Two days later a pitched battle was fought on the slopes above Joppa.  Saladin met Richard for the last time, and the Melek worsted him.  Our King with fifteen knights played the wedge again when his enemy was packed to his taste; and this time (being known) with less carnage.  But the left wing of the invading army re-entered the town, the garrison had a panic.  Richard wheeled and scoured them out at the other end; so they perished in the sea.  Men say, who saw him, that he did it alone.  So terrible a name he had with the Saracens, this may very well be.  There had never been seen, said they, such a fighter before.  Like sheep they huddled at his sight, and like sheep his onset scattered them.  ’Let God arise,’ says Milo with a shaking pen:  ’and lo!  He arose.  O lion in the path, who shall stand up against thee?’

He drove Saladin into the hills, and set him manning once more the watch-towers of Jerusalem.  But he had reached his limit; sickness fastened on him, and on the ebb of his fury came lagging old despair.  For a week he lay in his bed delirious, babbling breathless foolish things of Jehane and the Dark Tower, of the broomy downs by Poictiers, the hills of Languedoc, of Henry his handsome brother, of Bertran de Born and the falcon at Le Puy.  Then followed a pleasant thing.  Saladin, the noble foe, heard of it, and sent Saphadin his brother to visit him.  They brought the great Emir into the tent of his great enemy.

‘O God of the Christians!’ cried he with tears, ’what is this work of thine, to make such a mirror of thy might, and then to shatter the glass?’ He kissed King Richard’s burning forehead, then stood facing the standers-by.

’I tell you, my lords, there has been no such king as this in our country.  My brother the Sultan would rather lose Jerusalem than have such a man to die.’

At this Richard opened his eyes.  ‘Eh, Saphadin, my friend,’ he says, ’death is not mine yet, nor Jerusalem either.  Make me a truce with my brother Saladin for three years.  Then with the grace of God I will come and fight him again.  But for this time I am spent.’

‘Are you wounded, dear sire?’ asked Saphadin.

‘Wounded?’ said the King in a whisper.  ’Yes, wounded in the soul, and in the heart—­sick, sick, sick.’

Saphadin, kneeling down, kissed his ring.  ’May the God whom in secret we both worship, the God of Gods, do well by you, my brother.’  So he said, and Richard nodded and smiled at him kindly.

When peace was made they carried him to his ship.  The fleet went to Acre.

CHAPTER X

THE CHAPTER CALLED BONDS

King Richard sent for his sister Joan of Sicily on the morrow of his coming to Acre, and thus addressed her:  ’Let me hear now, sister, the truth of what passed when the Queen saw Madame d’Anjou.’

‘Madame d’Anjou!’ cried Joan, who (as you know) had plenty of spirit; ’I think you rob the Queen of a title there.’