The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Story of General Gordon, by Jeanie Lang
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: The Story of General Gordon
Author: Jeanie Lang
Release Date: March 5, 2008 [EBook #24756]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STORY OF GENERAL GORDON ***
Produced by Al Haines
[Frontispiece: He would lead the troops onwards with the little cane he
nearly always carried.]
THE CHILDREN'S HEROES SERIES
THE STORY OF
GENERAL GORDON
BY
JEANIE LANG
LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK, LTD.,
35 and 36 Paternoster Row, E.C.
AND EDINBURGH
1906
TO
ARCHIE AND BERTIE DICKSON
AND ALL BOYS WHO ARE GOING
TO SERVE THEIR KING
ON LAND OR SEA
PREFACE
DEAR ARCHIE AND BERTIE,
When boys read the old fairy tales, and the stories of King Arthur's
Round Table, and the Knights of the Faerie Queen, they sometimes wonder
sadly why the knights that they see are not like those of the olden
days.
Knights now are often stout old gentlemen who never rode horses or had
lances in their hands, but who made much money in the City, and who
have no more furious monsters near them than their own motor-cars.
Only a very few knights are like what your own grandfather was.
"I wish I had lived long ago," say some of the boys. "Then I might
have killed dragons, and fought for my Queen, and sought for the Holy
Grail. Nobody does those things now. Though I can be a soldier and
fight for the King, that is a quite different thing."
But if the boys think this, it is because they do not quite understand.
Even now there live knights as pure as Sir Galahad, as brave and true
as St. George. They may not be what the world calls "knights"; yet
they are fighting against all that is not good, and true, and honest,
and clean, just as bravely as the knights fought in days of old.
And it is of one of those heroes, who sought all his life to find what
was holy, who fought all his life against evil, and who died serving
his God, his country, and his Queen, that I want to tell you now.
Your friend,
JEANIE LANG.
CONTENTS
Chapter
I. "Charlie Gordon"
II. Gordon's First Battles
III. "Chinese Gordon"
IV. "The Kernel"
V. Gordon and the Slavers
VI. Khartoum
ILLUSTRATIONS
He would lead the troops onwards with the little cane
he nearly always carried . . . . . . . . . _Frontispiece_
The Corporal was butted downstairs
The shell struck the ground five yards in front of him
With his own hands he dragged him from the ranks
Gordon appeared with soap, towels, a brush, a sponge,
and a fresh suit of clothes
In the Soudan buying two children for a basketful of dhoora
There rode into their camp Gordon Pasha
Looking for the help that never came
THE STORY OF
GENERAL GORDON
CHAPTER I
"CHARLIE GORDON"
Sixty years ago, at Woolwich, the town on the Thames where the gunners
of our army are trained, there lived a mischievous, curly-haired,
blue-eyed boy, whose name was Charlie Gordon.
The Gordons were a Scotch family, and Charlie came of a race of
soldiers. His great-grandfather had fought for King George, and was
taken prisoner at the battle of Prestonpans, when many other Gordons
were fighting for Prince Charlie. His grandfather had served bravely
in different regiments and in many lands. His father was yet another
gallant soldier, who thought that there was no life so good as the
soldier's life, and nothing so fine as to serve in the British army.
Of him it is said that he was "kind-hearted, generous, cheerful, full
of humour, always just, living by the code of honour," and "greatly
beloved." His wife belonged to a family of great merchant adventurers
and explorers, the Enderbys, whose ships had done many daring things on
far seas.
Charlie Gordon's mother was one of the people who never lose their
tempers, who always make the best of everything, and who are always
thinking of how to help others and never of themselves.
So little Charlie came of brave and good people, and when he was a very
little boy he must have heard much of his soldier uncles and cousins
and his soldier brother, and must even have seen the swinging kilts and
heard the pipes of the gallant regiment that is known as the Gordon
Highlanders.
Charles George Gordon was born at Woolwich on the 28th January 1833,
but while he was still a little child his father, General Gordon, went
to hold a command in Corfu, an island off the coast of Turkey, at the
mouth of the Adriatic Sea. The Duke of Cambridge long afterwards spoke
of the bright little boy who used to be in the room next his in that
house in Corfu, but we know little of Charles Gordon until he was ten
years old. His father was then given an important post at Woolwich,
and he and his family returned to England.
Then began merry days for little Charlie.
In long after years he wrote to one of his nieces about the great
building at Woolwich where firearms for the British army are made and
stored: "You never, any of you, made a proper use of the Arsenal
workmen, as we did. They used to neglect their work for our orders,
and turned out some splendid squirts--articles that would wet you
through in a minute. As for the cross-bows they made, they were grand
with screws."
There were five boys and six girls in the Gordon family. Charlie was
the fourth son, and two of his elder brothers were soldiers while he
was still quite a little lad.
It was in his holidays that the Arsenal was his playground, for on the
return from Corfu he was sent to school at Taunton, where you may still
see his initials, "C.G.G.", carved deep on the desk he used.
At school he did not seem to be specially clever. He was not fond of
lessons, but he drew very well, and made first-rate maps. He was
always brimful of high spirits and mischief, and ready for any sort of
sport, and the people of Woolwich must have sighed when Charlie came
home for his holidays.
One time when he came he found that his father's house was overrun with
mice. This was too good a chance to miss. He and one of his brothers
caught all the mice they could, carried them to the house of the
commandant of the garrison, which was opposite to theirs, gently opened
the door, and let the mice loose in their new home.
Once, with the screw-firing cross-bows that the workmen at the Arsenal
had made for them, the wild Gordon boys broke twenty-seven panes of
glass in one of the large warehouses of the Arsenal. A captain who was
in the room narrowly escaped being shot, one of the screws passing
close to his head and fixing itself into the wall as if it had been
placed there by a screwdriver.
Freddy, the youngest of the five boys, had an anxious, if merry, time
when his big brothers came back from school. With them he would ring
the doorbells of houses till the angry servants of Woolwich seemed for
ever to be opening doors to invisible ringers. Often, too, little
Freddy would be pushed into a house, the bell rung by his mischievous
brothers, and the door held, so that Freddy alone had to face the
surprised people inside.
But the wildest of their tricks was one that they played on the cadets
at Woolwich--the big boys who were being trained to be officers of
artillery. "The Pussies" was the name they went by, and it was on the
most grown up of the Pussies that they directed their mischief. The
senior class of cadets was then stationed in the Royal Arsenal, in
front of which were earthworks on which they learned how to defend and
fortify places in time of war. All the ins and outs of these
earthworks were known to Charlie Gordon and his brothers. One dark
night, when a colonel was lecturing to the cadets, a crash as of a
fearful explosion was heard. The cadets, thinking that every pane of
glass in the lecture hall was broken, rushed out like bees from a hive.
They soon saw that the terrific noise had been made by round shot being
thrown at the windows, and well they knew that Charlie Gordon was sure
to be at the bottom of the trick. But the night was dark, and Charlie
knew every passage of the earthworks better than any big cadet there.
Although there were many big boys as hounds and only two little boys as
hares, the Gordons easily escaped from the angry cadets. For some time
afterwards they carefully kept away from the Arsenal, for they knew
that if the "Pussies" should catch them they need expect no mercy.
From Taunton Charlie went for one year to be coached for the army at a
school at Shooters Hill. From there, when he was not quite sixteen, he
passed into the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich.
As a cadet, Charlie Gordon was no more of a book-worm than he had been
as a schoolboy. There was no piece of mischief, no wild prank, that
that boy with the curly fair hair and merry blue eyes did not have a
share in. But if he fairly shared the fun, Charlie would sometimes
take more than his fair share of blame or punishment. He was never
afraid to own up, and he was always ready to bear his friends'
punishment as well as his own for scrapes they had got into together.
Of course he got into scrapes. There was never a boy that was full of
wild spirits who did not. But Charlie Gordon never got into a scrape
for any thoughtless mischief and naughtiness. He never did anything
mean, never anything that was not straight, and true, and honourable.
He had been at the Academy for some time, and had earned many
good-conduct badges, when complaint was made of the noise and roughness
with which the cadets rushed down the narrow staircase from their
dining-room. One of the senior cadets, a corporal, was stationed at
the head of this staircase, his arms outstretched, to prevent the usual
wild rush past. The sight of this severe little officer was too great
a temptation for Charlie Gordon. Down went his head, forward he
rushed, and the corporal was butted not only downstairs, but right
through the glass door beyond. The corporal's body escaped unhurt, but
his feelings did not, and Charlie was placed under arrest, and very
nearly expelled from the College.
[Illustration: The Corporal was butted downstairs]
When his term at Woolwich was nearly over, a great deal of bullying was
found to be going on, and the new boys were questioned about it by the
officers in charge. One new boy said that Charlie Gordon had hit him
on the head with a clothes-brush--"not a severe blow," he had to own.
But Charlie's bear-fighting had this time a hard punishment, for he was
put back six months for his commission.
Until then he had meant to be an officer of Artillery--a "gunner," as
they are called. Now he knew that he would always be six months behind
his gunner friends, and so decided to work instead for the Engineers,
and get his commission as a "sapper."
At college, as well as at school, his map-drawing was very good, and
his mother was very proud of what he did. One day he found her showing
some visitors a map he had made. His hatred of being praised for what
he thought he did not deserve, and his hot temper, sprang out together,
and he tore up the map and threw it in the grate.
But almost at once he was sorry for his rudeness and unkindness, and
afterwards he carefully pasted the torn pieces of the map together for
his mother.
"How my mother loved me!" he wrote of her long years afterwards.
His hot temper was sometimes shown to his officers. He would bear more
than his share of blame when he felt that he deserved it, but when he
felt that blame was undeserved, his temper would flash out in a sudden
storm.
One of his superiors at Woolwich once said, scolding him,--"You will
never make an officer."
Charlie's honour was touched. His temper blazed out, and he tore off
his epaulettes and threw them at the officer's feet.
He always hated his examinations, yet he never failed to pass them.
When he was fifty years old, he wrote to his sister,--"I had a fearful
dream last night: I was back at the Academy, and had to pass an
examination! I was wide awake enough to know I had forgotten all I had
ever learnt, and it was truly some time ere I could collect myself and
realise I was a general, so completely had I become a cadet again.
What misery those examinations were!"
When he was nineteen, Charlie Gordon became Sub-Lieutenant Charles
Gordon of the Royal Engineers.
From Woolwich he went to Chatham, the headquarters of the Royal
Engineers, to have some special training as an Engineer officer.
There he found his cleverness at map-drawing a great help in his work,
and for nearly two years he worked hard at all that an officer of
Engineers must know, and soon he was looked on as a very promising
young officer.
In February 1854, he gained the rank of full lieutenant, and was sent
to Pembroke Dock to help with the new fortifications and batteries that
were being made there.
Whatever Charlie Gordon did, he did with all his might, and he was now
as keen on making plans and building fortifications, as he had once
been in planning and playing mischievous tricks.
When he returned to Pembroke thirty years later, an old ferryman there
remembered him.
"Are you the gent who used to walk across the stream right through the
water?" he asked.
And all through his life no stream was too strong for Gordon to face.
Gordon had not been long at Pembroke when a great war broke out between
Russia on one side, and England, France, and Turkey on the other. It
was fought in a part of Russia called the Crimea, and is known as the
Crimean War.
The two elder Gordons, Henry and Enderby, were out there with their
batteries, and, like every other keen young soldier, Charlie Gordon was
wild to go.
After a few months at Pembroke, orders came for him to go to Corfu. He
suspected his father of having managed to get him sent there to be out
of harm's way.
"It is a great shame of you," he wrote. But very shortly afterwards
came fresh orders, telling him to go to the Crimea without delay.
A general whom he had told how much he longed to go where the fighting
was, had had the orders changed.
On the 4th December 1854 his orders came to Pembroke. Two days later
he reported himself at the War Office in London, and on the evening of
the same day he was at Portsmouth, ready to sail. At first it was
intended that he should go out in a collier, but that arrangement was
altered. Back he came to London, and went from there to France.
At Marseilles he got a ship to Constantinople, and just as fearlessly
and as happily as he had ever gone on one of his mischievous
expeditions as a little boy, Charlie Gordon went off to face hardships,
and dangers, and death in the Crimea, and to learn his first lessons in
war.
CHAPTER II
GORDON'S FIRST BATTLES
The Crimean War had been going on for several months when, on New
Year's Day 1855, Gordon reached Balaclava.
The months had been dreary ones for the English soldiers, for, through
bad management in England, they had had to face a bitter Russian
winter, and go through much hard fighting, without proper food, without
warm clothing, and with no proper shelter.
Night after night, and day after day, in pitilessly falling snow, or in
drenching rain, clad in uniforms that had become mere rags, cold and
hungry, tired and wet, the English soldiers had to line the trenches
before Sebastopol.
These trenches were deep ditches, with the earth thrown up to protect
the men who fired from them, and in them the men often had to stand
hour after hour, knee deep in mud, and in cold that froze the blood in
their veins.
Illness broke out in the camp, and many men died from cholera. Many
had no better bed than leaves spread on stones in the open could give
them.
