himself, and Lawrence’s parody had only proved to him how fine a
story-teller he really was. So he went over to Mohammed, embraced him,
and confessed that the necklace story was an invention. Mohammed in
gratitude invited the whole camp to breakfast the next morning: they
would have a sucking camel-calf boiled in sour milk.
The next day they rode off making for Bair, sixty miles away in the
direction of Akaba. There were five hundred in the party now and every
one was happy and confident. The country was limestone strewn
with black flints, and in the distance were three white chalk hills.
The leaders had a treat of rice that night, the chiefs of the Abu
Tayi coming in to share it. At coffee-drinking Auda began provoking
Lawrence with talk of the stars. ‘Why are the Westerners always wanting
everything?’ he asked when Lawrence had said that astronomers every
year make more and more powerful telescopes to map the heavens out more
and more accurately, adding thousands to the number of known stars.
‘Behind our few stars we can see God, who is not behind your millions,’
said Auda. ‘We want the World’s End,’ answered Lawrence. ‘But that is
God’s,’ said Zaal, half angry. Auda said that if the end of wisdom was
to add star to star, the foolishness of the Arabs pleased him better.
He took Lawrence ahead next day: he wished to visit the grave of his
favourite son, Annad, which was at Bair. Annad had been waylaid by his
cousins of the Motalga tribe and fought them, one against five, until
he was killed; Auda was bringing Lawrence to hear him mourn for the
dead. As they rode down a slope to the grave, they were astonished
to see smoke wreathing about the wells. They rode up carefully and
found that the well-top had been shattered: looking down they found
that the stone sides had been stripped and split and the shaft choked.
Auda said, ‘This is done by the Jazi.’ They went to see another well
beyond: it was also ruined. So was a third. There was a smell of
dynamite in the air. It was clear that the Turks had got wind of their
coming, and had possibly also raided the wells at Jefer where they had
planned to concentrate before the attack. But in any case they could
not reach Jefer without the Bair water. There was still, however, a
fourth well some way off. They visited this rather hopelessly, and
were delighted to find it undamaged. It was a well belonging to the
Jazi tribe and that it had been spared seemed to prove that Auda was
right. But one well was not enough for five hundred camels. So it was
necessary to open the least damaged of the others. Lawrence went down
in a bucket and found that a set of charges fixed lower in the shaft
had not all been exploded: the Turkish engineers had evidently been
surprised before they had time to finish their work. So he carefully
unpacked the charges and took them up with him. Soon they had two fit
wells and a clear profit of thirty pounds of Nobel dynamite.
They decided to stay a week at Bair and meanwhile sent off a party
to buy flour in the villages near the Dead Sea—it would be back in
five or six days—and a party to inquire about the wells at Jefer. If
Jefer was not spoilt for them they would cross the railway below Maan
and seize the great pass that led down from the plateau of Maan to
the red sandstone plain of Guweira. To hold this pass they would have
to capture Aba el Lissan, sixteen miles from Maan, where was a large
spring of water; the garrison was small and they should be able to rush
it. They could then hold the road to Akaba from Maan and the Turkish
posts along it would have to surrender within a week for want of food;
but before then the hill-tribes would probably have risen in sympathy
and wiped them out.
It was important not to frighten the Turks at Maan before the attack
began on Aba el Lissan, but the destruction of the Bair wells showed
that the news of the Howeitat march had reached them. The only thing to
do was to pretend that Akaba was not the place aimed at, but that they
were driving farther north. Nuri had been misleading the Turks
into thinking this and Newcombe had allowed some official papers to be
stolen from him at Wejh in which was a plan for turning north at Jefer
and attacking Damascus and Aleppo. Nesib was in Druse country preaching
revolt and Lawrence in his Damascus ride had himself, it seems, hinted
to the Druse tribes that they would soon have the Arab army there. The
Turks were taken in by all this and made preparations to resist the
northern advance by strengthening their garrisons.
