the silence. Fuad Beg faced me in the circle. After a while remember that their leader was the silence. not of the same kidney. Hachim ibn Muheid-who, I pointed at him. "I am here riding behind his Arabs, now dismounted, and after giving me formal greeting received the welcome of the other sheikhs-was, as all sheikhs must be, a diplomat, and he was also shifty and unscrupulous. For years, during the minority of his nephew Midghem, he had been regent of the western Anayzeh, and had little relished handing over the reins of power to the younger man. Now Midghem had proclaimed his allegiance to the French, and rumour naturally had it that he was well paid for so doing. Hachim, furious that no money had come his way, had taken the more popular course of joining the Turks, thereby posing as the true leader of his tribe and standing a good chance of earning Turkish gold where none was forthcoming from the French. I had last seen him, frightened and humiliated, waiting in an anteroom at our Aleppo headquarters an opportunity to apologise for misbehaviour, and that gave me an advantage over him which I could not afford to let slip. At my hint of it the other sheikhs, all lesser men than he, smiled covertly, and something of his arrogance went from him. On a carpet spread on the ground in front of the tent we sat and drank the bitter coffee of the desert, with only now and then a murmured reiteration of our greetings to break main We started on the issue of peace and war. At first all were bellicose enough, but gradually their truer sentiments came to the fore. Busrawi was the most violently Nationalist, but that was, of course, a pose not to be taken seriously, and it had the effect of weakening others from sheer love of contradiction. The Shahins did not want the French, but they did want peace. Several minor sheikhs were of the same mind. Hachim said that for himself he did not desire war, but he had brought his tribe up from far away to fight, had promised them the loot of the French garrisons, and could not lead them back empty-handed. This was a clear hint, and I took him aside with Hamoudi to ask his terms, for Hachim was to be bought. Actually he was less exorbitant than I had expected. If the French chose to pay, we could secure at least a temporary peace, a breathing space, for the defection of the Anayzeh would mean that the other tribes would keep quiet; but, of course, I could promise nothing, and when we rejoined the circle on the carpet Hachim had to be more obstinately resolved than ever on war to the knife. This brought in my second issue, the excavations. I pointed out that we were neutral, and cared nothing whether Urfa or Birijik were attacked or not, but if there were fighting at Jerablus the dig could not go on, and that did concern us. They replied that they were only attacking the French, and there was no need for us to be involved. This, I retorted, was nonsense, for the French were actually installed in my house, and any one who shot at them would be shooting at us, " And is there any one here who will fire a shot at my house? "God forbid!" came the pious chorus. “Well, then, since you cannot fight the French there without shooting at me, you cannot fight the French." The There was a rather dismayed silence, and then some one made the happy suggestion that I should send the French back to the railway station, where they could be attacked at pleasure while we carried on our work as usual. sheikhs brightened up. I turned to Busrawi. I were in your house, having dakhled to you, flung myself on your mercy, and were threatened by an enemy who would attack you for sheltering me, and he were stronger than you, would you put me out to save yourself?" The whole shocked cried out on the idea. "If "And would you ask me to do this shame ? " "God forbid!" once more. "And, by God, the French stay in my house until they choose to go, and either they have peace or our work must stop. Tell me, oh sheikhs, for whom do you do this thing?” "For the Turks." "And for what aim do you work?" "For the independence of the people!" the agitators' slogan came patly from all. "And I serve the British Museum, and work for archæology, which is knowledge. Which is greater, the British Museum or the empire of the Turks?" "W'Allah, the British Museum!" replied the sheikhs, who had probably never heard of it before. "And which is greater, liberty or knowledge? " "Knowledge is greater." "Therefore my work must go on and yours must stop. There shall be no attack on the French at Jerablus, nor within an hour's walk shall any man of you fire a single shot. Ya Fuad Beg! come here and learn the decision of the tribes!" and in front of the furious Turk the sheikhs swore to the terms. They had been jockeyed into accepting a ruling which was not likely to be popular, so it was well to let them talk the matter over among themselves, and to give Hamoudi a chance circle to have his say, repeating and embellishing all that I had said, so I got up and joined the leaving only one angry man, group of Anayzeh behind the the Turk, Fuad Beg. tent. They had caught wind of the way things had gone, and bore me no good will for robbing them of excitement and plunder. One great hairychested scoundrel thrust his face into mine, asking truculently what business I had out in the desert. He was bluffing me, so I bluffed back, and told him I went where I pleased. "The desert is ours,' he declared, "and if you enter it you find death." I assured him no one had ever hurt me out there, or was likely to. "If I saw you I should kill you, were it only for the sake of the coat you wear, which is a good coat." We awoke next morning to a white world and driving snow, which was to lie deep on the ground for twelve days. The change of weather hit the French hard, for they were short of firewood, and could get none from a hostile country. Cooking