The Saracen looked at him with as much surprise as his manners
permitted him to testify, which was only expressed by a slight
approach to a disdainful smile, that hardly curled perceptibly
the broad, thick moustache which enveloped his upper lip.

"It is justly spoken," he said, instantly composing himself to
his usual serene gravity; "List to a Frank, and hear a fable."

"Thou art not courteous, misbeliever," replied the Crusader, "to
doubt the word of a dubbed knight; and were it not that thou
speakest in ignorance, and not in malice, our truce had its
ending ere it is well begun. Thinkest thou I tell thee an
untruth when I say that I, one of five hundred horsemen, armed in
complete mail, have ridden--ay, and ridden for miles, upon water
as solid as the crystal, and ten times less brittle?"

"What wouldst thou tell me?" answered the Moslem. "Yonder
inland sea thou dost point at is peculiar in this, that, by the
especial curse of God, it suffereth nothing to sink in its waves,
but wafts them away, and casts them on its margin; but neither
the Dead Sea, nor any of the seven oceans which environ the
earth, will endure on their surface the pressure of a horse's
foot, more than the Red Sea endured to sustain the advance of
Pharaoh and his host."

"You speak truth after your knowledge, Saracen," said the
Christian knight; "and yet, trust me, I fable not, according to
mine. Heat, in this climate, converts the soil into something
almost as unstable as water; and in my land cold often converts
the water itself into a substance as hard as rock. Let us speak