A Prisoner of the Khaleefa: Twelve Years Captivity at Omdurman

by Charles Neufeld

“The first man up the steps plunged his huge spear into his body; he fell forward on his face without uttering a word. His murderers dragged him down the steps to the palace entrance, and here his head was cut off and at once sent over to the Mahdi.” |302|

It will be noticed that Father Ohrwalder’s account appears to be a condensation of the first given, while it is hard to believe that a coincidence only accounts for Slatin giving the history in almost the identical words used by Ohrwalder. It is still more extraordinary that the first account should ever have been believed and published, and still more extraordinary that it was not corrected by Ohrwalder and Slatin, for when I arrived in Omdurman, in 1887, the real details of the death of Gordon were the theme of conversation whenever his name was mentioned, and there are many eye-witnesses to his death—or were until the battle of Omdurman, who could tell a very different tale.

KHALEEL AGHA ORPHALI.

Those who knew Charles George Gordon, will believe me when I aver that he died, as they must all have believed that he died—in spite of the official and semi-official accounts to the contrary—as the soldier and lion-hearted man he was. Gordon did not rest his hand on the hilt of his sword and turn his back to his enemies to receive his mortal wound. Gordon drew his sword, and used it. When Gordon fell, his sword was dripping with the blood of his assailants, for no less than sixteen or seventeen did he cut down with it. When Gordon fell, his left hand was blackened with the unburned powder from his at least thrice-emptied revolver. When Gordon fell, his life’s blood was pouring from a spear and pistol-shot wound in his right breast. When Gordon fell, his boots were slippery with the blood of the crowd of dervishes he shot and hacked his way through, in his heroic attempt |303| to cut his way out and place himself at the head of his troops. Gordon died as only Gordon could die. Let the world be misinformed and deceived about Soudan affairs with the tales of so-called guides and spies, but let it be told the truth of Gordon’s death.

A week before the fall of Khartoum, Gordon had given up hopes. Calling Ibrahim Pasha Fauzi, he ordered him to provision one of the steamers, get all the Europeans on board, and set off for the north. To their credit be it said, they refused to leave unless Gordon saved his own life with theirs. Finding him obdurate, a plot was made to seize him while asleep, carry him off, and save him in spite of himself; but he somehow heard of the plot, smiled, and said it was his duty to save their lives if he could, but it was also his duty to “stick to his post.” As the troops must be near, then sail north, he told them, and tell them to hurry up.

Each day at dawn, when he retired to rest, he bolted his door from the inside, and placed his faithful body-servant—Khaleel Agha Orphali—on guard outside it. On the fatal night, Gordon had as usual kept his vigil on the roof of the palace, sending and receiving telegraphic messages from the lines every few minutes, and as dawn crept into the skies, thinking that the long-threatened attack was not yet to be delivered, he lay down wearied out. The little firing heard a few minutes later attracted no more attention than the usual firing which had been going on continuously night and day for months, but when the palace guards were heard firing it was known that something serious |304| was happening. By the time Gordon had slipped into his old serge or dark tweed suit, and taken his sword and revolver, the advanced dervishes were already surrounding the palace. Overcoming the guards, a rush was made up the stairs, and Gordon was met leaving his room. A small spear was thrown which wounded him, but very slightly, on the left shoulder. Almost before the dervishes knew what was happening, three of them lay dead, and one wounded, at Gordon’s feet—the remainder fled. Quickly reloading his revolver, Gordon made for the head of the stairs, and again drove the reassembling dervishes off. Darting back to reload, he received a stab in his left shoulder-blade from a dervish concealed behind the corridor door, and on reaching the steps the third time, he received a pistol-shot and spear-wound in his right breast, and then, great soldier as he was, he rose almost above himself. With his life’s blood pouring from his breast—not his back, remember—he fought his way step by step, kicking from his path the wounded and dead dervishes—for Orphali too had not been idle—and as he was passing through the doorway leading into the courtyard, another concealed dervish almost severed his right leg with a single blow. Then Gordon fell. The steps he had fought his way—not been dragged—down, were encumbered with the bodies of dead and dying dervishes. No dervish spear pierced the live and quivering flesh of a prostrate but still conscious Gordon, for he breathed his last as he turned to face his last assailant, half raised his sword to strike, and fell dead with his face to heaven. |305|

Even had I not been specially requested, as the last of the Soudan captives, to relate in my narrative all that I had heard and learned concerning Gordon, I should have done so to a certain extent at all events, for he was no more the hero of the British people than he was mine, and the belief that he was still alive had no little to do with my ill-starred journey in 1887. The truth about his death, which is now published for the first time, is ample justification for what follows concerning him while still alive. It is true, as I have been told, that all I can have to say will be from “hearsay;” but then all the reports published concerning Gordon’s last days are from hearsay. I have the advantage over all others in this—that I was maybe the one man, captive or not, in Omdurman whom Mahdist and “Government” man alike could trust implicitly and confide in, for there was no questioning what my attitude was towards Abdullahi and Mahdieh. The consequence was that old “Government” people and the powerful men who from time to time became my fellow-prisoners, and, as a consequence, enemies of Abdullahi, gave me confidences which, if given in other quarters, might have resulted in the loss of a head.

Again, almost all the tales told about the Soudan may be classed in one of two categories; the first, tales like mine, related by people interested in putting their own version upon events and incidents with which they were personally connected, and the second, tales told by people with versions for which they believed their questioners were hankering, so that what |306| was white to “A” became black to “B,” if it was considered that this colour pleased “B” best. The system scarcely puts a premium on accuracy.

But before proceeding to my comments on the criticisms, a few introductory remarks are called for to prevent misconceptions and misunderstandings arising in the minds of my readers. As an evidence that the following is not intended—far from it—to lacerate the feelings of any of those who suffered with me, I might mention that I have read over the notes of this chapter to many of my fellow-captives, and have, at their suggestion, cut out a series of incidents well known to Gordon, which influenced him in the stand he took towards certain people, and other incidents which prove how clear and long-sighted he was, and how events justified his taking up the stand which he did. One incident ought to be written, to punish on this earth, if possible, the man whose escape has not been recorded, and whose deserted and broken-hearted wife lies by the side of their unshriven baby-boy in the sands of the Soudan. However, maybe Gordon, had he come back alive to meet all the calumnies directed against him, would have hesitated to help his “clearance” by stabbing the living with a dead hand, and out of respect to his memory this incident, with a number of others, has been expunged.