Some of those who had tents, and used little charcoal fires to warm
them, were killed by the fumes of charcoal.
A "Black Winter" it was called, and the Black Winter was not over when
Gordon arrived. He had been sent out in charge of 320 huts, which had
followed him in the collier from Portsmouth, so that now, at least,
some of the men were better sheltered than they had been before. But
they were still half-starved, and in very low spirits. Officers and
men had constantly to go foraging for food, or else to go hungry, and
men died every day of the bitter cold. And all the time the guns of
the Russians were never idle.
It was not a very gay beginning for a young officer's active service,
but Gordon, like his mother, had a way of making the best of things.
Even when, as he wrote, the ink was frozen, and he broke the nib of his
pen as he dipped it, "There are really no hardships for the officers,"
he wrote home; "the men are the sufferers."
Before he had been a month out, Gordon was put on duty in the trenches
before Sebastopol, a great fortified town by the sea.
On the night of 14th February, with eight men with picks and shovels,
and five double sentries, he was sent to make a connection between the
French and English outposts by means of rifle-pits. It was a pitch
black night, and as yet Gordon did not know the trenches as well as he
had known the earthworks at Woolwich Arsenal. He led his men, and,
missing his way, nearly walked into the town filled with Russians.
Turning back, they crept up the trenches to some caves which the
English should have held, but found no sentries there. Taking one man
with him, Gordon explored the caves. He feared that the Russians,
finding them undefended, might have taken possession of them when
darkness fell, but he found them empty. He then posted two sentries on
the hill above the caves, and went back to post two others down below.
No sooner did he and these two appear below than "Bang! bang!" went two
rifles, and the bullets ripped up the ground at Gordon's feet. Off
rushed the two men who were with him, and off scampered the eight
sappers, thinking that the whole Russian army was at their heels. But
all that had really happened was that the sentries on the hill above,
seeing Gordon and his men coming stealthily out of the caves in the
darkness, had taken them for Russians, and fired straight at them. The
mischief did not end there. A Russian picket was stationed only 150
yards away, and the sound of the shots made them also send a shower of
bullets, one of which hit a man on the breast, passed through his
coats, grazed his ribs, and passed out again without hurting him. But
no serious harm was done, and by working all night Gordon and his men
carried out their orders.
It was not long before Gordon learned so thoroughly all the ins and
outs of the trenches that the darkest night made no difference to him.
"Come with me after dark, and I will show you over the trenches," he
said to a friend who had been away on sick leave, and who complained to
him that he could not find his way about. "He drew me a very clear
sketch of the lines," writes his friend, Sir Charles Stavely,
"explained every nook and corner, and took me along outside our most
advanced trench, the bouquets (volleys of small shells fired from
mortars) and other missiles flying about us in, to me, a very
unpleasant manner, he taking the matter remarkably coolly."
Before many weeks were past, Gordon not only knew the trenches as well
as any other officer or man there, but he knew more of the enemy's
movements than did any other officer, old or young. He had "a special
aptitude for war," says one general. "We used to send him to find out
what new move the Russians were making."
Shortly after his adventure in the caves, Gordon had another narrow
escape. A bullet fired at him from one of the Russian rifle-pits, 180
yards away, passed within an inch of his head. "It passed an inch
above my nut into a bank I was passing," wrote Gordon, who had not
forgotten his school-boy slang. But the only other remark he makes
about his escape in his letter home is, "They (the Russians) are very
good marksmen; their bullet is large and pointed."
Three months later, one of his brothers wrote home--"Charlie has had a
miraculous escape. The day before yesterday he saw the smoke from an
embrasure on his left and heard a shell coming, but did not see it. It
struck the ground five yards in front of him, and burst, not touching
him. If it had not burst, it would have taken his head off."
[Illustration: The shell struck the ground five yards in front of him]
The soldiers at Sebastopol were not long in learning that amongst their
officers there was one slight, wiry young lieutenant of sappers, with
curly hair and keen blue eyes, who was like the man in the fairy tale,
and did not know how to shiver and shake.
One day as Gordon was going the round of the trenches he heard a
corporal and a sapper having hot words. He stopped and asked what the
quarrel was about, and was told that the men were putting fresh gabions
(baskets full of earth behind which they sheltered from the fire of the
enemy's guns) in the battery. The corporal had ordered the sapper to
stand up on a parapet where the fire from the guns would hail upon him,
while he himself, in safety down below, handed the baskets up to him.
In one moment Gordon had jumped up on to the parapet, and ordered the
corporal to stand beside him while the sapper handed up baskets to
them. The Russian bullets pattered around them as they worked, but
they finished their work in safety. When it was done, Gordon turned to
the corporal and said: "Never order a man to do anything that you are
afraid to do yourself."
On 6th June there was a great duel between the guns of the Russians and
those of their besiegers. A stone from a round shot struck Gordon, and
stunned him for some time, and he was reported "Wounded" by the
surgeon, greatly to his disgust. All day and all night, and until four
o'clock next day, the firing went on. At four o'clock on the second
day the English and their allies began to fire from new batteries. A
thousand guns kept up a steady, terrible fire of shells, and, protected
by the fire, the French dashed forward and seized one of the Russians'
most important positions. Attacking and being driven back, attacking
again and gaining some ground, once more attacking and losing what they
had gained, leaving men lying dead and dying where the fight had been
fiercest, so the weary days and nights dragged past.
"Charlie is all right," his brother wrote home, "and has escaped amidst
a terrific shower of grape and shells of every description. . . . He
is now fast asleep in his tent, having been in the trenches from two
o'clock yesterday morning during the cannonade until seven last night,
and again from 12-30 this morning until noon."
Both sides agreed to stop fighting for a few days after this, in order
to bury the dead.
The whole ground before Sebastopol was, Gordon wrote, "one great
graveyard of men, freshly made mounds of dark earth covering English,
French, and Russians."
From this time until September the war dragged on. It was a dull and
dreary time, and as September drew near Gordon thought of happy days in
England, with the scent of autumn leaves, and the whir of a covey of
birds rising from the stubble, and he longed for partridge-shooting.
But they shot men, not birds, in the Crimea. "The Russians are brave,"
he wrote, "certainly inferior to none; their work is stupendous, their
shell practice is beautiful." Gordon was never one to grudge praise to
his enemies.
Every day men died of disease, or were killed or wounded. On 31st
August 1855, Gordon wrote that "Captain Wolseley (90th Regiment), an
assistant engineer, has been wounded by a stone." In spite of stones
and shells, Captain Wolseley fought many brave fights, and years
afterwards became Lord Wolseley, Commander-in-Chief of the British
Army, a gallant soldier and a brilliant leader of men.
On 8th September one of the chief holds of the Russians was stormed by
the French, who took it after a fierce fight and hoisted on it their
flag. This was the signal for the English to attack the great fort of
the Redan. With a rush they got to the ditch between them and the
fortress, put up their ladders, and entered it. For half-an-hour they
held it nobly. Then enormous numbers of fresh Russian troops came to
the attack, and our men were driven out with terrible loss. At the
same time, at another point, the French were driven back. Nothing was
left for the allied troops but to wait till morning. It was decided
that when morning came the Highland soldiers must storm and take the
Redan. But this the Russians gave them no chance to do.
While Gordon was on duty in the trenches that night he heard a terrific
explosion.
"At four next morning," he writes, "I saw a splendid sight. The whole
of Sebastopol was in flames, and every now and then great explosions
took place, while the rising sun shining on the place had a most
beautiful effect. The Russians were leaving the town by the bridge;
all the three-deckers were sunk, the steamers alone remaining. Tons
and tons of powder must have been blown up. About eight o'clock I got
an order to commence a plan of the works, for which purpose I went to
the Redan, where a dreadful sight was presented. The dead were buried
in the ditch--the Russians with the English--Mr. Wright" (an English
chaplain), "reading the burial service over them."
The fires went on all day, and there were still some prowling Russians
in the town, so that it was not safe to enter it.
When the allied forces did go in, they found many dreadful sights. For
a whole day and night 3000 wounded men had been untended, and a fourth
of them were dead. The town was strewn with shot and shell; buildings
were wrecked, or burned down.
"As to plunder," wrote Gordon, "there is nothing but rubbish and fleas,
the Russians having carried off everything else."
For some time after the fall of Sebastopol, Gordon and his men were
kept busy clearing roads, burning rubbish, counting captured guns, and
trying to make the town less unhealthy.
He then went with the troops that attacked Kinburn, a town many miles
from Sebastopol, but also on the shores of the Black Sea. When it was
taken, he returned to Sebastopol.
For four months he was there, destroying forts, quays, storehouses,
barracks, and dockyards; sometimes being fired on by the Russians from
across the harbour; never idle, always putting his whole soul into all
that he did.
His work was finished in February 1856, and in March peace was declared
between Russia and Britain.
The name of Lieutenant Gordon was included by his general in a list of
officers who had done gallant service in the war.
By the French Government he was decorated with the Legion of Honour, a
reward not often given to so young a man.
A little more than a year of hard training in war had turned Charlie
Gordon the boy into Gordon the soldier.
In May 1856 Gordon was sent to Bessarabia, to help to arrange new
frontiers for Russia, Turkey, and Roumania. In 1857 he was sent to do
the same work in Armenia.
The end of 1858 saw him on his way home to England, a seasoned soldier,
and a few months later he was made a captain.
CHAPTER III
"CHINESE GORDON"
For a year after his return from Armenia Gordon was at Chatham, as
Field-Work Instructor and Adjutant, teaching the future officers of
Engineers what he himself had learned in the trenches.
While he was there, a war that had been going on for some years between
Britain and China grew very serious.
Gordon volunteered for service, but when he reached China, in September
1860, the war was nearly at an end. "I am rather late for the
amusement, which won't vex mother," he wrote. He found, however, that
a number of Englishmen, some of them friends of his, were being kept as
prisoners in Pekin by the Chinese. The English and their allies at
once marched to Pekin, and demanded that the prisoners should be given
up.
The Chinese, scared at the sight of the armies and their big guns,
opened the gates. But in the case of many of the prisoners, help had
come too late. The Chinese had treated them most brutally, and many
had died under torture.
Nothing was left for the allied armies to do but to punish the Chinese
for their cruelty, and especially to punish the Emperor for having
allowed such vile things to go on in his own great city.
The Emperor lived in a palace so gorgeous and so beautiful that it
might have come out of the Arabian Nights. This palace the English
general gave orders to his soldiers to pillage and to destroy. Four
millions of money could not have replaced what was destroyed then. The
soldiers grew reckless as they went on, and wild for plunder.
Quantities of gold ornaments were burned for brass. The throne room,
lined with ebony, was smashed up and burned. Carved ivory and coral
screens, magnificent china, gorgeous silks, huge mirrors, and many
priceless things were burned or destroyed, as a gardener burns up heaps
of dead leaves and garden rubbish.
Treasures of every kind, and thousands and thousands of pounds' worth
of exquisite jewels were looted by common soldiers. Often the men had
no idea of the value of the things they had taken. One of them sold a
string of pearls for 16s. to an officer, who sold it next day for £500.
From one of the plunderers Gordon bought the Royal Throne, a gorgeous
seat, supported by the Imperial Dragon's claws, and with cushions of
Imperial yellow silk. You may see it if you go some day to the
headquarters of the Royal Engineers at Chatham, and you will be told
that it was given to his corps by General Gordon.
After the sack of the Summer Palace Gordon had a very busy time,
providing quarters for the English troops, helping to distribute the
money collected for the Chinese who had suffered from the war, and
doing surveying and exploring work. On horseback he and a comrade
explored many places which no European had visited before, and many
were their adventures.
But it was in work greater than this that "Chinese Gordon" was to win
his title. While Gordon was a little boy of ten, a Chinese village
schoolmaster, Hung-Tsue-Schuen, who came of a low half-gipsy race, had
told the people of China that God had spoken to him, and told him that
he was to overthrow the Emperor and all those who governed China, and
to become the ruler and protector of the Chinese people.
Soon he had many followers, who not only obeyed him as their king, but
who prayed to him as their god. He called himself a "Wang," or king,
and his followers called him their "Heavenly King." He made rulers of
some thousands of his followers--most of them his own relations--and
they also were named Wangs, or kings. They also had their own special
names, "The Yellow Tiger," "The One-Eyed Dog," and "Cock-Eye" were
amongst these. Twenty thousand of his own clansmen, many of them
simple country people, who believed all that he told them, joined him.
There also joined him fierce pirates from the coast, robbers from the
hills, murderous members of secret societies, and almost every man in
China who had, or fancied he had, some wrong to be put right.
His army rapidly grew into hundreds of thousands.
When this host of savage-looking men, with their long lank hair, their
gaudy clothes and many-coloured banners, their cutlasses and long
knives, marched through the land, plundering, burning, and murdering,
the hard-working, harmless little Chinamen, with their smooth faces and
neat pigtails, fled before them in terror.
The Tae-Pings, as they came to be called, robbed them, slew them,
burned their houses and their rice fields, and took their little
children away from them. They flayed people alive; they pounded them
to death. Ruin and death were left behind them as they marched on.
