The dead and dying were once more dragged out. The wounded sought shelter as best they could. Forty warriors yet remained to contest the field--twenty-five Saracens and fifteen Franks. For a quarter of an hour Miton and Garlan had fought together, with no advantage on either side. With his keen blade the Count of Rennes had cleft the casque of the Alcalde of Valentia, and would have split his skull open but for the turban, which deadened the blow. Garlan had hacked in pieces his adversary’s shield, and the corselet of cambric began to be marbled with streaks of gore. Miton saw that the ranks of his warriors were thinning, and was anxious to make an end of his foe in order to hasten to their aid. He closed with him, knee to knee, foot to foot, and, regardless of the danger to which he exposed himself, seized Garlan by the gorget of his coat of mail, dragged him from his horse, and then passing him from his right hand to his left, held the point of his sword to his throat, and compelled him to yield to his mercy. Then he sent the miscreant a foot beyond the barriers, and gave his charger to Thierry, Duke of Ardennes, who had just been unhorsed. Cha’chaân el Da’djah, Emir of Toledo, entertained the presumptuous idea of avenging Garlan the Bearded, as if, because he had strangled a few lions in the desert, ripped up a few elephants, and cut in pieces a million or so of enemies, he could pretend to hope for, the conquest of a French knight. He shouted his war-cry, and darted forward to meet the Count of Rennes, brandishing, as he did so, a huge flail with seven chains, the same with which Attila armed himself when fighting the legions of Aétius. But the blow was delivered in empty air--dragged the Emir forward, and made him lose his balance. Miton took advantage of this miss to seize Cha’chaân el Da’djah by the leg, and dragged him from his seat with such violence as to break the saddle, entangle him with the harness, and throw the horse down on its side. Then the spectators beheld a strange sight. The Count of Rennes grasped his foeman by the ankles, rose in his stirrups, and, using the body as a mace, swung it round his head, dashed into the thick of the fight, and began laying about right and left at the Saracens with the Emir. Every time this novel arm fell it encountered some weapon of defence, so that before long little was left of it but shreds. After a time the mortal instrument of war lost its weight, and became useless. When Miton flung it away it had stretched eight Saracens on the plain.