So
I made a happy start with my sponsor for the journey, Sherif Abd el
Kerim el Beidawi, half-brother of Mohammed, Emir of the Juheina, but, to
my astonishment, of pure Abyssinian type. They told me later that his
mother had been a slave-girl married by the old Emir late in life. Abd
el Kerim was a man of middle height, thin and coal black, but debonair,
twenty-six years old; though he looked less, and had only a tiny tuft of
beard on his sharp chin. He was restless and active, endowed with an
easy, salacious humour. He hated the Turks, who had despised him for his
colour (Arabs had little colour-feeling against Africans: it was the
Indian who evoked their race-dislike), and was very merry and intimate
with me. With him were three or four of his men, all well mounted; and
we had a rapid journey, for Abd el Kerim was a famous rider who took
pride in covering his stages at three times the normal speed. It was not
my camel, and the weather was cool and clouded, with a taste of rain. So
I had no objection.
After starting, we cantered for three unbroken
hours. That had shaken down our bellies far enough for us to hold more
food, and we stopped and ate bread and drank coffee till sunset, while
Abd el Kerim rolled about his carpet in a dog-fight with one of the men.
When he was exhausted he sat up; and they told stories and japed, till
they were breathed enough to get up and dance. Everything was very free,
very good-tempered, and not at all dignified.
When we re-started, an hour's mad race in the dusk
brought us to the end of the Tehama, and to the foot of a low range of
rock and sand. A month ago, coming from Hamra, we had passed south of
this: now we crossed it, going up Wadi Agida, a narrow, winding, sandy
valley between the hills. Because it had run in flood a few days
earlier, the going was firm for our panting camels; but the ascent was
steep and we had to take it at walking pace. This pleased me, but so
angered Abd el Kerim, that when, in a short hour, we reached the
watershed he thrust his mount forward again and led us at break-neck
speed down hill in the yielding night (a fair road, fortunately, with
sand and pebbles under-foot) for half an hour, when the land flattened
out, and we came to the outlying plantations of Nakhl Mubarak, chief
date-gardens of the southern Juheina.
As
we got near we saw through the palm-trees flame, and the flame-lit smoke
of many fires, while the hollow ground re-echoed with the roaring of
thousands of excited camels, and volleying of shots or shoutings in the
darkness of lost men, who sought through the crowd to rejoin their
friends. As we had heard in Yenbo that the Nekhl were deserted, this
tumult meant something strange, perhaps hostile. We crept quietly past
an end of the grove and along a narrow street between man-high mud
walls, to a silent group of houses. Abd el Kerim forced the courtyard
door of the first on our left, led the camels within, and hobbled them
down by the walls that they might remain unseen. Then he slipped a
cartridge into the breech of his rifle and stole off on tiptoe down the
street towards the noise to find out what was happening. We waited for
him, the sweat of the ride slowly drying in our clothes as we sat there
in the chill night, watching.
He came back after half an hour to say that Feisal
with his camel corps had just arrived, and we were to go down and join
him. So we led the camels out and mounted; and rode in file down another
lane on a bank between houses, with a sunk garden of palms on our right.
Its end was filled with a solid crowd of Arabs and camels, mixed
together in the wildest confusion, and all crying aloud. We pressed
through them, and down a ramp suddenly into the bed of Wadi Yenbo, a
broad, open space: how broad could only be guessed from the irregular
lines of watch-fires glimmering over it to a great distance. Also it was
very damp; with slime, the relic of a shallow flood two days before, yet
covering its stones. Our camels found it slippery under foot and began
to move timidly.
We had no opportunity to notice this, or indeed
anything, just now, except the mass of Feisal's army, filling the valley
from side to side. There were hundreds of fires of thorn-wood, and round
them were Arabs making coffee or eating, or sleeping muffled like dead
men in their cloaks, packed together closely in the confusion of camels.
So many camels in company made a mess indescribable, couched as they
were or tied down all over the camping ground, with more ever coming in,
and the old ones leaping up on three legs to join them, roaring with
hunger and agitation. Patrols were going out, caravans being unloaded,
and dozens of Egyptian mules bucking angrily over the middle of the
scene.
We ploughed our way through this din, and in an
island of calm at the very centre of the valley bed found Sherif Feisal.
We halted our camels
by his side. On his carpet, spread barely over the stones, he was
sitting between Sherif Sharraf, the Kaimmakam both of the Imaret and of
Taif, his cousin, and Maulud, the rugged, slashing old Mesopotamian
patriot, now acting as his A.D.C. In front of him knelt a secretary
taking down an order, and beyond him another reading reports aloud by
the light of a silvered lamp which a slave was holding. The night was
windless, the air heavy, and the unshielded flame poised there stiff and
straight.
