A few days after, fresh deputies arrived to declare that the king of Jerusalem and the other leaders of the army would be obliged to give up Ptolemaïs to the Mussulmans if they refused to surrender Damietta. In order to overcome the obstinate resistance of those who wished to defend the city, and who reproached the imprisoned army with disgracing the Christians, they added, that this army, though defeated, had obtained a prize worthy of their former exploits, for the Saracens had engaged to restore to them the true cross of the Saviour, which had fallen into the hands of Saladin at the battle of Tiberias. The fear of losing Ptolemaïs, the hope of regaining the cross of Christ, together with the speeches of the deputies, brought back the spirit of peace and resignation to the minds of the most ardent of the Crusaders, and disposed them to the performance of the conditions of the treaty. In the mean time, the Christian army having lost their tents and their baggage, passed many days and many nights in a plain covered with the waters of the Nile. Hunger, disease, and inundation threatened their entire destruction. The king of Jerusalem, then in the camp of the Saracens, upon being informed of the horrible distress of the Christians, went to conjure Melik-Kamel to have pity on his disarmed enemies. The continuator of William of Tyre, who is our guide in this part of our history, reports, in his old, quaint language, the touching interview between John of Brienne and the sultan of Egypt. “The king sat down before the sultan, and began to weep; the sultan, on seeing the king weep, said, ‘Sire, why do you weep?’ ‘Sire, I have good cause,’ replied the king, ‘for I behold the people whom God has confided to me perishing amidst the waters, and dying with hunger.’ The sultan felt great pity at seeing the king weep, and he wept also; then he sent thirty thousand loaves to the poor as well as the rich; and sent the same quantity daily during four days.”[230]