he
triumphant followers of Yakoobal-Mansoor. Curses on his head! But he
was a brave warrior, and the Christians before him seemed to forget
that they were the descendants of the brave Cid, the Kanbitoor, as the
Moorish hounds (in their jargon) denominated the famous Campeador.

A general move for the rescue of the faithful in Spain--a crusade
against the infidels triumphing there, was preached throughout Europe
by all the most eloquent clergy; and thousands and thousands of valorous
knights and nobles, accompanied by well-meaning varlets and vassals of
the lower sort, trooped from all sides to the rescue. The Straits of
Gibel-al-Tariff, at which spot the Moor, passing from Barbary, first
planted his accursed foot on the Christian soil, were crowded with the
galleys of the Templars and the Knights of St. John, who flung succors
into the menaced kingdoms of the peninsula; the inland sea swarmed
with their ships hasting from their forts and islands, from Rhodes and
Byzantium, from Jaffa and Ascalon. The Pyrenean peaks beheld the pennons
and glittered with the armor of the knights marching out of France into
Spain; and, finally, in a ship that set sail direct from Bohemia, where
Sir Wilfrid happened to be quartered at the time when the news of the
defeat of Alarcos came and alarmed all good Christians, Ivanhoe landed
at Barcelona, and proceeded to slaughter the Moors forthwith.

He brought letters of introduction from his friend Folko of
Heydenbraten, the Grand Master of the Knights of Saint John, to the
venerable Baldomero de Garbanzos, Grand Master of the renowned order of
Saint Jago. The chief of Saint Jago's knights paid the greatest respect
to a warrior whose fame was already so widely known in Christendom; and
Ivanhoe had the pleasure of being appointed to all the posts of danger
and forlorn hopes that could be devised in his honor. He would be called
up twice or thrice in a night to fight the Moors: he led ambushes,
scaled breaches, was blown up by mines; was wounded many hundred times
(recovering, thanks to the elixir, of which Wamba always carried a
supply); he was the terror of the Saracens, and the admiration and
wonder of the Christians.

To describe his deeds, would, I say, be tedious; one day's battle was
like that of another. I am not writing in ten volumes like Monsieur
Alexandre Dumas, or even in three like other great authors. We have no
room for the recounting of Sir Wilfrid's deeds of valor. Whenever h