work. As I entered he glanced up from his desk with a muttered “ Mush fadi ” (Anglo-Egyptian for “engaged”) but I spoke and got a surprised welcome. In Suez the night before I had scribbled a short report; so we had to talk only of what needed doing. Before the hour ended, the Admiral rang up to say that the Dufferin was loading flour for her emergency trip.
Clayton drew sixteen thousand pounds in gold and got an escort to take it to Suez by the three o’clock train. This was urgent, that Nasir might be able to meet his debts. The notes we had issued at Bair, Jefer and Guweira were pencilled promises, on army telegraph forms, to pay so much to bearer in Akaba. It was a great system, but no one had dared issue notes before in Arabia, because the Beduins had neither pockets in their shirts nor strongrooms in their tents, and notes could not be buried for safety. So there was an unconquerable prejudice against them, and for our good name it was essential that they be early redeemed.
Afterwards, in the hotel, I tried to find clothes less publicly exciting than my Arab getup; but the moths had corrupted all my former store, and it was three days before I became normally ill-dressed.
Meanwhile I heard of Allenby’s excellence, and of the last tragedy of Murray, that second attack on Gaza, which London forced on one too weak or too politic to resist; and how we went into it, everybody, generals and staff-officers, even soldiers, convinced that we should lose; while Murray, in headquarters, worked for a perfectly safe defeat, costing enough men to prove he had tried, but not enough to be disastrous. Five thousand eight hundred was the casualty bill. They said Allenby was getting armies of fresh men, and hundreds of guns, and all would be different.
Before I was clothed the Commander-in-Chief sent for me, curiously. In my report, thinking of Saladin and Abu Obeida, I had stressed the