acrossasiaminoro00chiluoft

RAIN-SQUALLS AND MUD 329
him, and was in the mood for knifing had he possessed
a knife. Meanwhile I was able to catch the other
man, and Ighsan running up at this moment wrenched
the pipe from his hand. The thing was over in a
minute, but now other Arabs were pulling at the gear
on the horse, and that attack had to be repulsed.
So far they had not got beyond the stage of prying
curiosity, and we managed to prevent looting. And
then the rearguard of the column arrived, a solitary
regular soldier on foot, a short, square-built, grizzled
Turkish veteran armed with a rifle, whose onerous
duty it was to push these thousand or more of conscripts
up into the mountains and see that none
remained behind. As he approached he abused me
violently, but on coming close said in an undertone for
my private hearing, " Haide, effendi, Chabuk!" (Get
away, eflendi, quickly !), which put a different colour
on his behaviour.
In the end we drew off with honour, having lost
nothing, but it had been touch and go. These conscripts
were Cilician Arabs ; had they been Turks
molestation might not have occurred, but once begun
would not have been so lightly put aside.
was mid-afternoon when we reached the plain,
It
where the road went between wide unenclosed fields of
cotton and young wheat, and here and there maize
and tobacco. Rain-squalls came sweeping over the
land, varied by intervals of hot sunshine. On every
side were signs of recent floods : fields were still under
water ; others were crossed by deep, newly scoured
channels ; sometimes earth from higher ground had
been carried across the road and formed acres of
deposit on the lower side. Ominous also was the
condition of caravans from Tarsus, for each camel was
caked to its belly with drying mud. The conscripts
evidently had waded bare-legged and washed themselves
when the worst was over ; we, however, had
yet to go through it. And go through it we presently
did with a vengeance. Every dip in the road held
two feet of liquid mud not to be avoided ; we walked