To make the plan seem more likely still, Lawrence decided to raid the
line about a hundred and twenty miles north near Deraa. He went with
Zaal and a hundred and ten chosen men and they rode hard in six-hour
spells with one- or two-hour intervals, day and night. It was a most
eventful trip for Lawrence because the raid was carried out on the
conventional lines of a tribal raid, the first in which he or possibly
any Westerner had ever taken part. On the second afternoon they reached
a Circassian village north of Amman in Transjordania; there was a big
bridge not far from here, suitable to be destroyed. Lawrence and Zaal
walked down in the evening to have a look at it and found the Turks
there in force. They saw that four arches of the bridge had been washed
away by the spring flood and the line was laid on a temporary structure
while the Turks repaired the arches. It was useless to bother about
a bridge already in ruins; so they decided to try to blow up a train
instead. This would attract more attention than a bridge, and the Turks
would think that the main body of the forces was at Azrak in Sirhan,
fifty miles to the east. As they rode forward over a flat plain in
the dark they heard a rumble and along came a train at great speed.
If Lawrence had had two minutes warning he could have blown the
engine to scrap-iron, but it rushed past and was gone. At dawn they
found an ideal ambush, an amphitheatre of rock with pasture for the
camels, hidden from the railway which curved round it, and crowned
with a ruined Arab watch-tower from which Lawrence could get a fine
view of the line. He decided to lay a mine that night. However, in the
middle of the morning, a force of a hundred and fifty Turkish cavalry,
regulars, were seen riding from the north directly towards the hill.
The Arabs slipped out of sight just in time and the Turks went by. The
place was called Minifer.
[Illustration:
description: Photo wide shot of rail tracks in sand receding
into the distance; stone hills border on each side
caption: THE PILGRIM-RAILWAY
_Copyright_
]
The Arabs went on to another hill, from where they saw a number of
black hair-tents, summer quarters of a tribe of friendly Syrian
peasants. Zaal sent messengers who brought back a gift of bread.
Lawrence was glad of this, for their own flour had long been exhausted
and they only carried parched corn with them, which they chewed. It
was too hard for his teeth, so he had fasted for the last, two days.
The peasants promised to tell the Turks that the party had ridden
off towards Azrak. After dark Lawrence and Zaal buried a big mine
and waited for a train to pass. But none appeared that night or the
next morning. Late in the afternoon a company of about two hundred
mule-mounted Turks came up from the south. Zaal was for attacking them;
a hundred men on camels suddenly charging down from higher ground could
sweep double that number of lighter-mounted men off their feet. It
would be a certain victory and they would capture not only the men but
their valuable animals. Lawrence asked Zaal what the Arab casualties
would be. Zaal thought five or six; Lawrence said that this was too
many to lose. They had only one main object, the capture of Akaba; and
they were here to mislead the Turks into thinking that the main body
was at Azrak, not for loot. They could not afford to lose a man
until Akaba had fallen. Zaal agreed, but the Howeitat were furious at
having to let the Turks escape; they wanted the mules. To watch the
company file unsuspecting by at point-blank range was too much for the
patience of one boy, a cousin of Auda’s, who sprang forward shouting
to attract the Turks’ attention and compel a battle. Zaal rushed
after him, caught him, threw him down and began bludgeoning him until
Lawrence feared that his now very different cries would arouse the
Turks, after all. But they did not hear.
Now, if the Howeitat had had their battle, there would have been no
keeping them on the Akaba plan. They would have driven home their
captured mules in triumph to the tents by way of Azrak and not have
come back again until too late. As for the prisoners Nasir could not
have fed them, so that they would have had to be murdered, or else
let go, in which case they would have revealed the raiding party’s
strength to the enemy. So the victory was let slip. But, what was even
more disappointing, no train came for the rest of the day. So at night
they returned to the line and blew up the most-curved rails they could
find: these were chosen because the Turks would have to send all the
way to Damascus for new ones. (This took the Turks three days and then
the repair-train caught the mine that had been left behind and damaged
its engine: so traffic stopped for three days more while the line was
searched for traps. But of this they only learned later.)
