save it from capture. Saladin’s biographer, however, frankly admits that the issue of Richard’s first encounter with Turks was a severe blow to the defenders of Acre.[637] To Richard and his followers it must have seemed a good omen; and it was immediately followed by another. At the opening of the fight they had had the wind in their faces;[638] suddenly it dropped[639] and then shifted to the north and carried them before nightfall to Tyre.[640] Here Richard landed, intending to spend the night in the city, but its keepers refused to admit him, asserting that their lord, Conrad of Montferrat, and the king of France had forbidden them to do so.[641] Next day the wind still favoured him and his fleet, and bore them past Scandalion and Casal Imbert straight to the haven where they would be.[642] CHAPTER III THE FALL OF ACRE 1191. What brave chief shall head the forces Where the Red Cross Legions gather? From Mount Taurus to the Gulf of Aden, from the river Tigris to the Mediterranean sea, and from the Arabian to the Libyan desert, Saladin was now master of everything except some fragments of territory in the north-west of Syria and one sea-port in Galilee. The first of these exceptions consisted of a small portion of the Latin principality of Antioch, including its capital city; south of this, a few fortified coast-towns—Markab, Tortosa, Tripoli; and east of these latter, the little settlement of Ismaïlite warriors who in their stronghold under the shelter of Mount Lebanon defied Franks and Turks alike, and acknowledged no ruler save their own chieftain, called by western chroniclers “the Old Man of the Mountain.” The one unconquered city in the Holy Land itself was Tyre.