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Updated: June 27, 2025
I shall say to you, Sheik, if you will now travel with me to Suakim or some other port where I can obtain money for paying you a fair ransom I will remain with you until such ransom is paid into your hands; if you will not do so I shall consider myself free to escape when I can.
"Stevenson came by it in a strange way. He told me he was goin' over a battle-field after a scrimmage near Suakim, lookin' out for the wounded, when he noticed somethin' clasped in a dead man's hand. The hand gripped it tight, as if unwillin' to part with it, an' when Stevenson got it he found that it was this little book, `The Victory. Here it is.
"True, true," groaned Sir Arthur, and, turning over the despatches with trembling hands, he added, "I am instructed to order troops from Cairo and Suakim. What madness! What madness!" Sir Arthur continued to talk in a rambling, excited way until Colonel Carrington assumed control of affairs. "Your steamer is here now?" he said to the captain.
The events outside Suakim alone might give them pause before they plunged into the Sudan; for that was the time when Russia was moving on towards Afghanistan; and the agreement between the three Emperors imposed the need of caution on a State as isolated and unpopular as England then was. Vital interests were at stake in too many places to warrant a policy of Quixotic adventure up the Nile.
Amid these dreadful memorials of the recent fight the party bivouacked! Next day the troops returned to Suakim, and Sutherland, after breakfast, and what he called a wash-up, went to see his friend Sergeant Hardy, with pen, ink, and paper. "Weel, serjint, hoo are ye the day?" "Pretty well, thank you pretty well. Ah!
"I believe you," answered Henry Withers. As for William Connor, when he left Suakim, his foot was light, his figure straight, and he sent a running fire of laughter through his company by one or two "insinsible remarks," as Coolin called them.
When night again fell the engines were slowed down, for it was not deemed advisable to arrive off Suakim before daylight, as the coast of the neighbourhood abounded with reefs, and the entrance to the harbour was intricate and difficult. As soon as day broke the engines were again put at full speed, and in an hour the masts of the shipping lying in the port could be made out.
Toward evening they met the Guards, and as it was too late to return to Suakim the force bivouacked in McNeill's deserted zereba, surrounded by graves and scarcely buried corpses. Only those who were there can fully understand what that meant.
Selecting him as a spokesman for the others, the Mahdi, using the negro as an interpreter, put him through the following examination: "Where do you come from?" he asked, sternly. "From Suakim," answered Molloy, quite as sternly. "What brought you here?" "Your dirty-faced baboons!"
Such an attitude would have involved war with Germany about East Africa and war with France about West Africa, at the very time when we were on the brink of hostilities with Russia about Merv, and were actually fighting the Mahdists behind Suakim. The "weary Titan" to use Matthew Arnold's picturesque phrase was then overburdened.
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