After waiting four days in Cairo, and receiving a telegram from the Atbara which gave me no cause for the least apprehension about Cross's condition, I left Alexandra on the 17th of September for Marseilles. On board I renewed my acquaintance with Major Stuart-Wortley, and amongst the other passengers were Prince Francis of Teck and Prince Christian Victor. Prince Francis had been very ill throughout the latter part of the campaign, but during the fight had risen from his bed, in spite of medical advice, and worked a Maxim gun with good effect.
We left Marseilles by the morning rapide on the 21st, and as we were crossing the Channel on the 22nd, Prince Christian handed me the Morning Post, and pointed to a paragraph which announced the death of Cross from enteric fever on the 20th.
The news took away for the time being all the joy of one's return. Twice I have been fated to lose my travelling companion by death when the work was finished which we set ourselves to do. Cross was an old Hertford man, who had rowed five in the 'Varsity boat of 1889, and had afterwards been appointed to an assistant mastership at Bedford. He had always been very loyal to his old college, and our successes on the river were largely due to his "coaching." We shall all—seniors and juniors alike—miss him greatly. In spite of constant attacks of illness from exposure to the sun, each of which left him weaker than before, Cross had refused to return from the front, and, as I said above, had actually dragged himself out of hospital in order to be present at the battle. But while his natural vivacity and vigour were to some extent impaired by physical debility, he was always unselfish in the "give and take" of camp life, and bore uncomplainingly the many discomforts which are necessarily experienced by the sick during the advance of an army. Still side by side with his courageous endurance of physical suffering, and the coolness which he showed when under fire for the first time, the central thought which occupied Cross's mind was that of returning to his beloved work at Bedford.
"His was a soul whose master-bias leans
To homefelt pleasures and to gentle scenes—
More brave for this, that he had much to love!"
The Sudan campaign, which, thanks to the Sirdar's wonderful genius for organisation, has been so thoroughly successful, cannot be regarded as in any sense final. Unless our recovery of the Nile banks as far as Omdurman is followed by the possession of the Bahr-el-Ghazal, we may almost be said to have laboured in vain. If we stayed our hand at Khartum, or even Fashoda, the same remark which Lord Salisbury passed on the French possessions in the Sahara, that "the soil was rather light," would apply equally well to our arid conquests in the Sudan. The so-called French occupation of the Bahr-el-Ghazal must not be allowed to count for anything. Their utter failure as colonisers in French Congo, Senegal, and even Algeria, and the selfish tariffs with which they seek to exclude foreign industry from the regions which they reserve for Frenchmen who never come—these things deprive them of any moral claim to further annexations of vast territories in the interior of Africa. Moreover, the Bahr-el-Ghazal was indubitably a province of Egypt before the Mahdi's revolt, and must be restored to the Khedive intact. Under British control this fertile province will be able to develop its splendid resources. Coffee grows wild, timber abounds, and thousands of square miles are ready for the cultivation of corn, two crops of which can be grown in a single year. In ancient days Egypt was the granary of Europe. Rome and Byzantium were dependent almost entirely upon the Alexandrian corn-ships. In fact, one of the most serious accusations which could be brought against a citizen was that he was carrying on intrigues for the stoppage of these vessels. This actual charge was levied against the great Athanasius himself, and the philosopher Sopater, who was accused of delaying the corn supply by magical rites, was promptly decapitated by Constantine "because he was too clever" (δι' ὑπερβολὴν σοφίας). There is no reason why the Bahr-el-Ghazal, when connected by river and rail with the sea, should not take its place as one of the great corn-growing countries of the world. Again, an exploration of the Nuba region to the north of the province may lead to the discovery of mineral wealth. At anyrate, during an earlier campaign, a Dervish caravan was captured by the forces under Sir Francis Grenfell, and amongst the merchandise was found a large quantity of gold which had been dug out of the Nuba Hills.
But even when the possession and organisation of the Bahr-el-Ghazal has become an accomplished fact, we find ourselves barred by a belt of territory some two hundred miles across, from Uganda to the north of Lake Tanganyika. Despite the vital importance of securing a road between Uganda and Nyassaland, Lord Salisbury allowed Germany to make the western frontier of its East African possessions conterminous with that of the Congo State, and thus completely bar our advance from north or south. But in this case what was lost by the weakness of one Government may be recovered by the firmness of another; and if this result be happily secured, the territories regained to civilisation by Lord Kitchener's genius will be united to our vast possessions in the South, and Mr. Cecil Rhodes' magnificent idea of a British Empire in Africa, stretching from Cairo to the Cape, will at length be realised in actual fact.