About noon
All night they toiled at the oars ; and in the morning , very early , every eye was turned to the fired East , where , in the sea-haze , lay the sacred places clothed -LRB- like the Sacrament -RRB- in that gauzy veil . First of them _ Trenchemer _ steered , the King 's red galley , in whose prow , stiff and hieratic as a figurehead , was the King himself , watching for a sign . The great ships rolled and plunged , the tide came racing by them , blue-green water lipped with foam , carrying upon it unknown weeds , golden fruit floating , wreckage unfamiliar , a dead fish scarlet-rayed , a basket strangely wrought -- drifting heralds of a country of dreams . About noon , when mass had been said upon his galley , King Richard was seen to throw up his arms and stretch them wide ; the shout followed the sign -- ` Terra Sancta ! Terra Sancta ! ' they heard him cry . Voice after voice , tongue after tongue , took up the word and lifted it from ship to ship .