was difficult, and fires for warmth were out of the question. The poor Senegalese in the dug-outs suffered terribly, and in the staff office, which served also as messroom, we could hear the officers stamping up and down and swinging their arms against their sides in the vain effort to keep up their circulation. "You wouldn't, because you Meal-time brought the only couldn't." comfort, and at half-past seven the orderlies trudging across the courtyard with the hot soup were welcomed with cheers of relief. On the second day Hachim sent me word that the enemy forces, while they would not attack, were to be sent forward to the edge of the forbidden zone so as to bring pressure to bear on the French with a view to the settlement which he had proposed. Colonel C. was ready to agree to the proposal, but the Anayzeh leader demanded cash down, which the Colonel had not got, and swore that his men could not be put off with promises; and since communications with Aleppo were now cut, the negotiations came to nothing. It was after this that Busrawi dropped in one day with a attack had begun, and the minor Anayzeh chief, and in strict confidence told me that an attack was planned for that night. I protested violently against this breach of the agreement, but Busrawi merely smiled slyly. It was, he said, not really a breach at all. There were Turkish representatives in the camp who were accusing the sheikhs of being half-hearted, and were reporting adversely on them to headquarters. Besides this, it was hard to keep the tribesmen together when they were suffering so from the cold with nothing to distract their thoughts from the weather, and so, to satisfy them both He whispered to me all the plan, and taking my laughter for approval, stamped off through the snow. "They do always eat at the same hour, do they not?" was his last question, shouted through the dusk. Guy and I dined at the same time as the French. We were already at table, and had listened smilingly to the joyful voices from the next room which hailed the soup, when there was the crack of a rifle, and a bullet whistled above the roof; then came a scattered volley, followed by the sharper sound of the French outposts returning the fire. From next door came exclamations, orders, the sound of men donning greatcoats and thrusting their feet into the heavy boots which had been discarded for the day; the officers were hurrying out to organise the defence. We, on the other hand, knowing the secret, could go on quietly with our dinner. Already, except for one or two shots let off by nervous sentries, the "attack" had fizzled out. In less than half an hour the French officers, puzzled and angry, had returned, and were flinging down belts and coats preparatory to starting afresh the interrupted meal. Then came a stream of curses; the soup stood cold and uninviting on the table,-the cooks had been called out to strengthen the defence force, the other dishes had been neglected and spoilt, and, with their parsimonious wood ration, dinner, the one joy of the miserable day, might be salved after a fashion but could not be made good. On the next night and the next after that the farce was repeated. Nobody was hurt. The enemy, true to their promise, never tried to hurt any one, and never came in sight, so ran no risks themselves. Once it was a slow desultory fire kept up for twenty minutes, once a series of ragged volleys which drew the fire of rifle-grenades from the defenders, but both "attacks" were most carefully timed to ruin the French dinner. On the fourth day Busrawi came in with a letter for the Colonel signed by the leading sheikhs. After due salutations, they expressed their regret that "owing to the cold weather It was a hard nasty shock for the Colonel. True, no trains had run for some time past, but the bridge over the Sajur valley was an essential link in his communications with the south, and its destruction seemed to cut him off finally from all hope of speedy relief. His face was very grim as he turned on the Kurd. there would be no battle to- I am here, but they also know night," and hoped that the that my eldest son is at this officers would enjoy their soup! moment blowing up the railBusrawi used to come in way bridge over the Sajur!" pretty often, usually seeing Colonel C. in my room, and sometimes giving him useful information. Once the Colonel, who had conceived a genuine liking for the wily Kurd, remonstrated with him on the risk he ran by these visits. "You say that you come to see the English," he urged; "but every one knows that you see me too, and the Turks cannot fail to look on you as a traitor. I know that you are on our side, but there is no need for you to prove it by coming so often, and I don't want you to get into trouble with them." "There is no danger," said Busrawi airily; "I tell them I come to spy on you, and I give them news every time when I get back." "Busrawi," he said, "I told you to pretend friendship with the Turks but to do nothing against us, and now you confess to cutting our lines. this your good will towards France? Is "How could I show it better?" retorted the sheikh imperturbably. "The Turks decided to blow up the bridge, and as their loyal subject and the sheikh of my tribe, I claimed that my son should command the raid and himself fire the mine. That makes me But nothing worth having," replied the Colonel; "I take care of that!" "What matter? They are safe, and so preserves your fools." friend. Further, my son may be a brave man, but he has small brains, and knows nothing about explosives. Any one of the Turks could have done the destruction better than he, but as my son he will do it himself, and very badly it will be done, so there will be the least possible damage to your bridge. W'Allah! and he sighed, "it is my fate to be misunderstood!" As I translated the Colone began to laugh, and at the end |