On 31st January, Colonel Talbot returned from Jakdul with a large convoy of supplies. He was accompanied by the second division of the Naval Brigade, which, it may be remembered, had not arrived at Korti when the Desert Column left that place. With the Naval Brigade came Lieutenant E. B. van Koughnet, in command, Sub-Lieutenant Colin R. Keppel (son of my old friend Sir Harry Keppel), Surgeon Arthur William May (now Surgeon-General Sir A. W. May, C.B.), and Chief Engineer Henry Benbow (now Sir Henry Benbow, K.C.B., D.S.O.). Never was reinforcement more timely; and it was with inexpressible pleasure that I greeted my shipmates. Once more I had officers; in the meantime, I had put the Safieh into fighting trim; and now we were ready for emergency. It came.
Every night I used to haul off the Safieh into the stream; and I slept on deck. Very early in the morning of the 1st February, I was awakened by a voice hailing the Safieh. I ran to the rail, and there, in the first light of the dawn, was a boat, and Stuart-Wortley's face was lifted to mine. He climbed aboard.
"Gordon is killed and Khartoum has fallen," he said. Then Stuart-Wortley told me how Sir Charles Wilson's two steamers were wrecked, how his force was isolated up the river, and how the Mahdi might be marching down with his whole triumphant horde armed with all the guns and rifles of the fallen city.
"Then the soldiers had better run up more wire entanglements and earthworks as quick as they can. And I wish to God I had those two steamers!" I said.
I told Stuart-Wortley I would at once proceed to the rescue of Sir Charles Wilson's party, and sent him on shore to tell the news to Colonel Boscawen.
How the tidings came to the camp, is related by Lieutenant Douglas Dawson, who recorded in his diary how one "drew his curtains in the dead of night and told him" ... (The diary was published in The Nineteenth Century for November, 1885. I quote from the copy kindly lent to me by the author):
"February 1st. No member of our small force as long as he lives will ever forget this morning. Just at dawn I was woke by someone outside our hut calling for Boscawen. I jumped up and went out to see who it was, and then made out to my surprise Stuart-Wortley, whom we all thought at Khartoum.
"I looked towards the river, expecting in the faint light to see the steamers, then seeing nothing, and observing by his face that there was something wrong, I said, 'Why, good heavens! where are the steamers, what is the news?' He said, 'The very worst.'"
The full story of a very gallant exploit, Sir Charles Wilson's daring voyage to Khartoum, has been modestly and clearly told in his book, From Korti to Khartoum. The Bordein and the Talahawiyeh towing the nuggar, came to the Shabloka Cataract upon the day (25th January) after they had started. Here the Bordein stuck; and having been got off after many hours' work, she ran aground again off Hassan Island next day, during which the expedition advanced only three miles. On the afternoon of the 27th, a man appearing on the left bank cried that Khartoum had fallen and Gordon was slain. No one believed him, because the air was full of false rumours. The next day, 28th, in the morning, a man on the right bank cried that Khartoum had fallen and that Gordon had been killed, two days before. No one believed him. But it was true. It was on that night that we in Gubat heard the guns firing in Metemmeh.
By this time, those in the steamers could catch a far glimpse of the roofs and minarets of Khartoum pencilled upon the blue above the trees of Tuti Island; and at the same time, a heavy fire was opened from the battery of Fighiaiha on their right hand. Then they came to Halfiyeh, where a battery of four guns fired upon them, on their left hand. The naked black men in the steamers served their guns with a furious zeal, while the British infantry fired steadily, and so through the smoke the red flags went on, safely past the point of the long island that ends opposite to Halfiyeh, the Soudanese ecstatically shrieking defiance and brandishing their rifles. At Halfiyeh were boats lying, and Khashm-el-Mus said to Sir Charles Wilson, "Gordon's troops must be there, as the Mahdi has no boats."