and others, who said that Sherif Sharraf, Feisal’s cousin, whom they
were to meet at the next stopping-place, was away raiding. So they all
rested for a day or two. The old man sold them vegetables, Rasim and
Maulud provided tinned meat, and they had music each evening round
the camp-fire. This was not the monotonous roaring ballad-music of the
desert, or the exciting melodies of the Central Oases which the Ageyl
sang, but the falsetto quarter-tones and trills of Damascus love-songs
given bashfully on guitars by Maulud’s soldier-musicians. Nesib and
Zeki, too, would sing passionate songs of Arab freedom, and all the
camp would listen dead silent until each stanza ended, then give a
sighing longing echo of the last note. The old man went on splashing
out his water into the clay channels of his garden, laughing at such
foolishness.
Auda hated the luxuriance of the garden and longed for the desert
again. So on the second night they pushed forward again, Auda riding
ahead and singing an endless ballad of the Howeitat. ‘Ho! Ho! Ho!’ he
boomed on three bass-notes; and his voice guided the party through the
dark valleys; Lawrence did not understand many words of the dialect,
which was a very ancient form of Arabic. On this journey Nasir and
Auda’s cousin Mohammed el Dheilan took pains with Lawrence’s Arabic,
giving him alternate lessons in the classical Medina tongue and the
vivid desert language. He had originally spoken, rather haltingly, the
dialects of the country about Carchemish. Now, from mixing with so many
tribes, he used a fluent ungrammatical mixture of every possible Arabic
dialect, so that new-comers imagined that he came from some unknown
illiterate district, the shot-rubbish ground of the whole Arabic
speaking continent. Of Lawrence’s knowledge of Arabic he has written to
me in a recent letter:
‘In Oxford I picked up a little colloquial grammar, before I first
went out. In the next four years I added a considerable (4,000
word) vocabulary to this skeleton of grammar; words useful in
archæological research mainly.
‘Then for the first two years of the War I spoke hardly a word of it
and as I had never learned the letters to read or write—and have not
yet—naturally it almost all passed from me. So when I joined Feisal
I had to take it all up again from the beginning in a fresh and very
different dialect. As the campaign grew it carried me from dialect
to dialect, so that I never settled down to learn one properly. Also
I learned by ear (not knowing the written language) and therefore
incorrectly; and my teachers were my servants who were too respectful
to go on reporting my mistakes to me. They found it easier to learn my
Arabic than to teach me theirs.
‘In the end I had control of some 12,000 words; a good vocabulary for
English, but not enough for Arabic, which is a very wide language; and
I used to fit these words together with a grammar and syntax of my own
invention. Feisal called my Arabic “a perpetual adventure” and used to
provoke me to speak to him so that he might enjoy it....
‘I’ve never heard an Englishman speak Arabic well enough to be taken
for a native of any part of the Arabic-speaking world, for five
minutes.’
The march was difficult, over rocky country; at last the track became a
goat-path zigzagging up a hill too steep to climb except on all fours.
The party dismounted and led the camels. Soon they had great difficulty
in coaxing them along, and had to push and pull them, adjusting the
loads to ease them. Two of the weaker camels broke down and had to
be killed: they were at once cut up for meat and their loads
repacked on the others. Lawrence was glad when they came to a plateau
at the top: he was ill again with fever and boils. They rode over lava,
between red and black sandstone hills, and at last halted in a deep
dark gorge, wooded with tamarisk and oleander, where they found the
camp of Sharraf. He was still away and they waited until he came three
days later.
Sleeping here in a shepherd’s fold Lawrence was awakened by the voice
of an Ageyl boy pleading to him for compassion. His name was Daud and
he had an inseparable friend called Farraj. Farraj had burned their
tent in a frolic and would be beaten by the captain of the Ageyl who
were with Sharraf. Would Lawrence beg him off? Lawrence spoke to the
captain, who answered that the pair were always in trouble and had
lately been so outrageous in their tricks that he must make an example
of them. All that he could do was to let Daud share Farraj’s sentence.
