fectly at ease when so much in their power; and her
surprise had been far less than her terror, if the desert around had
suddenly resounded with the shout of ALLAH HU! and a band of Arab
cavalry had pounced on them like vultures on their prey. Nor were these
suspicions lessened when, as evening approached, they were aware of
a single Arab horseman, distinguished by his turban and long lance,
hovering on the edge of a small eminence like a hawk poised in the air,
and who instantly, on the appearance of the royal retinue, darted
off with the speed of the same bird when it shoots down the wind and
disappears from the horizon.

"We must be near the station," said King Richard; "and yonder cavalier
is one of Saladin's outposts--methinks I hear the noise of the Moorish
horns and cymbals. Get you into order, my hearts, and form yourselves
around the ladies soldierlike and firmly."

As he spoke, each knight, squire, and archer hastily closed in upon his
appointed ground, and they proceeded in the most compact order, which
made their numbers appear still smaller. And to say the truth, though
there might be no fear, there was anxiety as well as curiosity in the
attention with which they listened to the wild bursts of Moorish music,
which came ever and anon more distinctly from the quarter in which the
Arab horseman had been seen to disappear.

De Vaux spoke in a whisper to the King. "Were it not well, my liege, to
send a page to the top of that sand-bank? Or would it stand with your
pleasure that I prick forward? Methinks, by all yonder clash and clang,
if there be no more than five hundred men beyond the sand-hills, half of
the Soldan's retinue must be drummers and cymbal-tossers. Shall I spur
on?"

The baron had checked his horse with the bit, and was just about to
strike him with the spurs when the King exclaimed, "Not for the world.
Such a caution would express suspicion, and could do little to prevent
surprise, which, however, I apprehend not."

They advanced accordingly in close and firm order till they surmounted
the line of low sand-hills, and came in sight of the appointed station,
when a splendid, but at the same time a startling, spectacle awaited
them.

The Diamond of the Desert, so lately a solitary fountain, distinguished
only amid the waste by solitary groups of palm-trees, was now the centre
of an encampment, the embroidered flags and gilded ornaments of which
glittered far and wide, and reflected a thousan