allowed. By no
individual effort, as has been too lightly granted by some writers,
but by the voice of the British people was it decided that not only
should Gordon have leave to go to the Congo, without resigning his
commission, but also that he should be held entitled to draw his pay
as a British general while thus employed. But this was not the whole
truth, although I have no doubt that the arrangement would have been
carried out in any case. In their dilemma the Government saw a chance
of extrication in the person of Gordon, the one man recognised by the
public and the press as capable of coping with a difficulty which
seemed too much for them. The whole truth, therefore, was that the
Congo mission was to wait until after Gordon had been sent to, and
returned from, the Soudan. He was then to be placed by the British
Government entirely at the disposal of the King of the Belgians. As
this new arrangement turned on the assent of the King, it was vital to
keep it secret during the remainder of the 15th and the whole of the
16th of that eventful January.

When Gordon arrived at Waterloo Station, at a little before two
o'clock on 15th January, and was met there by myself, I do not think
that he knew definitely what was coming, but he was a man of
extraordinary shrewdness, and although essentially unworldly, could
see as clearly and as far through a transaction as the keenest man of
business. What he did know was that the army authorities were going to
treat him well, but his one topic of conversation the whole way to
Pall Mall was not the Congo but the Soudan. To the direct question
whether he was not really going, as I suspected, to the Nile instead
of the Congo, he declared he had no information that would warrant
such an idea, but still, if the King of the Belgians would grant the
permission, he would certainly not be disinclined to go there first. I
have no doubt that those who acted in the name of the Ministry in a
few minutes discovered the true state of his mind, and that Gordon
then and there agreed, on the express request of the Government of Mr
Gladstone, to go and see the King, and beg him to suspend the
execution of his promise until he had gone to the Soudan to arrest the
Mahdi's career, or to relieve the Egyptian garrisons, if the phrase be
preferred. It should also be stated that Gordon's arrangement with the
King of the Belgians was always coupled with this proviso, "provided
the Government of my own cou