him who lags behind now!”[980] The royal galley, “painted all red, with a red canopy on the deck, and a red flag,” shot forward;[981] the king, without greaves or mail-shoes, sprang out, up to his waist in the water, came first ashore, and dashed into the midst of the Turks, cutting them down right and left. His shipmates followed close behind him; the other vessels quickly came up, and each disembarked its freight of men; and in little more than an hour the shore of the harbour was cleared of Turks.[982] Bohadin, under whose eyes all this had taken place, went round to Saladin’s tent in the rear and whispered his tidings into the ear of the Sultan, who was writing (or dictating) a letter for the Patriarch and the chaplain to take back to their friends in the citadel. The envoys were present; Saladin detained them till some flying Moslems passed the door of the tent. Then he placed the envoys under arrest, and ordered his whole army to retreat to Yazour.[983] Meanwhile Richard, as soon as the harbour was cleared, had set his men to barricade it on the land side with planks, barrels, pieces of old ships and boats, and other wood hastily piled up to form a rampart behind which they could safely defy the Saracens.[984] He himself made his way “by [Sidenote: _Aug. 1_] a stair that led to the house of the Templars” into the town, where he found a crowd of Saracens so busy pillaging that they made no attempt to interfere when he caused his banners to be reared on the walls as a signal to the Christians in the tower. These latter at once sallied forth to meet him, and the Turks, thus caught at unawares between two fires, were slaughtered wholesale. Then the victors turned towards the retreating army of Saladin. The crossbowmen tried to overtake it with a volley of arrows; the king galloped after it on a horse which he had found in Joppa; but as this and two other horses, also found in the town, were the only ones he possessed, he soon gave up the pursuit, and pitched his tents on the site lately occupied by Saladin,[985] in the open ground where the Frank host had camped in the previous October, between Joppa and S. Habakkuk’s.[986] No sooner was Richard in his tent than several of Saladin’s emirs and favourite Mameluks went to visit him; seemingly not as accredited envoys from the Sultan, but to ascertain informally what was now the king’s attitude towards the question of peace. He received them willingly, and sent a special invitation to the chamberlain Abu Bekr, who had previously acted as a medium of communication between him and Safadin, to join the assembly. Abu Bekr found him talking over the recent fight in a tone half serious, half bantering. “That Sultan of yours is truly admirable! But why did he run away at my very landing? I did not come prepared to fight; I am still in my boating-sandals! Why, in God’s Name, did he retreat, when I thought he could not take Joppa in two months, and he took it in a couple of days!” Then