With Kitchener in the Soudan : a story of Atbara and Omdurman

by G. A. Henty

  that I am safer here than I was at El Obeid. I have not written, because there was nothing to write. One day was like another, and as my paper was finished, and there were no incidents in my life, I let the matter slide. Again and again I contemplated attempting to make my way to this town, but the difficulties would be enormous. There were the dangers of the desert, the absence of wells, the enormous probability of losing my way, and, most of all, the chance that before I reached Khartoum it would have been captured. The Emir had been expecting news of its fall for months. There had been several fights, in some of which they had been victorious; in others, even according to their own accounts, they had been worsted. Traitors in the town kept them well informed of the state of supplies; they declared that these were almost exhausted, and that the garrison must surrender; indeed, several of the commanders of bodies of troops had offered to surrender posts held by them. So I had put aside all hope of escape, and decided not to make any attempt until after Khartoum fell, when the Dervishes boasted they would march down and conquer Egypt to the sea.

  "They had already taken Berber; Dongola was at their mercy. I thought the best chance would be to go down with them as far as they went, and then to slip away. In this way I should shorten the journey I should have to traverse alone, and being on the river bank, could at least always obtain water. Besides, I might possibly secure some small native boat, and with the help of the current get down to Assouan before the Dervishes could arrive there. This I should have attempted, but three weeks ago an order came from the Mahdi to El Khatim, ordering him to send to Omdurman five hundred well-armed men, who were to be commanded by his son Abu. Khatim was to remain at El Obeid with the main body of his force until further orders. Abu came to me at once with the news.

  "You will take me with you, Abu,' I exclaimed.This is the chance I have been hoping for. Once within a day's journey of Khartoum I could slip away at night, and it would be very hard if I could not manage to cross the Nile into Khartoum.'

  "'I will take you if you wish it,' he said. 'The danger will be very great, not in going with me, but in making your way into Khartoum.'

  "It does not seem to me that it would be so,' I said. • I should strike the river four or five miles above the town, cut a bundle of rushes, swim out to the middle of the river, drift down till I was close to the town, and then swim across.'

  "So be it,' he said.It is your will, not mine.' Khatim came to me afterwards and advised me to stay, but I said that it might be years before I had another chance to escape, and that whatever risk there was I would prefer running it.

  " 'Then we shall see you no more,' he said, 'for Khartoum will assuredly fall and you will be killed.'

  "' If you were a prisoner in the hands of the white soldiers, Emir,' I said,I am sure that you would run any risk if there was a chance of getting home again. So it is with me. I have a wife and child in Cairo. Her heart must be sick with pain at the thought of my death. I will risk anything to get back as soon as possible. If I reach Khartoum and it is afterwards captured, I can disguise myself and appear as I now am, hide for a while, and then find out where Abu is and join him again. But perhaps when he sees that no further resistance can be made, General Gordon will embark on one of his steamers and go down the river, knowing that it would be better for the people of the town that the Mahdi should enter without opposition, in which case you would scarcely do harm to the peaceful portion of the population, or to the troops who had laid down their arms.'

  "Very well,' the Emir said. 'Abu has told me that he has tried to dissuade you, but that you will go. We owe you a great debt of gratitude for all that you have done for us, and therefore I will not try to dissuade you. I trust Allah will protect you.'

  " And so we started the next morning. I rode by the side of Abu, and as all knew that I was the hakim who had taken off his arm, none wondered. The journey was made without any incident worth recording. Abu did not hurry. We made a long march between each of the wells, and then halted for a clay. So we journeyed until we made our last halt before arriving at Omdurman.

  " 'You are still determined to go?' Abu said to me.

  "I shall leave to-night, my friend.'

  "'I shall not forget all that you have told me about your people, hakim. Should any white man fall into my hands I will spare him for your sake. These are evil times, and I regret all that has passed. I believe that the Mahdi is a prophet, but I fear that in many things he has misunderstood the visions and orders he received. I see that evil rather than good has fallen upon the land, and that though we loved not the rule of the Egyptians we were all better off under it than we are now. We pass through ruined villages and see the skeletons of many people. We know that where the water-wheels formerly spread the water from the rivers over the fields, is now a desert, and that, except the fighting men, the people perish from hunger. All this is bad. I see that if we enter Egypt we shall be like a flight of locusts, we shall eat up the country and leave a desert behind us. Surely this cannot be according to the wishes of Allah, who is all-merciful. You have taught me much in your talks with me, and I do not see things as I used to. So much do I feel it, that in my heart I could almost wish that your countrymen should come here and establish peace and order. The Mohamedans of India, you tell me, are well content with their rulers; men may exercise their religion and their customs without hindrance; they know that the strong cannot prey upon the weak, and each man reaps what he has sown in peace. You tell me that India was like the Soudan before you went there—that there were great conquerors, constant wars, and the peasants starved while the robbers grew rich; and that under your rule peace and contentment were restored. I would that it could be so here. But it seems to me impossible that we should be conquered by people so far away.'

