marching smartly down to the jetty, there was a rush
for the boat. Almost before he was seated, the oars would be dipped
and the men's backs bent as if they meant to win a boat race.

"A little faster, boys! a little faster!" Gordon would constantly say,
and when he jumped ashore and hurried off to his work, he would leave
behind him four very breathless men, who were proud of being the crew
of the very fastest boat pulled in those waters.

The engineers under him he also trained never to lose any time,--always
to do a thing not only as thoroughly and as well as possible, but as
quickly as possible.

He would land at a port, and run up the steep earthworks in front of
it, while his followers, many of them big, heavy men, would come
puffing and panting after him.

One of his friends writes of him, "He was a severe and unsparing
taskmaster, and allowed no shirking. No other officer could have got
half the work out of the men that he did. He used to keep them up to
the mark by exclaiming, whenever he saw them flag: 'Another five
minutes gone, and this not done yet, my men! We shall never have them
again.'"

The old-fashioned house, with its big old garden, which was Gordon's
home during those six years, saw many strange guests during that time.

"His house," says one writer, "was school, and hospital, and almshouse
in turn--was more like the abode of a missionary than of a Colonel of
Engineers."

In his working hours he worked his hardest to serve his Queen and
country. In the hours in which he might have rested or amused himself,
he worked equally hard. And this other work was to serve the poor, the
sick, the lonely, and to give a helping hand to every one of those who
needed help. The boys whose work was on the river or the sea, and the
"mud-larks" of Gravesend, were his special care. Many a boy who had no
work and no right home, he took from the streets, washed, clothed, fed,
and took into his house to stay with him as his guest. When he had
found work for those boys, either as sailors or in other ways, he would
give them outfits and money, and start them in life. For the boys who
were being sheltered by him, and for others from outside, he began
evening classes. There he taught them, and read to them, and did all
that he could to make them Christian gentlemen. His "Kings" he called
them, perhaps remembering the many Kings or "Wangs" who ruled in the
Tae-Ping army.

A map of the world, hanging over