shop of Salisbury, a stout-hearted
prince, Auvergne, Limoges, and Mercadet. These eight were all the men in
authority that _Trenchemer_ held, except some clerks, fat men who loved
not water. But as soon as the other ships saw what was afoot, a man here
and there followed his King. The rest rowed closer to the shore and
engaged the Saracen horsemen with their archers. Long before any men
could be got off the eight were on dry land, and had found a way into
the sacked city.

How they did what they did the God of Battles knows best; but that they
did it is certain. All accounts of the fray agree, Bohadin with Vinsauf,
Moslem and Christian alike. What pent rage, what storm curbed up short,
what gall, what mortification, what smoulder of resentment, bit into
King Richard, we may guess who know him. Such it was as to nerve his
arm, nerve his following to be his lovers, make him unassailable, make a
devil of him. Not a devil of blind fury, but a cold devil who could
devise a scope for his malice, choose how to do his stabbing work
wiseliest. Inside the town gate they took up close order, wedgewise,
linked and riveted; a shield before, shields beside, Richard with his
double-axe for the wedge's beak. They took the steep street at a brisk
pace, turning neither right nor left, but heading always for the
citadel, boring through and trampling down what met them. This at first
was not very much, only at one corner a company of Nubian spears came
pelting down a lane, hoping to cut them off by a flank movement. Richard
stopped his wedge; the blacks buffeted into their shields with a shock
that scattered and tossed them up like spray. The wedge held firm; red
work for axe and swords while it lasted. They killed most of the
Nubians, drove bodily through the rabble at their heels; then into the
square of the citadel they came. It was packed with a shrieking horde,
whose drums made the day a hell, whose great banners wagged and rocked
like osiers in a flood-water. They were trying to fire the citadel, and
some were swarming the walls from others' backs. The square was like a
whirlpool in the sea, a sea of tense faces whose waves were surging men
and the flying wrack their gonfanons.

King Richard saw how matters lay in this horrible hive; these men could
not fight so close. Cavalry can do nothing in a dense mass of foot,
bowmen cannot shoot confined; spearmen against swords are little worth,
javelins sped once. So much he saw, and also t