  " 'I hope that it will be so, Abu; and I think that if the great and good white general, Governor Gordon, is murdered at Khartoum, the people of my country will never rest until his death has been avenged.'

  "You had better take your horse,' he said.If you were to go on foot it would be seen that there was a horse without a rider, and there would be a search for you; but if you and your horse are missing it will be supposed that you have ridden on to Omdurman to give notice of our coming, and none will think more of the matter.'

  "As soon as the camp was asleep I said good-bye to Abu, and took my horse by the reins and led him into the desert half a mile away, then I mounted and rode fast. The stars were guide enough, and in three hours I reached the Nile. I took off the horse's saddle and bridle and left him to himself, then I crept out and cut a bundle of rushes, and swam into the stream with them. After floating down the river for an hour I saw the light of a few fires on the right bank, and guessed that this was a Dervish force beleaguering Khartoum from that side. I drifted on for another hour, drawing closer and closer to the shore until I could see walls and forts; then I stripped off my Dervish frock and swam ashore. I had, during the time we had been on the journey, abstained from staining my skin under my garments, in order that I might be recognized as a white man as soon as I bared my arms.

  " I lay down till it was broad daylight, and then walked up to the foot of a redoubt. There were shouts of surprise from the black soldiers there as I approached. I shouted to them in Arabic that I was an Englishman, and two or three of them at once ran down the slope and aided me to climb it. I was taken, at my request, to General Gordon, who was surprised indeed when I told him that I was a survivor of Hicks's force and had been living nine months at El Obeid.

  "'You are heartily welcome, sir,' he said; 'but I fear that you have come into an even greater danger than you have left, for our position here is well-nigh desperate. For months I have been praying for aid from England, and my last news was that it was just setting out, so I fear there is no hope that it will reach me in time. The government of England will have to answer before God for their desertion of me, and of the poor people here whom they sent me to protect from the Mahdi. For myself I am content. I have done my duty
as far as lay in my power, but I had a right to rely upon receiving support from those who sent me. I am in the hands of God. But for the many thousands who trusted in me and remained here I feel very deeply. Now the first thing is to provide you with clothes. I am expecting Colonel Stewart here every minute, and he will see that you are made comfortable.'

  "' I shall be glad to place myself at your disposal, sir,' I said. 'I speak Arabic fluently, and shall be ready to perform any service of which I may be capable.'

  "I thank you,' he said,and will avail myself of your offer if I see any occasion; but at present we have rather to suffer than to do. We have occasional fights, but of late the attacks have been feeble, and I think that the Mahdi depends upon hunger rather than force to obtain possession of this town. This evening I will ask you to tell me your stoty. Colonel Stewart will show you a room. There is only one other white man—Mr. Power—here. We live together as one family, of which you will now be a member.'

  " I felt strange when I came to put on my European clothes. Mr. Power, who tells me he has been here for some years as correspondent of the Times, has this afternoon taken me round the defences and into the workshops. I think the place can resist any attacks if the troops remain faithful, but of this there is a doubt. A good many of the Soudanese have already been sent away. As Gordon said at dinner this evening, if he had but a score of English officers he would be perfectly confident that he could resist any enemy save starvation.

  "September 12th. —It has been settled that Colonel Stewart and Mr. Power are to go down the river in the Abbas, and I am to go with them. The General proposed it to me. I said that I could not think of leaving him here by himself, so he said kindly:I thank you, Mr. Hilliard, but you could do no good here, and would only be throwing away your life. We can hold on to the end of the year, though the pinch will be very severe; but I think we can make the stores last till then. But by the end of December our last crust will have been eaten, and the end will have come. It will be a satisfaction to me to know that I have done my best, and fail only because of the miserable delays and hesitation of government.' So it is settled that I am going. The gun-boats are to escort us for some distance. Were it not for Gordon I should feel delighted at the prospect. It is horrible to leave him—one of the noblest Englishmen!—alone to his fate. My only consolation is, that if I remained I could not avert it, but should only be a sharer in it.

  "September 18th. —We left Khartoum on the 14th and came down without any serious trouble until this morning, when the boat struck on a rock in the cataract opposite a village called Hebbeh. A hole has been knocked in her bottom, and there is not a shadow of hope of getting her off. Numbers of the natives have gathered on the shore. I have advised that we should disregard their invitations to land, but that, as there would be no animosity against the black crew, they would be safe; and that we three whites should take the ship's boat and four of the crew, put provisions for a week on board, and make our way down the river. Colonel Stewart, however, feels convinced that the people can be trusted, and that we had better land and place ourselves under the protection of the sheik. He does not know the Arabs as well as I do. However, as he has determined to go ashore, I can do nothing. I consider it unlikely in the extreme that there will be any additions to this journal. If at any time in the future this should fall into the hands of any of my countrymen, I pray that they will send it down to my dear wife, Mrs. Hilliard, whom, I pray, God may bless and comfort, care of the Manager of the Bank, Cairo."