Those who escaped were left to starvation. In some places so terrible
was the hunger of the poor people that they became cannibals, for lack
of any other food.
In one city which they destroyed, out of 20,000 people not 100 escaped.
"We killed them all to the infant in arms; we left not a root to sprout
from; and the bodies of the slain we cast into the Yangtse,"--so
boasted the rebels.
A march of nearly 700 miles brought this great, murdering, plundering
army to Nanking, a city which the Wangs took, and made their capital.
The frightened peasants were driven before them down to the coast, and
took refuge in the towns there. Many of them had crowded into the port
of Shanghai, and round Shanghai came the robber army. They wanted more
money, more arms, and more ammunition, and they knew they could find
plenty of supplies there. So likely did it seem that they would take
the port, that the Chinese Government asked England and France to help
to drive them away.
In May 1862 Gordon was one of the English officers who helped to do
this. For thirty miles round Shanghai, the rebels, who were the
fiercest of fighters, were driven back. In his official despatch
Gordon's general wrote of him:--"Captain Gordon was of the greatest use
to me." But he also said that Gordon often made him very anxious
because of the daring way in which he would go dangerously near the
enemy's lines to gain information. Once when he was out in a boat with
the general, reconnoitring a town they meant to attack, Gordon begged
to be put ashore so that he might see better what defences the enemy
had.
To the general's horror, Gordon went nearer and nearer the town, by
rushes from one shelter to another. At length he sheltered behind a
little pagoda, and stood there quietly sketching and making notes.
From the walls the rebels kept on firing at him, and a party of them
came stealing round to cut him off, and kill him before he could run
back to the boat. The general shouted himself hoarse, but Gordon
calmly finished his sketch, and got back to the boat just in time.
The Tae-Pings used to drag along with them many little boys whose
fathers and mothers they had killed, and whom they meant to bring up as
rebels. After the fights between the English troops and the Tae-Pings,
swarms of those little homeless creatures were always found.
Gordon writes: "I saved one small creature who had fallen into the
ditch in trying to escape, for which he rewarded me by destroying my
coat with his muddy paws in clinging to me."
In December 1862 Gordon, for his good service in China, was raised to
the rank of major.
Very soon afterwards the Chinese Government asked the English
Government to give them an English officer to lead the Chinese army
that was to fight with, and to conquer, the Tae-Ping rebels.
Already the Chinese soldiers had been commanded by men who spoke
English. One of these, an American adventurer, named Burgevine, was
ready to dare anything for power and money.
To his leadership flocked scoundrels of every nation, hoping to enrich
themselves by plundering the rebels.
Before long, Governor Li Hung Chang found that Burgevine was not to be
trusted, and the command was taken from him.
It was then that the Chinese Government asked England to give them a
leader for their untrained army of Chinese and of adventurers gathered
from all lands. This collection of rag, tag, and bobtail had been
named, to encourage it, and before it had done anything to deserve the
name, the "Chun Chen Chün," or the Ever-Victorious Army.
But "The Almost Always Beaten Army" would have been a much truer name
for it, and the victorious Tae-Pings scornfully laughed at it.
The English general in China had no doubt who was the best man for the
post.
He named Major Charles Gordon, and on 25th March 1863 Gordon took
command, and was given the title of Mandarin by the Chinese.
He knew that the idea of serving under any other monarch than his own
Queen would be a sorrow to his father. He wrote home begging his
father and mother not to be vexed, and telling them how deeply he had
thought before he accepted the command.
By taking the command, he said, he believed he could help to put an end
to the sufferings of the poor people of China. Were he not to have
taken it, he feared that the rebels might go on for years spreading
misery over the land. "I keep your likeness before me," wrote this
young Major who had been trusted with so great a thing to do, to the
mother whom he loved so much. "I can assure you and my father I will
not be rash. . . . I really do think I am doing a good service in
putting down this rebellion."
"I hope you do not think that I have got a magnificent army," he wrote
to a soldier friend. "You never did see such a rabble as it was; and
although I think I have improved it, it is still sadly wanting. Now,
both men and officers, although ragged and perhaps slightly
disreputable, are in capital order and well disposed."
Before his arrival, the soldiers had had no regular pay. They were
allowed to "loot," or plunder, the towns they took, and for each town
taken they were paid so much.
At once Gordon began to get his ragamuffin army into shape.
He arranged that the soldiers were to get their pay regularly, but were
to have no extra pay for the places which they took. Any man caught
plundering a town that was taken was to be shot. He replaced the
adventurers of all nations, many of them drunken rogues, who were the
army's officers, by English officers lent by the British Government.
He drilled his men well. He practised them in attacking fortified
places, and he formed a little fleet of small steamers and Chinese
gunboats. The chief of these was the _Hyson_, a little paddle steamer
that could move over the bed of a creek on its wheels when the water
was too shallow to float it.
The army, too, was given a uniform, at which not only the rebels but
the Chinese themselves at first mocked, calling the soldiers who wore
it "Sham Foreign Devils."
But soon so well had Gordon's army earned its name of "The
Ever-Victorious Army," that the mere sight of the uniform they wore
frightened the rebels.
In one month Gordon's army was an army and not a rabble, and the very
first battles that it fought were victories.
With 3000 men he attacked a garrison of 10,000 at Taitsan, and after a
desperate fight the rebels were driven out.
From Taitsan the victorious army went on to Quinsan, a large fortified
city, connected by a causeway with Soochow, the capital of the province.
All round Quinsan the country was cut up in every direction with creeks
and canals. But Gordon knew every creek and canal in that flat land.
He knew more now than any other man, native or foreigner, where there
were swamps, where there were bridges, which canals were choked with
weeds, and which were easily sailed up. He made up his mind that the
rebels in Quinsan must be cut off from those in Soochow.
At dawn, one May morning, eighty boats, with their large white sails
spread out like the wings of big sea-birds, and with many-coloured
flags flying from their rigging, were seen by the rebel garrison at
Quinsan sailing up the canal towards the city. In the middle of this
fleet the plucky little _Hyson_, with Gordon on board, came paddling
along.
By noon they reached a barrier of stakes placed across the creek.
These they pulled up, sailed to the shore, and landed their troops
close to the rebel stockades. For a minute the Tae-Pings stood and
stared, uncertain what to do, and then, in terror, ran before Gordon's
army.
There had been many boats in the creek, but the rebels had sprung out
of them and a left them to drift about with their sails up, so that it
was no easy work for the _Hyson_ to thread her way amongst them. Still
the little boat steamed slowly and steadily on towards Soochow. Along
the banks of the canal the rebels, in clusters, were marching towards
safety. On them the _Hyson_ opened fire, puffing and steaming after
them, and battering them with shells and bullets.
Like an angry little sheep-dog driving a mob of sheep, it drove the
rebels onwards. Many lay dead on the banks, or fell into the water and
were drowned. One hundred and fifty of them were taken as prisoners on
board the _Hyson_.
When they were less than a mile from Soochow, as night was beginning to
fall, Gordon decided to turn back and rejoin the rest of his forces.
Some of the rebels, thinking that the _Hyson_ was gone for good, had
got into their boats again, and were gaily sailing up the creek when
they saw the steamer's red and green lights, and heard her whistle.
The mere glare of the lights and hoot of the whistle seemed to throw
them into a panic. In the darkness the flying mobs of men along the
canal banks met other rebels coming to reinforce them, and in the wild
confusion that followed the guns of the _Hyson_ mowed them down. About
10.30 P.M. the crew of the _Hyson_ heard tremendous yells and cheers
coming from a village near Quinsan, where the rebels had made a stand.
Gordon's gunboats were firing into the stone fort, and from it there
came a rattle and a sparkle of musketry like fireworks, and wild yells
and shouts from the rebels. The gunboats were about to give in and run
away when the little _Hyson_ came hooting out of the darkness.
Gordon's army welcomed him with deafening cheers, and the rebels threw
down their arms and fled. The _Hyson_ steamed on up the creek towards
Quinsan, and in the darkness Gordon saw a huge crowd of men near a high
bridge. It was too dark to see clearly, but the _Hyson_ blew her
whistle. At once from the huddled mass of rebels came yells of fear.
It was the garrison of Quinsan, some seven or eight thousand, trying to
escape to Soochow. In terror they fled in every direction--8000 men
fleeing before thirty. The _Hyson_ fired as seldom as she could, but
even then, that day the rebels must have lost from three to four
thousand men, killed, drowned, and prisoners. All their arms also,
they lost, and a great number of boats.
Next morning at dawn, Gordon and his army took possession of Quinsan.
They had fought almost from daybreak until daybreak. "The rebels
certainly never got such a licking before," wrote Gordon.
The Ever-Victorious Army was delighted with itself, and very proud of
its leader. But they were less well-pleased with Gordon when they
found that instead of going on to a town where they could sell the
things they had managed to loot, they were to stay at Quinsan.
They were so angry that they drew up a proclamation saying that unless
they were allowed to go to a town they liked better, they would blow
their officers to pieces with the big guns. Gordon felt sure that the
non-commissioned officers were at the bottom of the mischief. He made
them parade before him, and told them that if they did not at once tell
him the name of the man who had written the proclamation, he would have
one out of every five of them shot. At this they all groaned, to show
what a monster they thought Gordon. One corporal groaned louder than
all the rest, and Gordon turned on him, his eyes blazing. So sure was
Gordon that this was their leader that, with his own hands, he dragged
him from the ranks.
[Illustration: With his own hands, he dragged him from the ranks]
"Shoot this fellow!" he said to two of his bodyguard. The soldiers
fired, and the corporal fell dead.
The other non-commissioned officers he sent into imprisonment for one
hour.
"If at the end of that time," said he, "the men do not fall in at their
officers' commands, and if I am not given the name of the writer of
that proclamation, every fifth man of you shall be shot."
At the end of the hour the men fell in, and the name of the writer of
the proclamation was given to Gordon. The man had already been
punished. It was the corporal who had groaned so loud an hour before.
This was not the only case that Gordon had in his own army. More than
once his officers were rebellious and troublesome. General Ching, a
Chinese general, was jealous of him. Ching one day made his men fire
on 150 of Gordon's soldiers, and treated it as a joke when Gordon was
angry. At the beginning of the campaign Gordon had promised his men
that they should have their pay regularly instead of plundering the
places they took. His own pay, and more, had gone to do this and to
help the poor. And now Li Hung Chang, the Governor, said he could not
pay the men; and no one but Gordon seemed to mind when Ching broke his
promise to prisoners who had been promised safety, and slew them
brutally.
Disgusted with this want of honour and truth in the men with whom he
had to work, Gordon made up his mind to throw up his command.
Just then, however, Burgevine, the adventurer, who had once led the
Emperor's army, again became very powerful. He gathered together a
number of men as reckless as himself, and joined the rebels. The
rebels made him a Wang, or King, and he offered so much money to those
who would serve under him that crowds of Gordon's grumbling soldiers
deserted and joined Burgevine.
Burgevine and his followers were a grand reinforcement for the rebel
army, and things began to look serious.
Gordon could not bear that the rebels should be allowed unchecked to
swarm over China and plunder and slay innocent people. Instead of
resigning he once more led the Ever-Victorious Army, and led it to
victory.
Soochow, "The City of Pagodas," was besieged. There were twice as many
soldiers in the town as there were besiegers, and amongst them were
Burgevine and his men. In front of the city Gordon placed his guns,
and after a short bombardment that did much damage to the walls, he
ordered his troops to advance. A terrific fire from the enemy drove
them back. Again Gordon's guns bombarded the city, and were pushed
forward as far as possible. Then again the besiegers rushed in, but
found that the creek round the city was too wide for the bridge they
carried with them. But the officers plunged fearlessly into the water
and dashed across. Their men followed them, the Tae-Pings fled, and
stockade after stockade was taken. Gordon himself, with a mere handful
of men, took three stockades and a stone fort.
In this siege, as in many other fights, Gordon had himself to lead his
army. If an officer shrank back before the savage enemy, Gordon would
take him gently by the arm and lead him into the thickest of the
battle. He himself went unarmed, and would lead his troops onwards
with the little cane he nearly always carried. Where the fire was
hottest, there Gordon was always to be found, caring no more for the
bullets that pattered round him than if they were hailstones. The
Chinese soldiers came to look on the little cane as a magic wand.
Gordon's "magic wand of victory," they called it.
During the siege he found men in his own army selling information to
the rebels. One young officer, more out of carelessness, it seemed,
than from any bad wish, had written a letter giving information to the
enemy.
"I shall pass over your fault this time," said Gordon, "if you show
your loyalty by leading the next forlorn hope."
Gordon forgot this condition, but the young officer did not. He led
the next assault, was shot in the mouth, and fell back and died in the
arms of Gordon, who was by his side.
A very wonderful old bridge, one of fifty-three arches, was destroyed
during the siege of Soochow, greatly to Gordon's regret.
One evening he was sitting smoking a cigar on one of the damaged
parapets of the bridge when two shots, accidentally fired by his own
men, struck the stone on which he sat. At the second shot he got down,
entered his boat, and started to row across the creek in order to find
out by whom the shots had been fired. He was scarcely clear of the
bridge than the part on which he had been seated fell crashing into the
water, nearly smashing his boat.
