GORDON AT KHARTUM. 1 39 story was told by another professed eye-witness to the correspondent of the Daily News at Korti. The narrator was a man with a bronzed "hatchet face," with a peculiarly weary and care-worn expression, and he wore the Egyptian uniform, for he asserted that he was one of the soldiers of Hicks Pasha who had been left at Khartum — presumably with Colonel Coetlogon — where he had been through the siege and had eventually escaped. He told the story as follows : — "We had a grand illumination the night Gordon arrived. If all Christians were like him all men would become Nazarah; but you do not follow the teachings of your own Prophet as we Mussulmans do. Gordon told us he had come to save us. The officials and Greeks illuminated their houses, and every native Soudanese, however poor, lit his lamp; but soon bad tidings came day by day of the approach of the cursed Arabs. Soon we saw them, first in small bodies at a distance, and then in large ones. They had been hovering around us a long time before the pasha arrived. Now Gordon set every man to work; he threw up a long parapet with a deep trench from the Bahr-el-Abiad to the Bahr-el-Azrek, and he built round towers on it and made one iron gate. He did not turn out Arabs from dwelling in Khartum; there were none there, though we had many traitors. They were known to the pasha; but he said, 'Let them alone: at the end they shall be punished.' Among these was the principal baker. Gordon used to say to all who wanted to leave, 'Stay, my friends; the English are coming.' That handsome girl of sixteen, the doctor's daughter, remained; so did the German tailor, Hen-Klein, and his wife and pretty daughter.

Soon after Gordon's arrival Sheik Wad-abou-Gurgy made three forts opposite Khartum on the Bahr-el-Azrek, for the time was now at hand when we were to be beleaguered. In these he placed three cannon, for his designs were evil — he was rebellious. These forts were near the gardens of Boussi, and now he piled up outside great pyramids of dhoora, three times higher than the forts themselves. When these things were related to Gordon in the early morn (for these piles were made at night) he despatched