Chapter XXI.
Richard made Captive.
1192
The returning Crusaders met by a storm.
It was now late in the season, and the autumnal gales had begun to blow. It was but a very short time after the vessels left the port before so severe a storm came on that the fleet was dispersed, and many of the vessels were driven upon the neighboring coasts and destroyed. The Crusaders that had been left in Acre and Jaffa were rather pleased at this than otherwise. They had been indignant at Richard and the knights who were with him for having left them, to return home, and they said now that the storm was a judgment from Heaven against the men on board the vessels for abandoning their work, and going away from the Holy Land, and leaving the tomb and the cross of Christ unredeemed. Some of the ships, it is said, were thrown on the coasts of Africa, and the seamen and knights, as fast as they escaped to the shore, were seized and made slaves.
Richard's ship, and also the one in which the queens were embarked, being stronger and better manned than the others, weathered the gale. After it was over, the queens' vessel steered for Sicily, where, in due time, they arrived in safety.
Richard's sudden change of course.
Richard did not intend to trust himself to go to any place where he was known. Accordingly, as soon as he found himself fairly separated from all the other vessels, he suddenly changed his course, and turned northward toward the mouth of the Adriatic Sea. He landed at the island of Corfu.[G] Here he dismissed his ship, and took three small galleys instead, to go up to the head of the Adriatic Sea, and thence to make his way homeward by land through the heart of Germany.