between these, each urging the other to keep up his heart and defy the
infidel. One or two had succumbed to their wounds during the afternoon,
and only six were able to stand erect when summoned to do so by some of
their guard, who made signs to them that a great personage was coming.
Soon the shouts of the horsemen and other sounds announced that the great
chief was near at hand, and the captives gathered from the swelling
shouts of the Arabs that the new arrival was Sultan Suleiman--or Saladin,
for he was called by both names--surrounded by a body-guard of
splendidly-dressed attendants. The emir, who was himself plainly attired,
reined up his horse in front of the captives.

"You are English," he said, in the lingua-franca which was the medium of
communication between the Eastern and Western peoples in those days. "You
are brave warriors, and I hear that before you were taken you slaughtered
numbers of my people. They did wrong to capture you and bring you here to
be killed. Your cruel king gives no mercy to those who fall into his
hands. You must not expect it here, you who without a pretence of right
invade my country, slaughter my people, and defeat my armies. The murder
of the prisoners of Acre has closed my heart to all mercy. There, your
king put 10,000 prisoners to death in cold blood, a month after the
capture of the place, because the money at which he had placed their
ransom had not arrived. We Arabs do not carry huge masses of gold about
with us; and although I could have had it brought from Egypt, I did not
think that so brave a monarch as Richard of England could have committed
so cruel an action in cold blood. When we are fresh from battle, and our
wounds are warm, and our hearts are full of rage and fury, we kill our
prisoners; but to do so weeks after a battle is contrary to the laws
alike of your religion and of ours. However, it is King Richard who has
sealed your doom, not I. You are knights, and I do not insult you with
the offer of turning from your religion and joining me. Should one of you