The earlier marauding expeditions came back with empty bags. The first found the Meccans too carefully and strongly guarded. The second, though stronger in numbers, shot one arrow and turned tail. The third was to catch a caravan at a place where the roads from Syria and {75} Egypt meet, five days from Medina; it arrived a day too late. Mohammed decided to lead the fourth himself, but again the Meccans, knowing no doubt by this time what to expect, gave them the slip. Mohammed, however, succeeded in forming an alliance with a heathen tribe not disinclined to similar enterprise, and through whose territory the caravan route ran. A month later news reached Mohammed that along this road would pass a very rich burden, laden on 2,500 camels, and protected by 100 armed men. This time he summoned the Medinese to his white standard, and marched forth at the head of 200 followers. But the safety of a desert caravan lies not so much in numbers as in cunning, and even this huge unwieldy caravan outwitted the highwaymen and passed on its way in safety. It was not an encouraging beginning for Moslem arms, but it brought men under the magnetic sway of Mohammed's leadership; it established Mohammed's right to drill and command the believers, and it whetted their Arabian appetites for blood and plunder. {76} When a man has once justified himself for highway robbery--and this was not hard for one who claimed to be the Prophet of God in Arabia in the seventh century--it was easy for him to justify worse methods. Mohammed's followers had failed before armed troops--there was still another way. [Sidenote: The 'Believers' break the Sacred Truce.]