hly dramatic
interview. Zobeir bitterly upbraided Gordon: "You killed my son, whom I
entrusted to you. He was as your son. You brought my wives and women and
children in chains to Khartoum." Still even after that incident, Gordon
declared that he had "a mystical feeling" that Zobeir and he were all
right.(99) What inspired his reiterated demand for the immediate despatch
of Zobeir is surmised to have been the conviction forced upon him during
his journey to Khartoum, that his first idea of leaving the various petty
sultans to fight it out with the Mahdi, would not work; that the Mahdi had
got so strong a hold that he could only be met by a man of Zobeir's
political capacity, military skill, and old authority. Sir E. Baring,
after a brief interval of hesitation, now supported Gordon's request. So
did the shrewd and expert Colonel Stewart. Nubar too favoured the idea.
The cabinet could not at once assent; they were startled by the change of
front as to total withdrawal from the Soudan--the very object of Gordon's
mission, and accepted by him as such. On February 21 Mr. Gladstone
reported to the Queen that the cabinet were of opinion that there would be
the gravest objection to nominating by an assumption of British authority
a successor to General Gordon in the Soudan, nor did they as yet see
sufficient reasons for going beyond Gordon's memorandum of January 25, by
making special provision for the government of that country. But at first
it looked as if ministers might yield, if Baring, Gordon, and Nubar
persisted.

As ill-fortune had it, the Zobeir plan leaked out at home by Gordon's
indiscretion before the government decided. The omnipotent though not
omniscient divinity called public opinion intervened. The very men who had
most loudly clamoured for the extrication of the Egyptian garrisons, who
had pressed with most importunity for the despatch of Gordon, who had been
most urgent for the necessity of giving him a free hand, now declared that
it would be a national degradation and a European scandal to listen to
Gordon's very first request. He had himself unluckily given them a capital
text, having once said that Zobeir was alone responsible for the slave
trade of the previous ten years. Gordon's idea was, as he explained, to
put Zobeir into a position like that of the Ameer of Afghanistan, as a
buffer between Egypt and the Mahdi, with a subsidy, moral support, and all
the rest of a buffer arrangement. The idea may or m