XV
He returned on June the sixteenth and found Nasir and Auda still at Nebk; the final preparations for the march to Akaba had been made. Auda bought a small flock of sheep from a drover and gave a farewell feast, the greatest of the whole series. Hundreds of men were present and five fills of the great tray were eaten up as fast as they were cooked and carried in. After the feast the whole party lay round the coffee-hearth outside the tent in the starlight while Auda and others told stories. Lawrence happened to remark that he had looked for Mohammed el Dheilan in his tent that afternoon to thank him for the present of a milch camel, but had not found him. Auda began to laugh out loud until every one looked at him to know what the joke was. Auda pointed to Mohammed sitting gloomily beside the coffee-mortar and said to the company, ‘Ho! shall I tell you why Mohammed has for fifteen days not slept in his tent?’ To every one’s delight he told how Mohammed had bought in the bazaar at Wejh a costly string of pearls and had not given it to any of his wives, so that they all began to quarrel and only agreed in one thing, to keep him out of the tent. This was Auda’s usual mischievous invention and Mohammed, whose wives in the tent near by had come up close to the partition-curtain to listen, was much confused and appealed to Lawrence to witness that Auda lied.
Lawrence began his answer with the phrase that introduces a formal tale in Arabia. ‘In the name of God the merciful, the loving-kind. We were six in Wejh. There were Auda and Mohammed and Zaal, Gasim, Mufaddhi and the poor man’ (which meant Lawrence himself). ‘And one night just before dawn Auda said, “Let us make a raid upon the market.” And we said, “In the name of God.” And we went; Auda in a white robe and a red headcloth, and Kasim sandals of pieced leather. Mohammed in a silken tunic of “seven kings”[3] and barefoot. Zaal ... I forget Zaal. Gasim wore cotton and Mufaddhi was in silk of blue stripe with an embroidered headcloth. Your servant was as he now is.’
He paused, and the Howeitat sat dead-silent. Lawrence was mimicking Auda’s epic style, also the wave of his hand, the booming voice and the accentuation of the points or what he thought were the points of his pointless stories. Parody was an unknown art among the Bedouin, and Lawrence’s beginning had a tremendous effect on them. He went on to tell how they left the tents (giving a list of them) and walked down the village, describing all the passers-by and the ridges ‘all bare of grazing, for by God, that country was barren. And we marched: and after we had marched the time of a smoked cigarette, we heard something, and Auda stopped and said, “Lads, I hear something.” And Mohammed stopped and said, “Lads, I hear something.” And Zaal said, “By God, you are right.” And we stopped to listen, and there was nothing, and the poor man said, “By God, I hear nothing.” And Zaal said, “By God, I hear nothing,” and Mohammed said, “By God, I hear nothing.” And Auda said, “By God, you are right!” And we marched and marched and the land was barren and we heard nothing. And on our right came a man, a negro, on a donkey. The donkey was grey with black ears and one black foot and on its shoulder was a brand like this’ (here Lawrence made a scribble in the air) ‘and its tail moved and its legs. Auda saw it and said, “By God, a donkey.” And Mohammed said, “By the very God, a donkey and a slave.”’
Lawrence continued this Arab version of the ‘Three Jovial Welshmen’ with ‘And we marched. And there was a ridge, not a great ridge but a ridge as great as from here to the what-do-you-call-it yonder; and we marched to the ridge and it was barren. The land was barren: barren: barren. And we marched; and beyond the what-do-you-call-it was a thing-um-bob as far as from this very place here to that actual spot there and afterwards a ridge; and we came to that ridge: it was barren, all that land was barren: and as we came up that ridge and were by the head of that ridge and came to the end of the head of that ridge, by God, by my God, by the very God, the sun rose upon us.’
This brought down the house. Every one knew the repetitions and linked phrases that Auda used to bring some sort of excitement into the dull story of a raid in which nothing happened, and they knew of old the terrible bathos of the sunrise which ended the story. But the walk to the market at Wejh was one also that many of them had taken. So they howled with laughter, rolling on the ground.
Auda laughed the loudest and longest, for he loved a joke against 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.
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!
A few of the enemy got away, the gunners on their mules and a few mounted men and officers. There were only a hundred and sixty prisoners taken, many of them wounded, for the Howeitat were avenging yesterday’s murder of their women and children. Three hundred dead and dying were scattered in the valley. Auda came up on foot, his eyes mad with delight of battle, and the words bubbling incoherently from his mouth: ‘Work, work, where are words? Work, bullets, Abu Tayi ...’ and he held up his shattered field-glasses, his pierced pistol-holster, and his leather sword-scabbard cut to ribbons. He had been the target of a volley which had killed his mare under him, but the six bullets through his clothes had not touched him. He told Lawrence later in confidence that thirteen years before he had bought a miniature Koran as an amulet. It had cost him one hundred and twenty pounds and he had never since been wounded. The book was a Glasgow photographic reproduction and was priced at eighteen-pence inside the cover; but nothing that the deadly Auda did might be laughed at. Least of all by Lawrence who, I think, envied Auda’s natural mediæval style; he himself could only doubtfully and self-consciously use the materials of this scientific age in the mediæval setting. Mohammed al Dheilan was angry with Auda and Lawrence, calling them fools and saying that Lawrence was worse than Auda for insulting him and provoking the folly that might have killed them all. However, Lawrence could not regret his action, for the Arabs had only had two men killed and he would have been content to have lost many more. Time was of the greatest importance because of the food shortage, and this victory would frighten the little Turkish garrisons between Aba el Lissan and Akaba into quick surrender. As for Maan, prisoners told him that there were only two companies of Turks left in the town, not enough to defend it; much less to send reinforcements to Aba el Lissan.
