TRAPPED IN KHARTUM. 1 47 or fall together. He would not be guilty of what he considered would be a base act of desertion. He had always been opposed to the notion of getting out of the country without providing for its regular government after his departure. Evacuation was one thing, " ratting out" was another. Still less would he consent to seek his own safety by deserting those who had shown their confidence in him. If fighting were to be necessary he had not begun it, but he would prepare to fight to the last ditch and the last biscuit, while nothing else was possible but a dishonourable capitulation.

Gordon was now left to his own resources. If he still fancied that the route from Suakim to Berber would be opened, or that a force either of Turkish, of Anglo-Indian, or of British troops would be sent to his aid at Wady Haifa, at Berber, or at Khartum, he must have hoped against hope; for the government here was "going to sea" like a floating hencoop, as he remarked afterwards in an entry in his journal; and if the opposition had succeeded in ousting that government and had come into power it is exceedin-lv doubtful whether they would not have gone to sea also, for they knew no more than anybody else did of the real position of affairs in the remote wastes of the Soudan, and there would still have been the bugbear of an alternative policy and the divided " public voice" to keep them in a condition of suspended animation. Gordon, as was usual with him, regarded the situation as eventually ordered by Providence, and therefore for the best so long as he did all he knew in the performance of what he believed to be his duty. That duty now was to endeavour to hold Khartum and to fight back the rebels. The Mahdi had had his answer, and would soon endeavour to invest the city more closely. When the Egyptians and townspeople would be put to death or be made prisoners, and the Europeans compelled under penalties to prof Islam, Gordon was not the man to be detained shuffling about the streets disguised as a dervish, nor were he and his companion likely to deny their faith. They were not likely i to be made prisoners; and Gordon afterwards declared that he never would be taken alive.