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General Gordon reached Shaka on 7th April, and at once issued a notice to the slave-dealers to quit that advantageous station. He also sent forward reinforcements of men and stores to Gessi, but in a few days they returned, with a message from Gessi that he had received enough powder from his own base on the Nile to renew the attack on Suleiman.
He at once ordered Hassan Pasha to come to him, with the intention of punishing him by dismissal for his negligence and cowardice in commanding a force that, properly led, might have coerced the whole province, when the alarming news reached the Governor-General that Suleiman and his band had quitted Shaka, and were plundering in the neighbourhood of Dara itself.
At such a time, probably 557 B.C., was born Shaka, of the Muni clan, at Kapilavastu, one hundred miles northeast of Benares.
"I believe you not. You trick me as you would a child," he moaned. The priest knelt slowly by the bed. "In the name of Shaka, whom I worship, these words of mine are true. Here, in this room, at this moment, your Umè-ko is waiting." "But I want her too," whispered the piteous lips. "Not only her aerial spirit!
After some days' parleying, some of Suleiman's chiefs came over to my side, and these chiefs warned me that, if I did not take care, Suleiman would attack me. I therefore ordered Suleiman to go to Shaka, and ordered those chiefs who were inclined to accept my terms in another direction, so as to separate them. On this Suleiman accepted my terms, and he and others were made Beys.
And the summits of some are domed like the head of Shaka, and the dark bossy frondage that clothes them might seem the clustering of his curls. But gradually, with the passing of the days, as we journey into the loftier west, I see fewer and fewer tera. Such Buddhist temples as we pass appear small and poor; and the wayside images become rarer and rarer.
We pass over the details of the life of him called Prince, Lord, Lion of the Tribe of Shaka, and Saviour; of his desertion of wife and child, called the first Great Renunciation; of his struggles to obtain peace; of his enlightenment or Buddhahood; of his second or Greater Renunciation; of merit on account of austerities; and give the story told in a mountain of books in various tongues, but condensed in a paragraph by Romesh Chunder Dutt.
Finding to his disgust that the leader had escaped, Gessi followed him westwards through deserted villages and dense forests, and though he did not succeed in catching his prey, he was able to break up the gang of slave-dealers. Meanwhile Gordon had left Khartoum and had gone to the slave-dealers' headquarters at Shaka, and then back towards Khartoum, capturing many caravans on the way.
To me the image of Kwannon of the Thousand Hands is not less admirable than any other representation of human loveliness idealised bearing her name the Peerless, the Majestic, the Peace-Giving, or even White Sui-Getsu, who sails the moonlit waters in her rosy boat made of a single lotus-petal; and in the triple-headed Shaka I discern and revere the mighty power of that Truth, whereby, as by a conjunction of suns, the Three Worlds have been illuminated.
Thus perished Suleiman, the son of Zebehr, in whose name and for whose safety he had gone into revolt, in the very way that Gordon had predicted two years before in the midst of his brigand power at Shaka; and thus, with a remarkable combination of skill and courage, did Gessi bring his arduous campaign of twelve months' duration to a victorious conclusion.
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