The oarsmen strained at the oars, then rested as the sailing vessels checked their way and hung motionless again.

Now the King, the three princes, and their half-brother the Count of Barcellos learned the indifference of the sea. King John was familiar with war on land, but he was a poor sailor and out of his element in a ship. Like the Constable, Nuno Pereira, like his knights and his soldiers, he was a landsman. Portugal was still primarily a peasant country. Although her coastal fishermen were fine sailors, it would be many years before Portugal would recognize that her destiny lay on the ocean.

We know little of Prince Henry’s early life, so we cannot tell how much experience he had of ships and the sea at the age of twenty-one. Most probably he had been sailing on the Tagus, and he would have been familiar since boyhood with the boats of the coastal fishermen and the merchantmen of Lisbon. It is doubtful whether he had ever been on a longer sea voyage than his recent excursion from Porto to Lisbon. In any case, this first experience of the contradictory ways of wind and weather was to serve him in good stead all his life. In later years, whenever his captains reported back to him with unsatisfactory news, he was always prepared to accept their excuse that the elements had been against them. Patience is a virtue learned at sea, and the quiet Prince absorbed this lesson early and thoroughly.

The plague was in the ships, and men were sickening and dying. The new pitch blistered and bubbled in the seams. The unfamiliar diet of salted food increased thirsts that could hardly be slaked with rationed water.

One morning the news was brought to Prince Henry that Fernando Alvares Cabral, the comptroller of his household, was delirious with a fever. The physician aboard the galley informed the Prince that Cabral was probably suffering from the plague. The sick man had the delusion that they were attacked by the Moors, and cried out that Prince Henry’s life was in danger.

Henry’s compassion was immediately aroused.

“Is there anything I can do for him?”

“As Cabral’s medical adviser, I would suggest that you see him, and calm him by the evidence of your presence and safety. As your medical adviser, my Prince, I say—do not go near him!”

But Henry immediately went to the sick man, spoke to him, and comforted him. His devotion to those who served him was a quality that later became legendary.

During these long fretful days of calm, another incident occurred which bore witness to Prince Henry’s bravery and presence of mind. His brother Edward, who was sleeping on deck, suddenly heard that most terrifying of all cries at sea— “Fire!” A lantern had burst into flames, and the burning oil was threatening to spread over the galley’s wooden decks. Prince Edward’s immediate reaction was to run below and wake his brother, who was sleeping in a stern cabin. Henry came straight out of a deep sleep, and ran up on deck. While the sailors were making ineffectual attempts to put out the fire, he seized the flaming lantern and threw it over the side. While the men sluiced water over the scorched deck, Prince Edward and other knights gathered round. Henry looked at his burned hands. Would he ever be able to fight and wield a sword? But the physician, who had twice been witness to the Prince’s courage, advised him to plunge them into honey. The simple remedy proved effective.

After a week of calm the Atlantic wind came back again, and the fleet began to gather way. To the slop of water against their wooden planking, the sigh of rigging, and the monotonous creak and splash of the oars, they came down to the Strait of Gibraltar. At nightfall, they loomed out of the ocean and began to pass the city of Tarifa. Tarifa was in the kingdom of Castile, but the governor happened to be Portuguese. Perhaps he had advance word of the King’s intentions. At any rate, he reassured the advisers who came running to him with the news that an unknown fleet was anchored in Algeciras Bay.

“They are Portuguese,” he said.

“If all the trees of Portugal had been turned into planks, and all the Portuguese had become carpenters,” said a skeptic, “they could never in the course of their lives have built such a multitude of ships.”

“They are Portuguese,” he said.

In the morning there was a thick summer haze over the sea. Nothing was visible, but through the white mist came the sounds of a great fleet.