oused herself to speak to them brave words of cheer and counsel, and,
calling them close to her, gave to each a sword, bidding them, with her
failing breath, to draw the blades only in the cause of truth and right,
and in defence of the widow and the orphan.

A good cause it was in which the young princes went forth but a few
weeks later. They had one and all refused to receive knighthood for some
bloodless achievement at a tournament, and had begged to be allowed to
win their spurs by an expedition against the Moorish pirates, who, from
their strongholds on the African coast, swept the Mediterranean Sea, and
carried off numberless prisoners into cruel bondage. It was in the cause
of many a widow and orphan, whose bread-winner toiled in some Moorish
seaport, or below the decks of a pirate galley, that the Portuguese
princes drew their mother's last gifts on African soil.

So well did they acquit themselves that, after one day of desperate
fighting, the city of Ceuta, one of the most valuable of the pirate
strongholds, fell into the hands of the three elder lads. Enrique, the
third brother, who was not only a gallant fighter, but so skilful a
general that our own Henry V. offered him a command in his army, so
distinguished himself that his father would have knighted him first, had
he not refused to be preferred before his elders.

But, of all the five, there was no more eager Crusader than the
youngest, Fernando, who, though a mere child, had been the first to
suggest the expedition, and who longed beyond everything to follow in
his brothers' footsteps. Eighteen years, however, passed away before
another such expedition could be undertaken, and by that time the eldest
of the five brothers, Duarte (or Edward), the namesake of his
great-uncle, our gallant Black Prince, had succeeded his father as King
of Portugal. From him Enrique and Fernando won permission for another
attack upon the Moors, and set forth, full of the hope of taking Tangier
as they had taken Ceuta. But Fernando's honours were not to be won with
the sword. The Portuguese forces found themselves so far outnumbered
that the brothers, bitterly disappointed, felt it necessary to retreat.
But worse was to come. There was a traitor in the Portuguese camp, who
let the enemy know of the princes' movements, and when the starving,
weary troops reached the coast at daybreak, they found themselves cut
off from their ships.

The Moorish leader, Lyala ben Lyala, agre