It now looked as if the attack was to be made on his fellow governor in the citadel of Gibraltar.

It was true that some of the ships and galleys were still anchored off his walls, but there were few of them. He contented himself with ordering sporadic fire to be made on them from the cannon and arbalests. A few skirmishes took place, parties trying to land from rowing boats, and minor clashes on the shore. But there seemed to be no real threat to Ceuta. The Berber tribesmen who had been summoned to the garrison’s defense were dismissed. The ruler of Fez, and other neighboring chieftains who had sent help, were told that reinforcements were no longer needed. The fact was that the prosperous merchants of Ceuta disliked the presence of these wild tribesmen in their rich and orderly city almost as much as they feared the threat of sea-borne invasion. They had watched the ragged approach of the first invasion force, and had seen it dispersed up and down the coast by the currents. They had watched the second attempt broken up by the onset of the Levanter. They felt quite confident that the Portuguese would not try again.

5

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There was near mutiny in some of the Portuguese ships, and Prince Henry found himself called upon to deal with an instance of it. Two of his squires rashly suggested to him that the King did not mean to take Ceuta at all. Taking his silence for assent and blind to his rising anger, they went so far as to say that King John was only looking for some way of saving his face, and that he cared little if he lost a few men in the process. Henry was not a man to suffer lightly the halfhearted, or the doubting Thomas, let alone men who dared suggest that his father was a coward.

“You force me to tell you,” he said, “something I would have preferred to keep secret. Tomorrow you will see me walking down the gangplank—the first man to land in Ceuta! As for you, I will have two men transferred from another ship to take your places.”

As Prince Edward later wrote, “… The most victorious King, my father, may God rest his soul, finding himself between Gibraltar and Algeciras, with me, my beloved brothers Prince Peter and Prince Henry, the Count of Barcellos, and the Constable, was told by some, who were not in favour of our intentions, that for many reasons we should not return to Ceuta, because of the danger of crossing the Straits in a storm. Furthermore, many signs and omens from Heaven made them believe this: the death of the most virtuous Queen, my beloved mother, the storm which had not allowed us to stay in harbour, and the plague which we now had amongst us in the ships.  

But if there were some among the nobility who were still reluctant or doubtful, the sailors and men-at-arms in Henry’s galley had been convinced of success by another omen. While they were crossing the strait, a fish “rose out of the sea, and lifting itself in the air came and fell on the deck of the galley; and they ate of it that day… Flying fish are common in the Strait of Gibraltar—angeletti, “little angels,” the sailors call them. In a low freeboard vessel, it is quite common for flying fish to skin aboard, particularly at night when they are attracted by the ship’s light. But a flying fish would make no more than a mouthful for one man. However, when the sea has been disturbed, as in this case after a strong wind, it is not unusual to find the great tunny leaping out of the waves. It was probably a tunny that jumped the low guardrail of Prince Henry’s galley and provided both a meal and a good omen.

Nine days later than originally planned, the Portuguese fleet regrouped for the attack on Ceuta. Sala-ben-Sala saw the fleet lift its sails over the horizon on the night of the twentieth. There could no longer be any doubt that his own city was the objective. It would take some time to recall the Berber tribesmen who had dispersed on his orders. He was also troubled by the reports of prophets and astrologers. A holy man had dreamed of a cloud of bees swarming in the city, and of a lion, bearing a gold crown on his head, which entered the strait in company with a swarm of sparrows and destroyed the bees. This had been interpreted as meaning that the lion was the King of Portugal, the sparrows his Christian troops, and the bees the Moors of Ceuta. An old prophecy had also been recalled, which said that a lion, with three cubs, would come out of the Spanish peninsula and would overthrow the city, and that this would be the beginning of the end of Moorish power in Africa.

The plan of the attack remained unchanged. Prince Henry, in command of forty or fifty ships, was to anchor off Almina on the eastern side of the headland, King John with the main body of the fleet coming in to Ceuta Bay on the west. At daybreak, on a signal from the King, Prince Henry was to lead his men ashore.