e
innocent, many were prisoners of war. Of many their gaolers could give
no reason for their being there. One woman had been imprisoned for
fifteen years for a crime committed when she was a child.

Gordon had their chains struck off, and set them free. At nightfall he
had a bonfire made of the prison, and men, women, and children danced
round it in the red light of the flames, laughing and clapping their
hands.

All the sick in the city he sent by the river down to Egypt.

In Khartoum itself, by the mercy of its Governor, peace soon reigned.

"Gordon is working wonders," was the message Mr. Power sent to England.

But the Mahdi's power was daily growing, and he feared no one. When
Gordon sent him messages of peace he sent back insolent answers,
calling upon Gordon to become a Mussulman, and to come and serve the
Mahdi.

"If Egypt is to be quiet, the Mahdi must be smashed up," Gordon
telegraphed to the English Government.

By means of his steamers he laid in stores. The defences of Khartoum
he strengthened by mines and wire entanglements. He made some steamers
bullet-proof, and on 24th August was able to write that they were doing
"splendid work." His poor "sheep," as he called his troops, were being
turned into tried soldiers. "You see," he wrote, "when you have steam
on, the men can't run away, and must go into action."

Daily, from the top of a tower that he had built, he would gaze long
with his glass down the river and into the country round. From there
he could see if the Mahdi's armies were approaching, or if help were
coming to save Khartoum and the Soudan. All the time he kept up the
hearts of the people, and encouraged work at the school and everywhere
else.

In his journal he wrote: "I toss up in my mind, whether, if the place
is to be taken, to blow up the Palace and all in it, or else to be
taken, and, with God's help, to maintain the faith, and if necessary
suffer for it (which is most probable). The blowing up of the Palace
is the simplest, while the other means long and weary humiliation and
suffering of all sorts. I think I shall elect for the last, not from
fear of death, but because the former is, in a way, taking things out
of God's hands."

"Haunting the Palace are a lot of splendid hawks. I often wonder
whether they are destined to pick out my eyes."

Gradually the Mahdi's forces were gathering round the city. Their
drums rang in the ears of the besieged like the sound o