But what had been an ample supply for the flocks of the patriarchs and passing caravans proved inadequate for the needs of the thousands of men and horses and camels thronging into Beersheba. A hundred thousand gallons is a big tax on the capacity of any well, and this is a very moderate estimate of the amount required daily by the troops. From the moment they were pronounced fit for use the watering-places by the station were crowded with thirsty men and animals, and the supply soon decreased alarmingly. To add to the trouble most of the stored water, accumulated previously with such care and labour, was delayed somewhere _en route_ to Beersheba and ultimately had considerable difficulty in reaching the place at all. Meanwhile the "Cameliers," whose mounts could last in fair comfort for a week without water, went off into the parched hills north of Beersheba to perform their usual function of protecting our flank. Then all the mounted troops took the road towards Sheria, so as to be in readiness for the main blow when the transport difficulty had been solved. CHAPTER XV GAZA AT LAST During the days immediately following the capture of Beersheba the mounted troops were kept exceedingly busy, for our position was yet by no means secure. Every day the Turks in the hills made an attempt to drive us eastwards into the desert and every day we strove to push them back on to their defences at Sheria. It was a series of battles for the wells, in effect, for here the eternal problems of transport and water were acute. The former was more or less solved in time for the big operations; the latter was the difficulty it had always been for the past two years, but in a different way. In the desert, whilst the wells were few and far between they were seldom more than fifty or sixty feet deep; in the district around Beersheba there were, to exaggerate a little, almost as many wells as in the whole of the Sinai Desert, but you could not get at the water! Scarcely a well was less than a hundred feet deep and most of them were anything over that up to a hundred and eighty; of course there were no pumps. The old shadouf of the desert, unwieldy though it was, would have been a veritable godsend to the troops here. A cavalryman could not pack a two-hundred foot coil of the lightest rope on to his saddle; it was as much as he could do to climb into it over the conglomeration of picketing-pegs and ropes, rifle-bucket, and sword which constituted his full marching order, and it was more or less the same in the artillery. Those patriarchs of old who built the wells would doubtless have been vastly diverted to see a trooper sit down and solemnly remove his putties with which to lengthen a "rope" already consisting of reins, belts, and any odds and ends of rope he had acquired, and when even these additions proved insufficient--! It was a joke which matured but slowly.