"Fatigued by his ride, he fell asleep, and a troop of the enemy rushed suddenly upon him to make him prisoner. The King, awakened by the noise, had barely time to mount his bay Cyprian horse, and his attendants were still in the act of mounting, when the Turks came upon them and tried to take him; but the King, drawing his sword, rushed upon them, and they, pretending flight, drew him after them to a place where there was another body of Turks in ambush. These started up with speed, and surrounded the King in order to make him prisoner. The King defended himself bravely, and the enemy drew {146} back, though he would certainly have been captured if the Turks had known who he was. "But in the midst of the conflict, one of the King's companions, William de Pratelles, called out in the Saracen language that _he_ was the "Melech," _i.e._ the King; and the Turks, believing what he said, led him off captive to their own army. "At the news of this action our army was alarmed, and seizing their arms, came at full gallop to find the King, and when they met him returning safe, he faced about and with them pursued the Turks, who had carried off William de Pratelles thinking they had got the King. They could not, however, overtake the fugitives, and King Richard, reserved by the Divine Hand for greater things, returned to the camp, to the great joy of his soldiers, who thanked God for his preservation, but grieved for William de Pratelles, who loyally redeemed the King at the price of his own liberty." Richard was much blamed by some of his friends for his rashness on this occasion. "But," says Geoffrey the hero-worshipper, "notwithstanding these admonitions on the part of his best friends, the King's nature still broke out; in all expeditions he was the first to advance and the last to retreat; and he never failed, either by his own valour or the Divine Aid, to bring back numbers of captives, or, if they resisted, to put them to the sword." When the fortress of Joppa had been rebuilt, Richard sent a "distinguished embassy" to Saladin and Saphadim, his brother, to demand the surrender of the Holy Land once more. This was to include the whole kingdom of Syria, as well as tribute for Babylon, and to this Saladin would not agree. At the same time he appeared to {147} deal very reasonably with the embassy, sending back with them his brother Saphadim, and offering through him to give up the kingdom of Jerusalem "from the Jordan to the sea," on condition that the city Ascalon should never be rebuilt. The account of the meeting of the two great representatives of Christendom and Islam is very interesting, and the more so because Richard never came face to face with the renowned Saladin himself.