“Ay, through my breast; and go, tell that tale to Saladin!”

Then, clear and calm was heard the command of Georgios.  “He who harms a hair of the Princess dies.  Take them both living if you may, but lay no hand on her.  Stay, let us talk.”

So they ceased from their onslaught and began to consult together.

Rosamund touched her father and pointed to the man who lay upon the floor with an arrow through his thigh.  He was struggling to his knee, raising the heavy scimitar in his hand.  Sir Andrew lifted his sword as a husbandman lifts a stick to kill a rat, then let it fall again, saying: 

“I fight not with the wounded.  Drop that steel, and get you back to your own folk.”

The fellow obeyed him—­yes, and even touched the floor with his forehead in salaam as he crawled away, for he knew that he had been given his life, and that the deed was noble towards him who had planned a coward’s stroke.  Then Georgios stepped forward, no longer the same Georgios who had sold poisoned wine and Eastern broideries, but a proud-looking, high-browed Saracen clad in the mail which he wore beneath his merchant’s robe, and in place of the crucifix wearing on his breast a great star-shaped jewel, the emblem of his house and rank.

“Sir Andrew,” he said, “hearken to me, I pray you.  Noble was that act,” and he pointed to the wounded man being dragged away by his fellows, “and noble has been your defence—­well worthy of your lineage and your knighthood.  It is a tale that my master,” and he bowed as he said the word, “will love to hear if it pleases Allah that we return to him in safety.  Also you will think that I have played a knave’s trick upon you, overcoming the might of those gallant knights, Sir Godwin and Sir Wulf, not with sword blows but with drugged wine, and treating all your servants in like fashion, since not one of them can shake off its fumes before to-morrow’s light.  So indeed it is—­a very scurvy trick which I shall remember with shame to my life’s end, and that perchance may yet fall back upon my head in blood and vengeance.  Yet bethink you how we stand, and forgive us.  We are but a little company of men in your great country, hidden, as it were, in a den of lions, who, if they saw us, would slay us without mercy.  That, indeed, is a small thing, for what are our lives, of which your sword has taken tithe, and not only yours, but those of the twin brethren on the quay by the water?”

“I thought it,” broke in Sir Andrew contemptuously.  “Indeed, that deed was worthy of you—­twenty or more men against two.”

Georgios held up his hand.