e carried the garrison on till the end of
November. As the greater part of that period had expired when these
documents reached Lord Wolseley's hands, it was quite impossible to
doubt that time had become the most important factor of all in the
situation. The chance of being too late would even then have presented
itself to a prudent commander, and, above all, to a friend hastening
to the rescue of a friend. The news that Colonel Stewart and some
other Europeans had been entrapped and murdered near Merowe, which
reached the English commander from different sources before Gordon
confirmed it in his letters, was also calculated to stimulate, by
showing that Gordon was alone, and had single-handed to conduct the
defence of a populous city. Hard on the heels of that intelligence
came Gordon's letter of 4th November to Lord Wolseley, who received it
at Dongola on 14th of the same month. The letter was a long one, but
only two passages need be quoted:--"At Metemmah, waiting your orders,
are five steamers with nine guns." Did it not occur to anyone how
greatly, at the worst stage of the siege, Gordon had thus weakened
himself to assist the relieving expedition? Even for that reason there
was not a day or an hour to be lost.

But the letter contained a worse and more alarming passage:--"We can
hold out forty days with ease; after that it will be difficult." Forty
days would have meant till 14th December, one month ahead of the day
Lord Wolseley received the news, but the message was really more
alarming than the form in which it was published, for there is no
doubt that the word "difficult" is the official rendering of Gordon's,
a little indistinctly written, word "desperate." In face of that
alarming message, which only stated facts that ought to have been
surmised, if not known, it was no longer possible to pursue the
leisurely promenade up the Nile, which was timed so as to bring the
whole force to Khartoum in the first week of March. Rescue by the most
prominent general and swell troops of England at Easter would hardly
gratify the commandant and garrison starved into surrender the
previous Christmas, and that was the exact relationship between
Wolseley's plans and Gordon's necessities.

The date at which Gordon's supplies would be exhausted varied not from
any miscalculation, but because on two successive occasions he
discovered large stores of grain and biscuits, which had been stolen
from the public granaries before hi