volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

58 The Expedition Comes Back.
excitement in the town, and people began to drift to
the Sinjar Gate and out into the country beyond, and
waited to welcome the victorious soldiers, for it was
generally assumed that the Shammar who were with
them must be their prisoners. In the early afternoon
we saw a great cloud of dust rising on the western horizon,
and an hour later we saw the soldiers returning, and the
report of the horsemen who arrived earlier in the day
was quite true, there were Shammar with them. We
watched the two companies of men draw nearer and
nccirer, but when they came quite close we saw that the
Shammar were holding their long lances in their hands
and had their " gas pipe " guns slung at their backs,
and that they certainly had not the appearance of men
who were prisoners. When they were about a mile
from the walls of the town the soldiers and the Shammar
halted, and the officer commanding the Turkish force
and the chief of the Shammar rode towards each other
and held a short conversation. The men of Mosul stood
silent and wondered what was going to happen next.
Suddenly the officer raised his sword in the air, and the
Shammar chief having poised his lance as if for attack,
wheeled his horse round quickly and galloped off to the
west followed by all his company. The Turkish officer
gave a word of command, and his men resumed their
march and rode quietly behind him into Mosul. Then
we all realized that the Shammar chief and his men were
not prisoners of the Turks at all, and that they feared
the garrison of Mosul so little that they dared to ride up
to within a mile of the town walls, and to take a ceremonious
farewell of the officer and his men whom they
had escorted to the town in order to protect them from
the attacks of roving bodies of their own tribe ! Such
was indeed the case. Little by little the facts became
known, and they were as follows :
The Turkish officer went a day and a half's ride due
west of Mosul, and imagined that he would reach Jabal
Shammar on the second day ; he had neither map nor
guide to help him to find the way there. He pitched his
camp in the open Choi, for there was no shelter to be had.