We drove down the straight banked road through the watered fields, in which the peasants were just beginning their day’s work. A galloping horseman checked at our headcloths in the car, with a merry salutation, holding out a bunch of yellow grapes. “Good news: Damascus salutes you.” He came from Shukri.

Nasir was just beyond us: to him we carried the tidings, that he might have the honourable entry, a privilege of his fifty battles. With Nuri Shaalan beside him, he asked a final gallop from his horse, and vanished down the long road in a cloud of dust, which hung reluctantly in the air between the water splashes. To give him a fair start, Stirling and I found a little stream, cool in the depths of a steep channel. By it we stopped, to wash and shave.