ecovered his consciousness, the first impression upon his mind
was the stillness which had succeeded to the din of battle; the shouts
and war-cries of the crusaders, the wild yells of the Moslems, were
hushed, and in their place was a quiet chatter in many unknown tongues,
and the sound of laughter and feasting. Raising his head and looking
round, Cuthbert saw that he and some ten of his comrades were lying
together in the midst of a Saracen camp, and that he was a prisoner to
the infidels. The sun streamed down with tremendous force upon them;
there was no shelter; and though all were wounded and parched with
thirst, the Saracens of whom they besought water, pointing to their
mouths and making signs of their extreme thirst, laughed in their faces,
and signified by a gesture that it was scarcely worth the trouble to
drink when they were likely so soon to be put to death.

It was late in the afternoon before any change was manifest. Then
Cuthbert observed a stir in the camp; the men ran to their horses, leapt
on their backs, and with wild cries of "Welcome!" started off at full
speed. Evidently some personage was about to arrive, and the fate of the
prisoners would be solved. A few words were from time to time exchanged
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