, they made their way into the city, and as they went through streets and lanes talked to the people, giving themselves airs and committing violence upon the wives and daughters of the citizens; they drove away pagans and Jews, plundered their property, and burned their houses. They then stripped their vineyards, leaving them not so much as a grape.” This faithful chronicler also narrates that during a storm at sea St. Thomas à Becket appeared to them and calmed the waves. “They passed the city of Silva(?), which was the most remote of all the cities of Christendom.” At Marseilles they missed King Richard, who already had departed; but they were compensated for their disappointment in being enabled to worship the identical “rods with which our Lord was scourged, the jaw-bone of Lazarus, and one of the ribs of Lawrence.” Approaching Sicily, they saw the marvellous fish of St. Agatha, the story of which they believed: how that the heat of the volcano of Mount Gebel (Stromboli?) once threatened the town of Catana; but the people took the veil of St. Agatha from her tomb, “carried it before them, facing the fire, on which the flames returned to the sea and, parching it, dried it up for nearly a mile, and scorched the fish, many of which were half burned; and there are to this day many fish there of the same kind.” But the marvels of that voyage are too many for our pages, if not for the credulity of the reader. Richard himself remained six months in Marseilles, a delay that nearly caused the destruction of his enterprise. A quarrel was started with Tancred, ruler of Sicily, about certain rights of Richard’s sister Joanna, who was the widow of Tancred’s predecessor. Says the chronicler: “Quicker than priest could chant matins did King Richard take the city.” Philip resented Richard’s audacity and forced him to take down his standard. Richard had once solicited and gained from Philip the hand of the French princess Alice; but, his advantage now blowing from another direction, he preferred Berengaria, a princess of Navarre. Berengaria, through the connivance of Eleanor, was brought to Messina. Only at the entreaty of utmost piety and discretion could Philip be persuaded to lay aside his rage at this new insult. He sailed at once for the East.