over the machine-gun, with few casualties, and scattered the Turks. Eshref fled on foot to the hilltop. Abdulla offered a reward of a thousand pounds for him; and near dusk he was found, wounded, and captured by Sherif Fauzan el Harith, in a stiff fight.
In the baggage were twenty thousand pounds in coin, robes of honour, costly presents, some interesting papers, and camel loads of rifles and pistols. Abdulla wrote an exultant letter to Fakhri Pasha (telling him of the capture), and nailed it to an uprooted telegraph pole between the metals, when he crossed the railway next night on his unimpeded way to Wadi Ais. Raja had left him there, camped in quiet and in ease. The news was a double fortune for us.
Between the joyful men slipped the sad figure of the Imam, who raised his hand. Silence fell for an instant. “Hear me,” he said, and intoned an ode in praise of the event, to the effect that Abdulla was especially favoured, and had attained quickly to the glory which Feisal was winning slowly but surely by hard work. The poem was creditable as the issue of only sixteen minutes, and the poet was rewarded in gold. Then Feisal saw a gaudy jewelled dagger at Raja’s belt. Raja stammered it was Eshref’s. Feisal threw him his own and pulled the other off, to give it in the end to Colonel Wilson. “What did my brother say to Eshref?” “Is this your return for our hospitality?” While Eshref had replied like Suckling, “I can fight, Whether I am i’ wrong or right, Devoutly!”
“How many millions did the Arabs get?” gasped greedy old Mohammed Ali, when he heard of Abdulla to the elbows in the captured chest, flinging gold by handfuls to the tribes. Raja was everywhere in hot demand, and he slept a richer man that night, deservedly, for Abdulla’s march to Ais made the Medina situation sure. With Murray pressing in Sinai, Feisal nearing Wejh, and Abdulla between Wejh and Medina, the position of the Turks in Arabia became defensive only. The tide of our ill-fortune had turned; and the camp seeing our glad faces was noisy until dawn.