Daud jumped at the chance, kissed Lawrence’s hand and the captain’s and
ran up the valley. The next day Farraj and Daud hobbled up to Lawrence,
where he was discussing the march with Auda and Nasir, and said that
they were for his service. Lawrence said that he wanted no servants and
that anyhow after their beating they could not ride. Daud turned away
defeated and angry, but Farraj went to Nasir, knelt humbly and begged
him to persuade Lawrence to take them on: which he did.
Sharraf came and reassured them about water, which had been an anxiety;
there were pools of new fallen rainwater farther on their road. They
set out then and had not gone far before they met five riders coming
from the railway. Lawrence riding in front with Auda had the thrill
‘Friend or enemy?’ of meeting strangers in the desert, but soon
they saw that the riders were friendly Arabs, and riding in front was
a fair-haired, shaggy-bearded Englishman in tattered uniform. Lawrence
knew that this must be Hornby, Newcombe’s pupil who vied with him in
smashing the railway. The persistent pair would cling for weeks to the
railway with few helpers and often with no food, blowing up bridges and
rails until they had exhausted their explosives or their camels and had
to return for more. Newcombe was hard on his camels, whom he worked at
the trot and who quickly wore out in that thirsty district; the men
with him had either to leave him on the road—a lasting disgrace in the
desert—or founder their own beasts. They used to complain: ‘Newcombe is
like fire, he burns friend and enemy.’ Lawrence was told that Newcombe
would not sleep except with his head on the rails, and that when there
was no gun-cotton left, Hornby would worry the metals with his teeth.
This was exaggerated, but gave a sense of their destructive energy
which kept four Turkish labour battalions constantly busy patching up
after them.
After greetings and exchange of news Hornby passed on and Lawrence’s
party continued the march over the lava desert. On this eighth day of
their journey they camped in a damp valley full of thorny brushwood
which was, however, too bitter for the camels to feed on. But they ran
about tearing up the bushes and heaping them on a big bonfire, where
they baked bread. When the fire was hot, out wriggled a large black
snake which must have been gathered, torpid, with the twigs. The ninth
day’s journey was still over long miles of lava broken with sandstone,
a dead, weary, ghostly land without pasture. The camels were nearly
spent.
At last the lava ended and they came to an open plain of fine
scrub and golden sand with green bushes scattered over it. There were
a few water-holes scooped by someone after the rainstorm of three
weeks before. By these they camped, and drove the unloaded camels out
to feed. There was an alarm when a dozen mounted men rode up from
the direction of the railway and began firing at the herdsmen, but
the party at the camp ran at once to the nearest mounds and rocks,
shouting, and began firing too. The raiders, whoever they were,
galloped off in alarm. Auda thought that they were a patrol of the
Shammar tribe. They rode on again over the plain through a fantastic
valley in which were red sandstone pillars of all shapes and all sizes
from ten to sixty feet in height, with narrow sand paths between,
then over a plateau strewn with black basalt, and finally reached
the water-pools of which Sharraf had spoken. Hornby and Newcombe had
evidently camped here: there were empty sardine-tins lying about.
Daud and Farraj were proving good servants; they were brave and
cheerful, rode well, worked willingly. They spent much time attending
to Lawrence’s camel which had the mange very badly on its face; having
no proper ointment they rubbed in butter, which was a slight relief
for the intolerable itch. This tenth day’s journey brought the party
to the railway which they had to cross near a station called Dizad.
It ran in a long valley. They happened on a deserted stretch of line
and were much relieved, because Sharraf had warned them of constant
Turkish patrols of mule-mounted men, camel-corps and trolleys carrying
machine-guns. There was good pasture on both sides of the line, and the
riding-camels were allowed to graze for a few minutes while Lawrence
and the Ageyl began fixing gun-cotton and gelatine charges to the
rails. The camels were then caught again and taken on to safety while
the fuses of the charges were lighted in proper order: the hollow
valley echoed with the bursts. This was Auda’s first experience of
dynamite, and he improvised some verses in praise of its power and
glory. Then they cut three telegraph-wires, tied the free ends to the
saddles of six riding-camels and drove the astonished team far across
the valley with the growing weight of twanging wire and snapped poles
dragging after them. When the camels could pull no more, the tangle was
cut loose. They rode on in the growing dusk until the country, with its
switchback of rock ridges, was too difficult to be crossed safely in
the dark by weak camels. They halted, but no fire was lit for fear of
alarming the Turks who, roused by the noise of the explosions, could
be heard in the block-houses all along the line shouting loudly and
shooting at shadows.
