There was no time for recriminations, however. The situation in Yanbu’ was grave and the Turks were expected at any minute. The total number of Arab troops in the town did not exceed 1,500. Feisal sent the remnants of the Juhayna back up into the hills to harry the Turkish lines, and when he returned Garland took charge of the physical defences, refurbishing old entrenchments, strengthening the 300-year-old coral town walls, unreeling barbed wire and posting machine-gun crews. Boyle signalled to the carrier Raven, riding at anchor in Sharm Yanbu’ – a creek eight miles north of the port – to dispatch its brace of seaplanes against Turkish positions, and then came ashore to survey the ground. Yanbu’ was built on a peninsula with the sea on three sides, a flat, dusty plain on the other, which was entirely devoid of cover. If the Turks attacked they would have to attack at night, he thought, and then the Navy would be waiting for them. At sunset on 11 December, a hush fell upon the port. No one slept. At about ten o’clock, the Turkish advance-guard, which had crept silently down from the hills with a Juhayna guide, engaged Arab pickets only six miles from the town walls. Town criers alerted the garrison. British naval spotters on the minaret of the mosque signalled to the ships in the harbour, whose crews immediately began to traverse the plain with powerful searchlights and to train their guns. The troops stood to arms in utter silence, and waited tensely for the Turkish assault. But the attack never came. The Turks lost their nerve at the sight of the eerie spotlights playing across the open plain like the fiery eyes of monsters hidden in the darkness. They turned south towards Rabegh, leaving Yanbu’ unmolested – a decision, Lawrence wrote, which ultimately cost them the war.⁹

Now all eyes were turned towards Rabegh, the key chess-piece in the game. Soon, Fakhri Pasha’s advance-guard was within thirty miles of the port, which was defended only by al-Masri’s anaemic army of half-trained Arab regulars, and a flight of aircraft under Major Ross. Sharif ‘Ali, in command of the Rabegh garrison, decided to march out boldly with his forces to engage the Turks, to take the pressure off Feisal in Yanbu’ and to make a final stand. When the Turks had evacuated Nakhl Mubarak, Feisal returned there and by a tremendous effort of rhetoric convinced the Juhayna to join him again. The following day his entire force went in pursuit of the Turks, hoping to trap them in the hills between his army and ‘Ali’s. It was not to be, however. Ali’s bold spirit deserted him as soon as he was out of sight of British naval guns, and he retreated when he heard a false rumour that the local Harb had gone over to the Turks – much to the disgust of his War Minister, al-Masri. Feisal pulled his Juhayna back to Nakhl Mubarak with equal disgust. Zayd and ‘Ali had both sat in Rabegh while he had faced the Turks alone on the Darb Sultani, and now both had proved ineffectual. Meanwhile, in Mecca, Hussain panicked, and against all previous misgivings demanded a British brigade to defend Rabegh. In November he had scored another diplomatic home-goal by declaring himself ‘king’ of the Hejaz. It was a title alien to Arab tradition, for while the Arabic counterparts of the words ‘Sultan’ and ‘Emir’ have connotations of authority, the Arabic word for king, malik, implies ownership. Hussain had announced his change of status without previous warning and without consulting his allies: the move was of no real advantage politically, and could only serve to infuriate other Arab potentates such as ibn Sa’ud in the Najd. At a meeting with Wilson in Jeddah on 12 December, he accused the British of defaulting on their promise to cut the Hejaz railway, a promise which had never, in fact, been made. It was bluster designed to excuse the Hashemites’ blunders. If Rabegh fell, then Mecca would fall and Hussain and his sons would be executed. The only way to save Mecca seemed to be a landing of British troops at Rabegh, but if this happened, then Hussain might lose all Muslim support anyway. After much deliberation, Win-gate informed the Sharif that the two brigades on standby at Suez would be dispatched to Rabegh only on receipt of his own written request. Hussain prevaricated. The British troops never came. Zayd had lost the Wadi Safra. Feisal had withdrawn to the Wadi Yanbu’. Abdallah was inactive in Hanakiyya, near Medina, short of food, water and ammunition. ‘Ali had marched out of Rabegh and promptly marched back. The Arab cause seemed lost.

It was obvious to the Hashemites and to their British advisers that a decisive move was necessary. Wilson pushed Feisal to reactivate his plan to march on Wejh, 200 miles up the coast – the last Turkish-held port in the Hejaz. Once Wejh had fallen, Feisal would be in a position to menace the Hejaz railway north of Medina, and Fakhri Pasha would inevitably be distracted from Rabegh. Feisal now justified Lawrence’s trust in his diplomatic powers, and by a combination of superb oratory and British gold he managed to regroup the Juhayna, and to assemble a force of thousands of camelry – including ‘Utayba, Harb and Billi – in the Wadi Yanbu’. Though the irregulars had proved ineffective in the field, Lawrence continued to see their worth. He realized that it had been the potential threat to the railway which had caused Fakhri Pasha to hesitate for so long, and if the Arabs threatened the railway, then the Turkish flank would be extended up to Damascus, 800 miles away, and the Turks would be obliged to spread their troops thinly across that entire distance. Lawrence and Feisal between them came up with a two-pronged plan. First, to move Sharif ‘Abdallah and his 5,000 Bedu from Hanakiyya to the Wadi ‘Ais, where he could strike at the Hejaz railway more easily, and yet remain within reach of Yanbu’. Second, to march on Wejh with Feisal’s entire force of tribesmen, leaving only a skeleton unit to defend the port. These two moves would certainly put the Turks on the defensive, Lawrence thought. Feisal hung back, however, fearing for Rabegh. He would sooner die in defence of his family than be cut off helplessly from them when the axe fell. On 27 December, Wilson arrived in Yanbu’ and gave Feisal his personal assurance that the navy could hold Rabegh until his troops reached Wejh. A week later, Feisal’s Bedu army rode out of Nakhl Mubarak with banners flying. It was a magnificent, barbaric sight, the like of which had not been seen in the Hejaz in living memory. This was no tribal ghazwa, but massed tribes on the march. The army was divided into nine sections, and Sharif Feisal rode at the head of his Agayl bodyguard, with Lawrence slightly to the rear, and behind him three standard-bearers carrying banners of purple silk, and three kettle-drummers pounding their great drums to the rhythm of the camels’ feet. The ‘Agayl, 1,200 of them, fanned out to the right and left, with their camels pressed together almost flank to flank in a wildly snorting mass, taking up the refrain of an improvised camel song, led by the tribal bard. Their greased, shoulder-length plaits, bleached with camels’ urine, swung from beneath their headcloths, their brilliantly coloured shirts billowed, and the tassels on their saddle-bags swung majestically, as every man sang for all he was worth ‘the deep-throated roaring of the tribes’, so that the camels pricked up their ears, lowered their heads, stretched out their necks, and lengthened their pace. Day by day, their numbers increased as Bedu contingents from almost every tribe in the Hejaz flocked to the Hashemite banner, until the force was 8,000 strong. Suddenly, the dismal image of defeat began to recede: suddenly, even the capture of Damascus looked possible. Feisal and Lawrence knew that this was the real beginning of the revolt, for after this historic massing of the tribes, the Hejaz would never be the same again. Lawrence called it the ‘biggest moral achievement of the new Hejaz government’: for the first time in memory, he said, an entire tribe had marched into another tribe’s district without thought of plunder or blood-feud, complete with transport and supplies, united in a military goal against a common enemy. It was, as Auda ibn Hamad, Sheikh of the Rifa’a, told Feisal, ‘not an army, but a world which is moving on Wejh’.¹⁰