To return to the narrative. After the defeat of El Eilafun on September 1, the position at Khartoum became well-nigh desperate. All the tribes in the neighbourhood submitted to the Mahdi and hurried to Khartoum to take part in the siege. "They fired projectiles from the guns, rockets, and firearms of all descriptions, which fell on the town from all sides. From time to time, the troops made sorties out of the city to drive them off, but almost each time their efforts proved fruitless, and they had to return to the garrison, for the projectiles of the rebels were numerous. On January 5, 1885, Omdurman capitulated. "Khartoum then fell into a dangerous state. The rebels surrounded it from all sides, and cut off all supplies. .. . The soldiers suffered terribly from want of food; some of them deserted and joined the rebels. Gordon Pasha used to say every day, 'They [the English] must come to-morrow,' but they never came, and we began to think that they must have been defeated after all. We all became heartbroken, and concluded that no army was coming to relieve Khartoum." The townspeople began to talk of capitulation. General Gordon appealed to them, on January 25, to make a determined stand for another twenty-four hours, by which time he thought that the English relief would arrive. "What more can I were his words to Bordeini Bey. "The people will no longer believe me. I have told them over and over again that help would be here, but it has never come, and now they must see I tell them lies. If this, my last promise, fails, I can do nothing more. Go and collect all the people you can on the lines and make a good stand. Now leave me to smoke these cigarettes."

say?

The end was very near. Early on the morning of January 26, by which time Sir Charles Wilson's steamers had reached the foot of the

Sixth Cataract, the Dervishes made a general attack on the lines and met with but a feeble resistance from the half-starved and disheartened soldiers. Farag Pasha, the commandant, who was suspected of treachery, escaped to the Mahdist camp, and met his death a short time afterwards at the hands of an Arab with whom he had a blood feud. The Palace was soon reached. General Gordon stood in front of the entrance to his office. He had on a white uniform. His sword was girt around him, but he did not draw it. He carried a revolver in his right hand, but he disdained to use it. The final scene, in which the civilised Christian faced barbarous and triumphant fanaticism, is thus described by Bordeini Bey, and it would be difficult, whether in tales of fact or of fiction, to find a more pathetic, or, it may be added, a more dramatic passage: "Taha Shahin was the first to encounter Gordon beside the door of the Divan, apparently waiting for the Arabs and standing with a calm and dignified manner, his left hand resting on the hilt of his sword. Shahin, dashing forward with the curse, Malaoun, el-yom yomak' (O cursed one, your time is come!), plunged his spear into his body. Gordon, it is said, made a gesture of scorn with his right hand and turned his back, when he received another spear-wound, which caused him to fall forward, and was most likely his mortal wound. The other three men closely following Shahin then rushed in, and cutting at the prostrate body with their swords, must have killed him in a few seconds. His death occurred just before sunrise. He made no resistance, and did not fire a shot from his revolver. From all I know, I am convinced that he never intended

1 From information subsequently obtained, it would appear that General Gordon received his death-blow, not from Taha Shahin, as stated above, but from Sheikh Mohammed Nebawi, who was eventually killed at the battle of Omdurman.

to surrender. I should say that he must have intended to use his revolver only if he saw it was the intention of the Arabs to take him prisoner alive; but he saw such crowds rushing on him with swords and spears, and there being no important Emirs with them, he must have known that they did not intend to spare him, and that was most likely what he wanted; besides, if he had fired, it could only have delayed his death a few moments, the wild fanatical Arabs would never have been checked by a few shots from a revolver. Gordon Pasha's head was immediately cut off and sent to the Mahdi at Omdurman, while his body was dragged downstairs and left exposed for a time in the garden, where many came to plunge their spears into it."1

Foul creatures were not wanting to kick the dead lion. Bordeini Bey goes on to say: "I saw Gordon Pasha's head exposed in Omdurman. It was fixed between the branches of a tree, and all who passed by threw stones at it. The first to throw a stone was Youssuf Mansour, late Mamour of Police at El Obeid, whom Gordon Pasha had dismissed for misconduct, and who afterwards commanded the Mahdi's artillery."

