procured, was often so muddy and impure that the very horses refused to drink it. As for those who worked in the camp, they dug up the ground and sucked the moist earth; they cut pieces of turf and laid them at their hearts to appease the devouring heat; in the morning they licked the dew from the grass; they abstained from eating till they were compelled by faintness; they drank the blood of their beasts. Never, not even in Antioch, not even in Phrygia, had their sufferings been so terrible, or so protracted. And, as the days went on, as the sun grew fiercer, the dews more scanty—as the miracle, still expected, delayed to come—some lay despairing in their tents, some worked on in a despairing energy, and some threw themselves down at the foot of the walls to die, or to be killed by the besieged, crying, “Fall, oh walls of Jerusalem, upon us! Sacred dust of the city, at least cover our bones!” These trials were to have an end. In the midst of their greatest distress, the news came that a Genoese fleet had arrived off Joppa, loaded with munitions and provisions. A detachment of three hundred men was sent off at once to receive them. They fought their way to Joppa. Here they found that the Christian ships had been abandoned to a superior Egyptian fleet, but not till after all the stores and provisions had been landed. With the fleet was a large number of Genoese artificers and carpenters, whose arrival in the camp was almost as timely as that of the wine and food. The hopes of the Crusaders, always as sanguine as they were easily dejected, revived again. This unexpected reinforcement—was it not a miracle? and might there not be others yet to follow? Gaston of Béarn superintended the construction of the machines. In the carriage of their timber, as they had no carts or wheels, they employed their Saracen prisoners. Putting fifty or sixty of them in line, they made them carry beams “which four oxen could not drag.” Raymond of Toulouse, who alone had not spent all he had brought with him, found the money to pay those few who were exempted from gratuitous service. A regular service for the carriage of water was organised, and some alleviation thus afforded to the sufferings caused by thirst. Three great towers were made, higher than the walls. Each of these was divided into three stages; the lowest for the workmen, and the two higher for the soldiers. The front and sides exposed to the enemy were cased with plates of iron, or defended by wet hides; the back part was of wood. On the top was a sort of drawbridge, which could be lowered so as to afford a passage to the wall.