"'Very well,' I said, 'I'll try and get you some, and meet you at the railway station with it.'
"I went round to the various clubs, and got £300 in gold. I gave the money to Colonel Stewart, who went with him: Gordon was not to be trusted with it. A week or so passed by, when I had a letter from Stewart. He said, 'You remember the £300 you gave me? When we arrived at Port Said a great crowd came out to cheer Gordon. Amongst them was an old Sheikh to whom Gordon was much attached, and who had become poor and blind. Gordon got the money, and gave the whole of it to him!'" [1]
Before he started, he gave away some trinkets and things that he prized. It was as if he knew something of what lay before him.
At Charing Cross, the Duke of Cambridge (who had known him since he was a merry little boy at Corfu), Lord Wolseley, and others, came to bid him Godspeed.
He took with him Colonel Donald Stewart, whom he had chosen as his military secretary. Even in the rush before the train started he found time to say to one of Colonel Stewart's relations: "Be sure that he will not go into any danger which I do not share, and I am sure that when I am in danger he will not be far behind."
When, on January 18, 1884, Gordon went out to the Soudan like one of the Crusaders of old, all England was proud and glad.
In Egypt the people were gladder still.
Said the Arabs who had served under him: "The Mahdi's hordes will melt away like dew, and the Pretender will be left like a small man standing alone, until he is forced to flee back to his island of Abbas."
The Khedive again made him Governor-General of the Soudan, and, on the 26th of January 1884, Gordon started for Khartoum.
At Khartoum the people were in a panic. Colonel Coëtlogan had his troops in readiness for flight. The rich people had already escaped. The poor who had not fled were in terror lest the Mahdi and his hosts might come any day and massacre them.