There was no time to lose. The rains were quite over; summer was beginning; and Saladin’s host would have been at its full strength again ere now but for some troubles in the northern part of his dominions. His nephew Taki-ed-Din, the lord of Hamath and Edessa, had died in October 1191 leaving a son, El Mansour, who was inclined to rebel against Saladin’s supremacy. On May 14 or 15 the Sultan despatched his own son El Afdal to seize El Mansour’s lands; but the diplomatist of the family, Safadin, fearing that this quarrel would imperil the “Holy” War, was pleading hard for a pacific settlement.[900] Knowing all this, Richard determined not to wait for Henry. He had his stone-casters packed on shipboard and sent them down towards Darum by sea; he hired men-at-arms to increase the forces at Ascalon; some he distributed in the strong places round about to guard the roads; then he set out with only the troops of his own domains,[901] and on Sunday, May 17,[902] this little band pitched their tents before Darum, a fortress with seventeen “fine strong towers and turrets,” besides a keep of great height and strength built against a solid rock which formed one side of it, while the other sides were of squared stone and surrounded by a deep fosse. Being too few to encircle such a place, the adventurers encamped all together a little way off to wait for their machines and consider on which side they could use them to the best advantage. The Turkish garrison thought scorn of such an insignificant looking force, and rode forth and made a feint of provoking them to fight, but failing to move them, withdrew into the castle and shut the gates. That night or next day the ships arrived with the engines of war; “and,” says an eye-witness, “we saw the valiant king of England himself, and the nobles who were his companions, all sweating under the burden of the various parts of the stone-casters, which they, like packhorses, carried on their shoulders near a mile across the sand.” The pieces were soon put together and the machines at work, one manned by the Normans of the party, another by the Poitevins, a third probably by the Englishmen; this last the king took under his own special command, and he directed its discharge solely against the keep; a mangonel set up there by the Turks was speedily destroyed by it. All three machines were kept in ceaseless action day and night. Meanwhile the walls were being undermined;[903] and wherever they began to fall they were set on fire by some men of Aleppo skilled in wall-breaking, whom Richard had hired during the siege of Acre and now brought with him to Darum.[904] On the fourth day of the siege (Friday, May 22), when the castle gate had been shattered by Richard’s stone-caster and set on fire, the garrison offered to surrender on condition that their lives and those of their families should be spared.[905] Richard refused the condition and bade them defend themselves as best they could. The stone-casters worked more