stream meandering through green bushes and flowers and cultivated fruits, things strange to us during the years of our wandering in the flinty desert.
The people of Sheikh Saad came shyly to look at Feisal’s army, which had been a whispered legendary thing, and was now in their village, led by renowned or formidable names—Talal, Nasir, Nuri, Auda. We stared back, in secret envy of their peasant life.
While the men stretched the saddle-stiffness of riding from thin legs, we went up, five or six of us, above the ruins, whence across the southern plain we should see the measure of security in store for us. To our astonishment we perceived, just over the walls, a thin company of regulars in uniform—Turks, Austrians, Germans—with eight machine guns on pack-animals. They were toiling up from Galilee towards Damascus after their defeat by Allenby; hopeless, but carefree, marching at ease, thinking themselves fifty miles from any war.
We did not give an alarm, to spare our tired troops pains: just Durzi ibn Dughmi, with the Khaffaji and others of the family, mounted quietly and fell on them from a narrow lane. The officers showed fight and were instantly killed. The men threw down their arms, and in five minutes had been searched and robbed and were being shepherded in file along the water-paths between the gardens to an open pound which seemed fit for our prison. Sheikh Saad was paying soon and well.
Away to the east appeared three or four black knots of people, moving northward. We loosed the Howeitat on them, and after an hour they returned in laughter, each man leading a mule or packhorse; poor, tired, galled brutes, showing all too clearly the straits of the beaten army. The riders had been unarmed soldiers fleeing from the British. The Howeitat disdained to make such prisoners. “We gave them to the boys and girls of the villages for servants,” sneered Zaal, with his thin-lipped smile.