Thus General Gordon died. Well do I remember the blank feeling of grief and disappointment with which I received the news of his death, and even now, at this distance of time, I cannot pen the record of those last sad days at Khartoum without emotion. If any consolation can be offered to those who strove, but strove in vain, to save him, it is to be found in the fact that it may be said of General Gordon, perhaps more than of any man, that he was felix opportunitate mortis.

1 The best evidence obtainable goes to prove that Bordeini Bey's account of General Gordon's death is substantially correct. It differs, however, in many important particulars from the account given by M. Neufeld in chap. xxv. of A Prisoner of the Khalifa.

Could we but choose our time and choose aright,
'Tis best to die, our honour at the height,
When we have done our ancestors no shame,
But served our friends, and well secured our fame.
Then should we wish our happy life to close,
And leave no more for fortune to dispose;
So should we make our death a glad relief
From future shame, from sickness, and from grief.

Dryden's lines may well serve as General Gordon's epitaph. He died in the plenitude of his reputation, and left a name which will be revered so long as the qualities of steadfast faith and indomitable courage have any hold on the feelings of mankind.

Rarely has public opinion in England been so deeply moved as when the news arrived of the fall of Khartoum. The daily movements of the relief expedition had been watched by anxious multitudes of General Gordon's countrymen, yearning for news of one who seemed to embody in his own person the peculiar form of heroism which is perhaps most of all calculated to move the Anglo-Saxon race. When General Gordon's fate was known a wail of sorrow and disappointment was heard throughout the land. The Queen's feelings, as a Sovereign and as a woman of lively sympathies, were touched to the quick. Her Majesty wrote a sympathetic letter to Miss Gordon, deeply lamenting her "dear brother's cruel, though heroic fate. On this, as on other occasions, the Queen's language truly represented the feelings of the nation. Yet the

1 On March 19, 1885, Sir Henry Ponsonby, the Queen's Private Secretary, wrote to me: "I now quite admit that I did not understand Gordon, that I did not see what you did, the force and reality of his position and requirements. The Government were to blame in not understanding this also, but I think we all here-the people, high and low-should share the responsibility, for we did not grasp the situation as we should have done. The Queen was in a terrible state about the fall of Khartoum, and indeed it had a good deal to do with making her ill. She was just going out when she got the telegram, and sent for

British nation had done its duty. Parliament voted supplies in no grudging spirit to enable an expedition to be sent to General Gordon's relief, and public opinion ratified the vote. The British army also sustained its ancient reputation. Mistakes Mistakes may have been, and, indeed, were made. But whatever judgment may be pronounced by competent critics in connection with some points of detail, the true reasons for the failure must be sought elsewhere. They are thus stated by Sir Reginald Wingate: "To innumerable enemies, flushed with victory and ardent fanaticism, Gordon exposed a skill and experience in savage warfare which few could equal. Ill-provisioned in a place naturally and artificially weak, Gordon for months preserved an undaunted front. Neither treachery in the besieged nor the stratagems of the besiegers caused the fall of Khartoum. The town fell through starvation, and despair at long neglect. There were no elements of chance in the expedition to relieve General Gordon. It was sanctioned too late. As day by day no English came, so day by day the soldiers' hearts sank deeper and deeper into gloom. As day by day their strength wasted, so that finally gum, their only food, was rejected, so day by day the Nile ebbed back from the ditch it had filled with mud, and from the rampart it had crumbled, and left a broad path for who should dare to enter.

me. She then went out to my cottage, a quarter of a mile off, walked into the room, pale and trembling, and said to my wife, who was terrified at her appearance-Too late!"

Throughout the whole of this difficult period, I received the utmost support from the Queen. On March 13, 1885, the following note, written by Her Majesty, was communicated to me by my brother (Mr. Edward Baring, subsequently Lord Revelstoke): "The concluding paragraph of Sir E. Baring's telegram" (I am not quite sure to what particular telegram allusion is here made) “is admirable. Let the Queen have a copy. She wishes Mary" (Lady Ponsonby, who was Lady Revelstoke's sister) "would tell Mr. Edward Baring that the Queen has endorsed everything his brother has said.”

1 Mahdiism, etc., p. 156.