"I felt strange when I came to put on my European clothes. Mr. Power, who tells me he has been here for some years, as correspondent of the Times, has this afternoon taken me round the defences, and into the workshops. I think the place can resist any attacks, if the troops remain faithful; but of this there is a doubt. A good many of the Soudanese have already been sent away. As Gordon said at dinner this evening, if he had but a score of English officers, he would be perfectly confident that he could resist any enemy save starvation.
"September 12th:
"It has been settled that Colonel Stewart and Mr. Power are to go down the river in the Abbas, and I am to go with them. The General proposed it to me. I said that I could not think of leaving him here by himself, so he said kindly:
"'I thank you, Mr. Hilliard, but you could do no good here, and would only be throwing away your life. We can hold on to the end of the year, though the pinch will be very severe; but I think we can make the stores last, till then. But by the end of December our last crust will have been eaten, and the end will have come. It will be a satisfaction to me to know that I have done my best, and fail only because of the miserable delays and hesitation of government.'
"So it is settled that I am going. The gunboats are to escort us for some distance. Were it not for Gordon, I should feel delighted at the prospect. It is horrible to leave him--one of the noblest Englishmen!--alone to his fate. My only consolation is that if I remained I could not avert it, but should only be a sharer in it.
"September 18th:
"We left Khartoum on the 14th, and came down without any serious trouble until this morning, when the boat struck on a rock in the cataract, opposite a village called Hebbeh. A hole has been knocked in her bottom, and there is not a shadow of hope of getting her off. Numbers of the natives have gathered on the shore. I have advised that we should disregard their invitations to land, but that, as there would be no animosity against the black crew, they would be safe; and that we three whites should take the ship's boat, and four of the crew, put provisions for a week on board, and make our way down the river. Colonel Stewart, however, feels convinced that the people can be trusted, and that we had better land and place ourselves under the protection of the sheik. He does not know the Arabs as well as I do.
"However, as he has determined to go ashore, I can do nothing. I consider it unlikely, in the extreme, that there will be any additions to this journal. If, at any time in the future, this should fall into the hands of any of my countrymen, I pray that they will send it down to my dear wife, Mrs. Hilliard, whom, I pray, God may bless and comfort, care of the Manager of the Bank, Cairo."
[Chapter 20]: A Momentous Communication.
Gregory had, after finishing the record, sat without moving until the dinner hour. It was a relief to him to know that his father had not spent the last years of his life as he had feared, as a miserable slave--ill treated, reviled, insulted, perhaps chained and beaten by some brutal taskmaster; but had been in a position where, save that he was an exile, kept from his home and wife, his lot had not been unbearable. He knew more of him than he had ever known before. It was as a husband that his mother had always spoken of him; but here he saw that he was daring, full of resource, quick to grasp any opportunity, hopeful and yet patient, longing eagerly to rejoin his wife, and yet content to wait until the chances should be all in his favour. He was unaffectedly glad thus to know him; to be able, in future, to think of him as one of whom he would have been proud; who would assuredly have won his way to distinction.