“I, Geoffrey,” he scratched out slowly, “to my knowledge have not ever lied by one word, and I bear witness that never was yet seen so fair a sight. As far as the eye could reach, there was no space without sails, and ships, and vessels.” Certainly there were enough ships to cover miles of ocean. Flat, broad-beamed palanders, built especially to carry troops and horses—the 4,500 knights with their fiery steeds, the 9,000 esquires, and the 20,000 foot soldiers who made up the expedition. Swift galleys to protect the mighty convoy. These galleys had oars as well as sails, and they lashed the waters to foam as they hurried about their tasks. There were even some fat, slow merchant vessels. Just as it is today, business was business in the Middle Ages, even when you went to war. But business or no business, the men crowding the rails were carried forward by another, nobler purpose. And before each of them had left his drafty castle in Normandy or France or Italy, he had sworn this solemn oath: “I will put on the cross, and march to redeem the land where Jesus lived, and where He died for us.” Once before it had been redeemed by Godfrey of Bouillon and the other saints and heroes of the First Crusade. But then the famous Arab leader Saladin had won it back, and not even Richard the Lion-Hearted, the knightly king of England, could defeat Saladin. “We will succeed where Richard failed. _Deus vult!_ God wills it!” The crusaders had a plan. Instead of landing on the enemy-held beaches of Palestine, they would sail to Egypt and fight their way across the desert and up through the famous Gaza strip, about which we read even today, to Jerusalem. The back door would be easier than the front door. They could not fail. Their hearts, therefore, were high as they sailed along the rugged coast with its deep inlets and its violet mountains—past rocky Ithaca, the legendary home of the wily Ulysses; past yellow beaches where the ancient Greeks drew up their craft before they sailed to rescue Helen of Troy; finally, past the southernmost tip of Greece where the storms were supposed to meet. Then suddenly something happened. Instead of continuing toward the Holy Land, the mighty fleet altered its course and turned north. What possibly could be the reason? The leaders knew, but most of the fighting men were puzzled. Soon a whisper ran from lip to lip. There was a new destination. Constantinople the Golden—the fabled Byzantium! The capital of the Greek, or Eastern Roman, Empire! The legendary El Dorado city with its glitter and its glory which was set on the Bosporus, a narrow little body of water that divides Europe from Asia, separating the West from the East.