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Disorder set in amongst them, and, before long, throughout their whole army; and the battle became a confused melley, wherein the lofty stature and stout armor of the Franks had the advantage. A great number of Arabs and Abdel-Rhaman himself were slain. At the approach of night both armies retired to their camps. The next day, at dawn, the Franks moved out of theirs, to renew the engagement.
The fire of these huge floating castles nearly caused a panic among the Turks, but they soon pulled past them, and a general melley ensued. In the Christian left, after a deadly struggle, in which both Barbarigo and Scirocco lost their lives, the Turks were repulsed, and, deprived of their chief, took to the shore, but not before the Christians had lost many galleys and a host of brave men.
As they approached, the archers shot so deftly, the spearmen launched their darts so briskly, that not a man dared to blink his eye or to show his face. The arrows flew like hail, and very quickly the melley became yet more contentious. There where the battle was set you might mark the lowered lance, the rent and pierced buckler.
Three desperate sallies had the besieged made under the leadership of Sinān the Jew; three Italian generals of rank had fallen in the melley; before they were driven in confusion back upon the city of Tunis, leaving the Goletta with all its stores of weapons and ammunition, and its forty guns, some of them famous for their practice at the siege of Rhodes, and more than a hundred vessels, in the hands of the enemy.
At last, the Chevalier Eustace, scorning the burghers and proud of his illustrious ancestors, moves out into the middle of the plain, and with haughty voice, roars, "Death to the French!" The battle soon became general and obstinate; it was a multitude of hand-to-hand fights in the midst of a confused melley.
The communes, and chiefly those of Corbeil, Amiens, Beauvais, Compiegne, and Arras, thereupon pierced through the battalions of the knights and placed themselves in front of the king, when some German infantry crept up round Philip, and with hooks and light lances threw him down from his horse; but a small body of knights who had remained by him overthrew, dispersed, and slew these infantry, and the king, recovering himself more quickly than had been expected, leaped upon another horse, and dashed again into the melley.
Victory and defeat alike forgotten, the crews staggered erect and flung themselves into the river, the slender boats capsizing and spinning futile around in a melley of oars. From the towing-path no more din there now, but great single cries of "Zuleika!" leapt figures innumerable through rain to river. The arrested boats of the other crews drifted zigzag hither and thither.
Bocus hastened his men to the battle, for he was fearful of none, however perilous the knight. When the two hosts clashed together the contention was very courteous, and the melley passing well sustained. Pagan and Saracen were set to prove their manhood against Angevins and the folk of Beauce. King Bocus took a sword, and discomfited the two paladins. May his body rot for his pains.
"A hundred years in the field," said he, in the words of an old Italian proverb, "are better than one day of fighting, for one may lose in a doubtful melley what one was certain of winning by skilful manoeuvres; but when one can no longer keep the field, one must risk a battle, so as not to give the enemy the victory without a fight." The same question was being discussed in the French camp.
During those minutes "C" Troop R.H.A. under Brandling's shrewd and independent guidance was moving slowly forward on the right of the ground that had been covered by the charging Heavies. There was no opportunity for its intervention while the melley lasted. Even when the Russian squadrons broke it could not for the moment act while the redcoats were still blended with the gray.
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