Gordon invited to the Soudan—The Mahdi—Chinese Gordon—His religious feeling—Not supported by England—Arabs attack—Blacks as cowards—Pashas shot—The Abbas sent down with Stewart—Her fate—Relief coming—Provisions fail—A sick steamer—Bordein sent down to Shendy—Alone on the house-top—Sir Charles Wilson and Beresford steam up—The rapids and sand-bank—“Do you see the flag?”—“Turn and fly”—Gordon’s fate.

In January, 1884, Charles Gordon was asked by the British Government to go to Egypt and withdraw from the Soudan the garrisons, the civil officials, and any of the inhabitants who might wish to be taken away. It was a dangerous duty he had to perform, as the Mahdi, a religious pretender in whom many believed, had just annihilated an Egyptian army led by an Englishman, Hicks Pasha, and, supported by the Arab slave-dealers, had revolted against Egyptian rule.

Gordon had some years before been Governor-General of the Soudan for the Khedive Ismail. He had been then offered £10,000 a year, but would not take more than £2,000, for he knew it would be “blood money wrung from the wretches under his rule.” When previously “Chinese Gordon,” as he was called, had put down the Taiping rebels for the Chinese Government, he refused the enormous treasure which was offered him, in order to mark his resentment at the treachery of the Emperor for having executed the rebel chiefs after Gordon had promised them their lives.

Gordon was a man of simple piety. “God dwells in us”—this was the doctrine he most valued. After the Bible, the “Imitation of Christ,” the writings of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, seem to have been his favourites. He once wrote: “Amongst troubles and worries no one can have peace till he stays his soul upon his God. It gives a man superhuman strength.... The quiet, peaceful life of our Lord was solely due to His submission to God’s will.”

Such was the man whom England sent out too late to face the rising storm of Arab rebellion. Gordon reached Khartoum on the 18th of February, taking up his quarters in the palace which had been his home in years before. He had come, he said, without troops, nor would he fight with any weapons but justice. The chains were struck off from the limbs of the prisoners in the dungeons.

“I shall make them love me,” he said; and the black people came in their thousands to kiss his feet, calling him “the Sultan of the Soudan.”

But time went by, and Gordon could not get the Government at home to second his schemes, so that the natives began to lose confidence in him, and sided with the Mahdi.

The Arabs began to attack Khartoum on the 12th of March, and from that date until his death Gordon was engaged in defending the city. Khartoum is situated on the western bank of the Blue Nile, on a spit of sand between the junction of that river with the White Nile. Nearly all the records of this period have been lost, but it is proved that wire entanglements were stretched in front of the earthworks, mines were laid down, the Yarrow-built steamers were made bullet-proof and furnished with towers, guns were mounted on the public buildings, and expeditions in search of food were sent out.

It was Gordon’s habit to go up on the roof at sunrise and scan the country around.

“I am not alone,” he would say, “for He is ever with me.”

On the 16th of March he had to look upon his native troops retiring before the rebel horsemen. He writes:

“Our gun with the regulars opened fire. Very soon a body of about sixty rebel horsemen charged down upon my Bashi-Bazouks, who fired a volley, then turned and fled. The horsemen galloped towards my square of regulars, which they immediately broke. The whole force then retreated slowly towards the fort with their rifles shouldered. The men made no effort to stand, and the gun was abandoned. Pursuit ceased about a mile from stockade, and there the men rallied. We brought in the wounded. Nothing could be more dismal than seeing these horsemen, and some men even on camels, pursuing close to troops, who with arms shouldered plodded their way back.”

But Gordon was no weak humanitarian. Two Pashas were tried, and found guilty of cowardice, and were promptly shot—pour encourager les autres. After that he tried to train his men to face the enemy by little skirmishes, and he made frequent sallies with his river steamers.

“You see,” he wrote, “when you have steam on the men can’t run away.”

Then began a long and weary waiting for the relief which came not until it was too late. The Arabs kept on making attacks, which they never pressed home, expecting to effect a surrender from scarcity of food.

In September only three months’ food remained. No news came from England; they knew not if England even thought of them. The population of Khartoum was at first about 60,000 souls; nearly 20,000 of these were sent away as the siege went on as being friends of the Mahdi.

