uakim in the month of September. Preparations
were actually begun at Suakim; but in July experts began to favour the
Nile route. In that month Lord Wolseley urged the immediate despatch of
a force up that river, and he promised that it should be at Dongola by
the middle of October. Even so, official hesitations hampered the
enterprise, and it was not until July 29 that the decision seems to have
been definitely formed in favour of the Nile route. Even on August 8,
Lord Hartington, then War Minister, stated that help would be sent to
Gordon, _if it proved to be necessary_[400]. On August 26, Lord Wolseley
was appointed to the command of the relief expedition gathering on the
Nile, but not until October 5 did he reach Wady Haifa, below the
Second Cataract.

[Footnote 400: Morley, _Life of Gladstone_, vol. iii. p. 164.]

Meanwhile the web of fate was closing in on Khartum. In vain did Gordon
seek to keep communications open. All that he could do was to hold
stoutly to that last bulwark of civilisation. There were still some
grounds for hope. The Mahdi remained in Kordofan, want of food
preventing his march northwards in force. Against his half-armed
fanatics the city opposed a strong barrier. "Crows' feet" scattered on
the ground ended their mad rushes, and mines blew them into the air by
hundreds. Khartum seemed to defy those sons of the desert. The fire of
the steamers drove them from the banks and pulverised their forts[401].
The arsenal could turn out 50,000 Remington cartridges a week. There was
every reason, then, for holding the city; for, as Gordon jotted down in
his _Journal_ on September 17, if the Mahdi took Khartum, it would need
a great force to stay his propaganda. Here and there in those pathetic
records of a life and death struggle we catch a glimpse of Gordon's hope
of saving Khartum for civilisation. More than once he noted the ease of
holding the Sudan from the Nile as base. With forts at the cataracts and
armed steamers patrolling the clear reaches of the river, the defence of
the Sudan, he believed, was by no means impossible[402].

[Footnote 401: For details, see _Letters from Khartum_, by Frank Power.]

[Footnote 402: _Journal_, p. 35, etc.]

On September 10 he succeeded in sending away down stream by steamer
Colonel Stewart and Messrs. Power and Herbin; but unfortunately they
were wrecked and murdered by Arabs near Korti. The advice and help of
that gallant officer would have been of priceless s