Outside, in the moonlight, I found a young, eye-glassed lieutenant--correct, aloof, and immaculate. In atrocious French he asked if I were badly shaken, and if I thought I could ride for three hours. I did not think I could ride for three hours. He was sorry, but I really must ride for three hours. Why, then, had he troubled to ask my opinion if I could ride for three hours? He made no reply, but I heard him giving instructions to the Sanitätsunteroffizier, who had come with him, to have me put on a mule and to ride behind, while a guide led the way to Army Group Headquarters. A shambling, decrepit mule was commandeered; and, with many a groan, I was helped on to its back. The Sanitätsunteroffizier mounted his pony, drew his revolver, and cocked it with an ostentatious click. An Arab guide took hold of my mule's reins. I said goodbye to the Arab and Armenian officers, and we moved off down a straggling track. The commandant had had no chance to give me the address of his friend in Damascus. About fifty yards ahead I saw what looked like a Bedouin, galloping across a stretch of grass and disappearing behind a mound. And then, from the camp behind us, came a startled and furious shout: "_Mein Pferd! Teufel! Wo ist mein Pferd?_" The Sanitätsunteroffizier motioned our guide to turn round, and we retraced our path. The young staff officer--no longer correct, aloof, and immaculate, and with eye-glass dangling unheeded in front of his tunic--was in a loud-voiced rage. He had told "one of these brutes," said he to the Sanitätsunteroffizier, to hold his horse, and he now found that both the horse and the brute had disappeared. I remembered the Bedouin whom I had seen riding across the patch of grass, and was infinitely amused. It appeared that the man who held the horse had already deserted twice and been recaptured. For his third attempt, who could blame him for taking as companion a German officer's horse, since Allah had sent such a wonderful gift? And the young German raged and cursed and shouted verbal contempt for all these Asiatic "cattle," among whom it was his misfortune to live. Finally, after promising the commandant all sorts of penalties, he said he would take the best horse from the Arab officers' stable. The Sanitätsunteroffizier and I again walked our mules along the narrow track. It was a ride that will live always vividly in my memory. The guide dragged my mule up impossible slopes, pulled it over slippery rocks that ended in an almost vertical drop of several feet, and beat it unmercifully on the several occasions when it fell forward on to its knees. Each small jolt sent an exquisite pain through my contused thigh, and my head felt as if it were being beaten by hammers. Everything seemed unreal. The piles of heaped-up stones, so common in this country of nomad Arabs, looked like monstrous gargoyles in the half-light of the moon.