The Howeitat then clamoured to be led to Maan, a magnificent place to loot, though the day’s plunder should have satisfied them. However, Nasir and Auda helped Lawrence to restrain them; it would have been absurd to have gone there without supports, regulars, guns or communications, without gold even—for they were already issuing notes with promises to pay ‘when Akaba is taken,’ the first notes ever passed current in Arabia—and no base nearer than Wejh, three hundred miles away. Yet it would be wise to alarm Maan further, so mounted men went north and captured two small garrison-villages between them and it; and news of this, and of the Aba el Lissan disaster, and of the capture of herds of convalescent army camels pasturing north of Maan by another of these raiding parties, all reached Maan together and caused a proper panic.
That night Lawrence experienced the shameful reaction after the victory: he went walking among the plundered dead with a sick mind; his thoughts were painful, emotional and shallow. Auda called him away at last; they must leave the battlefield. Partly this was a superstitious fear of the ghosts of the dead, partly a fear of Turkish reinforcements and of neighbouring clans, his blood-enemies, who might catch his force disorganized and pay off old grudges. So they moved on into the hills and camped in a hollow sheltered from the wind. While the tired men slept, Nasir and Auda dictated letters to the Howeitat near Akaba telling them of the victory and asking them to besiege the Turkish posts in their district until the force arrived. At the same time one of the captured officers to whom they had been kind wrote a letter for them to the garrisons at Guweira, Kethera and other posts on the way, advising surrender.
The food had been exhausted and water was scarce, so the expedition had to make haste forward. Fortunately the chief Howeitat sheikh of the hill tribes, an old fox who had been balancing in his mind which side to take, was impressed by the victory and captured the Guweira garrison of a hundred and twenty men. The next post on the Akaba road refused to surrender, so they decided to attack it, and in irony assigned the honour to the old fox and his less weary tribesmen, advising him to attack after dark. It was a strong post commanding the valley and looked costly to take. The sheikh shrank from the task and made difficulties, pleading the full moon. Lawrence promised that there would be no moon that night; by the greatest good luck he had noticed in his diary that an eclipse was due. So while the superstitious Turkish soldiers were firing rifles and clanging copper pots to frighten off the demon of darkness who was devouring their moon, the Arabs crept up and captured the place without loss.
They went on through the defiles and found post after post deserted. News came that the defenders had all been withdrawn to trenches four miles from Akaba, a magnificent position for beating off a landing from the sea, though facing the wrong way for an attack from inland. They were, it was said, only three hundred men and had little food (the Arabs were in the same fix), but were prepared to resist strongly. This was found to be true. The Arabs sent a summons to surrender by white flag and by prisoners, but the Turks shot at both; at last a little Turkish conscript said that he could arrange it. He came back an hour later with a message that the Turks would surrender in two days if help did not come from Maan. This was folly; the tribesmen could not be held back much longer and it might mean the massacre of every Turk and loss to the Arabs too. So the conscript was given a sovereign and Lawrence and one or two more walked down close to the trenches with him again, sending him in to fetch an officer to parley with them. After some hesitation one came and, when Lawrence explained that the Arab forces were growing and tempers were short, agreed to surrender next morning. The next morning fighting broke out again, hundreds of hill-men having come in that night knowing nothing of the arrangement; but Nasir stopped it and the surrender went off quietly after all. There were now no more Turks left between them and the sea.
When the Arabs rushed in to plunder Lawrence noticed an engineer in grey German uniform with a red beard and puzzled blue eyes; he was a well-borer and knew no Turkish. He begged Lawrence to explain what was happening and was astonished when he was told that this was a rebellion of the Arabs against the Turks. He wanted to know who the Arab leader was, and Lawrence answered: ‘The Sherif of Mecca.’ The German supposed that he would be sent to Mecca, but Lawrence told him, ‘No, Egypt.’ He inquired the price of sugar there and was glad to hear that it was cheap and plentiful. He was only sorry to leave the artesian well he had been boring, the pump of which was only half-finished. After quenching their thirst here with help of a sludge-bucket, Lawrence and his men raced on to Akaba in a driving sandstorm and splashed into the sea on July the sixth, exactly two months after setting out from Wejh.