ABEY. II.]

ST. JOHN OF JERUSALEM.

261

was the wonder of his whole fleet; and not evenhis own choice knights but wondered where he couldbe bound for. Thence, however, he appears to havesent to the Emperor of Constantinople, asking himfor the investiture of Rhodes, which pride and anti-Latin hate refused, though leave would have beenonly titular, for the expulsion of the Saracen pirateswould not have been a whit the easier. If that theGreek Emperor gave Rhodes to the Hospitallers,ever got into the head of any one, he must now getit out of it; for the fact is not so. Were it, weshould have it (as we have that of Charles V.), orsome record of it, in these documents. A capitu-lation gave full time to get away the archives.Not as at Acre. Pirates seem to have been indeedat that time the only real inhabitants of the island , 1the Venetians having all decamped long before, andmost of the Greeks still earlier; later they returned.Nor did this refusal produce much effect on SirFulk, whose spies had already made their reportsconcerning island and capital; so that he had de-termined where he would disembark. Only it madehim declare his project to his followers, unanimousin their approbation. So he let his allies think andcall themselves crusaders; and such he called them,to gratify their vanity, and give them the pomp and1 Sismondi : Rep. Ital., i. 280.