"It is better for him to serve the Mahdi," said Abdullahi; "now get ready, and I shall present you to him."
Before prayers began, the Khalifa conducted him, as he had conducted me a few days before, to the mosque, and bade him be seated; but I, being a mulazem, now took up my position in the second line. On the Mahdi approaching, the Khalifa and his guest stood up; and the latter, on being presented, craved his pardon for the blindness of heart which had hitherto prevented him from becoming one of his faithful adherents. He was pardoned, and, on taking the oath of allegiance, was enjoined to uphold faithfully the new doctrine, and attend prayers without fail. The Mahdi, seeing me in the second line, directed me to come forward and take up my position beside the Khalifa. "Drink of the river of my words," said he, "and that will be of inestimable benefit to you." I excused myself by saying that as mulazem of the Khalifa I did not think it my place to stand beside my master, and had therefore joined the second line. I was now praised for this act of self-abnegation; the Mahdi added, however, that in future this should always be my position, "For in the place of worship we are all alike."
After prayers, the Khalifa disappeared as usual, whilst Hussein Khalifa and I remained in the mosque till sunset. My uncomfortable posture brought more curses than prayers to my lips; but I had to put as good a face as I could on the matter. That evening, we supped with the Khalifa, and talked on general subjects, being continually warned to be honest and sincere. To my great delight, Hussein Khalifa was directed to spend that night in the rekuba; but his relatives were allowed to go home. The Khalifa had left us, and the servants had retired, so we were quite alone, and took this long-looked-for occasion to greet each other most heartily, and to mutually bemoan the sad fate which brought us together to this wretched position. "Hussein Pasha," said I, "I trust you and yours may rest assured of my silence. Tell me what is the present condition of Khartum, and what are the population doing?" "Alas!" he replied, "it is exactly as I have already described it to the Khalifa. Gordon's reading at Metemmeh of the proclamation abandoning the Sudan, upset the situation entirely, and was indirectly the cause of the fall of Berber. No doubt, it would have been lost later on; but this action of Gordon's greatly precipitated it. At Berber, I stopped him from taking this fatal step; and I cannot think what induced him to disregard my advice almost immediately afterwards." We talked so long about the situation and the various events that Hussein Pasha, who was old and tired, fell asleep; but this conversation had banished all sleep from my eyes. So this is to be the end, I thought, of all Gordon's efforts to settle the country; and is all the blood and treasure expended in past years to go for nothing? Now the Government wanted to abandon this great country which, though hitherto it had not proved a financial benefit to Egypt, was a land of great prospects, and could at least produce thousands of splendid Black recruits with whom to fill the ranks of its army. So the Government was to leave this country to its own people, and yet to remain on friendly terms with it; it was to withdraw the garrisons and war matériel, and to establish a form of local Government, when a form of such Government had already sprung into existence by the most violent of means,—namely, by the wholesale overturning of every vestige of the authority which it was to replace, and the massacre or capture of almost every individual representative of the ousted ruling power.
To carry out this plan, they had sent Gordon in the hope that his personal influence with the people, and their regard for him,—which he was inclined to estimate somewhat highly,—would enable him to succeed in this herculean task. Gordon, it is true, was popular with some of the Western and Equatorial tribes, whom he had won over by his munificence and his benevolent nature. During his stay in these districts, he had constantly travelled about; and his noted courage and fearlessness in action had won him the sympathy of those tribes whose greatest pride it is to possess such qualities. Yes, there is no doubt he had been popular with the Western Arabs: but they had now a Mahdi whom they adored; they had almost forgotten Gordon. The Sudanese, it must be remembered, are not Europeans; they are Arabs and Blacks, and are little given over to sentimental feelings. But, in this particular case of the reading of the proclamation, the people concerned were river tribes; and, of all others, the Jaalin were perhaps the most hostile to Gordon, for they had not forgotten the eviction of the Gellabas.
