The voice of the
soldiers, too, as they passed and repassed, was loud and
cheerful, carrying with its very tone an assurance of high and
excited courage, and an omen of approaching victory. While
Richard's ear drank in these sounds with delight, and while he
yielded himself to the visions of conquest and of glory which
they suggested, an equerry told him that a messenger from Saladin
waited without.
"Admit him instantly," said the King, "and with due honour,
Josceline."
The English knight accordingly introduced a person, apparently of
no higher rank than a Nubian slave, whose appearance was
nevertheless highly interesting. He was of superb stature and
nobly formed, and his commanding features, although almost jet-black, showed nothing of negro descent.
He wore over his coal-black locks a milk-white turban, and over his shoulders a short
mantle of the same colour, open in front and at the sleeves,
under which appeared a doublet of dressed leopard's skin reaching
within a handbreadth of the knee. The rest of his muscular
limbs, both legs and arms, were bare, excepting that he had
sandals on his feet, and wore a collar and bracelets of silver.
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