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.