“Doubtless,” he answered, “she thinks me cruel, and you also think me cruel—­a despot who delights in the death of his enemies.  Yet it is not so, for I desire peace and to save life, not to destroy it.  It is you Christians who for hard upon a hundred years have drenched these sands with blood, because you say that you wish to possess the land where your prophet lived and died more than eleven centuries ago.  How many Saracens have you slain?  Hundreds of thousands of them.  Moreover, with you peace is no peace.  Those Orders that I destroyed tonight have broken it a score of times.  Well, I will bear no more.  Allah has given me and my army the victory, and I will take your cities and drive the Franks back into the sea.  Let them seek their own lands and worship God there after their own fashion, and leave the East in quiet.

“Now, Sir Godwin, tell these captives for me that tomorrow I send those of them who are unwounded to Damascus, there to await ransom while I besiege Jerusalem and the other Christian cities.  Let them have no fear; I have emptied the cup of my anger; no more of them shall die, and a priest of their faith, the bishop of Nazareth, shall stay with their sick in my army to minister to them after their own rites.”

So Godwin rose and told them, and they answered not a word, who had lost all hope and courage.

Afterwards he asked whether he and his brother were also to be sent to Damascus.

Saladin replied, “No; he would keep them for awhile to interpret, then they might go their ways without ransom.”

On the morrow, accordingly, the captives were sent to Damascus, and that day Saladin took the castle of Tiberias, setting at liberty Eschiva, the wife of Raymond, and her children.  Then he moved on to Acre, which he took, relieving four thousand Moslem captives, and so on to other towns, all of which fell before him, till at length he came to Ascalon, which he besieged in form, setting up his mangonels against its walls.

The night was dark outside of Ascalon, save when the flashes of lightning in the storm that rolled down from the mountains to the sea lit it up, showing the thousands of white tents set round the city, the walls and the sentries who watched upon them, the feathery palms that stood against the sky, the mighty, snow-crowned range of Lebanon, and encircling all the black breast of the troubled ocean.  In a little open space of the garden of an empty house that stood without the walls, a man and a woman were talking, both of them wrapped in dark cloaks.  They were Godwin and Masouda.

“Well,” said Godwin eagerly, “is all ready?”

She nodded and answered: 

“At length, all.  To-morrow afternoon an assault will be made upon Ascalon, but even if it is taken the camp will not be moved that night.  There will be great confusion, and Abdullah, who is somewhat sick, will be the captain of the guard over the princess’s tent.  He will allow the soldiers to slip away to assist in the sack of the city, nor will they betray him.  At sunset but one eunuch will be on watch—­Mesrour; and I will find means to put him to sleep.  Abdullah will bring the princess to this garden disguised as his young son, and there you two and I shall meet them.”