  CHAPTEE XX

  A MOMENTOUS COMMUNICATION

  GREGORY had, after finishing the record, sat without moving until the dinner-hour. It was a relief to him to know that his father had not spent the last years of his life as he had feared, as a miserable slave—ill-treated, reviled, insulted, perhaps chained and beaten by some brutal taskmaster; but had been in a position where, save that he was an exile, kept from his home and wife, his lot had not been unbearable. He knew more of him than he had ever known before. It was* as a husband that his mother had always spoken of him; but here he saw that he was daring, full of resource, quick to grasp any opportunity, hopeful and yet patient, longing eagerly to rejoin his wife, and yet content to wait until the chances should be all in his favour. He was unaffectedly glad thus to know him, to be able in future to think of him as one of whom he would have been proud, who would assuredly have won his way to distinction.

  It was not so that he had before thought of him. His mother had said that he was of good family, and that it was on account of his marriage with her that he had quarrelled with his relations. It had always seemed strange to him that he should have been content to take, as she had told him, an altogether subordinate position in a mercantile house in Alexandria. She had accounted for his knowledge of Arabic by the fact that he had been for two years exploring the temples and tombs of Egypt with a learned professor; but surely, as a man of good family, he could have found something to do in England instead of coming out to take so humble a post in Egypt. Gregory knew nothing of the difficulty that a young man in England has in obtaining an appointment of any kind or of fighting his way single-handed. Influence went for much in Egypt, and it seemed to him that even if his father had quarrelled with his own people there must have been many ways open to him of maintaining himself honourably. Therefore he had always thought that although he might have been all that his mother described him—the tenderest and most loving of husbands, a gentleman, and estimable in all respects—his father must have been wanting in energy and ambition, deficient in the qualities that would fit him to fight his own battle, and content to gain a mere competence instead of struggling hard to make his way up the ladder.

  He had accounted for his going up as interpreter with Hicks Pasha by the fact that his work with the contractor was at an end, and that he saw no other opening for himself. He now understood how mistaken he had been in his estimate of his father's character, and wondered even more than before why he should have taken that humble post at Alexandria. His mother had certainly told him again and again that he had done so simply because the doctors had said that she could not live in England; but surely in all the wide empire of England there must be innumerable posts that a gentleman could obtain. Perhaps he should understand it better some day; at present it seemed unaccountable to him. He felt sure that, had he lived, his father would have made a name for himself, and that it was in that hope, and not of the pay that he would receive as an interpreter, that he had gone up with Hicks, and that had he not died at that little village by the Nile he would assuredly have done so, for the narrative he had left behind him would in itself, if published, have shown what stuff there was in him. It was hard that fate should have snatched him away just when it had seemed that his trials were over, that he was on the point of being reunited to his wife. Still, it was a consolation to know he had died suddenly, as one falls in battle, not as a slave worn out by grief and suffering.

  As he left his hut he said to Zaki, " I shall not want you again this evening, but mind, we must be on the move at daylight."

  "You did not say whether we were to take the horses, master; but I suppose you will do sol"

  "Oh, I forgot to tell you that we are going to have camels; they are to be put on board for us to-night. They are fast camels, and as the distance from the point where we shall land to the Atbara will not be more than seventy or eighty miles, we shall be able to do it in a day."

  "That will be very good, master; camels are much bettei than horses for the desert. I have got everything else ready."

  After dinner was over, the party broke up quickly, as many of the officers had preparations to make. Gregory went off to the tent of the officer with whom he was best acquainted in the Soudanese regiment.

  " I thought that I would come and have a chat with you if you happened to be in."

  " I shall be very glad, but I bar Fashoda; one is quite sick of the name."

  "No, it was not Fashoda that I was going to talk to you about; I want to
ask you something about England. I know really nothing about it, for I was born in Alexandria shortly after my parents came out from England. Is it easy for anyone who has been well educated, and who is a gentleman, to get employment there? I mean some sort of appointment, say, in India or the West Indies."

  " Easy! My dear Hilliard, the camel in the eye of a needle is a joke to it. If a fellow is eighteen and has had a first-rate education and a good private coach, that is, a tutor, he may pass through his examination either for the army, or the civil service, or the Indian service. There are about five hundred go up to each examination, and seventy or eighty at the outside get in; the other four hundred or so are chucked. Some examinations are for fellows under nineteen, others are open for a year or two longer. Suppose, finally, you don't get in; that is to say, when you are two-and-twenty, your chance of getting any appointment whatever in the public service is at an end."

  "Then interest has nothing to do with it?"

  "Well, yes. There are a few berths in the Foreign Office, for example, in which a man has to get a nomination before going in for the exam.; but of course the age limit tells there as well as in any other."

  "And if a man fails altogether what is there open to him?"

  The other shrugged his shoulders. "Well, as far as I know, if he hasn't capital he can emigrate, that is what numbers of fellows do. If he has interest he can get a commission in the militia, and from that possibly into the line, or he can enlist as a private for the same object. There is a third alternative, he can hang himself. Of course, if he happens to have a relation in the city he can get a clerkship, but that alternative, I should say, is worse than the third."

  "But I suppose he might be a doctor, a clergyman, or a lawyer?"