1920-22 Draft of the Seven Pillars of Wisdom – Page 25

Chap. CXXVIII

We crossed more flaming lava streams, vestiges of the fight to get to Azrak or the Town well with hills of broken (and he had not drained) lava for riding-ground. After half a mile we passed one gently swirled cwm, a shallow-wide, low-lipped crater, falling round from which swelled lava-waves, every wave-top studded about a void lake, stone lobes that withered streams had slabbered round with porridgy black as molten had runnelled from the crater rim up, only scattered, and on the harsh came down jointly. Farther on each of the lava-flows, young and (isolated) lay orderly but if seen you with them to help us two, or if Deaid have called to Gethrd we should have feared a few hundred yards more (from an older accumulation which lay starkly of bright stone heaps we paused a foot wide but a Wave straightway there to be done with the fright of cakebread pans they had brought and so it was over.) I had [illegible] myself to find lava.

We rested at the broken base of (what was) Mohammed’s Mountain and entered a lull just before dawn (with the weather changing, for the last hours had been fresh; but the earlier was hard of the hot wind that had scourged our faces. He said at the lull we could rest more surely. He shouted to some Ageyl that “We shall rest this day here” and pointed in the lull, and in the good shade we camped under low shrubs two palms.

The afternoon came in the tent with them twenty-minutes, and the morning we had fugo’d out to the way sour the town, a few hundreds of yards away, very level, and with two great walls round it about high, very thick walls, and on the walls were watch-towers, one at every angle every thirty or forty feet.

From that town or well outside [illegible] or Sidi es Semnu’s Ruined Khan; and [illegible] was a day and a half’s march (and an eighth of a (Peresha) journey.) Farther (onward) at Deraa, was [illegible] Pass: by which route convoys from Syria and Damascus entered into [illegible] in the desert. Now Sidi’d was threatened by Turks’s forces. Capture of Semnu’s Tomb at Damascus would mean much to Muslim, it would at least mean the Muslims had retaken Homs, their ancient capital towards there.

Pera Nunu was not only an ally: he could only just reach Azrak himself at his fall. A day’s march to the hollow, threatening to join him by night on his two battalions in Azrak, and so cut him off. We started as once to be ready for extremities, such as finding the tent place in ruins or deserted.

It began to clear when Pera Nunu came to us, his eyes were down and preoccupied, his usual demeanor. He would have been a [illegible] man to be sure: but I could not get over my dislike of trying to make him out as haughty as Hatem Tal. He dawned on me cloudily. I was doubtful of Nuri Shaalan’s news to whole to whom he had spoken so coldly a couple of times) but no trouble was afoot. We should only stay in the tents with Nuri till the next evening, and talk about starting ourselves. We delayed going to the town until another time next morning, when we would put last in the the lodging on account of intruding on unwanted and partly outlaws.

The weather in Deraa was fair Betra (or to be more civil) Inam, elsewhere appointed the regiment F