life in wejh was interesting. we had now set our camp in order. feisal pitched his tents (here an opulent group: living tents, reception tents, staff tents, guest tents, servants’) about a mile from the sea, on the edge of the coral shelf which ran up gently from the beach till it ended in a steep drop facing east and south over broad valleys radiating star-like from the land-locked harbour. the tents of soldiers and tribesmen were grouped in these sandy valleys, leaving the chill height for ourselves; and very delightful in the evening we northerners found it when the breeze from the sea carried us a murmur of the waves, faint and far off, like the echo of traffic up a by-street in london.
immediately beneath us were the ageyl, an irregular close group of tents. south of these were rasim’s artillery; and by him for company, abdulla’s machine-gunners, in regular lines, with their animals picketed out in those formal rows which were incense to the professional officer and convenient if space were precious. further out the market was set plainly on the ground, a boiling swell of men always about the goods. the scattered tents and shelters of the tribesmen filled each gully or windless place. beyond the last of them lay open country, with camel-parties coming in and out by the straggling palms of the nearest, too-brackish well. as background were the foothills, reefs and clusters like ruined castles, thrown up craggily to the horizon of the coastal range.
as it was the custom in wejh to camp wide apart, very wide apart, my life was spent in moving back and forth, to feisal’s tents, to the english tents, to the egyptian army tents, to the town, the port, the wireless station, tramping all day restlessly up and down these coral paths in sandals or barefoot, hardening my feet, getting by slow degrees the power to walk with little pain over sharp and burning ground, tempering my already trained body for greater endeavour.
poor arabs wondered why i had no mare; and i forbore to puzzle them by incomprehensible talk of hardening myself, or confess i would rather walk than ride for sparing of animals: yet the first was true and the second true. something hurtful to my pride, disagreeable, rose at the sight of these lower forms of life. their existence struck a servile reflection upon our human kind: the style in which a god would look on us; and to make use of them, to lie under an avoidable obligation to them, seemed to me shameful. it was as with the negroes, tom-tom playing themselves to red madness each night under the ridge. their faces, being clearly different from our own, were tolerable; but it hurt that they should possess exact counterparts of all our bodies.
feisal, within, laboured day and night at his politics, in which so few of us could help. outside, the crowd employed and diverted us with parades, joy-shooting, and marches of victory. also there were accidents. once a group, playing behind our tents, set off a seaplane bomb, dud relic of boyle’s capture of the town. in the explosion their limbs were scattered about the camp, marking the canvas with red splashes which soon turned a dull brown and then faded pale. feisal had the tents changed and ordered the bloody ones to be destroyed: the frugal slaves washed them. another day a tent took fire, and part-roasted three of our guests. the camp crowded round and roared with laughter till the fire died down, and then, rather shamefacedly, we cared for their hurts. the third day, a mare was wounded by a faffing joy-bullet, and many tents were pierced.
one night the ageyl mutinied against their commandant, ibn dakhil, for fining them too generally and flogging them too severely. they rushed his tent, howling and shooting, threw his things about and beat his servants. that not being enough to blunt their fury, they began to remember yenbo, and went off to kill the ateiba. feisal from our bluff saw their torches and ran barefoot amongst them, laying on with the flat of his sword like four men. his fury delayed them while the slaves and horsemen, calling for help, dashed downhill with rushes and shouts and blows of sheathed swords. one gave him a horse on which he charged down the ringleaders, while we dispersed groups by firing very lights into their clothing. only two were killed and thirty wounded. ibn dakhil resigned next day.
murray had given us two armoured-cars, rolls-royces, released from the campaign in east africa. gilman and wade commanded, and their crews were british, men from the a.s.c. to drive and from the machine gun corps to shoot. having them in wejh made things more difficult for us, because the food we had been eating and the water we had been drinking were at once medically condemned; but english company was a balancing pleasure, and the occupation of pushing cars and motor-bicycles through the desperate sand about wejh was great. the fierce difficulty of driving across country gave the men arms like boxers, so that they swung their shoulders professionally as they walked. with time they became skilled, developing a style and art of sand-driving, which got them carefully over the better ground and rushed them at speed over soft places. one of these soft places was the last twenty miles of plain in front of jebel raal. the cars used to cross it in little more than half an hour, leaping from ridge to ridge of the dunes and swaying dangerously around their curves. the arabs loved the new toys. bicycles they called devil-horses, the children of cars, which themselves were sons and daughters of trains. it gave us three generations of mechanical transport.
the navy added greatly to our interests in wejh. the espiegle was sent by boyle as station ship, with the delightful orders to ‘do everything in her power to co-operate in the many plans which would be suggested to her by colonel newcombe, while letting it be clearly seen that she was conferring a favour’. her commander fitzmaurice (a good name in turkey), was the soul of hospitality and found quiet amusement in our work on shore. he helped us in a thousand ways; above all in signalling; for he was a wireless expert, and one day at noon the northbrook came in and landed an army wireless set, on a light lorry, for us. as there was no one to explain it, we were at a loss; but fitzmaurice raced ashore with half his crew, ran the car to a fitting site, rigged the masts professionally, started the engine, and connected up to such effect that before sunset he had called the astonished northbrook and held a long conversation with her operator. the station increased the efficiency of the base at wejh and was busy day and night, filling the red sea with messages in three tongues, and twenty different sorts of army cypher-codes.
