to pick it. The very fruit was
bitter and poisonous. Rain sometimes fell in unexpected torrents, so
heavy that he was flooded out of his tent.

When he was dead tired, body and soul, Gordon would sometimes build
castles of what he would do when he got back to England. He would lie
in bed till eleven, and always wear his best fur coat, and travel first
class, and have oysters every day for lunch!

In 1876 there seemed a chance of his really building his castles.

He felt it was impossible to rid the land of slavery, with the Egyptian
officials, who did not wish to have it stopped, working hard against
him, and so, after three years of hard work, he threw up his post and
went home.

No sooner was he gone than the Khedive realised how great a loss it
would be to him and to his country if Gordon were not to return.

He begged him to come back, and he would make him Governor-General of
the Soudan, and help him in every possible way to carry out the work he
wished to do.

So Gordon returned, and in February 1877 he started for the Soudan,
absolute ruler now of 1640 miles of desert, marsh, and forest.

"So there is an end of slavery," he wrote to his sister, "if God wills,
for the whole secret of the matter is in that Government (the Soudan),
and if the man who holds the Soudan is against it, it must
cease." . . . "I go up alone with an infinite Almighty God to direct
and guide me, and am glad to so trust Him as to fear nothing, and,
indeed, to feel sure of success."

From this time on, in every direction, the slavers were hunted and
harried and driven out of the land, as one drives rats from a farmyard.

On every side he came on caravans packed with starving slaves, dying of
hunger and thirst, and set them free. The desert was strewn not only
with the bodies of camels, that the dry air had turned into mummies,
but with the bones and whitened skulls of the slave-dealers' victims.
Everywhere he had to look out for treachery and for lying, and be ready
to pounce on slaves cunningly concealed by the kidnappers.

A hundred or more would sometimes be found being smuggled past, down
the Nile, hidden under a boatload of wood.

Gordon, on a camel that he rode so quickly that it came to be called
the Telegraph, seemed to fly across the silent desert like a magician.
Daily, often all alone, he would ride 30 or 40 miles. In the three
years during which he governed the Soudan he rode 8490 miles.

The black people knew t