The next morning they left the rocky country behind and found
themselves on a great plain: it was a country unknown to Europeans,
and old Auda told Lawrence the names of this valley or that peak,
bidding him mark them on his map. Lawrence said that he did not want
to pander to the curiosity of geographers in an unspoiled country.
Auda was pleased and began to give Lawrence instead personal notes and
news about the chiefs in the party or ahead on the line of march. This
whiled away dreary hours of slow march across this waste of sand and
rotten sandstone slabs. There were no signs of life in this desert,
which was named ‘The Desolate,’ no tracks of gazelle, no lizards, rats
or even birds. There was a hot wind blowing with a furnace-taste and,
as the day went on and the sun rose, it blew stronger. By noon it was
half a gale. The Arabs drew their headcloths tightly across their
faces to keep the stinging sand from wearing open the sun-chapped skin
into painful wounds. Lawrence’s throat was so dry that he could not eat
for three days after without pain. By sunset they had gone fifty miles
and came then to a valley full of scrub as dry as dead wood. The party
dismounted wearily and gathered armfuls to build a great fire to show
the rest of the party, from whom they had got separated the previous
day after crossing the railway, where they were halting. When there was
a fine heap gathered together they found that nobody had any matches.
However, the main body came up an hour later, and that night they set
sentries to watch because it was a district over which raiding parties
frequently passed. They gave the camels the whole night for their
grazing.
Noon of the twelfth day brought them to the place towards which they
had been heading, an ancient stone well about thirty feet deep. The
water was plentiful but rather brackish and soon grew foul when kept
in a water-skin. On the thirteenth day out the sun was hotter than
ever: at midday Auda and his nephew Zaal rode out hunting towards a
green-looking stretch of country while the rest of the party rested in
the shade under some cliffs. The hunters soon returned, each with a
gazelle. Bread had been baked the day before at the well, and they had
water in their skins, so they made a feast of it. On the fourteenth
day they came in view of the great desert of sand-dunes called Nefudh
which Wilfred Scawen Blunt, Gertrude Bell and other famous travellers
had crossed. Lawrence wanted to cut across a corner of it but old
Auda refused, saying that men went to Nefudh only out of necessity
when raiding, and that the son of his father did not raid on a mangy,
tottering camel. Their business was to reach the next place,
Arfaja, alive.
They rode over monotonous glittering sand and over worse stretches of
polished mud, often miles square and white as paper, which reflected
back the sun until the eyes were tortured even through closed eyelids.
It was not a steady pain but ebbed and flowed, piling up to an agony
until the rider nearly swooned; then, falling away for a moment, gave
him time to get a new capacity for suffering. That night they baked
bread; Lawrence gave half his share to his camel which was very tired
and hungry. She was a pedigree camel given to Feisal by his father who
had her as a gift from the Emir Ibn Saud of the Central Oases. The best
camels were she-camels: they were better tempered, less noisy and more
comfortable to ride. They would go on marching long after they were
worn out, indeed until they fell dead in their tracks of exhaustion:
whereas the males when they grew tired would roar and fling themselves
down, and die unnecessarily from sheer rage.
The fifteenth day was an anxious one: there was no water left, and
another hot wind would delay them a third day in the desert. They had
therefore started long before dawn over a huge plain strewn with brown
flints which cut the camels’ feet badly and soon set them limping.
In the distance they saw puffs of dust. Auda said ‘Ostriches,’ and
presently a man rode up with two great eggs. They decided to breakfast
on these, but there was no more fuel than a wisp or two of grass.
However, Lawrence opened a packet of blasting gelatine and shredded
it carefully on the lighted grass, over which the eggs were propped
on stones. Nasir and Nesib the Syrian stopped to scoff. Auda took his
silver-hilted dagger and chipped the top of the first egg. A
terrible stink arose and every one ran out of range. The second egg
was fresh enough and hard as a stone. They dug out the meat with the
dagger, using flints for plates. Even Nasir, who never before in his
life had fallen so low as to eat eggs—eggs were counted as paupers’
food in Arabia—was persuaded to take his share. Later oryx were seen,
the rare Arabian deer, with long slender horns and white bellies,
which are the origin of the unicorn legend. Auda’s men stalked them:
they ran a little but, being unaccustomed to man, stopped still out of
curiosity, and only ran away again when it was too late.
