vigorously than ever; presently one of the undermined towers fell with a crash. The assailants rushed through the breach; some sixty Turks were slain; the rest fled into the keep, and when they saw the Christian banners waving all over the outer [Sidenote: _May 22_] bailey and the Frank knights and men-at-arms beginning to scale the keep itself, they “gave themselves up to King Richard as his captives and slaves.” He kept them securely guarded in the tower for the night; next morning they were brought out, “and their hands tied behind their backs so tightly that they roared with pain.” There were three hundred men; and there were also some women and children in the place, and, moreover, forty Christian prisoners.[906] The conquest of the seaboard was complete; the last fortress on the coast[907] was in Christian hands; and Richard and his men were the more delighted with their success because they had won it unaided, before their French comrades rejoined them. Count Henry and his followers had ridden at full speed, but they came spurring up just too late. Uncle and nephew met with joyful greetings and mutual congratulations, and Richard publicly made over his prize to Henry as a kind of first-fruits of the realm. It was Whitsun Eve; so all rested where they were on the festival day.[908] On the Monday the castle was given in charge to constables appointed by Henry,[909] and the rest of the party set out northward. Henry and his men went straight on [Sidenote: _May 25_] to Ascalon; Richard and his company stopped at Furbia,[910] where it seems the king expected to receive the report of a scout whom he had sent to reconnoitre the approach to the southernmost of the cross-valleys leading from the plain to the mountains—the Wady el Hesy, “valley of the wells,” which opens from the Shephelah about twelve miles east of Furbia and meets the central trench about eight miles west of Hebron. The scout came and reported that Caysac, the emir whom Saladin had placed in charge of that district, was at the “Castle of Figtrees” with more than a thousand men, making the castle ready for defence against the Christians. Richard at once called out the host from Ascalon to follow him; they set out from Furbia on May 27 and advanced up the Wady el Hesy to a place which they called the Canebrake of Starlings; its Arabic name was [Sidenote: _May 28_] Cassaba, meaning “the Reeds.”[911] On the morrow they set out at sunrise and proceeded to the Castle of Figtrees, but found in it only two Turks; the rest had fled in haste at tidings of their approach. The Christians therefore returned to Cassaba.[912] They were less fortunate in an expedition which they seem to have made next day, against another fortress in the same neighbourhood; one Moslem historian says the garrison came out and worsted them in fight; another, that they were surprised within the castle; and both assert that one of their chief captains or nobles was slain.[913]