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dark.
    Men say that the water of the seas is black, and that is a lie. It is both gray and green, but to one who stands looking out upon it, when the sun dips toward the sea, it hath the seeming of darkness-yet not beneath the sun. There is gold beneath the sun. And this shining gold of the port lighted the street of the metalworkers and the scheming face of Abou Asaid of Damascus, who sells daggers and sword blades.
    "Hearken, my lord Khalil," said the weapon seller, "there is talk in the city."
    "There is always talk," I made response.
    But he stretched forth his hand and pulled together the leather curtains of his stall, so that he could look out and see who passed by, without being seen or heard.
    "It hath reached my ears," he said again, "from the seamen of the harbor, that a fleet comes from Venice."
    "Thine ears be overlong," I made answer then, "and thou art little the richer for it, 0 Abou Asaid. What is Venice?"
    "If thine ears, 0 Iny lord Khalil," he reproached me, "were inclined more to politics and less to the step of strange women, thou wert the wiser. Nay, Venice is the city of the Greater Sea whence come the hosts of the iron men, the Franks who have invaded the lands of the Muslimin. They are the barbarians, the faith-breakers, the slayers.
    "They are fearless men. Their swords have two edges and are straight and heavy. A blow from such a sword breaks the rings of mail and the bones beneath. I have met them in Palestine.
    "May they eat shame! This is a new host, and the fleet is vast indeed. The galliots bearing the warriors are as many as the sands of Yamen; the fighting galleys are beyond counting, and the store ships stretch from sky to sky."
    Twice, thrice, even four times had these hosts of the Franks descended upon the barren coast of Palestine by land and sea-so my father and his father had said. At this time there was peace between Muslimin and Nazarene in Palestine. So I wondered why this host had set forth from Venice, and why it was coming to Constantinople.
    "There are great lords upon this fleet," Abou Asaid resumed. "Nazarene lords from far Frankistan, and the king of the Venetians. He is an old man."
    "It will be a fine sight," I said then, "these kings and their clans and their horses."
    Abou Asaid looked out through the rift of his curtains and ran his finger through his beard.
    "The Emperor of Constantinople will not think it a fine sight," he explained under his breath. "He is a Greek."
    "Yet he is a Nazarene." So I said, to get at the kernel in the shell of the weapon seller's words. And, indeed, Abou Asaid disgorged the thing that had been troubling him.
    "The fleet of the Franks is coming to take Constantinople."
    Now I had seen the emperor of Constantinople. Because I had come to the city on a mission, I had been allowed within the palace. The mission had been to escort a princess, the daughter of the emperor out of Roum, to Scutari and into Constantinople. Other Nazarene lords had been in the escort, and though they called me a saracin, which is a robber, we had not quarreled on the way. And to hear my tales of other lands, the emperor, who was called Murtzuple, summoned me into his presence.
    His palace had walls of beaten gold and azure, and its marble floors were carpeted. Upon the walls, done in mosaics, were pictures of the wars of his ancestors. There were many walls.
    And this Murtzuple himself had a bold bearing. He is a dark man with a sallow skin and restless eyes. Generous he is, for he gave to me a silk robe of honor and a horse of his own stable-a white horse of a Frankish breed, too heavy in the leg for my choice. And brave he is-though according to the custom of his fathers I was searched for weapons by eunuchs, and held by the arms and the cloak when I stood before him.
    Two Frankish warriors he had on his right hand and three on his left, who leaned on their shields, fully armed. Not a rat could have run upon this emperor without being cut down. Yet it was in my mind