Feisal, quiet as ever, welcomed me with a smile
until he could finish his dictation. After it he apologised for my
disorderly reception, and waved the slaves back to give us privacy. As
they retired with the onlookers, a wild camel leaped into the open space
in front of us, plunging and trumpeting. Maulud dashed at its head to
drag it away; but it dragged him instead; and, its load of grass ropes
for camel fodder coming untied, there poured down over the taciturn
Sharraf, the lamp, and myself, an avalanche of hay. 'God be praised,'
said Feisal gravely, 'that it was neither butter nor bags of gold.' Then
he explained to me what unexpected things had happened in the last
twenty-four hours on the battle front.
The Turks had slipped round the head of the Arab
barrier forces in Wadi Safra by a side road in the hills, and had cut
their retreat. The Harb, in a panic, had melted into the ravines on each
side, and escaped through them in parties of twos and threes, anxious
for their threatened families. The Turkish mounted men poured down the
empty valley and over the Dhifran Pass to Bir Said, where Ghalib Bey,
their commander, nearly caught the unsuspecting Zeid asleep in his tent.
However, warning came just in time. With the help of Sherif Abdulla ibn
Thawab, an old Harith campaigner, Emir Zeid held up the enemy attack for
long enough to get some of his tents and baggage packed on camels and
driven away. Then he escaped himself; but his force melted into a loose
mob of fugitives riding wildly through the night towards Yenbo.
Thereby the road to Yenbo was laid open to the
Turks, and Feisal had rushed down here only an hour before our arrival,
with five thousand men, to protect his base until something properly
defensive could be arranged. His spy system was breaking down: the Harb,
having lost their wits in the darkness, were bringing in wild and
contradictory reports from one side and another about the strength of
the Turks and their movements and intention. He had no idea whether they
would strike at Yenbo
or be content with holding the passes from Wadi Yenbo into Wadi Safra
while they threw the bulk of their forces down the coast towards Rabegh
and Mecca. The situation would be serious either way: the best that
could happen would be if Feisal's presence here attracted them, and
caused them to lose more days trying to catch his field army while we
strengthened Yenbo. Meanwhile, he was doing all he could, quite
cheerfully; so I sat down and listened to the news; or to the petitions,
complaints and difficulties being brought in and settled by him
summarily.
Sharraf beside me worked a busy tooth-stick back
and forward along his gleaming jaws, speaking only once or twice an
hour, in reproof of too-urgent suitors. Maulud ever and again leaned
over to me, round Feisal's neutral body, eagerly repeating for our joint
benefit any word of a report which might be turned to favour the
launching of an instant and formal counter-attack.
This lasted till half-past four in the morning. It
grew very cold as the damp of the valley rose through the carpet and
soaked our clothes. The camp gradually stilled as the tired men and
animals went one by one to sleep; a white mist collected softly over
them and in it the fires became slow pillars of smoke. Immediately
behind us, rising out of the bed of mist, Jebel Rudhwa, more steep and
rugged than ever, was brought so close by the hushed moonlight that it
seemed hanging over our heads.
Feisal at last finished the urgent work. We ate
half-a-dozen dates, a frigid comfort, and curled up on the wet carpet.
As I lay there in a shiver, I saw the Biasha guards creep up and spread
their cloaks gently over Feisal, when they were sure that he was
sleeping.
An hour later we got up stiffly in the false dawn
(too cold to go on pretending and lying down) and the slaves lit a fire
of palm-ribs to warm us, while Sharraf and myself searched for food and
fuel enough for the moment. Messengers were still coming in from all
sides with evil rumours of an immediate attack; and the camp was not far
off panic. So Feisal decided to move to another position, partly because
we should be washed out of this one if it rained anywhere in the hills,
and partly to occupy his men's minds and work off their restlessness.
When his drums began to beat, the camels were
loaded hurriedly. After the second signal everyone leaped into the
saddle and drew off to left or right, leaving a broad lane up which
Feisal rode, on his mare, with Sharraf
a pace behind him, and then Ali, the standard-bearer, a splendid wild
man from Nejd, with his hawk's face framed in long plaits of jet-black
hair falling downward from his temples. Ali was dressed garishly, and
rode a tall camel. Behind him were all the mob of sherifs and sheikhs
and slaves – and myself – pell-mell. There were eight hundred in the
bodyguard that morning.
Feisal rode up and down looking for a place to
camp, and at last stopped on the further side of a little open valley
just north of Nakhl Mubarak village; though the houses were so buried in
the trees that few of them could be seen from outside. On the south bank
of this valley, beneath some rocky knolls, Feisal pitched his two plain
tents. Sharraf had his personal tent also; and some of the other chiefs
came and lived by us. The guard put up their booths and shelters; and
the Egyptian gunners halted lower down on our side, and dressed their
twenty tents beautifully in line, to look very military. So in a little
while we were populous, if hardly imposing in detail.