The Chinese were more sure than ever that it must be magic that kept
their general alive. Even when in a fierce fight he was severely
wounded below the knee, they believed that his magic wand had saved his
life.
From Soochow and the rebels he succeeded in rescuing Burgevine and his
miserable followers, even although he knew that Burgevine was ready for
any deed of treachery towards him at any minute.
One rebel stronghold after another fell before Gordon and his army, but
many and fierce were the fights that were fought before Soochow was
taken.
The Wangs gave in at last. They agreed to surrender if Gordon promised
to spare the lives of the leading Wangs--six in all--to treat all the
other rebels mercifully, and not to sack the city. To all these
conditions Gordon, Li Hung Chang, and General Ching gladly agreed, and
that night one of the gates was thrown open, and the Ever-Victorious
Army took possession of Soochow.
As a reward for their brave service, and to make up to them for the
loot they were not to have, Gordon asked Li Hung Chang to give his
troops two months' pay. Li refused, but presently gave them pay for
one month, and Gordon marched his grumbling soldiers back to Quinsan,
unable to trust them in a city where so much rich plunder was to be had.
As Gordon left the city the Wangs, wearing no arms, and laughing and
talking, rode past him on their way to a banquet with Li Hung Chang.
He never saw them alive again.
He had some time to wait for the steamer that was to take him to
Quinsan, so, having seen his army marching safely off, he rode round
the walls of the city. In front of Li Hung Chang's quarters he saw a
great crowd, but so sure did he feel that Li would not break his solemn
promises that he did not feel uneasy. A little later a large number of
General Ching's men entered the city, yelling loudly, and firing off
their guns. This was so unlike the peaceful way that Gordon and Ching
had promised they should behave, that Gordon went and spoke to their
officers.
"This will never do," he said. "There are still many rebels in the
city, and if our men get excited the rebels will get excited too, and
there will be fearful rioting."
Just then General Ching appeared. He had fancied Gordon safely
steaming across the lake, and when he saw him he turned pale.
In answer to Gordon's questions as to the meaning of the disturbance,
he gave some silly answer, which it was easy to see was untrue. Gordon
at once rode to the house of Nar Wang, the chief of the Wangs and the
bravest of them, to find out for himself what was wrong. On his way he
met crowds of excited rebels, and a large band of Ching's soldiers
laden with plunder. Nar Wang's house, he found, had been emptied of
everything by the thieving soldiers. An uncle of Nar Wang begged
Gordon to help him to take the women of Nar Wang's house to his own
home, where they would be in safety. Unarmed as he was, Gordon did so,
but when they got to the house of Nar Wang's uncle they found the
courtyard filled with thousands of rebel soldiers. The doors and gates
were shut at once, and Gordon was a prisoner. During the night more
and more rebels came to the house. They all said that Li Hung Chang
and Gordon had laid a trap for the Wangs and had taken them prisoners,
but none knew exactly what had happened to them. It was well for
Gordon that they did not. Probably they would have tortured him in one
of the many hideous ways the Chinese knew so well, and then put him to
death. At length Gordon persuaded his captors to allow him to send a
messenger to summon his own bodyguard, and also an order to some of his
other soldiers to seize Li Hung Chang, and not to let him go until the
Wangs had safely returned to their own homes.
On the way the messenger met some of Ching's soldiers, who wounded him
and tore up Gordon's message. The rebels then allowed Gordon to be his
own messenger; but on the way he met more of Ching's men, who seized
him, because, they said, he was in company with rebels, and kept him
prisoner for several hours.
When at last he got away and reached his own men, he sent a body of
them to protect the house of Nar Wang's uncle. General Ching arrived
just then. Gordon, furious with him for the looting and bad behaviour
of his men, fell on him in a perfect storm of rage, and Ching hurried
off to the city.
He sent an English officer to explain to Gordon what had happened, but
this officer said he did not know whether the Wangs were alive or dead.
He said, however, that Nar Wang's son was in his boat, and that he
would be able to tell him.
"My father has been killed," said the boy. "He lies dead on the other
side of the creek."
Gordon crossed the creek in a boat, and on the banks lay the dead
bodies of the Wangs, headless, and frightfully gashed. Li Hung Chang
and General Ching had broken their promise, and Gordon's. The guests
of the banquet of Li Hung Chang had been cruelly murdered.
Many were the excuses that the Chinese Governor had to offer; many were
the reasons that he gave for breaking faith so shamefully.
But to none of his excuses or reasons would Gordon listen. It is said
that, in furious anger, he sought Li Hung Chang, revolver in hand, that
he might shoot him like a dog. But Li wisely hid himself, and Gordon
sought him in vain. He wrote to Li, telling him he must give up his
post as Governor, or Gordon and his army would attack all the places
the Chinese held, retake them, and hand them back to the rebels. His
anger and his shame were equally great.
Li Hung Chang did the wisest thing that then could be done. He sent
for Halliday Macartney, a wise and brave English officer, and a friend
of Gordon's, and asked him to go to Gordon and try and make peace
between them. Macartney at once got a native boat with several rowers,
and started for Quinsan. It was the middle of the night when he
arrived, and Gordon was in bed. Very soon, however, he sent Macartney
a message, asking him to come and see him in his room. Macartney went
upstairs and found Gordon sitting on his bedstead in a badly lighted
room. When Gordon saw him, he stooped down, drew something from under
his bed, and held it up.
"Do you see that? Do you see that?" he asked.
Macartney stared in horror, scarcely able, in the dim light, to see
what it was.
"It is the head of Nar Wang, foully murdered!" said Gordon, and sobbed
most bitterly.
Halliday Macartney found it impossible then to get Gordon to forgive Li
for his treachery. For two months Gordon remained in quarters, while
inquiries, made at his demand, were being made about the death of the
Wangs.
During this time the Chinese Government gave Gordon a medal that only
the bravest soldiers ever received, to show how highly they valued his
services as general. The Emperor also sent him a gift of 10,000 taels
(then about £3000 of our money) and many other costly gifts. When the
treasure-bearers appeared in Gordon's quarters, bearing bowls full of
gold on their heads, as if they had walked straight out of the Arabian
nights, Gordon, believing the Emperor meant to bribe him to say no more
about the murder of the Wangs, was in a white-heat of fury. With his
"magic wand" he fell on the treasure-bearers, and flogged the amazed
and terrified men out of his sight.
Although the Government gave Gordon a medal for the way in which he had
fought, it was Li Hung Chang who took all the credit for the taking of
Soochow.
He published a report telling how the army under him had taken it. But
while Gordon was under a daily fire of bullets, and daily ran a hundred
risks of losing his life, the wily Li, who sounded so brave on paper,
was safely sitting in Shanghai, miles away from the besieged city.
Gordon had much cause for anger. There seemed every reason why he
should not forgive Li, and why he should leave China and its people to
the mercy of the rebels.
But Gordon had learned what it means to say "Forgive us our
trespasses." And not only that, but he had taken the sorrows of the
unhappy people of China into his heart. Whatever their rulers might
do, he felt he could not desert them. He must free them from the
cruelties of their oppressors, the Tae-Pings, before he went home to
his own land.
In February 1864 Gordon again took command. From then until 11th May
he was kept constantly fighting, and steadily winning power for the
Emperor of China.
On 10th May Gordon wrote to his mother: "I shall leave China as poor as
I entered it, but with the knowledge that through my weak
instrumentality upwards of eighty to one hundred thousand lives have
been spared. I want no further satisfaction than this."
On 11th May Gordon took Chanchufu, the last great rebel stronghold, and
the rebellion was at an end. "The Heavenly King" killed his wives and
himself in his palace at Nankin, and the other rebel chiefs were
beheaded.
Before Gordon gave up his command, the Chinese Government again offered
him a large sum of money, but again he refused it. But he could not
well refuse the honour of being made a Ti-Tu, or Field-Marshal, in the
Chinese Army, nor the almost greater honour of being given the Yellow
Jacket. To us the giving of a yellow jacket sounds a foolish thing,
but to a Chinaman the Yellow Jacket, and peacock's feathers that go
with it, are an even greater honour than to an Englishman is that plain
little cross that is called "The Victoria Cross," and which is given
for valour. Gordon accepted the yellow jacket, as well as six
magnificent mandarin dresses, such as were worn by a Ti-Tu. "Some of
the buttons on the mandarin hats are worth £30 or £40," he wrote. A
heavy gold medal was struck in his honour and given to him by the
Empress Regent. It was one of the few belongings he had for which
Gordon really cared a great deal, and presently you will hear how he
gave even that up for the sake of other people.
The Chinese Government told the British Government that Gordon would
receive no rewards from the Chinese for the great things he had done
for their country, and asked that his own Queen Victoria would give him
some reward that he would accept. This was done, and Major Gordon was
made a Lieutenant-Colonel and a Companion of the Bath.
Not only in China was he a hero, but in England also. Gordon had saved
China from an army of conquering robbers, "first"--it was written in
the _Times_--"by the power of his arms, and afterwards, still more
rapidly, by the terror of his name."
Li Hung Chang was ready to do anything that the hero wished, and so,
before he said good-bye to his army, Gordon saw that his officers and
men were handsomely rewarded.
It was not wonderful that his army had learned to love him, for even
the rebels who feared his name loved him too. They knew that he was
always true and brave, honourable and merciful.
Of him one of the rebels wrote: "Often have I seen the deadly musket
struck from the hand of a dastardly Englishman (tempted by love of loot
to join our ranks) when he attempted from his place of safety to kill
Gordon, who ever rashly exposed himself. This has been the act of a
chief--yea, of the Shield King himself."
All England was ready to give "Chinese Gordon" a magnificent welcome
when he came home. Invitations from the greatest in the land were
showered upon him.
But when, early in 1865, he returned, he refused to be made a hero of.
"I only did my duty," he said, and grew quite shy and ashamed when
people praised and admired him. He would accept no invitations, and it
was only a very few people who were lucky enough to hear him fight his
battles over again. Sometimes in the evening as he sat in the
fire-light, in his father's house at Southampton, he would tell his
eager listeners the wonderful tale of his battles and adventures in the
far-off land of pagodas.
And to them not the least wonderful part of what they listened to was
this, that the hero who was known all over the world as "Chinese
Gordon" was one who took no credit for any of the great things he had
done, and who was still as simple and modest as a little child.
CHAPTER IV
THE "KERNEL"
Had you lived thirty-five or forty years ago at Gravesend, a dirty,
smoky town on the Thames near London, you might have read chalked up on
doors and on hoardings in boyish handwriting, these words--
"GOD BLESS THE KERNEL."
And had you asked any of the ragged little lads that you met, who was
"The Kernel," their faces would have lit up at once, while they told
you that their "Kernel" was the best and bravest soldier in the world,
and that his name was Colonel Gordon.
For six years after he left China, Gordon was Commanding Royal Engineer
at Gravesend, and these years, he said, were "the most peaceful and
happy of any portion of his life."
His work there was done, as all his work throughout his life was done,
with all his might.
When he first took command he was worried by the amount of time that
was wasted as he rowed from one port which he had to inspect, to
another, in a pair-oared boat. He put away the pair-oared boat and got
a four-oared gig, and soon had the men who pulled it trained to row him
in racing style. They might sometimes have waited for hours on the
chance of Colonel Gordon wanting them, but the minute his trim little
figure was seen marching smartly down to the jetty, there was a rush
for the boat. Almost before he was seated, the oars would be dipped
and the men's backs bent as if they meant to win a boat race.
"A little faster, boys! a little faster!" Gordon would constantly say,
and when he jumped ashore and hurried off to his work, he would leave
behind him four very breathless men, who were proud of being the crew
of the very fastest boat pulled in those waters.
The engineers under him he also trained never to lose any time,--always
to do a thing not only as thoroughly and as well as possible, but as
quickly as possible.
He would land at a port, and run up the steep earthworks in front of
it, while his followers, many of them big, heavy men, would come
puffing and panting after him.
One of his friends writes of him, "He was a severe and unsparing
taskmaster, and allowed no shirking. No other officer could have got
half the work out of the men that he did. He used to keep them up to
the mark by exclaiming, whenever he saw them flag: 'Another five
minutes gone, and this not done yet, my men! We shall never have them
again.'"
The old-fashioned house, with its big old garden, which was Gordon's
home during those six years, saw many strange guests during that time.
"His house," says one writer, "was school, and hospital, and almshouse
in turn--was more like the abode of a missionary than of a Colonel of
Engineers."
In his working hours he worked his hardest to serve his Queen and
country. In the hours in which he might have rested or amused himself,
he worked equally hard. And this other work was to serve the poor, the
sick, the lonely, and to give a helping hand to every one of those who
needed help. The boys whose work was on the river or the sea, and the
"mud-larks" of Gravesend, were his special care. Many a boy who had no
work and no right home, he took from the streets, washed, clothed, fed,
and took into his house to stay with him as his guest. When he had
found work for those boys, either as sailors or in other ways, he would
give them outfits and money, and start them in life. For the boys who
were being sheltered by him, and for others from outside, he began
evening classes. There he taught them, and read to them, and did all
that he could to make them Christian gentlemen. His "Kings" he called
them, perhaps remembering the many Kings or "Wangs" who ruled in the
Tae-Ping army.
