  At last Fort Bodo was reached and there fortunately Stanley found all well and hoped that troubles were at an end. In the eight months of his absence he expected that Emin Pasha would certainly be ready to take his departure, and that the united company could enter upon its journey to the coast without delay. He impatiently waited daily news from the Pasha, for he must certainly be in camp by the lake with his people in the neighborhood of the storehouse which he had engaged to erect. At last a messenger came from Kavalli and Stanley learned what we have already learned. The news occasioned him bitter disappointment and a feeling of dread. The letter read:
Thus Emin was in the power of his barbarous inferiors, who, if they felt so disposed, could end his life any moment. But the province was in danger of being overrun by the swarms of Mahdists, and in that case there would be no alternative for man, woman, or child, but death or slavery. The efforts of the relief expedition had been wasted for a year, a very hell of torment had been endured, and hundreds of lives had been sacrificed, only at last to hasten the doom of Emin, for there is no doubt that the arrival of Stanley with his tattered, hungry people kindled the torch of revolt. The people of the Equatorial Provinces would not leave their country and exchange its comfort for poverty and wretchedness, and deaf to every protest of reason imprisoned their governor, who they believed would take them to strange countries, sell them as slaves, and forsake them. Fortunately Jephson reached the camp and Stanley learned from his own mouth what had transpired. He described the dissensions and insubordination of the Soudanese officers which made it impossible to organize any defence against the enemy approaching from the north. Stanley was indignant at the condition of affairs. “As they will not go they can stay and perish. But how can we save the Pasha?” “The Pasha would come to us if there were nothing to hinder,” said Jephson, “but he will not be rescued alone. These people have deceived him, imprisoned him, and treated him shamefully, and yet he will not be induced to forsake them when it means their certain destruction.” “That is bad,” said Stanley. “We shall have to carry him off by force.” The situation was a doubtful one. Stanley could not wait any longer at his camp on the shore of the lake, for he was in a country destitute of supplies and he was constantly exposed to danger from the hostile people in his vicinity. At last he succeeded in getting Emin with some of his most faithful officers to come to the camp and after endless discussions, deliberations, and protests, the tenth of April, 1889, was fixed upon for the march to the coast. Those of the Soudanese who would not join them within two months must take the consequences. Emin gave up with a sad heart. Over and over he declared he could not leave his people. The indifferent manner with which Stanley imposed his will grieved the man whom the negroes rightly designated as “father and mother of their country.” At last he had to yield. Of all his people only six hundred were in camp at the right time and saved from the dreadful cruelty of the Mahdi. |
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