They caught two Turkish deserters: one had been badly wounded while
escaping and died soon afterwards; the other, though only wounded
slightly, was very weak and feeble, his body so covered with bruises
and weals, the cause of his desertion, that he dared only lie on
his face. The Arabs gave him the last of their bread and water and did
what they could for him; which was little. When they had to go away
at midnight to water their camels some miles off they were forced to
leave him behind on the hill. He could not walk or ride and they had
no carriage for him. So Lawrence put a notice on the line in French
and German to explain where the poor fellow was and to say that he had
been captured wounded, after a hard fight. They hoped by this means
to save him from being shot when the Turks found him, but coming back
to Minifer six months later they saw his skeleton lying on their old
camping-ground.
The next morning, many miles away on the return journey, they were
watering their camels at the same cisterns that they had used on the
way out, when a young Circassian came in sight driving three cows. This
was dangerous, he might give an alarm. So Zaal sent off the men who
had been most eager for a fight the day before, to stalk him. He was
captured, unharmed but frightened. Circassians were swaggering fellows
but cowards, and this fellow was in a cringing terror. To give him a
chance of recovering his self-respect Zaal set him to fight at daggers
with one of the party, a Sherari tribesman who had been caught stealing
on the march: but after a scratch the man threw himself down weeping.
He was a nuisance. They did not want to kill him, but if they let him
go he would give the alarm and put the horsemen of his village on their
trail. If they tied him up here he would die of hunger—they had no food
to leave with him. And anyhow there was no rope to spare.
At last the Sherari said that he would settle it for them without
murder. So he looped the man’s wrist to his saddle and trotted him off
with the rest of the party for the first hour: they were still near the
railway but four miles from the village when the Sherari dismounted,
stripped the Circassian of his outer garments and threw him down on his
face. Lawrence wondered what was coming next; the Sherari then drew
his dagger and cut the man deeply across the soles of his feet. The
Circassian howled as if he were being killed. Then Lawrence understood.
The man would be able to crawl to the railway on his hands and knees;
it would take him about an hour, but his nakedness would keep him there
in the shadow of the rocks until sunset. It was kinder than killing
him, though he did not seem to be grateful.
Soon they came to a small station consisting of two stone buildings and
crept within a hundred yards behind limestone rocks. They heard singing
from one of the buildings, and a soldier drove out a flock of young
sheep to pasture. The Arabs counted them hungrily, weary of a parched
corn diet. The sheep settled the fate of the station. Zaal led a party
of men round another side of the station and Lawrence saw him take very
careful aim at the party of officers and officials sipping coffee in
shaded chairs outside the ticket-office. He pressed the trigger; there
was a crack and the fattest man slowly bowed in his chair and sank
to the ground among his horrified friends. This was the signal for a
volley and a rush. Zaal’s men broke into the nearest building and began
plundering; but the door of the other clanged to and rifles were fired
from behind the steel shutters. Lawrence’s party fired back, but soon
saw that it was no good and stopped: so did the Turks and allowed the
plundering to go on.
The sheep were driven off into the hills, where the camels were
tied up, and the plundered building was splashed with paraffin and set
on fire. Meanwhile the Ageyl were measuring out explosive and fixing
charges; which were afterwards fired. A culvert, many rails and a
quarter of a mile of telegraph-wire were destroyed. The explosions
scared the sheep and the knee-haltered camels who shook off the
rope-hitches and scattered in all directions. It took three hours to
recapture them, but fortunately the Turks did not attempt anything
in the interval, and the whole party reached Bair safely at dawn
without losing a man. They had had a grand feast of mutton on the way;
twenty-four sheep eaten at a sitting by a hundred and ten men. Nothing
was left, for the riding-camels were trained to like cooked meat and
finished off the scraps. The only difficulty had been the skinning, for
there was a shortage of knives, but they had used flints instead.
At Bair they found that Nasir had bought a week’s flour and were glad
to think that they might well take Akaba before starving again. That
day a messenger came post-haste from the Emir Nuri to say that four
hundred Turkish cavalry had started from Deraa to Sirhan in search of
them. He had sent his nephew as a guide to mislead them by devious
routes, so that men and horses were suffering terribly from thirst.
