He knew that England and the other European Powers were angry with him because he permitted slavery. And now that the slavers refused to obey him, he was between two fires.
So the Khedive and his ministers suddenly seemed to become very much shocked at the wicked traffic in slaves in the Soudan, and asked Colonel Gordon to come and help to stop it.
Early in February Gordon arrived in Cairo. He had been but a few days there when he wrote: "I think I can see the true motive now of the expedition, and believe it to be a sham to catch the attention of the English people." He felt he had been humbugged. Only in name was he Governor, for the Egyptian Government only owned three stations in that wide tract of country which he had been asked to come and govern.
But Gordon never turned his back upon those who wanted help. The land was full of misery. There were thousands of wretched people to fight for and to set free. Humbugged or not, he must do the work he had come to do, and on the 18th of February 1874 he started for the Soudan.
The Egyptian troops and Gordon's own staff were amazed when they found what sort of a man was the new Governor. They were used to the Egyptian officials who never did any work they were not paid for, who did not do it then if they could find any one else to do it for them, and whose hands were constantly held out asking for bribes.
Sebehr the slaver, when he went to Cairo, took with him £100,000 to bribe the Pashas. It was as if some notorious criminal should go to London with £100,000 gained by murders and thefts to bribe the British Government. But what would be outrageous in our country was a very usual thing in Egypt.
As Gordon and his troops (200 Egyptian soldiers) sailed up the Nile in their dahabeah, the boat was often blocked by the tangled water weeds. And always one of the first to spring into the water and help to pull the boat onwards was the new Governor. The old Nile crocodiles, even, must have been surprised; but they did him no harm, for they never touch any one who is moving.
They landed at Berber, and after a fortnight's march across the desert they reached the two or three thousand yellowish-white, flat-roofed, mud-walled houses that made Khartoum, the capital of the Soudan.
There eight busy days were spent. He issued proclamations; he held a review; he visited the hospitals and the schools. "The little blacks were glad to see me," he wrote; "I wish the flies would not dine on the corners of their eyes."
The grown-up people at Khartoum also seemed delighted to see "His Excellency General Colonel Gordon, the Governor-General of the Equator," as his title went. "They make a shrill noise when they see you, as a salutation; it is like a jingle of bells, very shrill, and somewhat musical," wrote Gordon.