that held the enemies in check; Saladin’s troops were thoroughly discontented with their ruler’s conduct of this expedition to Joppa and with its failure to bring them either the success or the booty which they had expected. In vain the Sultan rode up and down among them, promising them splendid rewards for one more charge; his son Ed-Daher sprang forward alone, only to be hastily called back by his father, for not another man broke the stillness of the silent, motionless ranks.[1010] At last, it seems, they yielded a sullen obedience to Saladin’s impassioned exhortations, and made another attempt to advance. But this time a volley of arrows, with which the crossbowmen had hitherto speeded their retirement, greeted them on their approach, and under cover of this the king and his men charged. “Brandishing his lance, and laying about him as if he had done nothing yet that day,”[1011] Richard with his few mounted followers burst right through the Turkish host and came out facing the rearguard. Looking round, he saw that the earl of Leicester was unhorsed and in danger of capture; he at once rescued him and helped him to remount. A crowd of Turks rushed at a banner which from its device—a lion—they probably took for the king’s, but which seems to have been really that of Ralf of Mauléon. Ralf was surrounded, and was actually being led away by his captors when he, too, was rescued by his sovereign.[1012] At another moment a large body of Turks closed in upon Richard, all alone; but he laid about him with his sword, smiting off heads and limbs on every side, till he had slain or disabled so many of his assailants that the rest took to flight “as from the face of a furious lion.” His first sudden irruption had thrown into confusion the whole array of Saladin’s host; and when the guard which he had left in Joppa, seeing how matters were going, came out to help their comrades, the Moslem defeat became a rout.[1013] At the close of the long day’s fighting the victor returned “with arrows sticking out all over him like the bristles of a hedgehog, and with his horse in the same plight.”[1014] Saladin retired to Yazour, and on the following day to Natroun.[1015]