At dusk they went down to lay a mine at the rebuilt culvert that he had blown up before. They had hardly got there when a tram passed. This was annoying, it was still more annoying later when, after spending all night burying the gelatine under a sleeper on the arch of the bridge and hiding the wires—it was the mud that made him take so long—Lawrence was signalled at dawn to run back under cover while a patrol went by; for, in that interval, a train, seen too late through the mists, steamed past at full speed.
Ali ibn el Hussein said that bad luck was with the expedition. For fear that someone would next be accused of having the evil eye, Lawrence suggested putting out new watching posts, north and south, and gave as a task to the remainder to pretend not to be hungry. Waiting in cold wind and rain, without food, was bad; the only half-consolation was that Allenby was being held up by the bad weather too, and the Arabs would be partners with him next year when the Revolt was riper.
At last a train was signalled; an enormously long train, the report was, coming very slowly. Lawrence had only a sixty-yard length of wire and so had to put the exploder quite near the line behind a small bush, where he waited in suspense for half an hour wondering why the train did not appear. The engine was apparently out of order and the long gradient made it go very slowly on its wood fuel. At last it appeared. The first ten trucks were open ones, full of troops, but it was too late to choose; so when the engine was over the mine, Lawrence pushed down the handle.
Nothing happened. He sawed it up and down four times. Still nothing happened, and he realized that the exploder was out of order and that he was kneeling behind a bush only a foot high with a Turkish troop-train crawling past fifty yards away. The Arabs were under cover two hundred yards behind him, wondering what he was at; but he could not dash back to them or the Turks would jump off the train and finish off the whole lot. So he sat still, pretending to be a casual Arab shepherd and, to steady himself, counting the trucks as they went by. There were eighteen open trucks, three box-wagons and three officers’ coaches. The engine panted slower and slower and he thought every moment that it would break down. The troops took no particular notice of him, but the officers came out on the little platforms at the ends of the carriages, pointing and staring.
He was not dressed like a shepherd, with his gold circlet and white silk robes, but he was wet and mud-stained, and the Turks were ignorant about Arab costume. He waved innocently to them and the train slowly went on and disappeared into a cutting farther north. Lawrence picked up the exploder and ran. He was hardly in safety when the train finally stuck; and while it waited for nearly an hour to get up steam again, an officers’ party came back and very carefully searched the ground by the bush. However, the wires were well hidden; they found nothing and, the engine picking up again, away the whole lot went.
The Arabs were most unhappy. Bad luck was certainly with them, grumbled the Serahin. Lawrence was sarcastic at their expense and a fight nearly started between the Serahin and the Beni Sakhr, who took Lawrence’s part. Ali ibn el Hussein came running up. He was blue with cold and shaking with fever. He gasped that his ancestor, the Prophet, had given sherifs the faculty of second sight, and he knew that the luck was turning. That comforted them and the luck certainly began when, with no tool but his dagger, Lawrence forced the box of the exploder open and coaxed the electric gear into working order. All that day they waited, and still no train. It was too wet to light a fire and nobody wanted to eat raw camel; so they went hungry again. It was another cold, wet night: Lawrence spent it lying sleeplessly by the exploder, which he had re-connected with the wires.
Ali awoke next morning feeling better and cheered the party up. They killed a camel then and were about to light a fire with some half-dry sticks, warmed under a cloak all night, and shavings of the gelatine, when a train was signalled from the north. They left the fire and dashed to their positions. The train was racing downhill with two engines and twelve passenger-coaches. Lawrence arrived at the exploder just in time to catch the driving-wheel of the first engine. The explosion was terrific. He was sent spinning backwards. He righted himself and found that his left arm was badly gashed and his shirt ripped to the shoulder. Between his knees lay the exploder, crushed under a sooty piece of iron; close by was the horribly mangled body of the engine-driver. He hobbled back, half-conscious, with a broken toe, saying weakly in English: ‘Oh, I wish this hadn’t happened.’ The Turks opened fire, and Lawrence fell. Ali ran forward to him with Turki and some servants and Beni Sakhr tribesmen. The Turks had the range and hit seven of the rescuers in a few seconds; the rest picked Lawrence up and hurried him into shelter. He secretly felt himself all over and found that, besides the bruises and cuts from flying boiler-plate, he had five different bullet wounds; none were serious, but all uncomfortable. His clothes were ripped to pieces.
The train was a wreck; both engines had fallen through the broken bridge and were beyond repair. Three coaches had telescoped, the rest were derailed. One was decorated with flags—the saloon of the Turkish General commanding the Eighth Army Corps. There had been four hundred troops on board and the survivors, now recovered from the shock, were under shelter and shooting hard under the eye of their Corps Commander. The Beni Sakhr had grabbed some loot from the train in the first rush—rifles, bags, boxes and some loose military medals from the saloon, but soon had to draw off. If only there had been a machine-gun posted not a Turk would have escaped. Adhub inquired for Fahad, and one of the Serahin said that he had been killed in the first rush: he showed Fahad’s belt and rifle in proof that he was dead and that he and his friends had tried to save him. Adhub said nothing, but ran to the rescue right among the Turks, and, by a miracle, came back safely dragging Fahad, who was badly wounded in the face but alive. The Turks began to attack then and the Arabs, after giving them a volley which killed twenty men and drove the rest back, drew off, firing as they went. Lawrence could only go very slowly because of his hurts, but pretended to Ali that he was interested in the Turks and studying them. Turki, who was giving protecting fire from the ridges as they went, got four bullets through his headcloth. At last they reached their camels—now forty men instead of sixty—and galloped eastward out of range. After five miles they met a friendly caravan with flour and raisins, and, halting under a barren fig tree, cooked their first meal for three days. There was camel meat, too, for one of the body-guard, Rahail, had remembered to bring a haunch along from their previous interrupted meal. There, Fahad and the other wounded men were attended to. The next day they went on to Azrak, showing their booty of rifles and medals and pretending that it was a victorious return and that they had done all that they had intended to do.
XXI
The weather had broken now finally and the Turks in Palestine were safe until the following year. Lawrence remained at Azrak with Ali ibn el Hussein and the Indians, and sent to Feisal for a caravan of winter supplies. It was a good place for preaching the Revolt and comfortable for the winter, once the ruined fort had been cleaned out and in part re-roofed. The Indian, Hassan Shah, took charge of the defence of the fort, mounting machine-guns in the towers and placing a sentry, an unheard-of thing in Arabia, at the postern gate. They settled down here with coffee-fires and story-telling, and Ali and Lawrence daily entertained the many visitors who came in to swear loyalty to the Revolt—Arab deserters from the Turks, Bedouin chiefs, head-men of peasant villages, Syrian-Arab politicians, Armenian refugees. There were also traders from Damascus with presents of sweetmeats, sesame, caramel, apricot paste, nuts, silk clothes, brocade cloaks, headcloths, sheepskins, patterned rugs and Persian carpets. In return the traders were given coffee, sugar, rice and rolls of cotton-sheeting, necessities of which the war had deprived them. The tale of plenty at Azrak would have a good political effect on Syria.