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Updated: May 24, 2025
In due course they came to the inn again, having met no one whom they knew, except two pilgrims who had been their fellow-passengers on the dromon. These men were astonished when they said that they had been through the Saracen quarter of the city, where, although this town was in the hands of the Christians, it was scarcely thought safe for Franks to venture without a strong guard.
"I? Oh, from a man on the dromon who called here while I made ready your food, and told me a strange story that he had learned in England of a band sent by Salah-ed-din may his name be accursed! to capture a certain lady.
Then they undid their baggage, and having taken from it clean garments, washed themselves after their long journey with the water that had been placed ready for them in great jars. This, indeed, they needed, for on that crowded dromon there was little chance of washing.
On the forecastle rose a kind of turret, possibly revolving, from which, after Greek fire was invented, the tubes or primitive cannon projected the substance on the decks of the enemy. The dromon had two masts, lateen rigged, and between thirty and forty oars to a side.
Through the hot haze of a July morning a dromon, as certain merchant vessels of that time were called, might have been seen drifting before a light breeze into St. George's Bay at Beirut, on the coast of Syria.
The dromon was not the low galley of the later Middle Ages but a two-banked ship, probably quite as large as the Roman quinquereme, carrying a complement of about 300 men. Amidships was built a heavy castle or redoubt of timbers, pierced with loopholes for archery.
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