The mere fact that Gordon had come to Khartum without a force at his back, proved to these people that he depended on his personal influence to carry out his task; but, to those who understood the situation, it was abundantly clear that personal influence at this stage was as a drop in the ocean. Then what could have induced him to read that fatal notice, proclaiming far and wide that the Government intended to abandon the Sudan? At Hussein Pasha's advice, he had not read it at Berber; but at Metemmeh, he had proclaimed it before all the people. Had Gordon never been informed of the Mahdi's proclamations, sent to all the tribes after the fall of El Obeid? Was he not aware that these proclamations enjoined all the people to unite in a religious war against the Government authority, and that those who disobeyed the summons, and were found giving assistance to the hated Turk, were guilty of betraying the faith, and as such would not only lose their money and property, but their wives and children would become the slaves of the Mahdi and his followers? Gordon's idea was to obtain the assistance of these tribes, in order to facilitate the withdrawal of the garrisons; and he would have come to terms with them to effect this object: but how could he expect them to help him, when, in the words of that fatal proclamation, it was decreed they were to be abandoned to their fate, and what would, in this eventuality, have been their fate? Could they have opposed the Mahdi, his forty thousand rifles, and his hosts of wild fanatics panting for blood and plunder? No, indeed, these tribes were sensible enough to understand that assistance given to Gordon to retreat, meant the annihilation of themselves and the enslavement of their families; why should they commit this self-sacrifice? How could Gordon's personal influence avail him for an instant against the personal interests of every man, woman, and child in the now abandoned Sudan?
If, for political or other reasons, it was impossible for the Government to maintain the Sudan, or to re-conquer it by degrees, it was an equally useless step to have sent Gordon there to sacrifice him. It did not require a person of any special military capacity to remove the garrisons and war matériel by the steamers to Berber, under pretext of relieving that town, and thus the whole or a considerable portion of the Sudan garrisons might have been successfully withdrawn, though it would have been necessary to do this without delay, and it could not have been feasible after the fall of Berber; but Berber, it must be remembered, did not fall till the 19th of May,—three months after Gordon's arrival in Khartum. However, under any circumstances, the reading of that fatal proclamation precipitated matters to an alarming extent; the intention of the Government was openly declared to the Sudanese, and they naturally, from that moment, looked to their own immediate interests, which were now directly opposed to those of the Government so hopelessly overturned by their victorious compatriot the Mahdi.
How could Gordon's qualities of personal bravery and energy, great as they undoubtedly were, arrest the progress of events after that most grave political error?
Perplexed and worried with such thoughts as these, I was tossing about on my angareb, whilst Hussein Khalifa was snoring. There was no small advantage in being a fatalist; but as yet I was too European to have arrived at this stage, though gradually I learnt to look at such matters with more equanimity, and my experiences in the Sudan have undoubtedly taught me to practise that great virtue—patience.
The next morning, the Khalifa honoured us with a visit, and asked me why my eyes were so red; I answered that, owing to a severe attack of fever, I had passed a sleepless night, on which he advised me to take care of myself and not to go into the sun; and he also excused me from attending the Mahdi's prayers. However, when prayer-time came, I performed them under the shade of the rekuba, and in the sight of the servants; as it was my object to appear to them as devout as possible, well-knowing they would report my every action to their master. The following day my huts were ready, and, with the Khalifa's permission, I entered into occupation. Hussein Khalifa had already been allowed to live with one of his relatives; and he made a point of going through all five prayers daily, in order to secure the good-will of the Mahdi and Khalifa, hoping in this way to obtain their leave to go back to his own country. I decided to remain as near the Khalifa as possible, and to only go occasionally to the Mahdi when he recommended me to do so.
A few days afterwards, a rumour was spread through the camp that Abu Girga had been attacked by Gordon, and had been wounded; his forces, which were then investing Khartum, were reported to have been repulsed, and the siege raised. This news filled my heart with delight, though openly, I was obliged to appear quite unconcerned.