Still, her captain and the motley crowd of passengers--for the most part Eastern merchants and their servants, together with a number of pilgrims of all nations--thanked God for so prosperous a voyage--for in those times he who crossed the seas without shipwreck was very fortunate.
Among these passengers were Godwin and Wulf, travelling, as their uncle had bidden them, unattended by squires or by servants.

Upon the ship they passed themselves off as brothers named Peter and John of Lincoln, a town of which they knew something, having stayed there on their way to the Scottish wars; simple gentlemen of small estate, making a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in penitence for their sins and for the repose of the souls of their father and mother.

At this tale their fellow-passengers, with whom they had sailed from Genoa, to which place they travelled overland, shrugged their shoulders.

For these brethren looked what they were, knights of high degree; and considering their great stature, long swords, and the coats of mail they always wore beneath their gambesons, none believed them but plain gentlefolk bent on a pious errand.

Indeed, they nicknamed them Sir Peter and Sir John, and as such they were known throughout the voyage.
The brethren were seated together in a little place apart in the bow of the ship, and engaged, Godwin in reading from an Arabic translation of the Gospels made by some Egyptian monk, and Wulf in following it with little ease in the Latin version.