for them in the Hejaz.

We were in close touch with the shore through fishing-canoes by day and
secret emissaries by night, who brought us news that some German
"officers" had been done to death by Hejazi tribesmen some eight hours'
journey north of Jeddah. They had evidently been first over-powered and
bound, then stabbed in the stomach with the huge two-handed dagger which
the Hejazis use, and finally decapitated, as a Turkish rescue party
which hurried to the spot found their headless and practically
disembowelled corpses with their hands tied behind them. Their effects
came through our hands in due course, and we ascertained that the party
consisted of Lieut.-Commander von Moeller (late of a German gunboat
interned at Tsing-Tao) and five reservists whom he had picked up in
Java. They had landed on the South Arabian coast in March, had visited
Sanaa, the capital of Yamen, and had come up the Arabian coast of the
Red Sea by dhow, keeping well inside the Farsan bank, which is three
hundred miles long and a serious obstacle to patrol work. They had landed
at Konfida, north of the bank, and reached Jeddah by camel on May 5.
Against the advice of the Turks they continued their journey by land,
as they had no chance of eluding our northern patrol at sea. They were
more than a year too late to emulate the gallant (and lucky) "Odyssey"
of the Emden's landing-party from Cocos Islands up the Red Sea coast in
the days when our blockade was more lenient and did not interfere with
coasting craft. They hoped to reach Maan and so get on the rail for
Stamboul and back to Germany, as the Sharif would not sanction their
coming to the sacred city of Medina, which is the rail-head for the
Damascus-Hejaz railway. After so staunch a journey they deserved a
better fate. Among their kit was a tattered and blood-stained copy of my
book on the Aden hinterland.[A]

Meanwhile affairs ashore were simmering to boiling-point, and on the
night of June 9 we commenced a bombardment of carefully located Turkish
positions, firing by "director" to co-operate with an Arab attack which
was due then but did not materialise till early next morning, and was
then but feebly delivered. We found out later that the rifles and
ammunition we had delivered on the beach some distance south of Jeddah
to the Sharif's agents in support of this attack had been partly
diverted to Mecca and partly hung up by a squabble with their own
camel-men for more cash.

We contin