The Ageyl were dismounted and leading their camels for fear that if the
wind blew stronger some of them would be dead before evening. Lawrence
suddenly noticed that one of his men, a yellow-faced fellow called
Gasim from the town of Maan, who had fled to the desert after killing
a Turkish tax-gatherer, was not with the rest. The Ageyl thought that
he was with Auda’s Howeitat, but when Lawrence went forward he found
Gasim’s camel riderless, with Gasim’s rifle and food on it: it dawned
on the party that Gasim was lost, probably miles back. He could not
keep up with the caravan on foot, and the heat-mirage was so bad that
the caravan was invisible two miles away, and the ground was so hard
that it left no tracks. The Ageyl did not care much what happened to
Gasim; he was a stranger and surly, lazy and ill-natured. Possibly
someone in the party had owed him a grudge and paid it; or possibly he
had dozed in the saddle and fallen off. His road-companion, a Syrian
peasant called Mohammed, whose duty it was to look after him, had a
foundered camel and knew nothing of the desert; it would be death for
him to turn back. The Howeitat would have gone in search, but they
were lost in the mirage, hunting or scouting. The Ageyl were
so clannish that they would only put themselves out for each other.
Lawrence had to go himself. If he shirked the duty it would make a bad
impression on the men.
He turned his camel round and forced her grunting and moaning with
unhappiness past the long line of her friends, into the emptiness
behind. He was in no heroic temper; he was furious with his other
servants for their indifference, and particularly with Gasim, a
grumbling brutal fellow whose engagement he had much regretted. It
seemed absurd to risk his life and all it meant to the Arab Revolt
for a single worthless man. He had been keeping direction throughout
the march with an oil-compass and hoped by its help to return nearly
to that day’s starting-place seventeen miles behind. He passed some
shallow pits with sand in them and rode across these so that the camel
tracks would show in them and mark the way for his return. After
an hour and a half’s ride he saw a figure, or a bush, or at least
something black ahead of him in the mirage. He turned his camel’s
head towards it, and saw that it was Gasim. He called and Gasim stood
confusedly, nearly blinded and silly, with his arms held out to
Lawrence and his black mouth gaping. Lawrence gave him water, a gift
of the Ageyl, the last that they had, and he spilled it madly over his
face and breast in his haste to drink. He stopped babbling and began
to wail out his sorrows. Lawrence sat him, pillion, on the camel’s
rump and turned about. The camel seemed relieved at the turn and moved
forward well.
Lawrence went back by his compass course so accurately that he often
found the old tracks that he had made in the pits. The camel began to
stride forward freely, and he was glad at this sign of her reserve
strength. Gasim was moaning about the pain and terror and thirst;
Lawrence told him to stop, but he would not and sat huddled loosely so
that at each step of the camel he bumped down on her hind-quarters.
This and his crying spurred her to greater speed. Lawrence was afraid
that she might founder, and again told him to stop, but Gasim only
screamed the louder. Then Lawrence struck him and swore that if he
made another sound he would be pushed off and abandoned. He kept quiet
then. After four miles a black bubble appeared in the mirage, bouncing
about. Later it broke into three and Lawrence wondered if they were
enemies. A minute later he recognized Auda with two of Nasir’s men,
who had come back to look for him. Lawrence yelled jests and scoffs at
them for abandoning a friend in the desert. Auda pulled at his beard
and grumbled that had he been present Lawrence would never have gone
back. Gasim was transferred to another rider’s camel with insults. As
they went forward Auda said, ‘For that thing not worth the price of a
camel....’ Lawrence interrupted: ‘Not worth half a crown,’ and Auda,
laughing, rode up to Gasim, struck him sharply and made him, like a
parrot, repeat his price. What had happened, apparently, was that Gasim
had dismounted for something or other that morning, and sitting down
had gone to sleep.
