em.

The English archers landed first, and their arrows fell upon the enemy
"as a shower upon the grass." The doughty King Richard and his knights
then rushed in, and quickly drove the Greeks before them like a flock of
sheep. After Isaac's affrighted army had taken refuge in the mountains,
he tried to make peace, but could come to no agreement with Richard, and
fled from Limasol. The English king then stormed the town and took
possession. Here he first used his famous battle-axe, for the old rhymer
tells us:--

"The valiant King Richard, as I understand,
Before he departed from old England,
Made an axe to slaughter that infidel band,
The Saracen dogs in the Holy Land.
The head in sooth was wondrously wrought,
Of steel twenty pounds, the best to be bought.
And when that he landed in Cyprus land,
He first took this terrible axe in hand;
And he hewed and he hewed with such direful slaughter,
That the blood flowed around him like pools of water."

With such a valiant leader, it is small wonder that the English were
soon masters of the whole island of Cyprus. Isaac, after making a treaty
with Richard and immediately breaking it, was captured by the English
king, who bound him with silver fetters, kept him in prison, and gave
his beautiful daughter to Berengaria as an attendant.

Ere this, Richard and Berengaria had been married with pomp and ceremony
at Limasol, and crowned king and queen of Cyprus. The bride was simply
attired in a white lawn dress, but wore a splendid girdle of jewels; and
her flowing black tresses were adorned with a double crown. Richard wore
a rose-colored tunic of satin, belted with jewels. A mantle of silk
tissue, brocaded in silver crescents, fell from his shoulders, and on
his head was a scarlet brocaded cap. By his side hung a Damascus blade
in a silver-scaled sheath. Before the king was led his beautiful
Cyprian steed, Favelle, gorgeously caparisoned, and bitted with gold,
the saddle adorned with two little golden lions.

Not long after this grand ceremony, word came to Richard that Acre, a
city of Palestine long besieged by the Crusaders already in the Holy
Land, was about to surrender. Exclaiming, "Heaven grant that it be not
taken before I arrive!" Richard immediately set sail for that port.

When near Beyrout, the English fell in with a large Saracen ship, and
after a desperate but vain attempt to board the vessel, pierced its