A map of the world, hanging over his mantelpiece, was stuck full of
pins. Some one asked the meaning of this, and was told by Gordon that
they marked and followed the course of his boys on their voyages. The
pins were moved from point to point as the boys sailed onward. "I pray
for each one of them day by day," he said.
Soon Gordon's class grew too big for his room to hold, and he then
began to have a class at the Ragged Schools. The mud-larks of
Gravesend needed no coaxing to go to "The Kernel's" class. Here was a
teacher who did not only try to teach them to be good and manly, and
straight and true, and _gentle_ men, but who, when he taught them
geography, could tell them the most splendid and exciting stories of
countries beyond the seas, where he himself had fought in great
battles. He never _preached_ at them, or looked solemn and shocked,
but made them laugh more than any one else ever did, and had the
merriest twinkle in his kind, keen eyes, that were like the sea, and
looked sometimes blue, sometimes grey.
He found out one day that what his "Kings" most longed to do was to go
up to London to see the Zoo. No sooner did he know it than every plan
was made for the little campaign. He himself could not leave his work,
but he got some one else to take them, saw them safely off with their
dinner in baskets, and welcomed them back in the evening to a great
strawberry feast.
Three or four of the boys who stayed with him got scarlet fever, and
far into the night he would sit with them, telling them stories, and
soothing them until they stopped tossing about and fell asleep.
At first, when he came to Gravesend, he clothed two or three boys in
the year. But it was not long before he gave away, each year, several
hundreds of suits, and had to buy boys' boots by the gross.
All this came out of his pay. Gordon was always well-dressed,
well-groomed, and looked like an officer and a gentleman, but upon
himself he spent next to nothing.
His food was of the plainest, and sometimes of the scantiest. He would
tell, with a twinkle in his eye, what a surprise it was to the boys who
came to stay with him, expecting to be fed with all sorts of dainties,
to find that salt beef, and just what other things were necessary, was
what the Colonel had to eat.
Constantly his purse and pockets were empty, for scarcely ever did any
one come to Gordon for help without getting it, and Gordon had no money
save his pay as a colonel.
Often he had disappointments. There were people who were mean enough
to deceive him, and people with no gratitude in their hearts.
One boy he found starving, in rags, and miserably ill. He fed him,
clothed him, had him doctored and nursed, and, when he was well, sent
him back to his parents in Norfolk. But neither boy nor parents ever
sent him one line of thanks.
Another starving, ragged boy he took into his house. He fed, clothed,
and taught him, and at last found him a good place on a ship, and sent
him to sea. Three times did this little scamp run away from the ship,
and turn up filthy, starving, and in rags. The third time Gordon found
him in the evening lurking at the door, half dead with hunger and cold.
The boy was much too dirty to be brought into the house with other
boys, and Gordon looked at him for a minute in silence. He then led
him to the stable, gave him a heap of clean straw in an empty stall to
sleep on, and some bread and milk for supper. Early next morning
Gordon appeared with soap, towels, a brush, a sponge, and a fresh suit
of clothes. He poured a bucket of hot water into the horse trough, and
himself gave him a thorough scrubbing.
[Illustration: Gordon appeared with soap, towels, a brush, a sponge,
and a fresh suit of clothes]
We do not know what afterwards became of the boy. It would be nice to
think that he was the unknown man who came to the house of Sir Henry
Gordon, when the news of General Gordon's death was heard, and wished
to give £25 towards a memorial to him. "All my success and prosperity
I owe to the Colonel," he said.
There were many boys--there are many men now--with good cause for
saying from their hearts, "_God bless the Colonel._"
A boy, who worked in a shop, stole some money from his master, who was
very angry, and said he would have him put in prison. The boy's
mother, in a terrible state of grief, came to Gordon and begged him to
help her. Gordon went to the boy's master, and persuaded him to let
the boy off. He then sent the little lad to school for twelve months,
and afterwards found him a berth at sea. The boy has grown up into an
honest, good man. "God bless the Colonel," he, too, can say.
Two afternoons a week Gordon went to the infirmary, to cheer up the
sick people there. And in all parts of Gravesend he would find out old
and bedridden men and women, sit with them, cheer them up with tales of
his days in Russia and China, and make them feel less lonely and less
sad. "He always had handy a bit o' baccy for the old men, and a screw
o' tea for the old women," it was said.
One poor, sick old woman was told by the doctor that she must have some
dainties and some wine, which she had no money to buy. But each day a
good fairy brought them to her, and the good fairy was Colonel Gordon.
A sick man, who lay fretting in bed, feeling there was nothing to do,
nothing to interest him, found each day a _Daily News_ left at his
door. Again the good fairy was Colonel Gordon.
A big, rough waterman, tossing about in bed with an aching, parched
throat, and in a burning fever, also knew the good fairy. Night after
night the Colonel sat by his bed, tending him as gently as the gentlest
nurse, and placing cool grapes in his parched mouth.
In the Colonel's big, old-fashioned garden, with its trim borders of
boxwood, one would find on summer days the old and the halt sunning
themselves. Many nice flowers and vegetables were grown in the garden,
but they did not belong to him. He allowed some of his poor people to
plant and sow there what vegetables they chose, and then to make money
for themselves by selling them.
Presents of fruit and flowers sent to him at once found their way to
the hospital or to the workhouse. People saw that it was no use ever
to give Gordon any presents, because they at once went to those who
needed the things more than he did.
To the poor he gave pensions of so much a week--from 1s. to £1. Some
of these pensions were still kept up and paid to the day of his death,
thirteen years later.
He was always tender-hearted, always merciful, and he _always_ forgave.
A soldier got tipsy, and stole five valuable patent locks. Gordon
asked the manager of the works from which they had been taken what he
meant to do.
"The carpenters were to blame for leaving the locks about, so I am
going to let the soldier off," said the manager.
"Thank you, thank you," said Gordon, as eagerly as if he himself had
been the thief. "That is what I should have done myself."
One day a woman called on him and told him a piteous story. He left
the room to get her half-a-sovereign, and while he was gone she stole
his overcoat, and hid it under her skirt. When he came back with the
money, she thanked him again and again, and went away. As she walked
along the street, the overcoat--a brown one--slipped down. A policeman
noticed it, and asked her what it meant. The woman, too frightened to
tell a lie, said she had stolen it from "the Kernel." Back to Gordon's
house the policeman marched her. The coat was shown to Gordon, and the
policeman asked him to charge the woman with the theft, and have her
put in prison. But this Gordon refused to do. He was really far more
distressed than was the thief herself. At last, his eyes twinkling, he
turned to the woman.
"You wanted it, I suppose?" he asked.
"Yes," said the surprised woman.
"There, there, take her away and send her about her business," he said
to the policeman, and the policeman could only obey.
The gold medal which the Empress of China had had made for him
mysteriously disappeared, no one could tell how or where. Years
afterwards, by accident, it was found that Gordon had had the
inscription taken off it, and had sent it anonymously to Manchester, to
help to buy food for the people who were starving there because of the
Cotton Famine. It cost him so much to give it up that often, when he
meant that others should give up something that was to cost them a very
great deal, he would say, "You must give up your medal."
"In slums, hospitals, and workhouse, or knee-deep in the river at work
upon the Thames defence," so he spent the six happiest years of his
life.
In 1871, to the deep sorrow of all Gravesend, he was made British
Commissioner to the European Commission of the Danube, where he had
done good work fifteen years earlier.
To his "Kings" at the Ragged Schools he left a number of magnificent
Chinese flags, trophies of his victories in China. They are still
carried aloft every year at school treats, and the name of their giver
is cheered until the echoes ring and voices grow hoarse.
To the people of Gravesend, and to people of all lands who hear the
story of those six years, he left the memory of a man whose charity was
perfect, whose mercy was without limit, and whose faith in the God he
served was never-failing.
CHAPTER V
GORDON AND THE SLAVERS
Gordon went to his work on the Danube on 1st October 1871, and remained
there until 1873.
On his return to England then, his short visit was a sad one. While he
was home his mother became paralysed, and no longer knew the son she
loved so much; and the death took place of his youngest brother, who
had shared his pranks in the long-ago happy days at Woolwich.
In the same year the Khedive of Egypt asked Gordon to come, at a salary
of £10,000 a year, to be Governor of the tribes on the Upper Nile.
Gordon accepted the post, but would not take more than £2000 a year.
He wished, he said, "to show the Khedive and his people that gold and
silver idols are not worshipped by all the world." He knew that the
money was wrung from the poor people of Egypt and that some of it was
the price of slaves, and he could not bear to enrich himself with money
so gained.
The Soudan, or Country of the Blacks, which was now to be the scene of
Gordon's work, is one of the dreariest parts of Africa.
In years not so long ago, the Egyptians had nothing to do with it. For
between Egypt and the Black People's country lay hundreds of miles of
sandy desert--desolate, lonely, without water. Behind its rocks the
wild desert tribes could hide, to surprise and murder peaceful traders
who tried to bring their camel caravans across the waste of sand. And
when the desert was crossed and the Soudan reached, the country was not
one to love or to long for.
A wretched, dry land is the Soudan, a land across which hot winds
sweep, like blasts from a furnace, driving the sand before them. The
Nile wanders through it, but in the Soudan there is none of the green
and pleasant river country that we know, who know the Thames and the
Tweed, the Hudson or St. Lawrence.
There is never a fresh leaf, never a blade of grass. The hills are
bare slopes, the valleys strewn with sand and stones. Tufts of rough
yellow grass and stunted grey bushes, a mass of thorns, grow here and
there on the yellow sand. The mimosa trees, sapless and dry, are thick
with thorns. The palms, called dom-palms, grow fruit like wood. The
Sodom apples, that look like real fruit, are poisonous and horrible to
the taste.
Tarantulas, scorpions, serpents, white ants, mosquitoes, and every kind
of loathsome creature that flies and crawls is to be found there.
When men are toiling through that land, dust in their throats, sand in
their eyes, and longing with all their hearts for the sight of
something green, and the touch and taste of fresh, cool, sparkling
water, sometimes they see a great wonder.
In front of them suddenly appears a lake or river, sparkling and
shimmering. There is green grass at the water-side. White-winged
birds float on it, and trees dip their leafy branches into its
coolness. Sometimes great palaces and towers overlook it. Sometimes
it seems a lonely spot, quiet and peaceful, and delicious for the weary
wanderers to rest at.
English soldiers have often started off running with their empty
water-bottles to fill them in that lake or river. Many, many
travellers have hastened towards it when they knew that they must have
water or die. But ever the mirage, as it is called, retreats before
them. That water is like magic water that no human being can ever
drink. The palaces and towers are like fairy palaces and towers into
which no real person ever enters. The green leaves and white birds,
the trees and the grass, are only a picture that the sun and the desert
make to madden thirst-parched men.
"When Allah made the Soudan," say the Arabs, "he laughed."
European traders were amongst the first to open a way into the Soudan.
The Egyptians knew that there was much fine ivory to be got there, but
were too lazy to try to get it. The Europeans, many of them
Englishmen, braved dangers and hardships, and made much money by the
ivory they bought from the black people of the desert land. Soon they
found there was something else for which they could get much higher
prices than any that they could get for elephants' tusks. They called
it "black ivory." By that they meant slaves.
At once they began to raid, to harry, and to kidnap the black races of
the Soudan. They built forts and garrisoned them with Arabs, to whom
no cruelty was too frightful, no wickedness too great. They burned
down the villages of the blacks. They stole their flocks and herds.
They burned or stole their crops. Their wives and little children they
tore from them, chained them in gangs, and took them across the desert
to sell for slaves. The men whom they could not take they slew.
So great and shameless became this trade, that at last Europe grew
ashamed that any of her people should be guilty of it. There was an
outcry made. The Europeans sold their stations to the Arabs, and
quietly withdrew. The Arabs then agreed to pay a tax to the Egyptian
Government, which saw no harm in stealing people and selling them as
slaves, so long as some of the money thus gained went into the royal
treasury.
And so the slave trade grew and grew, until, in 1874, out of every
hundred people of the land about eighty-four were slaves. The Arabs
trained some of the black boys they caught to be slave-hunters, and
taught them so well that they grew up even more wicked and cruel than
their masters.
Before long the slavers became so powerful and so rich that they no
longer owned the Khedive as their king. Their king was Sebehr, the
richest and worst of them all--a man who used to have chained lions as
part of his escort, and who owned a great army of armed slaves. When
the slavers refused to pay a tax any longer, and when they had cut in
pieces the army the Khedive sent to quell them, the Khedive grew afraid.
He knew that England and the other European Powers were angry with him
because he permitted slavery. And now that the slavers refused to obey
him, he was between two fires.
So the Khedive and his ministers suddenly seemed to become very much
shocked at the wicked traffic in slaves in the Soudan, and asked
Colonel Gordon to come and help to stop it.