An hour later they caught up the caravan and towards evening they
reached Sirhan, the chain of pastures and wells running up towards
Syria. There among sandhills grown with tamarisk they halted. They had
no water yet, but ‘The Desolate’ was crossed and they knew that they
would get some the next day, so they rested the whole night and lit
bonfires for the Emir of the Ruwalla’s slave who had been with the
caravan and had disappeared the same day. Nobody was anxious for
him, for he had a camel and knew the country. He might be riding direct
to Jauf, the capital of the Emir Nuri, to earn the reward of first news
that the party was coming with gifts. However, he did not ride in that
night or next day, and months afterwards the Emir told Lawrence that
the man’s dried body had lately been found lying beside his unplundered
camel far out in the wilderness. He must have got lost in the mirage
and wandered until his camel broke down, and there died of thirst and
heat. Not a long death—the very strongest man would die on the second
day in this summer season—but very painful. Fear and panic tore at the
brain, and in an hour or two reduced the bravest man to a babbling
lunatic; then the sun killed him. Lawrence himself learned to stand
thirst as well as any of the Bedouin. He noticed that they did not
drink on the march and learned to do as they did—to drink deeply at the
wells and make it last, if need be, for two or three days. Only once in
all his journeys did he get really ill from thirst.
The next day, the sixteenth of their journey, they came to the wells of
Arfaja, grown about with a sweet-smelling bush after which the place
was named. The water was creamy to the touch, with a strong smell and
brackish taste: it soon went bad in the water-skins. There was plenty
of grazing for the camels, so they stayed a day and sent scouts to the
southernmost well of Sirhan to inquire for news of Auda’s Howeitat, in
search of whom they came. If they were not in that direction they would
be to the north, and by marching up Sirhan the party could not fail to
find them.
There was an alarm at the wells when a Shammar patrol of three men was
seen hiding among the bushes. Mohammed el Dheilan, Auda’s cousin
and second man of the clan, went after them with a few men, but did not
press the chase because of the weakness of his camels. He was about
thirty-eight years old, tall, strong and active; richer because less
generous than Auda, with landed property and a little house at Maan.
Under his influence the Howeitat war-parties would ride out delicately
with sunshades and bottles of mineral-water. He was the brain of the
clan and directed its politics.
Lawrence was taking coffee that night, sitting at the camp-fire
with the Ageyl and Mohammed el Dheilan. While the coffee-beans were
being pounded in the mortar (with three grains of cardamom seed for
flavouring) and boiled and strained through a palm-fibre mat, and they
were talking about the Revolt, suddenly a volley rang out and one of
the Ageyl fell screaming. Instantly Mohammed el Dheilan quenched the
fire with a kick of his foot that covered it with sand. The coffee
party scattered to collect rifles and shot back vigorously. The
raiders, a party of perhaps twenty, were surprised at the resistance
and made off. The wounded man soon died. It was most disheartening
to be troubled by inter-Arab warfare when all efforts should be
concentrated on fighting the Turks.
The seventeenth and eighteenth days passed without danger as they rode
from oasis to oasis. Nesib and Zeki the Syrians were planning works of
plantation and reclamation here for the Arab Government to undertake
when it was at last established. It was typical of Syrian townsmen to
plan wonderful schemes far ahead and leave present responsibilities
to others. Some days before, Lawrence had said: ‘Zeki, your camel is
mangy.’ ‘Alas,’ he agreed, ‘but in the evening we shall make haste
to dress her skin with ointment.’ The following day Lawrence
mentioned mange again and Zeki said that it had given him an idea.
When Damascus was in Arab hands, he would have a Government Veterinary
Department for the care of camels, horses, donkeys, even sheep and
goats, with a staff of skilled surgeons. Central hospitals with
students learning the business would be founded in four districts.
There would be travelling inspectors, research laboratories and so
on.... But his camel had not been treated yet.
The next day the talk went back to mange and Lawrence chaffed them
about their schemes: but they began talking of stud-farms for improving
the breeds of animals. On the sixth day the camel died. Zeki said:
‘Yes, because you did not dress her.’ Auda, Nasir and the rest kept
their beasts going by constant care: they might perhaps survive until
they reached a tribe that had proper remedies.
[Illustration:
description: Photo wide shot of four seated men in Arab dress
caption: AUDA AND HIS KINSMEN
(His son Mohammed is seated on the left)
_Copyright American Colony Stores, Jerusalem_
]