Various efforts both from within and without were made to raise the siege, but in vain. On one occasion an immense body of Saracens, Arabs, and Turks was defeated by seven hundred Christian knights, to which small number[341] the disposable cavalry of the army was reduced. Famine, however, disease, and tempests did more to alarm and destroy the crusading force than all the efforts of the infidels. The winds[342] became so high that the tents even of the chiefs were blown down, and for some time they were forced to sleep in the open air. An earthquake[343] was felt towards the beginning of the year, and was of course considered as an omen. A comet,[344] too, blazed through the sky; but as the superstitious fancied they beheld in it the form of the Cross, this rather increased than abated their hope. In the midst of these circumstances Stephen,[345] Count of Blois, never very famous for his valour, pretended illness, and retired from the army of the crusade, accompanied by four thousand men, whom he led to Alexandretta. A more serious desertion, also, was threatened, though no design ever existed of its execution: Boemond[346] himself began to murmur at the length of the siege. He was poor, he declared: he had given up every thing in his native country for the Cross, and he could not waste his blood and treasure, and see all his soldiers fall in a siege which was to be productive of no advantage to himself. Such murmurs had their object, and might perhaps spring, in some degree, from a weak quarrel with Godfrey of Bouillon, on the subject of a tent, which had been sent to the duke by the Prince of Armenia, but which had been waylaid by Pancrates, the Armenian I have had occasion to mention in speaking of Baldwin; and had by him been given to Boemond. The Prince of Tarentum had been obliged to yield it by the decision of all the leaders; but though this was a subject of irritation, he had more ambitious projects in view. Boemond for some time, through a proselyte Turk to whom he had given his name at baptism, had kept up a communication with the commander of one of the chief towers, on that part of the city wall which looked towards the gorges of the mountains. This man,[347] by birth an Armenian, had embraced Mahometanism, and raised himself high in the opinion of the prince of Antioch. He had in consequence received the command of the important[348] station I have mentioned, while his two brothers occupied the neighbouring towers.[349] The origin of his communication with Boemond is variously stated, but the event is the same. He was won over by magnificent promises to engage that he would admit that chief and his followers into the town when called upon.