the river he went, establishing some of the forts which he
knew to be necessary if the slave-trade was to be put down. One day Abou
Saoud brought him some letters written by a party of slave-dealers to
the Egyptian governor of Fashoda, on the White Nile, half-way to
Khartoum, saying that they would shortly arrive with a gang of negroes
whom they had captured, and with two thousand cows, which they had also
kidnapped, as was their custom. Gordon was ready for them; the cattle he
kept, not being able to return them to their black owners, and the
negroes he set free. If possible they were sent home, but if that could
not be done he bought them himself, so that no one else should have a
claim to them. The gratitude shown by the blacks was boundless, and one,
a chief of the Dinkas, proved useful to him in many ways. The others,
tall, strong men, gladly served him as hewers of wood and drawers of
water.

So the weeks went on, and in the intervals of capturing more convoys of
slaves Gordon still found time to attend to an old dying woman, whom he
often visited himself, besides daily sending her food, and, what she
loved better still, tobacco. The heat grew worse and worse, and no doubt
the mosquitoes also; and Gordon's only pleasure was wading in the Nile
morning and evening--a very dangerous amusement, as the river swarmed
with crocodiles. But he had heard that crocodiles never attacked
anything that was moving, and certainly he took no harm, and his health
was good. All his white men, however, fell ill, and as there was no one
to nurse them but himself, he would not replace them.

[Illustration: Gordon found time to attend to an old dying woman.]

Meanwhile the natives had learned to trust him, and under his rule
things were looking more prosperous. He saw that his men took nothing
from them without paying for it, whereas the Egyptian governor had
forced them to work without pay; and finding the troops he had brought
from Cairo both cowardly and lazy, he engaged forty Soudanese, on whom
he could depend, and trained them to act as his body-guard.

* * * * *

It was not to be expected that Gordon could carry through all these
measures without becoming an object of hatred to the Egyptian officials,
most of whom were in league with the slave-dealers. Soon he discovered
that many of his men were taking bribes and plotting against him, and of
them all, Abou Saoud was the worst. He even incited t