ight: I was back at the Academy, and had to pass an
examination! I was wide awake enough to know I had forgotten all I had
ever learnt, and it was truly some time ere I could collect myself and
realise I was a general, so completely had I become a cadet again.
What misery those examinations were!"

When he was nineteen, Charlie Gordon became Sub-Lieutenant Charles
Gordon of the Royal Engineers.

From Woolwich he went to Chatham, the headquarters of the Royal
Engineers, to have some special training as an Engineer officer.

There he found his cleverness at map-drawing a great help in his work,
and for nearly two years he worked hard at all that an officer of
Engineers must know, and soon he was looked on as a very promising
young officer.

In February 1854, he gained the rank of full lieutenant, and was sent
to Pembroke Dock to help with the new fortifications and batteries that
were being made there.

Whatever Charlie Gordon did, he did with all his might, and he was now
as keen on making plans and building fortifications, as he had once
been in planning and playing mischievous tricks.

When he returned to Pembroke thirty years later, an old ferryman there
remembered him.

"Are you the gent who used to walk across the stream right through the
water?" he asked.

And all through his life no stream was too strong for Gordon to face.

Gordon had not been long at Pembroke when a great war broke out between
Russia on one side, and England, France, and Turkey on the other. It
was fought in a part of Russia called the Crimea, and is known as the
Crimean War.

The two elder Gordons, Henry and Enderby, were out there with their
batteries, and, like every other keen young soldier, Charlie Gordon was
wild to go.

After a few months at Pembroke, orders came for him to go to Corfu. He
suspected his father of having managed to get him sent there to be out
of harm's way.

"It is a great shame of you," he wrote. But very shortly afterwards
came fresh orders, telling him to go to the Crimea without delay.

A general whom he had told how much he longed to go where the fighting
was, had had the orders changed.

On the 4th December 1854 his orders came to Pembroke. Two days later
he reported himself at the War Office in London, and on the evening of
the same day he was at Portsmouth, ready to sail. At first it was
intended that he should go out in a collier, but that arrangement was
altered. Back he came to London,