h is no
more. What will you give me for having freed you from an enemy who
meditated your destruction as well as ours?'

Louis vouchsafed no reply.

'What!' cried the emir, furiously presenting the point of his sword;
'know you not that I am master of your person? Make me a knight, or thou
art a dead man.'

'Make thyself a Christian, and I will make thee a knight,' said Louis,
calmly.

Rather cowed than otherwise with his reception, and with the demeanour
of the royal captive, Octai retired; and the French king and his
brothers once more breathed with as much freedom as men could under the
circumstances. But they were not long left undisturbed. Scarcely had the
Mameluke aspirant for knighthood disappeared when the tent was crowded
with Saracens, who brandished their sabres and threatened Louis with
destruction.

'Frenchman!' cried they, addressing the king, wildly and fiercely; 'art
thou ignorant of thy danger, or what may be the fate that awaits thee?
Pharescour is not Mansourah, as events may convince thee yet. Here thou
mayest find a tomb instead of the house of Lokman, and the two terrible
angels, Munkir and Nakir, instead of the Eunuch Sahil.'

CHAPTER XXXII.

PERILS AND SUSPENSE.

THE Saracen chiefs, after having dyed their sabres in the blood of the
sultan, did not confine their menaces and violent demonstrations to the
tent in which the captive King of France was lodged. With swords drawn
and battle-axes on their shoulders, thirty of them boarded the galley
where Joinville was with the Count of Brittany, Sir Baldwin d'Ebelin,
and the Constable of Cyprus, and menaced them with gestures and furious
imprecations.

'I asked Sir Baldwin d'Ebelin,' writes Joinville, 'what they were
saying; and he, understanding Saracenic, replied that they were come to
cut off our heads, and shortly after I saw a large body of our men on
board confessing themselves to a monk of La Trinite, who had accompanied
the Count of Flanders. I no longer thought of any sin or evil I had
done, but that I was about to receive my death. In consequence, I fell
on my knees at the feet of one of them, and making the sign of the
cross, said "Thus died St. Agnes." The Constable of Cyprus knelt beside
me, and confessed himself to me, and I gave him such absolution as god
was pleased to grant me the power of bestowing. But of all the things
he had said to me, when I rose up I could not remember one of them.'

'We were confined in the