They were now near Nebk. The Turkish Government would believe that
the expedition was still in Sirhan until the cavalry returned, and
that would be some days. So the coast was clear, especially since the
Turks thought that the Bair wells had been utterly destroyed and that
therefore Maan was safe. The Jefer wells had been also destroyed, and
that settled it. But Lawrence wondered whether the destruction of the
wells at Jefer had not been bungled too. A Howeitat chief who had
been present, and was one of those who had sworn allegiance at Wejh,
sent secretly to say that the King’s Well (Auda’s family property and
the biggest of the wells) had been dynamited from above; but that he
had heard the upper stones clap together and key over the shaft. They
hoped this was so and rode forward on June the twenty-eighth to find
out, over a hard mud-plain blinding white with salt.
Jefer seemed hopeless; the seven wells were completely wrecked.
However, they sounded around the King’s Well and the ground rang
hollow, so volunteers of the Ageyl began to dig away the earth outside.
As they dug, the core of the well stood up in the hollow like a rough
tower, and they carefully removed the stones until at last they knew
that the report had been true; they could hear the mud fragments
slipping between the stones and splashing many feet below. They worked
hard, in relays, while the rest of the men sang to encourage them,
promising rewards of gold when water was found. At sunset came a rush
and rumble, followed by a splash and yells; the well was opened. The
key of stones had given way and one of the Ageyl had fallen in and was
swimming about trying not to drown. All night long they watered there,
while a squad of Ageyl, singing in chorus, built up a new well-head.
The earth was stamped in around this and the well was, in appearance at
least, as good as ever. The Ageyl were rewarded by being feasted on a
weak camel which had failed in the march that day.
From Jefer the next step was the pass of Aba el Lissan, where a
Turkish block-house guarded the crest. A neighbouring clan of the
Howeitat had promised to settle it, so picked men went from Jefer to
help them. The Turks were not, however, taken by surprise; they
manned their stone breastworks and drove the tribesmen off into cover.
Thinking that this was only an ordinary tribal raid, they then sent a
mounted party to take vengeance on the nearest Arab encampment. They
found one old man, six women, and seven children there and cut their
throats. The tribesmen only saw what was happening too late, but then
furiously charged down from the hill across the return road of the
murderers and cut them off almost to a man. They next attacked the now
weakly-garrisoned block-house, carried it in their first angry rush and
took no prisoners.
Hearing this news at Jefer the same day, Lawrence, Nasir, Auda and the
rest went forward towards Aba el Lissan: striking the railway twenty
miles south of Maan and blowing up a long stretch of it, including ten
bridges. Lawrence had learned to destroy these at small expense by
stuffing the drainage holes in the spandrels with five-pound charges
of gelatine. The explosion brought down the arch, shattered the
uprights, and stripped the side-walls. With short fuses it took only
six minutes to finish each bridge. They continued their demolitions
until all their explosive was gone and then struck westward towards
Aba el Lissan, camping that evening about five miles from the railway
on the Akaba side. Hardly had they finished baking their bread when
three men galloped up to say that Aba el Lissan, the block-house, the
pass and the command of the Akaba road were lost again. A large column
of Turks, infantry and guns, had just arrived from Maan, and the Arabs
at Aba el Lissan, disorganized as usual by victory, had run away.
Lawrence learned later that this sudden move was an accident. A Turkish
battalion from the Caucasus had arrived at Maan to relieve another that
had been garrisoned there for some time; while it was still formed
up at the station news arrived of fighting at Aba el Lissan and the
battalion, with the addition of some mountain-guns carried on mules,
was marched off at once to relieve the block-house. When the Turks
climbed up to the pass they had found the place deserted, except for
the vultures flying in slow uneasy rings above the block-house walls.
The battalion commander was afraid that the sight would be too much
for his troops, young conscripts who had never been on a battlefield
before, and led them downhill again to the roadside spring, where they
encamped all night.
The news was startling and unwelcome. The Arabs started off again at
once, eating the hot bread as they rode. Auda was in front, singing,
and the men joined in from time to time with the proud vigour of an
army moving into battle. As they went, the camels in front kicked
against the wormwood bushes and the scent hung in the air, making the
road fragrant for those behind. They rode all night and came at dawn
to the hill-crest overlooking the pass. Here the head-men of the tribe
that had captured the block-house the day before were waiting for them,
the blood still splashed on their anxious faces. It was decided to
attack; unless the battalion were dislodged the dangers and trials of
the last two months would go for nothing. And the Turks made this easy
for them; they slept on in the valley while the Arabs surrounded them,
seizing the crests of all the hills unobserved; and were caught in a
trap.
