The king’s fever was now gone, but his strength was not returned; and, the necessity of the case requiring it, he attempted to rise from his bed and put on his armour, but, fainting, fell upon his face with weakness, while his servant was girding his sword. The horse now returned, and confirmed the tidings the huntsmen had brought; they had found the Moorish army in the same place it was first discovered, by the water-side; but the account of their number and appearance was such that the whole army was struck with a panic. The king’s wives (as the historian says, by which it should appear he had more than one) endeavoured to persuade him not to risk a battle in the weak state of health he then was, but to retire from this low, unwholesome country, and occupy the passes that lead into Upper Abyssinia, so as to make it impossible for the enemy to follow him into Shoa. The king having washed and refreshed himself, with a countenance full of confidence, sat down at the door of his tent: whilst officers and soldiers crowded about him, he calmly, in the way of conversation, told them,--“That, being men of experience as they were, he was surprised they should be liable, at every instant, to panic and despondency, totally unworthy the character of a veteran army. You know,” said he, “that I came against the king of Adel, and to recover that province, one of the old dependencies of my crown. And though it has happened that, in our march, you have loaded yourselves with riches, which I have permitted, as well out of my love to you, as because it distresses the enemy, yet my object was not to plunder merchants. If in battle to-morrow I be beaten, for God forbid that I should decline it when offered, I shall be the first to set you the example how to die like men in the middle of your enemies. But while I am living, it never shall be said that I suffered the standard of Christ to fly before the profane ensigns of infidels. As to what regards our present circumstances, my sickness, and the number of the Moorish troops, these make no alteration in my good hopes that I shall tread upon the king of Adel’s neck to-morrow. For as it was never my opinion that it was my own strength and valour, or their want of it, which has so often been the means of preserving me from their hands, so I do not fear at present that my accidental weakness will give them any advantage over me, as long as I trust in God’s strength as much as ever I have done.”