It was about midday on the 28th when a couple of steamers, with Sir Charles Wilson and a detachment of the Sussex Regiment on board, steamed out on to the broad stretch of river above which Khartoum stands at the junction of the Blue and White Nile. Half-an-hour told the miserable truth. There was no flag flying from the battlements, and no English voice to bid the tardy comers welcome.
But there is to be a welcome of a sort, for, as the boats come within range, the guns of Khartoum open fire on them and a spattering hail of rifle-balls drop about them, and the puffs of smoke leap up from every point along the banks till the circle round the boats is completed. Of this there could be only one meaning: Gordon the deserted was dead. And this meaning was true, though we did not know the full truth of it until long after all that was left of him on earth had been scattered, graveless and uncared for, over the wind-swept sands of the Soudan.
There is his grave; there, too, now is his monument—the memory of the work he did and the deathless fame he earned. On those who sent him to the forefront of the battle and left him there to die History has not yet given her verdict. When she does it will, as usual, be a just one, and, in all probability, it will not form very pleasant reading for those of their descendants who may be animated with anything like a proper pride of ancestry.
XII
CECIL RHODES
“ALL ENGLISH—THAT’S MY DREAM!”
XII
CECIL RHODES
Although there are obvious difficulties in the way of writing at once without fear and without favour of a man who is unquestionably one of the great ones of the earth while he is still alive, there are yet two very cogent reasons why Cecil Rhodes should be the subject of this concluding essay.
In the first place, he is the last of our Empire-Makers in order of time, and, in the second place, he has done his empire-making in the last region of the earth in which this empire, or any other, can be extended without coming into direct armed conflict with the great Powers of the earth.
If you get a map of Africa published thirty years ago, and lay it beside a quite recent one, a very little intelligent observation will enable you to see, at any rate, what I may be allowed to call prima facie evidence of the magnificent work which this last of our Empire-Makers has done, not so much for this generation, perhaps, as for the next, and the next.