On the 9th of September Gordon sent down the Nile, in a small paddle-boat named the Abbas, Colonel Stewart, Mr. Power, M. Herbin, the French Consul, some Greeks, and about fifty soldiers. They took with them letters, journals, dispatches which were to be sent from Dongola. The Abbas drew little water, the river was in full flood, and they seemed likely to be able to get over the rapids with safety. Henceforth Gordon was alone with his black and Egyptian troops. One might have thought that his heart would have sunk within him at the loneliness of his situation, at the feeling of desertion by England, and of treachery in his own garrison. He had no friend to speak to, no sympathetic companion left at Khartoum. Yes, he had one Friend left, and in his journal he tells us that he was happier and more peaceful now than in the earlier months of the siege.

“He is always with me. May our Lord not visit us as a nation for our sins, but may His wrath fall on me, hid in Christ. This is my frequent prayer, and may He spare these people and bring them to peace.”

The ill-fated Abbas was wrecked, her passengers and crew were murdered, her papers were taken to the Mahdi, who now knew exactly how long Khartoum could hold out against famine.

On the 21st of September Gordon first heard the news of a relief expedition being sent from England, and three days later he resolved to dispatch armed steamers to Metemma down the Nile to await the arrival of our troops. They started on the 30th, taking with them many of Gordon’s best men; but Gordon went on, drilling, feeding the hungry, visiting the sick, writing hopefully, and sometimes merrily, in his journals. For instance, writing of an official who had telegraphed, “I should like to be informed exactly when Gordon expects to be in difficulties as to provisions and ammunition,” Gordon remarks:

“This man must be preparing a great statistical work. If he will only turn to his archives he will see we have been in difficulties for provisions for some months. It is as if a man on the bank, having seen his friend in a river already bobbed down two or three times, hails, ‘I say, old fellow, let us know when we are to throw you the life-buoy. I know you have bobbed down two or three times, but it is a pity to throw you the life-buoy until you are in extremis, and I want to know exactly.’”

On the 21st of October the Mahdi arrived before Khartoum, and Gordon was informed of the loss of the Abbas and the death of his friends. To this Gordon replied:

“Tell the Mahdi that it is all one to me whether he has captured 20,000 steamers like the Abbas—I am here like iron.”

On the 2nd of November there were left provisions for six weeks, and he could not put the troops on half rations, lest they should desert.

On the 12th an attack was made upon Omdurman, a little way down the river, and on Gordon’s steamers Ismailia and Hussineyeh. The latter was struck by shells, and had to be run aground. In the journal we read:

“From the roof of the palace I saw that poor little beast Hussineyeh fall back, stern foremost, under a terrific fire of breechloaders. I saw a shell strike the water at her bows; I saw her stop and puff off steam, and then I gave the glass to my boy, sickened unto death. My boy (he is thirty) said, ‘Hussineyeh is sick.’ I knew it, but said quietly, ‘Go down and telegraph to Mogrim, “Is Hussineyeh sick?”’”

On the 22nd of November Gordon summed up his losses. He had lost nearly 1,900 men, and 242 had been wounded. And where were the English boats that were to hurry up the Nile to his rescue?

On the 30th of November only one boat had passed the third cataract, the remaining 600 were creaking and groaning under the huge strain that was hauling them painfully through the “Womb of Rocks.”

In December the desertions from the garrison increased, as the food-supply decreased. There was not fifteen days’ food left now in Khartoum. So the steamer Bordein was sent down to Shendy with letters and his journal. In a letter to his sister he writes:

“I am quite happy, thank God! and, like Lawrence, I have tried to do my duty.”

The last entry in his journal runs as follows:

“I have done the best for the honour of our country. Good-bye. You send me no information, though you have lots of money.”

Evidently this high-souled man was cut to the heart by what he thought was the ingratitude and neglect of England. He could not know that thousands of Englishmen and Canadians were toiling up the Nile flood to save him, if it were possible. But alas! they all started too late, since valuable time had been wasted in long arguments held in London as to which might be the best route to Khartoum.

