Such a man was not found, and well might the black people long for the return of Gordon Pasha, the only Christian for whom they offered prayers at Mecca.
When he went away, under the rule of the greedy Egyptian pashas the slave trade began again. Once more packed caravans of wretched slaves dragged across the desert, and the land was full of misery and of rebellion.
In 1881 the discontented Soudanese found a leader.
From the island of Abbas on the Nile, Mahommed Ahmed, a dervish or holy man, from Dongola, proclaimed to the people of Egypt and of the Soudan that he was a prophet sent from heaven to save them from the cruelty of their rulers.
El Mahdi el Muntazer, or The Expected One, he called himself, and said he was immortal and would never die.
Soon he had many followers. He was attended by soldiers, who stood in his presence with drawn swords, and he had all the power of a king. Because he was Mahdi, his followers all had to obey him. And as he was Mahdi, he himself did exactly as he pleased, and what he liked to do was all that was wicked and cruel.
The Governor-General at Khartoum, seeing that the Mahdi was growing much too powerful, sent two companies of soldiers to take him prisoner. The Mahdists made a trap for them, fell on them with their swords and short stabbing spears, and destroyed them. More troops were sent, and also destroyed. Then came a small army, and of that army almost no man escaped.
"This is in truth our Deliverer, sent from Heaven," said the wild people of the Soudan, and they flocked in tribes to join the Mahdi.
It was not long before he owned a great army, and there have never been any soldiers who fought more fiercely and with more magnificent courage, and who feared death less, than those followers of a savage dervish.
The Mahdi laid siege to one of the chief cities of the Soudan. It fell before him, and sack and massacre followed.