Morning came and found the ship fast aground, and seeing there was much damage done to her keel, the servants of the king implored him to embark in another vessel. By his decision Louis showed once again that wonderful unselfishness which forms one of his best claims to the title of Saint.
After hearing the opinion of the master mariners, and his nobles, he called together the seamen and said to them.
"I ask you, on your fealty, whether, if the ship were your own, and freighted with your own merchandise, you would leave her?"
And they replied all together "No!" for they liked better to put their bodies in peril of drowning than to buy a new ship at great cost.
"Why then," asked the king, "do you advise me to leave the ship?"
"Because," said they, "the stakes are not equal. For neither gold nor silver can be set against your person and the persons of your wife and children who are here; therefore we advise you not to put yourself or them in danger."
Then the king said, "Lords, I have heard your opinion and that of my people, and now I will tell you mine, which is this: If I leave the ship there are in her five hundred people and more who will land in this Isle of Cyprus, for fear of peril to their body—since there is none that does not love his life as much as I love mine—and these, peradventure, will never return to their own land. Therefore I like better to place my own person, and my wife, and my children in God's hands than do this harm to the many people who are here."
Their next adventure might have been more serious, at least for some of the crew. Sailing away in comparative safety in the damaged ship they came at length to the island of the sea called Pentelema, which was peopled by Saracens who were subjects of the King of Sicily and the King of Tunis.
"The queen begged the king to send thither three galleys to get fruit for the children; and the king consented, and ordered the masters of the galleys to go thither, and be ready to come back to him when his ship passed before the island. The galleys entered into a little port that was on the island; and it chanced that when the king's ship passed before the port, we got no tidings of the galleys.