Perhaps Feisal’s two most important acquisitions after the taking of Wejh were in the persons of Jaafar Pasha and Auda Abu Tayi. Jaafar, an Arab from Baghdad, was a senior career officer in the Turkish army, a well-trained professional soldier who had fought the British with distinction in Libya, had been captured, had escaped, was recaptured, and was finally converted to the Arab cause. Jaafar would take command of the “regular” troops, a small and somewhat disheveled group of Arab prisoners of war from the Turkish army—at this point they numbered around 600—who were overshadowed by the more glamorous (and numerous) Bedouin. Jaafar conveyed to British officers a respectable and reliable military presence, despite the small size of his “army” and its tattered uniforms.

The second adherent was very different indeed. Auda Abu Tayi was a tribal leader of the Howeitat, “a tall, strong figure with a haggard face, passionate and tragic,” a warrior and bandit chieftain of fearsome reputation, “who had married twenty-eight times, and had been wounded thirteen times,” and who had killed with his own hands in battle seventy-five men, all Arabs, for he did not dignify the Turks he had slain by bothering to count them. Most of Auda’s life had been spent in raids and in blood feuds, the principal feud being against a cousin, during the course of which he had seen his own favorite son and half his own tribe killed. Auda was a bigger-than-life figure out of a desert saga from some other age: lean, hawk-nosed, with sharply pointed whiskers and beard, and flashing dark eyes that could change instantly from radiating good humor to furious menace. He was a hero who, had he not been a Bedouin and a Muslim, might have seemed at home beside such legendary figures as Ajax and Achilles, cunning, ruthless, violent, physically strong, a born leader and utterly without fear. He was known as a savage fighter and feared throughout northern Arabia, Syria, and Lebanon. The Turks had put a price on his head (among the Turks he had murdered was a tax collector) many times, without result. It was not just admiration for Auda that kept him safe—anybody who gave him up to the Turks would have to live in fear of revenge from Auda’s extended family, his tribe, and their allies. Even the Turks found it more expedient to bribe him than to attempt to hunt him down.

Close as was the relationship between Lawrence and Feisal, Lawrence’s intense admiration for Auda is a constant theme in Seven Pillars of Wisdom, not surprisingly, since they had many traits in common: physical courage, hardiness, cool judgment under fire, indifference to danger, a flamboyant gift for the theatrical side of warfare, and a magnetic attraction that drew hero-worshippers to them and made them natural leaders. Auda was the more bloodthirsty of the two; he reveled in killing his enemies, and had been known in his younger days to cut out the heart of someone he had killed and take a bite out of it while it was still beating—though, as James Barr points out in Setting the Desert on Fire, in that respect Auda was merely an old-fashioned traditionalist, since this had been, in the good old days, an accepted custom in desert blood feuds.

Lawrence’s description of Feisal’s camp at Wejh during February and early March 1917 makes it clear that the majority of his men were doing nothing except lounge around, while Feisal sought to resolve blood feuds and to win the loyalty (or at least the neutrality) of the sheikhs of the tribes and clans to the north. This involved endless negotiations and the exchange of “presents,” which in practice meant payment in gold sovereigns, and promises of more to come. The British supplied the gold, andalso, to the great amusement of the Arabs, two armored cars, and a variety of other vehicles, as well as drivers from the Army Service Corps, and a naval wireless station powered by a generator. The encampment was spread out and enormous, since each tribe and clan wanted its tents to be as far away from the others as possible, and included at its center a tented bazaar, or marketplace. Lawrence made a point of walking everywhere barefoot, so as to toughen the soles of his feet. He lived in comparative opulence in Feisal’s camp, on a raised “coral shelf” about a mile from the sea, where Feisal maintained “living tents, reception tents, staff tents, guest tents,” and the tents of the numerous servants. It was not only with gold and honeyed words that Feisal sought to impress the tribal leaders, but also with his impressive surroundings, as befitted a prince and a son of the sharif of Mecca. The number and size of his tents, the layers of priceless carpets, and the endless banquets—these were all necessary accompaniments if he was to move his army north toward Damascus.

For the moment, neither Jaafar’s “regulars” nor Auda’s tribesmen had much to do. Such action as was taking place consisted largely of raids inland to damage the railway line to Medina, and these were carried out by Newcombe, Garland, and Lawrence, accompanied by small numbers of tribesmen to engage the Turks if they appeared. The Turks were determined to repair the railway line whenever it was broken—and since the line had originally been intended to run all the way to Mecca, they had no shortage of rails stored in Medina with which to repair it.

Medina continued to be the focus of everybody’s attention. The Turks were determined to hold on to it; the army of Abdulla was ensconced to the north of the city in Wadi Ais; Feisal still harbored thoughts of advancing from Wejh to attack it in collaboration with Abdulla; Colonel Brйmond was being urged on by cables from Paris to persuade the Arabs to attack Medina at once. Early in March, the partial interception of a message from Jemal Pasha to Fakhri Pasha, which seemed to call for the evacuation of Medina and the transfer of the troops there to Gaza and Beersheba, set off a panic. General Murray, in Cairo, had been informed it was Prime Minister David Lloyd George’s personal wish that he shouldattack Gaza again, and he was preparing to do so with some reluctance, since he was also warned at the same time not to expect any additional troops, and even that he might have to send more of his units to France. The addition of two or three more Turkish divisions on the Gaza-Beersheba line would almost certainly prevent an attack, so it became imperative that either Medina should be taken, or the railway should be cut off once and for all so no Turkish troops could be transferred north.

Since his nominal superior Colonel Newcombe was away dynamiting railway tracks, Lawrence decided to ride from Wejh to Wadi Ais to inform Abdulla of what was happening—and, perhaps more important, what was expected of him, since, in Lawrence’s words, “he had done nothing against the Turks for the past two months.” Lawrence was ill with dysentery, “feeling very unfit for a long march,” but despite this he set off, with Feisal’s approval and a handpicked escort of tribesmen, for Wadi Ais, a distance of about 100 miles as the crow flies, but more on the ground. His traveling party might have made him feel uneasy had he not been too sick to think about it, since it was ill-assorted, consisting of men from different tribes. He was unable to ride more than four or five hours at a stretch; the pools of water and the few wells on the way had turned salty, a cause for some concern; boils on his back were giving him considerable pain when he rode; and the landscape, which was rugged, hilly, and flinty, made it necessary from time to time to dismount and walk the camels up zigzagging slippery trails of worn stone. In the distance, huge and fantastic rock formations loomed. Finally, the landscape changed: there was grass for the camels in a narrow valley, and the men camped for the night under the lee of a “steep broken granite” cliff. Lawrence was suffering from a headache, a high fever, occasional fainting fits, and attacks of dysentery that left him light-headed and exhausted.