The armoured car had by this time used up all the spare tyres and inner tubes, and, when the retirement over the Shibley Pass began, it was going on bare rims. Its mobility was impaired, and, while it could still fight, it certainly could not run, and its tyreless progress over the mud and boulders which pass for a road in Azerbaijan was slow and painful. The limping car looked an easy prey to Turk or prowling robber hordes. So thought a band of two hundred Shahsavan tribesmen, as they rode down from the hills one morning on one of their periodical forays. They had watched the car from afar, and noted its limping gait and its helplessness. In that corner of upper Azerbaijan, from the Tabriz road east to Ardabil and the Caspian Sea, and north towards the Russian frontier, there roam free and unhampered a score or so of sub-tribes of the Shahsavan Clan, wild and lawless rascals for the most part, but not wanting in courage or in that rude chivalry common to the Asiatic hillmen. The Shahsavani handle a rifle skilfully. Pillaging is for them both a livelihood and a distraction. They are the recognized tax-gatherers of the Tabriz road, and {158} will rob a fat caravan, or disarm and strip the Shah's Cossacks, with equal impunity. And now the tribesmen got their lesson. The car stood on the roadside while Lieutenant Pierpont and his men were preparing breakfast. Approaching to within eight hundred yards, the raiders opened out, and charged to the accompaniment of wild yells. Then the machine-gun in the turret of the immobile car spoke up in reply. It sprayed the charging horsemen with lead; they broke and fled; but, reforming, came on anew. The gun spat more leaden hail, and this time the tribesmen had had enough; they fled in disorder, and ever afterwards gave a very wide berth to all such devilish contrivances as armoured cars and machine-guns. The Turks now grew seriously alarmed at our temerity in threatening to snatch Tabriz from their impending grasp. It was the door to the Caucasus and to one of the Turkish main theatres of military operations. It was a prize worth having, and for the Turks the possession of the capital of Azerbaijan was of scarcely less vital importance than it was for the British themselves. Kuchik Khan had already effectively barred the gate to Resht and shut us off from the Caspian on the east; now the Turk was completing the "bottling-up" process, for he was closing the door of Tabriz in our face and getting in the way of our reaching Tiflis in the north. [Illustration: ROAD NEAR RUDBAR. THE TWO LARGE ROCKS IN THE FOREGROUND REPRESENT ONE ATTEMPT OF THE JUNGALIES TO BLOCK THE ROAD.]