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If the Mahdi had been a purely secular potentate, and not a fanatical religious propagandist, it would have been a natural and feasible arrangement to have come to terms with him as the conqueror of the country. But the basis of the Mahdi's power forbade his being on terms with anyone.
Her father, her mother, her brothers were all loved by her; and, beyond these, the unfortunate camels and the donkeys whose sides bled where the girths cut them as the careless Englishmen rode them in and out of the village to and from the Mahdi's tomb, and the lean, barking curs in the mud street that seldom barked as she passed by.
When the attack by your people was made, I have heard that one of the Soudanese regiments held together, and marched away, and that there was a white officer with them." "That was so. Two days afterwards, we surrounded them. They fought hard; and at last, when we had lost many men, we offered that, if they would surrender and become the Mahdi's men, they would be spared.
Therefore the only course for them seemed to be to join him, and so escape the vengeance which would otherwise overtake them. And since they had hesitated and therefore incurred suspicion, it was advisable, they thought, to show the greater zeal, and they in many instances adopted the Mahdi's uniform, as the present prisoner had done.
The Mahdi's forces will fall to pieces of themselves; but if in a moment of panic orders are issued for the abandonment of the whole of the Eastern Soudan, a blow will be struck against the security of Egypt and the peace of the East, which may have fatal consequences. "The great evil is not at Khartoum, but at Cairo. It is the weakness of Cairo which produces disaster in the Soudan.
It was not until December 30th more than a fortnight after the last entry in Gordon's Journal that Sir Herbert Stewart, at the head of 1,100 British troops, was able to leave Korti on his march towards Metemmah, 170 miles across the desert. His advance was slow, and it was tenaciously disputed by, the Mahdi's forces.
From there he could see if the Mahdi's armies were approaching, or if help were coming to save Khartoum and the Soudan. All the time he kept up the hearts of the people, and encouraged work at the school and everywhere else. The blowing up of the Palace is the simplest, while the other means long and weary humiliation and suffering of all sorts.
"And of a city too, Excellency El Gaebor," replied the Sheikh. "Few people have gone there, for it is half a day's journey from the river bank. But his Excellency will not stay to visit it now?" "No, Ibrahim; not now," said the professor. "It is very tempting, but duty first. We must come and see the ruins after we have fetched my friend out of the new Mahdi's grasp. Not before."
Having accepted this duty, he goes out, and finding the Mahdi's forces stronger than was supposed in this country, he sends home word that the task is a far more complicated one than the authorities in England knew of, and he suggests other methods.
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.
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