But they were the only means in sight just then, and we had to bear in mind that message I had made Rene send, warning the French to look out for an auto with a white flag and two civilians together with Feisul and Lawrence.  So we picked out the two best that remained, pitched Rene and his basket of provisions into the front one with Mabel and Jeremy, piled Narayan Singh in after them to take my place as the second civilian, and started them off straight forward, Grim and I following in a second car after I had paid our former Arab driver handsomely and sent him off grinning to give a lift to as many runaways as the car would hold.

We learned afterward that the rascal made a fortune, charging as much as fifty pounds sterling for the trip halfway back to Damascus, at which point the car collapsed.  They say he carried eleven officers that far, bought two wives with the proceeds and escaped all the way to a village near Mecca, where his home was.

You know how bewildering and tricky those early mists are when they start to roll up before the wind.  We had hardly got going when the whole mass seemed to shift in one great cloud, covering the fleeing troops and incidentally Feisul, but leaving us in our two autos high and dry, as it were, in full view of the French.  And they were advancing by that time.

I couldn’t see more than a division of them that we would have to reckon with—­nearly all Algerians—­and they looked dead-weary.  I guess they had forced the pace in advance of the main body in order to take advantage of the treason of Feisul’s officers.  They came slouching forward with their rifles at the trail and a screen of skirmishers thrown out a quarter of a mile or so ahead.

There were cavalry and guns far off on their right, evidently trying to work around to the flank of the fleeing array, but those were much too far away to trouble us and were going in the wrong direction.  Rolling banks of mist shut off the farther view to westward and there was no guessing where the main French force might be, and for all I know it hadn’t started from the coast yet.

Fortune came to our rescue with one riderless horse, a splendid Arab gelding tied by the bridle to the wheel of a water-cart and left behind in the stampede.  Jeremy appropriated it, riding Arab fashion with short stirrups, and I wouldn’t have blamed Feisul’s own brother for falsely identifying him at ten yards.  He was born mischievous and he caricatured Feisul on horseback as if he were acting for the movies.

I guess the French officers had good glasses with them, for Jeremy had hardly mounted when the advancing Algerians opened a hot fire on us.  The whole division surely wouldn’t have blazed away, with machine-guns and all, at two cars and a man on horseback unless someone had passed the word along that Feisul was in full view.

So Grim and I abandoned our car, driver and all, and jumped into Jeremy’s place.  It wasn’t more than two hundred yards to the top of a gentle rise, over which we disappeared from view; and just as we bumped over it I wrenched out the white tablecloth in which Rene’s chicken and stuff was wrapped and waved it violently.