Early in February Gordon arrived in Cairo. He had been but a few days
there when he wrote: "I think I can see the true motive now of the
expedition, and believe it to be a sham to catch the attention of the
English people." He felt he had been humbugged. Only in name was he
Governor, for the Egyptian Government only owned three stations in that
wide tract of country which he had been asked to come and govern.
But Gordon never turned his back upon those who wanted help. The land
was full of misery. There were thousands of wretched people to fight
for and to set free. Humbugged or not, he must do the work he had come
to do, and on the 18th of February 1874 he started for the Soudan.
The Egyptian troops and Gordon's own staff were amazed when they found
what sort of a man was the new Governor. They were used to the
Egyptian officials who never did any work they were not paid for, who
did not do it then if they could find any one else to do it for them,
and whose hands were constantly held out asking for bribes.
Sebehr the slaver, when he went to Cairo, took with him £100,000 to
bribe the Pashas. It was as if some notorious criminal should go to
London with £100,000 gained by murders and thefts to bribe the British
Government. But what would be outrageous in our country was a very
usual thing in Egypt.
As Gordon and his troops (200 Egyptian soldiers) sailed up the Nile in
their _dahabeah_, the boat was often blocked by the tangled water
weeds. And always one of the first to spring into the water and help
to pull the boat onwards was the new Governor. The old Nile
crocodiles, even, must have been surprised; but they did him no harm,
for they never touch any one who is moving.
They landed at Berber, and after a fortnight's march across the desert
they reached the two or three thousand yellowish-white, flat-roofed,
mud-walled houses that made Khartoum, the capital of the Soudan.
There eight busy days were spent. He issued proclamations; he held a
review; he visited the hospitals and the schools. "The little blacks
were glad to see me," he wrote; "I wish the flies would not dine on the
corners of their eyes."
The grown-up people at Khartoum also seemed delighted to see "His
Excellency General Colonel Gordon, the Governor-General of the
Equator," as his title went. "They make a shrill noise when they see
you, as a salutation; it is like a jingle of bells, very shrill, and
somewhat musical," wrote Gordon.
From Khartoum he sailed up the Nile to Gondokoro, and enjoyed like a
boy all the new sights he came across.
Hoary old crocodiles lay basking on the sand, their hungry mouths
agape. Great hippopotamuses, "like huge islands," walked about in the
shallows, and sometimes bellowed and fought all night. Troops of
monkeys, "with very long tails stuck up straight like swords all over
their backs," came down to drink. Herds of elephants and of fierce,
coal-black buffaloes eyed the boat threateningly from the banks, while
giraffes, looking like steeples, nibbled the tops of trees. At
Khartoum the sight of flocks of English sparrows had gladdened Gordon's
heart. Now he saw storks and geese preparing to go north for the
summer, and many strange birds as well. He found out that some little
white birds that roosted in the trees near where he camped were white
egrets. Their feathers make the plumes of horse artillery officers,
and trim many hats and bonnets, so Gordon did not tell his men of his
discovery. "I do not want the poor things to be killed," he wrote.
Not only strange birds and beasts were to be seen on the way to
Gondokoro. The wild black people came down to the banks to stare.
Some had their faces smeared with ashes, others wore gourds for
headdresses. Some wore neither gourds nor anything else. One
chieftain's full dress was a string of beads. At first he was afraid
to come near Gordon, but when he had been given a present of beads and
other things he grew very friendly.
"He came up to me," says Gordon, "took up each hand, and gave a good
soft lick to the backs of them; and then he held my face and made the
motion of spitting in it."
This was a mark of great politeness and respect. A chief of this tribe
once welcomed an English traveller by spitting into each of his hands,
and then into his face. The traveller, in a rage, spat back as hard as
ever he could, and the chief was overcome with joy at the traveller's
friendliness.
Near Gondokoro, at St. Croix, Gordon came to the ruins of an Austrian
missionary settlement. Only a few banana trees, planted by the
missionaries, and some graves, marked where the Christian settlement
had been. Out of twenty missionaries who had gone there during
thirteen years, thirteen had died of fever, two of dysentery, and two,
broken in health, had had to go home. And yet they had not been able
to claim as a Christian even one of the blacks amongst whom they
worked. No wonder that the Austrian Government lost heart and gave up
the mission.
When Gordon reached Gondokoro he saw that it was absurd to pretend that
the Khedive ruled any of the country outside its walls. No one dared
go half a mile outside without being in danger of his life from the
tribes whose wives and children and cattle the slavers had taken.
Gordon felt that to make friends with those people, to show them that
he was sorry for them, and that he wished to help them, was the first
thing to be done if he was to be in reality their Governor. And so, as
he travelled on from point to point--back to Khartoum from Gondokoro,
to Berber, to Fashoda, to Soubat--he made friends wherever he went.
Quickly the black people came to love the man who punished or slew
their enemies, who took them from the slavers, and gave them back their
wives and children and cattle. He gave grain to some, set others to
plant maize, fed the starving ones, and always paid them for each piece
of work that they did for him.
Sometimes, even, he would buy from them the children that they were too
poor to feed, and find good homes for them.
One man sold him his two boys of twelve and eight for a basket of
dhoora (a kind of grain). He soon found that the blacks did not look
on the sale of human beings in the same way that he did.
[Illustration: In the Soudan buying two children for a basketful of
dhoora]
One man stole a cow, and when the owner found out the thief and came to
claim his cow, it was too late. The cow had been eaten.
Next day Gordon passed the man's hut, and saw that one of his two
children was gone.
"Where was the other?" he asked of the mother.
"Oh, it had been given to the man from whom the cow had been stolen,"
she replied with a happy smile.
"But," said Gordon, "are you not sorry?"
"Oh no! we would rather have the cow."
"But you have eaten the cow, and the pleasure is over," said Gordon.
"Oh, but, all the same, we would sooner have the cow!"
Two little boys came smiling up to Gordon one day, and pressed him to
buy one of them for a little basketful of dhoora. Gordon bought one,
and both boys were delighted.
"Do buy me for a little piece of cloth. I should like to be your
slave," said one little fellow that Gordon rescued from a gang of
slavers. It was this boy, Capsune, who years afterwards asked Gordon's
sister if she was quite sure that Gordon Pasha still kept his blue
eyes. "Do you think he can see all through me now?" he asked, and
said, "I am quite sure Gordon Pasha could see quite well in the dark,
because he has the light inside him."
Most of the slaves that the Arab slavers had in their gangs were little
children. In one caravan that Gordon rescued there were ninety slaves,
very few over sixteen, most of them little mites of boys and girls,
perfect skeletons. They had been brought over 500 miles of desert, and
the ninety were all that lived out of about four hundred.
When Gordon rescued them, they knew the gentle, tender Gordon, whose
tenderness was like a mother's.
It was another Gordon that the slavers knew--a man terrible in his
anger. Having taken from the ruffianly Arabs who had so cruelly
treated the little children, their slaves, their stolen cattle, and
their ivory, he would have them stripped and flogged, and driven naked
into the desert.
For two months he was at Saubat River, a lonely and desolate country,
the prey of slavers. It was so dull and dreary a place, that the Arab
soldiers were sent there for a punishment, as the Russians are sent to
Siberia.
But Gordon was too busy to be dull. He was always so full of thought
for others, that he never had time to be sorry for himself.
"_I am sure it is the secret of true happiness to be content with what
we actually have_," he wrote from Saubat.
From there, too, he wrote: "I took a poor old bag-of-bones into my camp
a month ago, and have been feeding her up; but yesterday she was
quietly taken off, and now knows all things. She had her tobacco up to
the last."
Looking out of his camp he saw a poor woman, "a wisp of bones," feebly
struggling up the road in wind and rain. He sent some dhoora to her by
one of his men, and thought she had been taken safely to one of the
huts. All through that wet and stormy night he heard a baby crying.
At dawn he found the woman lying in a pool of mud, apparently dead,
while men passed and repassed her, and took no notice. Her baby, not
quite a year old, sat and wailed in some long grass near her. The
woman was actually not dead, but she died a few days later. The baby
boy was none the worse for his night out, and drank off a gourd of milk
"like a man." Gordon gave him to a family to look after, paying for
him daily with some maize.
Mosquitoes and other insects were a pest wherever he went, but at
Saubat he had the extra pest of rats. They ran over his mosquito nets,
ate his soap, his books, his boots, and his shaving-brush, and screamed
and fought all night, until he invented a clever trap and stopped their
thefts.
When Gordon returned to Gondokoro, he found nearly all his own staff
ill with fever and ague. Out of ten only two were well,--one of these
having newly recovered from a severe fever. Two were dead, and six
seriously ill. Gordon himself was worn to a mere shadow, but he had to
act as doctor and as sick-nurse. The weather was cold and wet, and the
rain came into the tents. To his sister, Gordon wrote: "Imagine your
brother paddling about a swamped tent without boots, attending to a
sick man at night, with more than a chance of the tent coming down
bodily." Of course he got chilled, and ill too, and at last gave an
order that "all illness is to take place away from me."
Nor was it only sickness amongst his friends that he had to sadden him.
He found that his Egyptian officials--some of them those he had most
trusted--were leaguing with the slavers, taking bribes, helping to undo
the good work he had already done, and trying to rouse his troops into
mutiny. The troops themselves were a great trial. They were lazy,
treacherous, chicken-hearted fellows, with no pluck. "I never had less
confidence in any troops in my life," Gordon said, and he declared that
three natives would put a whole company to flight. The native
Soudanese were as brave as lions. A native has been known to kill
himself because his wife called him a coward. The Arab soldiers when
on sentry duty would all go to sleep at their posts, and think no harm
of it.
The climate of the Soudan did not suit them, and they died like flies.
Of one detachment of 250, half were dead in three months, 100
invalided, and only twenty-five fit for duty, and yet the Egyptian
Government continued to send them instead of the black troops Gordon
asked for.
From Gondokoro, Gordon moved to Rageef, and there built a station on
healthier ground, higher up from the marshes. He sent to Gondokoro for
ammunition for his mountain howitzer, and the commandant there thought
it a good chance to pawn off on him some that was so damp as to be
useless. With ten men and no ammunition, his Arab allies left him in a
place where no Arab would have stayed without 100 well-armed men.
Gordon's German servant, and two little black boys that Gordon had
bought, followed in a small boat to Rageef with Gordon's baggage.
The German came to Gordon with very grave face.
"I have had a great loss," said he. Gordon at once thought that one of
the boys must have been drowned.
"What?" he anxiously asked.
"I saw a hippopotamus on the bank," said the man, "and fired at him
with your big rifle; and I did not know it would kick so hard, and it
kicked me over, and it fell into the water."
Said Gordon, "You are a born idiot of three years old! How dare you
touch my rifle?"
But the rifle was gone, and he had to smile as the little black boys
mimicked the German's fright when he dropped the rifle and laughed in
scorn at him.
At Rageef, seeing he need expect no real help from the Egyptian
Government, Gordon began to form an army of his own, making soldiers of
the Soudanese,--the "Gippies," as our own soldiers now call them. And
the Gippies are as brave and soldier-like a body of troops as is to be
found. "We," they say, "are like the English; we are not afraid." He
enlisted men who had been slaves, and men who had been slavers. A
detachment of cannibals that he came across he also enlisted, drilled,
and trained, and turned into first-rate soldiers.
The slavers grew afraid of Gordon Pasha, and of the army that he had
made.
Where an Egyptian official would not have dared to go without a convoy
of 100 soldiers, and where a single soldier would have been sure to
have been waylaid and murdered, Gordon could now go in safety, alone
and unarmed. He would walk along the river banks for miles and miles,
only armed when he wished to shoot a hippopotamus.
Gordon's work was always much varied. Always, each bit of it was done
with all his might.
He drilled savages, shot hippopotamuses, mended watches and musical
boxes for black chiefs, patched his own clothes and made clothes for
some of his men, invented rat-traps and machines for making rockets,
tamed baby lions and baby hippopotamuses, cleaned guns, raided the
camps of slavers, nursed the sick, and fed the hungry. And day and
night he worked to rid the land of slavery; to teach the black people
the meaning of justice, of mercy, and of honour.
His food all the time was of the plainest--no vegetables, only dry
biscuits, bits of broiled meat, and macaroni boiled in sugar and water.
Ants and beetles often nested in the stores, and made them horrid to
the taste. "Oh, how I should like a good dinner!" he wrote to his
sister.
In addition to all his other work, Gordon had the task of finding out
for himself the exact geography of that part of the Nile of which he
was Governor, and he had to do much exploring.
While doing this he one day marched 18 miles through jungle, in pouring
rain. Another day, in the hottest season of that hot land, he marched
35 miles.
As he and his men sailed up the Nile they met with many dangers. There
were rapids to pass, furious hippopotamuses to charge their boats, and
on the banks were concealed enemies, throwing their assegais with
deadly aim. And through all this he had only a pack of cowardly Arabs
to depend on for everything.
A wizard belonging to one of the black tribes, sure that the white man
and his soldiers could only have come for some evil purpose, stood on
the top of a rock by the river, screaming curses at them and exciting
his tribe.
