ABSTRACT
Setting sail in the morning, which was the 26th of August, the day of Saint Louis, King of France, and sailing with mild weather, on the 28th I awoke at dawn with a small sore on the little finger of my right hand. Thinking it was hardly anything, I tried to draw the pus out of it, but it grew so poisoned that it became· a very dangerous infection, for it quickly spread over my whole hand. There was no medicine on the ship nor any place where I could retire. The pain was excessive, the more so because we slept on the half-deck exposed to the ill-effects of the weather, the worst place on the ship, so that we could say that we were travelling under the Muslims' feet, because all the servicing of the ship was done there, and day and night; the continual work of navigating it had to be done in the same place where we spent our days and nights with no other place to go except to occupy as little space as possible to oblige those who were walking over us. Our beds were the planks of the deck, our pillows some rope, sticks or boards, all of which together was of little help, really very prejudicial to the state in which I found myself, unable to sleep at night or rest during the day with the excessive pain. They soon gave evidence ofhow severe the infection was, for in a few days the finger was swollen beyond belief. The worst of it was that there were visible signs that the infection was turning into herpes, as those best acquainted with the disease considered this to be, for which there was no other remedy available than a little oil, with which I anointed it and suffered the pain, preparing myself for all the rest that could be expected to follow. God Our Lord, however, never sends a calamity without a means of enduring it, so that, at a time when there was no way whatsoever of stopping its progress and it was at its most dangerous stage, the infection began to diminish until it was completely cured, although my right hand was still somewhat incapacitated, so that I could not move it vigorously; and although the infection was never treated and has not recurred since that time, to this very day I still feel some slight pain in that hand.