Meanwhile, starvation was beginning: strange things were eaten by those who still remained faithful to the last. Only 14,000 now were left in the city. But Omdurman had been taken, the Arabs were pressing closer and fiercer, and Egyptian officers came to Gordon clamouring for surrender. Then he would go up upon the roof, his face set, his teeth clenched. He would strain his eyes in looking to the north for some sign, some tiny sign of help coming. He cared not for his own life—“The Almighty God will help me,” he wrote—but he did care for the honour of England, and that honour seemed to him to be sullied by our leaving him here at bay—and all alone!

Meanwhile, the English had fought their way to Gubat, where they found the steamers which Gordon had sent to meet them. So tired were the men that, after a drink of river-water, they fell down like logs. Four of Gordon’s steamers, with Sir Charles Wilson and Captain C. Beresford, started from Gubat on the 24th of January with twenty English soldiers and some undisciplined blacks. They were like the London penny steamers, that one shell would have sent to the bottom. They were heavily laden with Indian corn, fuel, and dura for the Khartoum garrison. Each steamer flew two Egyptian flags, one at the foremast and one at the stern. Every day they had to stop for wood to supply the engines, when the men would be off after loot or fresh meat.

When they reached the cataract and rapids the Bordein struck on a rock, and could not be moved for many hours, the Nile water running like a mill-race under her keel. Arabs on the bank were taking pot-shots at her, and the blacks on board grinned good-humouredly, and replied with a wasteful fusillade. After shifting the guns and stores, the crew got the Bordein to move on the 26th of January, but only to get fast upon a sand-bank. Precious time was thus lost, and on the 27th of January a camel man shouted from the bank that Khartoum was taken and Gordon killed. No one believed this news.

Near Halfiyeh a heavy fire was opened upon them at 600 yards from four guns and many rifles. The gunners on the steamers were naked, and looked like demons in the smoke.

“One huge giant was the very incarnation of savagery drunk with war,” writes Sir Charles Wilson.

When the steamers had passed the batteries the Soudanese crews screamed with delight, lifting up their rifles and shaking them above their heads.

Soon they saw the Government House at Khartoum above the trees, and excitement stirred every heart. The Soudanese commander, Khashm el Mus, kept on saying, “Do you see the flag?”

No one could see the flag.

“Then something has happened!” he muttered.

However, there was no help for it; they had to go on past Tuti Island and Omdurman, spattered and flogged with thousands of bullets.

“It is all over—all over!” groaned Khashm, as to the sound of the Nordenfeldt was added the deeper note of the Krupp guns from Khartoum itself.

As they reached the “Elephant’s Trunk”—so the sand-spit was called below Khartoum—they saw hundreds of Dervishes ranged under their banners in order to resist a landing; so the order was given with a heavy heart: “Turn her, and run full speed down.” Then the Soudanese on board, who till now had been fighting enthusiastically, collapsed and sank wearily on the deck. The poor fellows had lost their all—wives, families, houses!

“What is the use of firing? I have lost all,” said Khashm, burying his face in his mantle.

But they got him upon his legs, and the moment of sorrowful despair changed again to desperate revenge. After all the steamers got safely back.

And General Gordon—we left him alone in command of a hungry garrison—what of him? From examinations of Gordon’s officers taken later it seems that before daylight on the 26th of January the Arabs attacked one of the gates, and met with little or no resistance. There was reason to fear treachery. For some three hours the Arabs went through the city killing every one they met. Some of them went to the palace, and there met Gordon walking in front of a small party of men. He was probably going to the church, where the ammunition was stored, to make his last stand. The rebels fired a volley, and Gordon fell dead. It is reported that his head was cut off and exposed above the gate at Omdurman. We may be glad that it was a sudden death—called away by the God in whom he trusted so simply. Thus died one of England’s greatest heroes, one of the world’s most holy men.

The siege had lasted 317 days, nine days less than the siege of Sebastopol, and the Mahdi ascribed the result to his God. In a letter sent to the British officers on the steamers he says:

“God has destroyed Khartoum and other places by our hands. Nothing can withstand His power and might, and by the bounty of God all has come into our hands. There is no God but God.

“Muhammed, the Son of Abdullah.”