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Unfortunately, Gordon was not in the position of a Napoleon: he was hampered in the carrying out of his brilliant designs by those at home, who had neither his knowledge nor his capacity. With regard to the proposed appointment of the great slave-hunter to be King of the Soudan, opinions even now differ greatly.
As soon as he left the office, the slave-hunter seized hold of him, and swore he would keep him till witnesses were brought. But Friend Hopper walked up to him, and said in his resolute way, "Let go thy hold! or I will take such measures as will make thee repent of thy rashness. How darest thou lay a finger upon the man after the magistrate has discharged him?"
This letter was given to the fugitive with directions how to proceed. His friend accompanied him to the ferry, saw him safely across the river, and then returned home. In an hour or two the slave-hunter came to the house, accompanied by a constable and two witnesses from Virginia. "The slave I arrested was seen to come here," said he. "Where is he? Produce him."
By these means he would be able to cheat the government out of the two-fifths of all ivory; he would preserve his slaves; and a judicious present to some high official would reinstate him in his original position as the greatest slave-hunter of the White Nile; with the additional kuilos of having battled the Christian Pacha.
As for slavery, that institution alone has gained by the weak policy of those who were afraid to send up the old slave-hunter to govern the unfortunate Soudan. One of the most remarkable characteristics of General Gordon was the marvellous fertility of his resources.
Strange rumours, mysterious and vague, had reached him already rumours relating to an immensely powerful tribe inhabiting the dark and unexplored country away to the north, whose raids were extending more and more, whose wrath fell alike upon all upon Arab slave-hunter and the prey sought by the latter a Zulu-speaking tribe said to have taken its origin in some hardly recorded exodus in the days of Tshaka Zulu alike in its habits and customs, and in the despotism of its ruler.
Let such men as these, rough with the pioneer sense of justice, once suspect the situation of those two women, especially if the rumor got abroad among them that Eloise was white, and the slave-hunter would have a hard row to hoe.
Koorshid Aga returned them a girl from Khartoum who had been captured by a slave-hunter; this delighted the people, and they immediately brought an ox as an offering. The "Clumsy's" yard broke in two pieces, thus I was obliged to seek a dry spot for the necessary repairs.
In her young womanhood, so the tale ran, the slave-hunter had found her and driven her aboard a slave-ship bound for the American coast. He never drove another slave toward any coast. In Virginia her first purchaser had sold her quickly to a Georgia planter whose heirs sent her on to Mississippi. Thence she soon found her way to the Louisiana rice-fields.
He came out as a cabin-boy, and, by persevering energy, has become the richest man on the East Coast. On the 10th of January, 1863, the "Pioneer," with the "Lady Nyassa" in tow, steamed up the Shire. They soon met signs of the bandit slave-hunter Mariano's expedition. Dead bodies floated by them in great numbers, and for scores of miles the entire population had been swept away.
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