“You are English,” he said, in the lingua-franca which was the medium of communication between the Eastern and Western peoples in those days.  “You are brave warriors, and I hear that before you were taken you slaughtered numbers of my people.  They did wrong to capture you and bring you here to be killed.  Your cruel king gives no mercy to those who fall into his hands.  You must not expect it here, you who without a pretence of right invade my country, slaughter my people, and defeat my armies.  The murder of the prisoners of Acre has closed my heart to all mercy.  There, your king put 10,000 prisoners to death in cold blood, a month after the capture of the place, because the money at which he had placed their ransom had not arrived.  We Arabs do not carry huge masses of gold about with us; and although I could have had it brought from Egypt, I did not think that so brave a monarch as Richard of England could have committed so cruel an action in cold blood.  When we are fresh from battle, and our wounds are warm, and our hearts are full of rage and fury, we kill our prisoners; but to do so weeks after a battle is contrary to the laws alike of your religion and of ours.  However, it is King Richard who has sealed your doom, not I. You are knights, and I do not insult you with the offer of turning from your religion and joining me.  Should one of you wish to save his life on these conditions, I will, however, promise him a place of position and authority among us.”

None of the knights moved to accept the offer, but each, as the eye of the emir ran along the line, answered with an imprecation of contempt and hatred.  Saladin waved his hand, and one by one the captives were led aside, walking as proudly to their doom as if they had been going to a feast.  Each wrung the hand of the one next to him as he turned, and then without a word followed his captors.  There was a dull sound heard, and one by one the heads of the knights rolled in the sand.

Cuthbert happened to be last in the line, and as the executioners laid hands upon him and removed his helmet, the eye of the sultan fell upon him, and he almost started at perceiving the extreme youth of his captive.  He held his hand aloft to arrest the movements of the executioners, and signalled for Cuthbert to be brought before him again.

“You are but a boy,” he said.  “All the knights who have hitherto fallen into my hands have been men of strength and power; how is it that I see a mere youth among their ranks, and wearing the golden spurs of knighthood?”

“King Richard himself made me a knight,” Cuthbert said proudly, “after having stood across him when his steed had been foully stabbed at the battle of Azotus, and the whole Moslem host were around him.”

“Ah!” said the emir, “were you one of the two who, as I have heard, defended the king for some time against all assaults?  It were hard indeed to kill so brave a youth.  I doubt me not that at present you are as firmly determined to die a Christian knight as those who have gone before you?  But time may change you.  At any rate for the present your doom is postponed.”