Her trampled flag—for he loved Honour more—
Nay, not for Life, Revenge, or Victory,
Would he have fled, whose hour had dawned to die.
The White Pasha, Andrew Lang.
Considerably before the events of the last chapter, Sir Samuel Baker, the English explorer, had travelled through the unknown regions of the Upper Nile, and found that the country was almost entirely devoted to the slave-trade. An effort was made to improve conditions there. The Khedive for a time asserted his authority over these regions, two Englishmen being appointed in succession as his governors, the first Sir Samuel Baker himself, and the second Charles Gordon. For many years Gordon, who had come fresh from China, struggled to free the natives from the slave-traders, but his labours were rendered useless by the accession of a worthless Khedive. Shortly afterwards he returned to England, and the Soudan relapsed into its old corruption. Then, in 1882, appeared one of those strange dramatic figures that in the East spring into prominence and disappear as abruptly—a fanatic named Mohammed Ahmed, proclaiming himself as Mahdi, and calling to his standard all true Mahommedans.
The Arabs have ever been ready to follow the sword, and very soon 6000 troops under Yusef Pasha were almost annihilated. Swiftly one Egyptian garrison fell after another. The Mahdi advanced towards the north, and cut to pieces an Egyptian army under Colonel Hicks. The word passed from village to village, from mosque to mosque, from one solitary encampment to another that the Mahdi had indeed come at last, and with the defeat of Hicks’s army not only was Khartoum in hourly peril, but Cairo itself was threatened.
Fortunately, the Arab—like the Highlander of old—is satisfied with the booty in hand, and very much prefers to see it safely put away before he takes to the field again in search of more. Such practical considerations were a check to the Mahdi’s religious zeal, and permitted England to collect her strength—or one should say such strength as lay to her hand; for at this time public interest in Egypt was very luke-warm. The result was the tragic page in history that closed with the death of Gordon in Khartoum. There was one man in Egypt who was later on both to avenge Gordon and to subdue the Soudan, but he as yet was unknown. The name of this young man was Kitchener, and the war correspondent, Mr. John Macdonald, has given the following little sketch of the future victor of Omdurman as he was in the year 1883—the year in which the Mahdi renewed his activities. It is not without interest at the present time.
“Taylor,” he writes, “had invited me the night before to accompany him and his friend and witness the operation which they were both to supervise. A tall, slim, thin-faced, slightly stooping figure in long boots, ‘cut-away’ dark morning-coat and Egyptian fez, somewhat tilted over his eyes—such, as I remember him, was the young soldier who was destined to fulfil Gordon’s task of ‘smashing the Mahdi.’ ‘He’s quiet,’ Taylor whispered to me as we were getting ready; ‘that’s his way.’ And, again, with characteristic jerk of the head, ‘He’s clever.’ And so, in the raw, greyish early morning of January 8, 1883, the three of us drove in our dingy rattle-trap over the white dusty road Nilewards to meet the fellah cavaliers. Taylor did most of the talking. Kitchener expressed himself in an occasional nod or monosyllable.
“At the barracks we found some forty men waiting. I remember Kitchener’s gaze at the awkward, slipshod group as he took his position in the centre of a circular space round which the riders were to show their paces. ‘We begin with the officers,’ said Taylor turning to me; ‘we shall train them first, then put them to drill the troopers. We have no troopers just yet, though we have 440 horses ready for them.’
“And now began the selection of the fellah officers. They were to be tested in horsemanship. The first batch were ordered to mount. Round they went, Indian file, Kitchener, like a circus-master standing in the centre. Had he flourished a long whip he might have passed for a show-master at a rehearsal. Neither audible nor visible sign did he give of any feeling roused in him by a performance most disappointing and sometimes ridiculous. His hands buried in his trousers pockets, he quietly watched the emergence of the least unfit. In half an hour or so the first native officers of the fellah cavalry were chosen. It was then that Kitchener made his longest speech, ‘We’ll have to drive it into those fellows,’ he muttered, as if thinking aloud.”