"I don't think that's a healthy spot to deliver an address from," said
Gordon, taking up a rifle and pointing it at the wizard, who at once
ran away.
"We do not want your beads; we do not want your cloth; we only want you
to go away," one tribe said to him. Gordon's heart was full of pity
for them. It was for them that he was spending his life, had they only
known it.
The never-ending work and worry tried him badly.
"Poor sheath, it is much worn," he wrote of himself from the dreary
land of marsh and forest into which he had come while laying down a
chain of posts between Gondokoro and the Lakes.
The dampness of the marshes was poison to white men, and earwigs, ants,
mosquitoes, sandflies, beetles, scorpions, snakes, and every imaginable
insect and reptile seemed to do their best to make things unpleasant
for him.
The turf was full of prickly grass seeds; the long grass cut the
fingers to the bone if people tried to pick it. The very fruit was
bitter and poisonous. Rain sometimes fell in unexpected torrents, so
heavy that he was flooded out of his tent.
When he was dead tired, body and soul, Gordon would sometimes build
castles of what he would do when he got back to England. He would lie
in bed till eleven, and always wear his best fur coat, and travel first
class, and have oysters every day for lunch!
In 1876 there seemed a chance of his really building his castles.
He felt it was impossible to rid the land of slavery, with the Egyptian
officials, who did not wish to have it stopped, working hard against
him, and so, after three years of hard work, he threw up his post and
went home.
No sooner was he gone than the Khedive realised how great a loss it
would be to him and to his country if Gordon were not to return.
He begged him to come back, and he would make him Governor-General of
the Soudan, and help him in every possible way to carry out the work he
wished to do.
So Gordon returned, and in February 1877 he started for the Soudan,
absolute ruler now of 1640 miles of desert, marsh, and forest.
"So there is an end of slavery," he wrote to his sister, "if God wills,
for the whole secret of the matter is in that Government (the Soudan),
and if the man who holds the Soudan is against it, it must
cease." . . . "I go up alone with an infinite Almighty God to direct
and guide me, and am glad to so trust Him as to fear nothing, and,
indeed, to feel sure of success."
From this time on, in every direction, the slavers were hunted and
harried and driven out of the land, as one drives rats from a farmyard.
On every side he came on caravans packed with starving slaves, dying of
hunger and thirst, and set them free. The desert was strewn not only
with the bodies of camels, that the dry air had turned into mummies,
but with the bones and whitened skulls of the slave-dealers' victims.
Everywhere he had to look out for treachery and for lying, and be ready
to pounce on slaves cunningly concealed by the kidnappers.
A hundred or more would sometimes be found being smuggled past, down
the Nile, hidden under a boatload of wood.
Gordon, on a camel that he rode so quickly that it came to be called
the Telegraph, seemed to fly across the silent desert like a magician.
Daily, often all alone, he would ride 30 or 40 miles. In the three
years during which he governed the Soudan he rode 8490 miles.
The black people knew that he was always willing to listen to their
troubles, always ready to help them. In the first three days of his
governorship he gave away over £1000 of his own money to the hungry
poor.
Great chiefs, as well as poor people, came to see him and became his
friends. If one of them sat too long, Gordon would rise and say in
English: "Now, old bird, it is time for you to go," and the chief would
go away, delighted with the Governor's affability and politeness.
Those who begged, and continued to beg for things he could not grant,
knew a different Governor.
"Never!" he would shout in an angry voice. "Do you understand? Have
you finished?" and they would hurry off, frightened at his flashing
eyes.
When fighting was necessary, he led his men as he had led his Chinese
troops in past days. Like Nelson, he did not know the meaning of the
word "fear."
News came to him that the son of Sebehr, king of the slavers, with 6000
men, was about to attack a poor, weak little garrison that they could
have wiped out with the greatest ease. At once Gordon mounted his
camel, and, alone and unarmed, sped off across the desert, covering 85
miles in a day and a half. On the way he rode into a swarm of flies
that thickly covered him and his camel. Of his arrival at the little
garrison he wrote to his sister: "I came on my people like a
thunderbolt. . . . Imagine to yourself a single, dirty, red-faced man
on a camel, ornamented with flies, arriving in the divan all of a
sudden. They were paralysed, and could not believe their eyes."
Still more paralysed were the slavers when, at dawn next morning, there
rode into their camp Gordon Pasha, radiant in the gorgeous "golden
armour" the Khedive had given him. Fearlessly and scornfully Gordon
condemned them, and ordered them at once to lay down their arms. They
listened in silence and wonderment, and then weakly submitted to this
great Pasha who knew no fear.
[Illustration: There rode into their camp Gordon Pasha]
When the slavers' power had been broken and their dens harried out--not
without some heavy fighting--Gordon went on a mission from the Khedive
to the King of Abyssinia, one of the cruellest and most savage of cruel
kings. The Khedive wanted peace, but the Abyssinian King would not
have it, and treated Gordon with the greatest insolence.
"Do you know that I could kill you?" he asked, glaring at Gordon like a
tiger. Gordon answered that he was quite ready to die, and that in
killing him the King would only confer a favour on him, opening a door
he must not open for himself.
"Then my power has no terrors for you?" said the King.
"None whatever," replied Gordon, and the King, who was used to rule by
terror, had no more to say.
This mission over, Gordon, utterly worn out, and broken in health,
returned to Egypt, and resigned his post as Governor-General of the
Soudan.
The slaves that he had set free used to try to kiss his feet and the
hem of his garment. To this day there is a name known in Egypt and in
the Soudan as that of a man who scorned money, who had no fear of any
man, who did not even fear death, whose mercy was as perfect as his
uprightness. And the name of that man is Gordon Pasha.
"Give us another Governor like Gordon Pasha," was the cry of the
Soudanese when the Mahdi uprose to be a scourge to the Soudan.
CHAPTER VI
KHARTOUM
Gordon left Egypt in December 1879, "not a day too soon," the doctor
said, for he was ill, not only from hard work, but from overwork.
The burden he had carried on his shoulders through those years was the
burden of the whole of the Soudan.
He was ordered several months of complete rest. But those days of rest
were only castles that Gordon had built in his day-dreams, when burning
days and bitter nights had made him long for ease.
Early in 1880 he became Secretary to Lord Ripon, Viceroy of India. He
remained only a few months in India, and then went to China, in answer
to an urgent message from his old friend, Li Hung Chang.
China and Russia were on the brink of a great war. The Chinese
courtiers wished to fight, but Li Hung Chang longed for peace.
"Come and help me to keep peace," he said to Gordon. And "Chinese
Gordon" did not fail him.
"I cannot desert China in her present crisis," he wrote.
His stay in China was not long, but when he returned to England he had
made peace between two empires.
He had only been home for a short time when again he was on the wing.
One day at the War Office he met a brother officer, who complained of
his bad luck at having to go and command the Engineers at such a dull
place as the Island of Mauritius.
"Oh, don't worry yourself," said Gordon, "I will go for you: Mauritius
is as good for me as anywhere else."
For a year he remained there--a peaceful, if dull year, but in March
1882 he was made a Major-General, and relieved from his post.
For a short time he was in South Africa, trying to put to rights
affairs between the Basutos--a black race--and the Government at the
Cape. The Government, who had asked him to come, treated him badly,
and even put his life in danger. He made them very angry by telling
them that they were wholly in the wrong, and that he would not fight
the Basutos, who had right and justice on their side; and, having
failed in his mission, he returned to England.
To find the rest and peace he so much needed, Gordon now went to the
Holy Land.
Long ago, the day before a brave warrior was made a knight, he spent
the hours from sunset till dawn alone in a chapel beside his armour,
watching and praying. This was called "watching his armour."
Gordon was "watching his armour" now. Often he saw no one for weeks at
a time. He prayed much, and the books he read were his Bible, his
Prayer Book, Thomas à Kempis, and Marcus Aurelius. He wandered over
the ground where the feet of the Master he served so well had trod
before him. He was much in Jerusalem. He went to where the grey
olives grow in the Garden of Gethsemane. His own Gethsemane was still
to come.
In those quiet days he planned great work that he meant to do in the
East End of London.
But there was other work for him to do. "We have nothing to do when
the scroll of events is unrolled but to accept them as being for the
best," he once wrote.
In December 1883 he suddenly returned to London, and soon it was known
that he was going, at the request of the King of the Belgians, to the
Congo, to help to fight the slavers there. "We will kill them in their
haunts," said Gordon.
Meantime, fresh things had been happening in the Soudan.
When Gordon left Egypt in 1879, he said to an English official there:
"I shall go, and you must get a man to succeed me--if you can. But I
do not deny that he will want three qualifications which are seldom
found together. First, he must have my iron constitution; for Khartoum
is too much for any one who has not. Then, he must have my contempt
for money; otherwise the people will never believe in his sincerity.
Lastly, he must have my contempt for death."
Such a man was not found, and well might the black people long for the
return of Gordon Pasha, the only Christian for whom they offered
prayers at Mecca.
When he went away, under the rule of the greedy Egyptian pashas the
slave trade began again. Once more packed caravans of wretched slaves
dragged across the desert, and the land was full of misery and of
rebellion.
In 1881 the discontented Soudanese found a leader.
From the island of Abbas on the Nile, Mahommed Ahmed, a dervish or holy
man, from Dongola, proclaimed to the people of Egypt and of the Soudan
that he was a prophet sent from heaven to save them from the cruelty of
their rulers.
_El Mahdi el Muntazer_, or The Expected One, he called himself, and
said he was immortal and would never die.
Soon he had many followers. He was attended by soldiers, who stood in
his presence with drawn swords, and he had all the power of a king.
Because he was Mahdi, his followers all had to obey him. And as he was
Mahdi, he himself did exactly as he pleased, and what he liked to do
was all that was wicked and cruel.
The Governor-General at Khartoum, seeing that the Mahdi was growing
much too powerful, sent two companies of soldiers to take him prisoner.
The Mahdists made a trap for them, fell on them with their swords and
short stabbing spears, and destroyed them. More troops were sent, and
also destroyed. Then came a small army, and of that army almost no man
escaped.
"This is in truth our Deliverer, sent from Heaven," said the wild
people of the Soudan, and they flocked in tribes to join the Mahdi.
It was not long before he owned a great army, and there have never been
any soldiers who fought more fiercely and with more magnificent
courage, and who feared death less, than those followers of a savage
dervish.
The Mahdi laid siege to one of the chief cities of the Soudan. It fell
before him, and sack and massacre followed.
An army of 11,000, under the command of a brave English officer, was
then sent to attack the Mahdi. Like all the troops that had gone
before them, they were led into a trap, and, out of 11,000 men, only
eleven returned to Egypt.
From one victory to another went the Mahdi. His troops, armed with
weapons taken from those they had slain, were rich with plunder.
Only two Englishmen were now left in the Soudan. At Khartoum were
Colonel Coëtlogan and Mr. Frank Power, correspondent of the _Times_.
Colonel Coëtlogan telegraphed that it was hopeless for the Egyptian
troops in the Soudan to hold out against the Mahdi. Soldiers were
deserting daily, and people on every hand were joining the victorious
army of the ruffian who claimed to have been sent from Heaven. Colonel
Coëtlogan begged for orders for the loyal troops to leave the Soudan
and seek safety in Egypt.
Gordon believed that if the Soudan were given up to the Mahdi, there
would presently be no limit to the tyrant's power. All the slavery and
misery from which Gordon had tried to free the land would be worse than
ever before. Egypt and Arabia might also, before long, take as their
king the Mahdi who ruled the Soudan.
He held that at all costs Khartoum must be defended, and not handed
over to the Mahdi, as Colonel Coëtlogan and many others advised.
In England this belief of General Gordon, who knew more about the
Soudan than any other living man, soon became known.
All his plans for going to the Congo were made, and he had gone to
Brussels to take leave of the King of the Belgians when a telegram came
to him from the English Government.
"Come back to London by evening train," it said. And, leaving all his
luggage behind him, Gordon went.
Next morning he interviewed Lord Wolseley and some members of the
Cabinet. He was asked if he would undertake a mission to the Soudan,
to try to resettle affairs there, to bring away the Egyptian garrisons,
and to divide, if possible, the country amongst the petty sultans whom
he thought strong and wise enough to keep order.
Gordon was ready to go, and, to go at once. "I would give my life for
these poor people of the Soudan," he said.
Late that afternoon he started.
Lord Wolseley has told the story of his going:--
"There he stood, in a tall silk hat and frock coat. I offered to send
him anything he wanted.
"'Don't want anything,' he said.
"'But you've got no clothes.'
"'I'll go as I am!' he said, and he meant it.
"He never had any money; he always gave it away. I know once he had
£7000. It all went in the establishment of a ragged school for boys.
"I asked him if he had any cash.
"'No,' was his calm reply. 'When I left Brussels I had to borrow £25
from the King to pay my hotel bill with.'
"'Very well,' I said, 'I'll try and get you some, and meet you at the
railway station with it.'
