Gordon got the money, and gave the whole of it to him!'" [1]

Before he started, he gave away some trinkets and things that he
prized. It was as if he knew something of what lay before him.

At Charing Cross, the Duke of Cambridge (who had known him since he was
a merry little boy at Corfu), Lord Wolseley, and others, came to bid
him Godspeed.

He took with him Colonel Donald Stewart, whom he had chosen as his
military secretary. Even in the rush before the train started he found
time to say to one of Colonel Stewart's relations: "Be sure that he
will not go into any danger which I do not share, and I am sure that
when I am in danger he will not be far behind."

When, on January 18, 1884, Gordon went out to the Soudan like one of
the Crusaders of old, all England was proud and glad.

In Egypt the people were gladder still.

Said the Arabs who had served under him: "The Mahdi's hordes will melt
away like dew, and the Pretender will be left like a small man standing
alone, until he is forced to flee back to his island of Abbas."

The Khedive again made him Governor-General of the Soudan, and, on the
26th of January 1884, Gordon started for Khartoum.

At Khartoum the people were in a panic. Colonel Coetlogan had his
troops in readiness for flight. The rich people had already escaped.
The poor who had not fled were in terror lest the Mahdi and his hosts
might come any day and massacre them.

Across the desert spread the telegraph message: "_General Gordon is
coming to Khartoum_."

"_You are men, not women. Be not afraid; I am coming,_" followed
Gordon's own message to the terrified garrison.

More swiftly than ever before, he crossed the lonely desert. Many
skeletons of men and of camels, of oxen and of horses, now lay
bleaching in the scorching sun on that dreary waste of treeless
desolation.

On 18th February he reached Khartoum, and was greeted as their
deliverer by the people, who flocked around him in hundreds, trying to
kiss his hands and feet.

"I come without soldiers," he said to them, "but with God on my side,
to redress the evils of the land."

At once he was ready, as in past days, to listen to tales of wrong from
the poorest, and to try to set them right. He had all the whips and
instruments of torture that Egyptian rulers had used piled up outside
the Palace and burned. In the gaol he found two hundred men, women,
and children lying in chains and in the most dismal plight. Some wer