dawn found us crossing a steep short pass out of wadi kitan into the main drainage valley of these succeeding hills. we turned aside into wadi reimi, a tributary, to get water. there was no proper well, only a seepage hole in the stony bed of the valley; and we found it partly by our noses: though the taste, while as foul, was curiously unlike the smell. we refilled our water-skins. arslan baked bread, and we rested for two hours. then we went on through wadi amk, an easy green valley which made comfortable marching for the camels.
when the amk turned westward we crossed it, going up between piles of the warped grey granite (like cold toffee) which was common up-country in the hejaz. the defile culminated at the foot of a natural ramp and staircase: badly broken, twisting, and difficult for camels, but short. afterwards we were in an open valley for an hour, with low hills to the right and mountains to the left. there were water pools in the crags, and merawin tents under the fine trees which studded the flat. the fertility of the slopes was great: on them grazed flocks of sheep and goats. we got milk from the arabs: the first milk my ageyl had been given in the two years of drought.
the track out of the valley when we reached its head was execrable, and the descent beyond into wadi marrakh almost dangerous; but the view from the crest compensated us. wadi marrakh, a broad, peaceful avenue, ran between two regular straight walls of hills to a circus four miles off where valleys from left, right and front seemed to meet. artificial heaps of uncut stone were piled about the approach. as we entered it, we saw that the grey hill-walls swept back on each side in a half-circle. before us, to the south, the curve was barred across by a straight wall or step of blue-black lava, standing over a little grove of thorn trees. we made for these and lay down in their thin shade, grateful in such sultry air for any pretence of coolness.
the day, now at its zenith, was very hot; and my weakness had so increased that my head hardly held up against it. the puffs of feverish wind pressed like scorching hands against our faces, burning our eyes. my pain made me breathe in gasps through the mouth; the wind cracked my lips and seared my throat till i was too dry to talk, and drinking became sore; yet i always needed to drink, as my thirst would not let me lie still and get the peace i longed for. the flies were a plague.
the bed of the valley was of fine quartz gravel and white sand. its glitter thrust itself between our eyelids; and the level of the ground seemed to dance as the wind moved the white tips of stubble grass to and fro. the camels loved this grass, which grew in tufts, about sixteen inches high, on slate-green stalks. they gulped down great quantities of it until the men drove them in and couched them by me. at the moment i hated the beasts, for too much food made their breath stink; and they rumblingly belched up a new mouthful from their stomachs each time they had chewed and swallowed the last, till a green slaver flooded out between their loose lips over the side teeth, and dripped down their sagging chins.
lying angrily there, i threw a stone at the nearest, which got up and wavered about behind my head: finally it straddled its back legs and staled in wide, bitter jets; and i was so far gone with the heat and weakness and pain that i just lay there and cried about it unhelping. the men had gone to make a fire and cook a gazelle one of them had fortunately shot; and i realized that on another day this halt would have been pleasant to me; for the hills were very strange and their colours vivid. the base had the warm grey of old stored sunlight; while about their crests ran narrow veins of granite-coloured stone, generally in pairs, following the contour of the skyline like the rusted metals of an abandoned scenic railway. arslan said the hills were combed like cocks, a sharper observation.
after the men had fed we re-mounted, and easily climbed the first wave of the lava flood. it was short, as was the second, on the top of which lay a broad terrace with an alluvial plot of sand and gravel in its midst. the lava was a nearly clean floor of iron-red rock-cinders, over which were scattered fields of loose stone. the third and other steps ascended to the south of us: but we turned east, up wadi gara.
gara had, perhaps, been a granite valley down whose middle the lava had flowed, slowly filling it, and arching itself up in a central heap. on each side were deep troughs, between the lava and the hill-side. rain water flooded these as often as storms burst in the hills. the lava flow, as it coagulated, had been twisted like a rope, cracked, and bent back irregularly upon itself. the surface was loose with fragments through which many generations of camel parties had worn an inadequate and painful track.
we struggled along for hours, going slowly, our camels wincing at every stride as the sharp edges slipped beneath their tender feet. the paths were only to be seen by the droppings along them, and by the slightly bluer surfaces of the rubbed stones. the arabs declared them impassable after dark, which was to be believed, for we risked laming our beasts each time our impatience made us urge them on. just before five in the afternoon, however, the way got easier. we seemed to be near the head of the valley, which grew narrow. before us on the right, an exact cone-crater, with tidy furrows scoring it from lip to foot, promised good going; for it was made of black ash, clean as though sifted, with here and there a bank of harder soil, and cinders. beyond it was another lava-field, older perhaps than the valleys, for its stones were smoothed, and between them were straths of flat earth, rank with weeds. in among these open spaces were beduin tents, whose owners ran to us when they saw us coming; and, taking our head-stalls with hospitable force, led us in.