"I went round to the various clubs, and got £300 in gold. I gave the
money to Colonel Stewart, who went with him: Gordon was not to be
trusted with it. A week or so passed by, when I had a letter from
Stewart. He said, 'You remember the £300 you gave me? When we arrived
at Port Said a great crowd came out to cheer Gordon. Amongst them was
an old Sheikh to whom Gordon was much attached, and who had become poor
and blind. Gordon got the money, and gave the whole of it to him!'" [1]
Before he started, he gave away some trinkets and things that he
prized. It was as if he knew something of what lay before him.
At Charing Cross, the Duke of Cambridge (who had known him since he was
a merry little boy at Corfu), Lord Wolseley, and others, came to bid
him Godspeed.
He took with him Colonel Donald Stewart, whom he had chosen as his
military secretary. Even in the rush before the train started he found
time to say to one of Colonel Stewart's relations: "Be sure that he
will not go into any danger which I do not share, and I am sure that
when I am in danger he will not be far behind."
When, on January 18, 1884, Gordon went out to the Soudan like one of
the Crusaders of old, all England was proud and glad.
In Egypt the people were gladder still.
Said the Arabs who had served under him: "The Mahdi's hordes will melt
away like dew, and the Pretender will be left like a small man standing
alone, until he is forced to flee back to his island of Abbas."
The Khedive again made him Governor-General of the Soudan, and, on the
26th of January 1884, Gordon started for Khartoum.
At Khartoum the people were in a panic. Colonel Coëtlogan had his
troops in readiness for flight. The rich people had already escaped.
The poor who had not fled were in terror lest the Mahdi and his hosts
might come any day and massacre them.
Across the desert spread the telegraph message: "_General Gordon is
coming to Khartoum_."
"_You are men, not women. Be not afraid; I am coming,_" followed
Gordon's own message to the terrified garrison.
More swiftly than ever before, he crossed the lonely desert. Many
skeletons of men and of camels, of oxen and of horses, now lay
bleaching in the scorching sun on that dreary waste of treeless
desolation.
On 18th February he reached Khartoum, and was greeted as their
deliverer by the people, who flocked around him in hundreds, trying to
kiss his hands and feet.
"I come without soldiers," he said to them, "but with God on my side,
to redress the evils of the land."
At once he was ready, as in past days, to listen to tales of wrong from
the poorest, and to try to set them right. He had all the whips and
instruments of torture that Egyptian rulers had used piled up outside
the Palace and burned. In the gaol he found two hundred men, women,
and children lying in chains and in the most dismal plight. Some were
innocent, many were prisoners of war. Of many their gaolers could give
no reason for their being there. One woman had been imprisoned for
fifteen years for a crime committed when she was a child.
Gordon had their chains struck off, and set them free. At nightfall he
had a bonfire made of the prison, and men, women, and children danced
round it in the red light of the flames, laughing and clapping their
hands.
All the sick in the city he sent by the river down to Egypt.
In Khartoum itself, by the mercy of its Governor, peace soon reigned.
"Gordon is working wonders," was the message Mr. Power sent to England.
But the Mahdi's power was daily growing, and he feared no one. When
Gordon sent him messages of peace he sent back insolent answers,
calling upon Gordon to become a Mussulman, and to come and serve the
Mahdi.
"If Egypt is to be quiet, the Mahdi must be smashed up," Gordon
telegraphed to the English Government.
By means of his steamers he laid in stores. The defences of Khartoum
he strengthened by mines and wire entanglements. He made some steamers
bullet-proof, and on 24th August was able to write that they were doing
"splendid work." His poor "sheep," as he called his troops, were being
turned into tried soldiers. "You see," he wrote, "when you have steam
on, the men can't run away, and must go into action."
Daily, from the top of a tower that he had built, he would gaze long
with his glass down the river and into the country round. From there
he could see if the Mahdi's armies were approaching, or if help were
coming to save Khartoum and the Soudan. All the time he kept up the
hearts of the people, and encouraged work at the school and everywhere
else.
In his journal he wrote: "I toss up in my mind, whether, if the place
is to be taken, to blow up the Palace and all in it, or else to be
taken, and, with God's help, to maintain the faith, and if necessary
suffer for it (which is most probable). The blowing up of the Palace
is the simplest, while the other means long and weary humiliation and
suffering of all sorts. I think I shall elect for the last, not from
fear of death, but because the former is, in a way, taking things out
of God's hands."
"Haunting the Palace are a lot of splendid hawks. I often wonder
whether they are destined to pick out my eyes."
Gradually the Mahdi's forces were gathering round the city. Their
drums rang in the ears of the besieged like the sound of a gathering
storm. The outlying villages were besieged, and many of those
villagers went over to the enemy. In some cases Gordon managed to
drive back the rebels from the parts they attacked, and bring back arms
and stores taken from them. More often the troops that were expected
to defend Khartoum put Gordon to shame by their feebleness and
cowardice, and suffered miserable defeat. Once, when attacking the
Mahdists, five of Gordon's own commanders deserted, and helped to drive
their own soldiers back to Khartoum.
As the year wore on, the siege came closer. Daily the Palace and the
Mission House were shelled, and men were killed as they walked in the
streets.
Money was scarce, and Gordon had little bank-notes made and used in
place of money, so that business still went on. But food grew scarcer
than money. Biscuits were the officers' chief food; dhoora that of the
men.
Again and again news was sent to him: "The English are coming."
Again and again he found that the English army that was to relieve
Khartoum had not yet started.
"The English are coming!" mocked the dervishes.
Day by day, Gordon's glass would sweep the steely river and the yellow
sand for the first sight of the men who were coming to save him and his
people.
At last, with sinking heart, he wrote: "The Government having abandoned
us, we can only trust in God."
"When our provisions, which we have, at a stretch, for two months, are
eaten, we must fall," wrote, to the _Times_, Frank Power, a brave man
and a true friend of Gordon.
In April the telegraph wires were cut by the enemy. After that, news
from England was only rarely to be had, and only through messengers who
were not often to be trusted.
Still hoping that an English army was coming, Gordon determined to send
his steamers half way to meet it. It meant that his garrison would be
weaker, should the Mahdi make any great attack, but Gordon felt that
England _could_ not fail him, and that in a very short time the
steamers would return, bringing a splendid reinforcement.
On September 10th, three steamers, with Colonel Stewart and Frank Power
in command, sailed down the Nile.
Gordon was left the only Englishman in Khartoum.
"I am left alone . . . but not alone," he wrote.
The steamer with Stewart and Power on board ran aground. The crew was
treacherously taken by a native sheikh, and Stewart, Power, and almost
all the others were cruelly murdered and their bodies thrown into the
Nile.
The news of the death of his two friends, and the ruin of his plan to
hasten on the relief of Khartoum, cut Gordon's brave heart to the quick.
Before Mr. Power left, Gordon had given him a little book that he
loved. It is called _The Dream of S. Gerontius_. Gordon had marked
many passages in it.
Here are some:--
"_Pray for me, O my friends._"
"Now that the hour is come, my fear is fled . . ."
"Into thy hands
O Lord, into Thy hands . . ."
So it seemed that even then Gordon knew that Death was drawing near
him, and was greeting with a fearless face the martyrdom that he was
soon to endure.
Yet all the while he never wavered, and his bravery seemed to give
courage to the feeblest hearted.
He who had never taken any pride in decorations or in medals--save
one--tried to cheer his soldiers by having a decoration made and
distributed--"three classes: gold, silver, pewter."
A Circassian in the Egyptian Service, speaking of Gordon in after
years, said: "He never seemed to sleep. He was always working and
looking after the people."
In the early days of those dark months, Frank Power had written of him
that all day he was cheering up others, but that through the night he
heard his footfall overhead, backwards and forwards, backwards and
forwards, sleepless, broken in heart, bearing on his soul the burden of
those he had no power to save.
At dawn he slept. All day he went the rounds, cheering up the people,
seeing to the comfort of every one, feeding the starving as well as he
could. For two days at a time he would go without food, that his
portion might go to others. They were living on roots and herbs when
the siege was done.
All the night he spent on the top of his tower, watching and praying.
Many times in the day did men see the spare figure standing on that
yellow-white tower, staring, with eyes that grew tired with longing,
into the far-away desert, looking for the help that never came.
[Illustration: Looking for the help that never came]
But, after many delays, an English army was actually on the march.
It was a race of about 1800 miles up the Nile from the sea--a race
between Victory and the Salvation of the beleaguered city and its
defender on one side, and Defeat, Death, and the Mahdi on the other.
Lord Wolseley, who commanded the expedition, offered £100 to the
regiment that covered the distance first.
Some fierce battles were fought on the way, and many brave lives were
lost.
On 14th December 1884, Gordon wrote to his sister: "This may be the
last letter you will receive from me, for we are on our last legs,
owing to the delay of the expedition. However, God rules all, and, as
He will rule to His glory and our welfare, His will be done. . . .
"I am quite happy, thank God, and, like Lawrence, I have '_tried_ to do
my duty.'"
On the same day he wrote in his journal:
"I have done my best for the honour of our country. Good-bye.--C. G.
Gordon."
The last message of all was one that bore no date, and was smuggled out
of Khartoum in a cartridge case by one who had been his servant:--
"What I have gone through I cannot describe. The Almighty God will
help me."
In the camp of the Mahdi lay an Austrian prisoner, Slatin Pasha.
On the 15th of January 1885 he heard vigorous firing from Khartoum.
Gordon and his garrison were preventing the Mahdists from keeping in
their possession a fort which they had just taken.
In the days that followed, the firing went on, but Gordon's ammunition
was nearly done, and he and his men were weak and spent with hunger.
On the night of the 25th Slatin heard "the deafening discharge of
thousands of rifles and guns; this lasted for a few minutes, then only
occasional shots were heard, and now all was quiet again."
He lay wide awake, wondering if this was the great attack on Khartoum
that the Mahdi had always planned.
A few hours later, three black soldiers entered the prison bearing
something in a bloody cloth. They threw it at the prisoner's feet, and
he saw that it was the head of General Gordon.
When the relieving army reached Khartoum, they found the Mahdi's
banners of black and green flaunting from its walls, and the guns that
had so bravely defended it turned against them. They had come too late.
A traitor in the camp had hastened the end, and Gordon had fallen,
hacked to pieces, while trying to rally his troops.
For hours after he fell, massacre and destruction went on in the city.
Fourteen years later, Lord Kitchener and his soldiers avenged that
massacre, and marched into Khartoum.
The Mahdi was dead. He who boasted that he was immortal had died from
poison given him by a woman whom he had cruelly used. The Mahdi's
successors had fallen before a conquering English army.
When the Mahdists sacked and burned the Governor's Palace, they forgot
to destroy the trees and the rose bushes that Gordon with his own hands
had planted.
And in a new and lovely garden, beside a new Palace from which a brave
Scottish soldier rules the Soudan, the roses grow still, fragrant and
beautiful.
Khartoum is a great town now, peaceful and prosperous.
The Gordon College, where the boys of the Soudan are taught all that
English schoolboys learn, is the monument that England gave to a hero.
A statue of him stands in one of the squares, and to it came a poor old
black woman to whom Gordon had been very kind.
"God be praised!" she cried, "Gordon Pasha has come again!"
For a whole day she sat beside the statue, longing for a look from him
who had never before passed her without a friendly nod.
"Is he tired? or what is it?" she asked.
After many visits, she came home one evening quite happy.
"The Pasha has nodded his head to me!" she said.
And so, in the hearts of the people of the Soudan, Gordon Pasha still
lives.
Winds carry across the desert the scent of the roses that he planted,
and that drop their fragrant leaves near where his blood was shed.
And to the Eastern country for whose sake he died, and to our own land
for whose honour his life was given, he has left a memory that must be
like the roses--for ever fragrant, and for ever sweet.
[1] _Strand Magazine_, May 1892. By kind permission of Messrs. Newnes.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Story of General Gordon, by Jeanie Lang
*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STORY OF GENERAL GORDON ***
***** This file should be named 24756-8.txt or 24756-8.zip *****
This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
http://www.gutenberg.org/2/4/7/5/24756/
Produced by Al Haines
Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
will be renamed.
Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules,
set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project
Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you
do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is
subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
redistribution.
*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
http://gutenberg.org/license).
Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic works
1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be
used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works. See paragraph 1.E below.
1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the
collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an
individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in
a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check
the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning
the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
States.
1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
copied or distributed:
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
1.E.9.
1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked
to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg-tm License.
1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or
distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
that
- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is
owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments
must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License. You must require such a user to return or
destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
Project Gutenberg-tm works.
- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
of receipt of the work.
- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the
Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
1.F.
1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
your equipment.
1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.
1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with
the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy
is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
opportunities to fix the problem.
1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any
provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists
because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
people in all walks of life.
Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
http://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at
809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
[email protected]. Email contact links and up to date contact
information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
page at http://pglaf.org
For additional contact information:
Dr. Gregory B. Newby
Chief Executive and Director
[email protected]
Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation
Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
status with the IRS.
The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To
SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
particular state visit http://pglaf.org
While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
approach us with offers to donate.
International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works.
Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily
keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
http://www.gutenberg.org
This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
