The books were brought ashore again. The ship sailed without Lull.

"The ship has gone," said a friend to Lull. He quivered under a
torture of shame greater than the agony of the rack. He was wrung with
bitter shame that he who had for all these years prepared for this
Crusade should now have shown the white feather. He was, indeed, a
craven knight of Christ.

His agony of spirit threw him into a high fever that kept him in his
bed.

Soon after he heard that another ship was sailing for Africa.

In spite of the protestations of his friends Lull insisted that they
should carry him to the ship. They did so; but as the hour of sailing
drew on his friends were sure that he was so weak that he would die
on the sea before he could reach Africa. So--this time in spite of all
his pleading--they carried him ashore again. But he could not rest and
his agony of mind made his fever worse.

Soon, however, a third ship was making ready to sail. This time Lull
was carried on board and refused to return.

The ship cast off and threaded its way through the shipping of the
harbour out into the open sea.

"From this moment," said Lull, "I was a new man. All fever left me
almost before we were out of sight of land."

V

_The First Battle_

Passing Corsica and Sardinia, the ship slipped southward till at last
she made the yellow coast of Africa, broken by the glorious Gulf
of Tunis. She dropped sail as she ran alongside the busy wharves of
Goletta. Lull was soon gliding in a boat through the short ancient
canal to Tunis, the mighty city which was head of all the Western
Mohammedan world.

He landed and found the place beside the great mosque where the
grey-bearded scholars bowed over their Korans and spoke to one another
about the law of Mohammed.

They looked at him with amazement as he boldly came up to them and
said, "I have come to talk with you about Christ and His Way of Life,
and Mohammed and his teaching. If you can prove to me that Mohammed is
indeed _the_ Prophet, I will myself become a follower of him."

The Moslems, sure of their case, called together their wisest men and
together they declaimed to Lull what he already knew very well--the
watchword that rang out from minaret to minaret across the roofs of
the vast city as the first flush of dawn came up from the East across
the Gulf. "There is no God but God; Mohammed is the Prophet of God."

"Yes," he replied, "the Allah of Mohammed is one and is great, bu