g kite to round up one stray chick instead of sitting tight and
calling it in under her wing, so Aden made a belated and insane attempt
to save Lahej.

The Aden Movable Column, a weak brigade of Indians, young Territorials,
and guns, marched out at 2 p.m. on July 4, _i.e._ at the hottest time of
day, in the hottest season of the year and the hottest part of the
world. Motor-cars were used to convey the infantry of the advanced
guard, but the main body had to march in full equipment with ammunition.
The casualties from sunstroke were appalling. The late G.O.C. troops in
Egypt mentioned them to me in hundreds, and one of the Aden "politicals"
told me that not a dozen of the territorial battalion remained effective
at the end of the day. Many were bowled over by the heat before they had
gone two miles.

Most of the native camel transport, carrying water, ammunition and
supplies,--and yet unescorted and not even attended by a responsible
officer--sauntered off into the desert and vanished from the ken of that
ill-fated column.

Meanwhile the advanced guard of 250 men (mostly Indians) and two
10-pounder mountain-guns pushed on with all speed to Lahej, which was
being attacked by several thousand Turks and Turco-Arabs with 15-pounder
field batteries and machine-guns. They found the palace and part of the
town on fire when they arrived, and fought the Turks hand-to-hand in the
streets. They held on all through that sweltering night, and only
retired when dawn showed them the hopeless nature of their task and the
fact that they were being outflanked. They fell back on the main body,
which had stuck halfway at a wayside well (Bir Nasir) marked so
obviously by ruins that even Aden guides could not miss it. Shortage of
water was the natural result of sitting over a well that does not even
supply a settlement, but merely the ordinary needs of wayfarers.

This well is marked on the Aden protectorate survey map (which is
procurable by the general public) as Bir Muhammad, its full name being
Bir Muhammad Nasir. There are five wells supplying settlements within
half an hour's walk of it on either side of the track, but when we
remember that the column's field-guns got no further owing to heavy
sand, and that the aforesaid track is frequently traversed by ordinary
_tikkagharries_, we realise the local knowledge available.

The column straggled back to the frontier town of Sheikh Othman, which
they prepared to defend, but Simla, by