IX. MAN IN ARID LANDS: NORTH FROM JIDDAH
537
Fig. 3. Freight car on some remaining rail of the old Hijaz Railway.
mile, spiking the rails to the desert floor, fighting off hostile Bedouins and
wondering when their hot hard labors would ever end. Then, no doubt,
Turkish sentries paced the parapets above each station, and looked down
the tracks to the south where a great purple mountain looms large against
the sky, or north across the empty prairie, waiting, perhaps, for the sight
of smoke signaling another train carrying pilgrims south to Medina. Later,
probably, as war came, the sentries crouched nervously behind the heavy
doors set deep in stone casements, rifles loaded and cocked, and peered
out through narrow slits wondering when the nearby hills would yield up
a line of mounted raiders behind the robed figure of Colonel Lawrence.
Over there, for example, behind that jabal. The riders could assemble
quietly there, form a rough line of battle and then move out at a trot,
537
Fig. 3. Freight car on some remaining rail of the old Hijaz Railway.
mile, spiking the rails to the desert floor, fighting off hostile Bedouins and
wondering when their hot hard labors would ever end. Then, no doubt,
Turkish sentries paced the parapets above each station, and looked down
the tracks to the south where a great purple mountain looms large against
the sky, or north across the empty prairie, waiting, perhaps, for the sight
of smoke signaling another train carrying pilgrims south to Medina. Later,
probably, as war came, the sentries crouched nervously behind the heavy
doors set deep in stone casements, rifles loaded and cocked, and peered
out through narrow slits wondering when the nearby hills would yield up
a line of mounted raiders behind the robed figure of Colonel Lawrence.
Over there, for example, behind that jabal. The riders could assemble
quietly there, form a rough line of battle and then move out at a trot,