The sentries guarding the stores put up a little fight, and five more of us were wounded, but finally we burned the stores, and the flames were so bright and high that we had to gallop for two miles before we could be safe again in darkness.

So we crossed at a rather bad place, and there was something like panic for ten minutes, but we got over safely in the end, wounded and all.

We floated the wounded men and ammunition and rations for men and horses across on some of those strange goatskin rafts that go round and round and any way but forward.

We found them in the long grass by the river-bank.
At a town on the far side we seized new carts, far better than our old ones.

And then, because we might have been expected to continue eastward, we turned to the south and followed the course of the Tigris, straight into Kurdish country, where it did us no good to resemble either Turks or Kurds; for we could not hope to deceive the Kurds into thinking we were of their tribe, and Turks and Kurds are open enemies wherever the Turks are not strong enough to overawe.
They were all Kurds in these parts, and no Turks at all, so that our problem became quite different.