When the lady beheld that swashing-blow, Sharrkan's might was magnified in her sight and she knew that when she overthrew him in the wrestle it was not by her strength but by her beauty and loveliness. So she turned to the Knights and said, "Take wreak for your chief!" Thereupon out came the slain man's brother, a fierce and furious Knight, and rushed upon Sharrkan, who delayed not, but smote him also with the shoulder-cut and the sword came out glittering from his vitals. Then cried the Princess, "O ye servants of the Messiah, avenge your comrade!" So they ceased not charging down upon him, one after one; and Sharrkan also ceased not playing upon them with the blade, till he had slain fifty Knights, the lady looking on the while. And Allah cast a panic into the hearts of the survivors, so that they held back and dared not meet him in the duello, but fell upon him in a body; and he laid on load with heart firmer than a rock, and smote them; and trod them down like straw under the threshing-sled,[FN#201] till he had driven sense and soul out of them. Then the Princess called aloud to her damsels, saying, "Who is left in the convent?"; and they replied, "None but the gate-keepers;" whereupon she went up to Sharrkan and took him to her bosom, he doing the same, and they returned to the palace, after he had made an end of the melée. Now there remained a few of the Knights hiding from him in the cells of the monastery, and when the Princess saw this she rose from Sharrkan's side and left him for a while, but presently came back clad in closely-meshed coat of ring-mail and holding in her hand a fine Indian scymitar. And she said, "Now by the truth of the Messiah, I will not be a niggard of myself for my guest; nor will I abandon him though for this I abide a reproach and a by-word in the land of the Greeks." Then she took reckoning of the dead and found that he had slain fourscore of the Knights, and other twenty had taken to flight.[FN#202] When she saw what work he had made with them she said to him, "Allah bless thee, O Sharrkan! The Cavaliers may well glory in the like of thee." Then he rose and wiping his blade clean of the blood of the slain began reciting these couplets, "How oft in the mellay I've cleft the array, * And given their bravest to lions a prey: Ask of me and of them when I proved me prow * O'er creation, on days of the foray and fray: When I left in the onslaught their lions to lie * On the sands of the low-lands[FN#203] in fieriest day."