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
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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.