Again and again he found that the English army that was to relieve Khartoum had not yet started.
"The English are coming!" mocked the dervishes.
Day by day, Gordon's glass would sweep the steely river and the yellow sand for the first sight of the men who were coming to save him and his people.
At last, with sinking heart, he wrote: "The Government having abandoned us, we can only trust in God."
"When our provisions, which we have, at a stretch, for two months, are eaten, we must fall," wrote, to the Times, Frank Power, a brave man and a true friend of Gordon.
In April the telegraph wires were cut by the enemy. After that, news from England was only rarely to be had, and only through messengers who were not often to be trusted.
Still hoping that an English army was coming, Gordon determined to send his steamers half way to meet it. It meant that his garrison would be weaker, should the Mahdi make any great attack, but Gordon felt that England could not fail him, and that in a very short time the steamers would return, bringing a splendid reinforcement.
On September 10th, three steamers, with Colonel Stewart and Frank Power in command, sailed down the Nile.
Gordon was left the only Englishman in Khartoum.
"I am left alone … but not alone," he wrote.