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 debonaire, 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 underfoot) 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 nakhl 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 apologized 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.