they proved to be sheikh fahad el hansha and his men: old and garrulous warriors who had marched with us to wejh, and had been with garland on that great occasion when his first automatic mine had succeeded under a troop train near toweira station. fahad would not hear of my resting quietly outside his tent, but with the reckless equality of the desert men urged me into an unfortunate place inside among his own vermin. there he plied me with bowl after bowl of diuretic camel-milk between questions about europe, my home tribe, the english camel-pasturages, the war in the hejaz and the wars elsewhere, egypt and damascus, how feisal was, why did we seek abdulla, and by what perversity did i remain christian, when their hearts and hands waited to welcome me to the faith?
so passed long hours till ten at night, when the guest-sheep was carried in, dismembered royally over a huge pile of buttered rice. i ate as manners demanded, twisted myself up in my cloak, and slept; my bodily exhaustion, after those hours of the worst imaginable marching, proofing me against the onslaught of lice and fleas. the illness, however, had stimulated my ordinarily sluggish fancy, which ran riot this night in dreams of wandering naked for a dark eternity over interminable lava (like scrambled egg gone iron-blue, and very wrong), sharp as insect-bites underfoot; and with some horror, perhaps a dead moor, always climbing after us.
in the morning we woke early and refreshed, with our clothes stinging-full of fiery points feeding on us. after one more bowl of milk proffered us by the eager fahad, i was able to walk unaided to my camel and mount her actively. we rode up the last piece of wadi gara to the crest, among cones of black cinders from a crater to the south. thence we turned to a branch valley, ending in a steep and rocky chimney, up which we pulled our camels.
beyond we had an easy descent into wadi murrmiya, whose middle bristled with lava like galvanized iron, on each side of which there were smooth sandy beds, good going. after a while we came to a fault in the flow, which served as a track to the other side. by it we crossed over, finding the lava pocketed with soils apparently of extreme richness, for in them were leafy trees and lawns of real grass, starred with flowers, the best grazing of all our ride, looking the more wonderfully green because of the blue-black twisted crusts of rock about. the lava had changed its character. here were no piles of loose stones, as big as a skull or a man’s hand, rubbed and rounded together; but bunched and crystallized fronds of metallic rock, altogether impassable for bare feet.
another watershed conducted us to an open place where the jeheina had ploughed some eight acres of the thin soil below a thicket of scrub. they said there were like it in the neighbourhood other fields, silent witnesses to the courage and persistence of the arabs.
it was called wadi chetl, and after it was another broken river of lava, the worst yet encountered. a shadowy path zigzagged across it. we lost one camel with a broken fore-leg, the result of a stumble in a pot-hole; and the many bones which lay about showed that we were not the only party to suffer misfortune in the passage. however, this ended our lava, according to the guides, and we went thence forward along easy valleys with finally a long run up a gentle slope till dusk. the going was so good and the cool of the day so freshened me that we did not halt at nightfall, after our habit, but pushed on for an hour across the basin of murrmiya into the basin of wadi ais, and there, by tleih, we stopped for our last camp in the open.
i rejoiced that we were so nearly in, for fever was heavy on me. i was afraid that perhaps i was going to be really ill, and the prospect of falling into the well-meaning hands of tribesmen in such a state was not pleasant. their treatment of every sickness was to burn holes in the patient’s body at some spot believed to be the complement of the part affected. it was a cure tolerable to such as had faith in it, but torture to the unbelieving: to incur it unwillingly would be silly, and yet certain; for the arabs’ good intentions, selfish as their good digestions, would never heed a sick man’s protesting.
the morning was easy, over open valleys and gentle rides into wadi ais. we arrived at abu markha, its nearest watering-place, just a few minutes after sherif abdulla had dismounted there, and while he was ordering his tents to be pitched in an acacia glade beyond the well. he was leaving his old camp at bir el amri, lower down the valley, as he had left murabba, his camp before, because the ground had been fouled by the careless multitude of his men and animals. i gave him the documents from feisal, explaining the situation in medina, and the need we had of haste to block the railway. i thought he took it coolly; but, without argument, went on to say that i was a little tired after my journey, and with his permission would lie down and sleep a while. he pitched me a tent next his great marquee, and i went into it and rested myself at last. it had been a struggle against faintness day-long in the saddle to get here at all: and now the strain was ended with the delivery of my message, i felt that another hour would have brought the breaking point.
