s threw down the axe and the spade for
the pike and bow and arrows. Led by knights, on whose armour a red
Cross was emblazoned, the people poured out in their millions for the
first Crusade. It is said that in the spring of 1096 an "expeditionary
force" of six million people was heading toward Palestine.

The Crusades were caused partly by the cruelty of the followers of
Mohammed, the Moslem Turks, who believed that they could earn entrance
into Paradise by slaying infidel Christians. The Moslems every day and
five times a day turn their faces to Mecca in Arabia, saying "There is
no God but God; Mohammed is the Prophet of God." Allah (they believe)
is wise and merciful to His own, but not holy, nor our Father,
nor loving and forgiving, nor desiring pure lives. On earth and in
Paradise women have no place save to serve men.

The first Crusade ended in the capture of Jerusalem (July 15, 1099),
and Godfrey de Bouillon became King of Jerusalem. But Godfrey refused
to put a crown upon his head. For, he said, "I will not wear a crown
of gold in the city where Our Lord Jesus Christ wore a crown of
thorns."

The fortunes of Christian and Moslem ebbed and flowed for nearly
two hundred years, during which time there were seven Crusades
ending at the fall of Acre into the hands of the Turks in 1291.

The way of the sword had failed, though indeed the Crusades had
probably been the means of preventing all Europe from being
overrun by the Moslems. At the time when the last Crusade had
begun a man was planning a new kind of Crusade, different in
method but calling for just as much bravery as the old kind.
We are going to hear his story now.

II

_The Young Knight's Vision_

In the far-off days of the last of the Crusades, a knight of Majorca,
in the Mediterranean Sea, stood on the shore of his island home gazing
over the water. Raymund Lull from the beach of Palma Bay, where he
had played as a boy, now looked out southward, where boats with their
tall, rakish, brown sails ran in from the Great Sea.

The knight was dreaming of Africa which lay away to the south of his
island. He had heard many strange stories from the sailors about the
life in the harbours of that mysterious African seaboard; but he had
never once in his thirty-six years set eyes upon one of its ports.

It was the year when Prince Edward of England, out on the mad, futile
adventure of the last Crusade, was felled by the