At dawn the Arabs began sniping while Zaal and the horsemen rode to
cut the Maan telegraph and telephone in the plain behind. The sniping
went on all day. The Turks every now and then would make a sortie
in one direction or another, but were soon driven back again to their
position under some cliffs by the water spring. It was terribly hot on
the hills, hotter than Lawrence had ever known it in Arabia, and the
anxiety and constant moving made it worse. To make up for their small
numbers they had to run behind the hill-crests from point to point to
pretend to be more numerous than they really were. The sharp limestone
ridges cut their naked feet, so that long before evening the more
energetic men left a rusty print on the ground at every stride. Even
some of the tough tribesmen broke down under the heat and had to be
thrown under the shade of rocks to recover.
By noon the rifles had become so hot with shooting that they burned
the Arabs’ hands, and the rocks from behind which they aimed scorched
their arms and breasts, from which later the skin peeled off in sheets.
They were very thirsty but had little water and could not spare men to
fetch more; so every one went without rather than that a few should
drink. The only consolation was that the valley was far hotter, and the
Turks less used to heat than themselves. The mountain-guns were being
constantly fired, which made the Arabs laugh: the little shells burst
far behind the hill-crests, though to the Turkish gunners they seem to
be doing great damage.
Just after noon Lawrence himself broke down with something like a
heat-stroke, and crawled into a hollow behind the ridge where there was
a trickle of mud on the slope. He sucked up some moisture, making his
sleeve a filter. Nasir joined him, panting, with cracked and bleeding
lips, and then old Auda appeared striding along, his eyes bloodshot and
staring, his face working with excitement. He grinned maliciously
to see them lying there under the bank and croaked to Lawrence, ‘Well,
how is it with the Howeitat? All talk and no work?’ Lawrence was angry
with himself for his weakness and with every one else. He spat back at
Auda, ‘By God, indeed they shoot a lot and hit a little!’ Auda, pale
and trembling with rage, tore his headcloth off and threw it on the
ground. Then he ran back up the hill like a madman shouting to the men
in his dreadful strained voice. They gathered together and scattered
downhill past Lawrence. Lawrence was afraid that things were going
wrong. He struggled up to Auda, who stood alone on the hill-top glaring
at the enemy, but all that Auda would say was: ‘Get your camel if
you want to see the old man’s work!’ Nasir and Lawrence mounted; the
Howeitat were riding to a lower part of the ridge, across the crest of
which was an easy slope down to the valley; it ran to a point rather
below the spring where the Turks were huddled. Behind the crest they
found four hundred camel-men massed, waiting. Lawrence asked where the
horsemen were and was told: ‘With Auda yonder.’ At that moment yells
and shots poured up from the valley. The Arabs kicked their camels
to the crest and saw the fifty horsemen galloping at full speed down
another slope, making straight for the Turks and shooting from the
saddle. Two or three went down, but the rest thundered forward. The
Turks hesitated, broke and ran.
‘Come on!’ Nasir screamed to Lawrence with his bloody mouth, and away
down over the crest plunged the four hundred camels, heading off the
Turkish flight. The Turks did not see them coming until too late: then
they fired a few shots, but for the most part only shrieked and ran
faster. Lawrence’s racing camel stretched herself out and charged
at such a speed that she soon outdistanced the rest, and he found
himself alone among the Turks, firing wildly with his pistol. Suddenly
the camel tripped and fell headlong. Since she was going something
like thirty miles an hour, Lawrence was torn from the saddle and went
hurtling through the air for a great distance. He landed with a crash
that drove all the power and feeling from his body and lay there
waiting for the Turks to kill him, or the camels to trample him.
After a long time he sat up and saw that the battle was over. His
camel’s body behind him had divided the charge into two streams; he
looked at it and saw that the heavy bullet of the fifth shot that he
had fired from his revolver was embedded at the back of its skull!