Beneath the Banner Part 7

On the 30th April Gordon was before the city of Taitsan, where three months before the same army which was now under his command had been defeated.

Three times his men rushed into the breach which the big guns had made. Twice they were hurled back; but for a third time Gordon urged them on, and their confidence in his leaders.h.i.+p was such that they went readily; and this time, after a swift, sharp conflict, the city was won.

Europeans were fighting both with him and with the rebels. In the breach at Taitsan he came across two of the men he formerly had under his command. One was shot during the a.s.sault; the other cried out, "Mr. Gordon! Mr. Gordon! you will not let me be killed". "Take him down to the river and shoot him," said Gordon aloud. Aside he whispered, "Put him in my boat, let the doctor attend him, and send him down to Shanghai". He was stern and resolute enough where it was necessary, but underneath all was a heart full of love and pity.

During this war the only weapon Gordon carried was a cane; and men grew to regard this stick as a kind of magic wand, and Gordon as a man whom nothing could harm.

On one occasion when he was wounded he refused to retire till he was forcibly carried off the field by the doctor's orders.

After he had put an end to the rebellion the Emperor of China wanted to give him a large sum of money; but Gordon, whose only object in fighting was to benefit the people, refused it, and left China as poor as he had entered it. He had various distinctions conferred upon him by the emperor, and the English people gave him the t.i.tle of "Chinese Gordon".

A gold medal was presented to him by the emperor. Gordon, obliterating the inscription, sent it anonymously to the Coventry relief fund. Of this incident he wrote at a later period: "Never shall I forget what I got when I scored out the inscription on the gold medal. How I have been repaid a millionfold! There is now not one thing I value in the world. Its honours, they are false; its knicknacks, they are perishable and useless; whilst I live I value G.o.d's blessing--health; and if you have that, as far as this world goes, you are rich."

He returned to England and settled down at Gravesend, living quite simply, and working in his spare moments amongst the poor. To the boys he was a hero indeed. That was but natural, seeing he not only taught them to read and write, and tried to get them situations, but treated them as his friends.

In his sitting-room was a map of the world, with pins stuck in it marking the probable positions of the s.h.i.+ps in which his "kings" (as he called his boys) were to be found in various parts of the world.

Thus, as they moved from place to place, he followed them in his thoughts, and was able to point out their whereabouts to inquiring friends.

It is no wonder then that the urchins scrawled upon the walls of the town, "C.G. is a jolly good feller". "G.o.d bless the Kernel."

He visited the hospitals and workhouses, and all the money he received he expended on the poor; for he believed that having given his heart to G.o.d he had no right to keep anything for himself. He comforted the sick and dying, he taught in the Ragged and Sunday Schools. He lived on the plainest food himself, thus "enduring hardness". He even gave up his garden, turning it into a kind of allotment for the needy.

He had one object in life--to do good. His views were utterly unworldly and opposed to those generally held, but they were in the main right.

In 1874 Gordon went to Egypt, and at the request of the Khedive undertook the position of Governor-General of the Soudan, in the hope of being able to put down the slave trade.

He was beset with difficulties, and "worn to a shadow" by incessant work and ceaseless anxiety; but he would not give up.

In all his trials he felt the presence of G.o.d. As he watched his men hauling the boats up the rapids he "_prayed them up_ as he used to do the troops when they wavered in the breaches in China".

Once his men failed in their attack on an offending tribe; and, believing they had been misled by the Sheik, wanted to punish him; but Gordon saw the other side of the man's character--"He was a brave patriotic man," he said; "and I shall let him go".

Here was his hope. "With terrific exertion," he writes, "in two or three years' time I may with G.o.d's administration make a good province--with a good army and a fair revenue and peace, and an increased trade,--also have suppressed slave raids." He felt it was a weary work before him, for he adds: "Then I will come home and go to bed, and never get up till noon every day, and never walk more than a mile". No wonder he was worn and tired, for he moved about the Soudan like a whirlwind. He travelled on camelback thousands of miles. In four months' time he had put down a dangerous rebellion that would have taken the Egyptians as many years--if, indeed, they could ever have done it at all.

This is the kind of way in which he won his victories. On one occasion with a few troops he arrived at a place called Dara. That great slave trader Suleiman, who had given Sir Samuel Baker so much trouble, was there at the head of 6000 men. Gordon rode into the place nearly alone, and told the commander to come and talk with him. Utterly taken aback the man did as he was requested, and afterwards promised obedience.

It is true he did not keep his promise; but after fighting several battles Suleiman was at length taken prisoner by Gordon's lieutenant; and so many were the crimes and cruelties that he had committed that he was condemned to death, and thus the slaves of Africa became rid of one of their worst oppressors.

[ILl.u.s.tRATION: GORDON STATUE IN TRAFALGAR SQUARE.]

The work begun by Baker was continued with great success by Gordon. He estimated that in nine months he liberated 2000 slaves. The suffering these poor creatures had gone through was appalling. Some of them when set free had been four or five days without water in the terrible heat of that hot country. Every caravan route showed signs of the horrible trade, by the bones of those who had fallen and died from exhaustion, unable to keep their ranks in the gang.

So great was the effect which the thought and sight of these sufferings produced on Gordon that he wrote in March, 1879: "I declare if I could stop this traffic I would willingly be shot this night".

Later on he was to give his life for these people; but the hour was not yet.

When Gordon was in Abyssinia King John took him prisoner. Brought before his Majesty, Gordon fairly took away the breath of the monarch by going up to him, placing his own chair beside the king's, and telling him that he would only talk to him as an equal.

"Do you know, Gordon Pasha," said the king, "that I could kill you on the spot if I liked?"

"I am perfectly aware of it," replied Gordon calmly; "so do it, if it is your royal pleasure."

"What! ready to be killed?" asked the king incredulously.

"Certainly. I am always ready to die," answered the pasha; "and so far from fearing your putting me to death you would confer a favour on me by so doing."

Upon this his Majesty gave up the idea of frightening him.

At the end of 1879 Gordon was free from the Soudan for the second time. In 1876 he had left it, as he thought, for good; but, as it turned out, it was only for a few weeks' holiday in England, and then back to quell the rebellion.

Even now it was destined that he should soon return once again and finally. But during the breathing time that now came to him, so far from leading an easy life or "never getting up till noon," he was in all parts of the world, from China to the Cape, from Ireland to India, still on the old mission of endeavouring to do a little good wherever he was.

Leopold II., King of the Belgians, who had a profound regard for Gordon, greatly desired that he should go out to the Congo; and in January, 1884, he was just preparing to start in his Majesty's service when on the 17th of that month a telegram from Lord Wolseley arrived, asking him to return to England.

At six o'clock next morning he was in London; and the same day, having received instructions from the Government, he was on his way for the last time to Khartoum.

The Egyptian garrisons of the Soudan towns were sore beset by the legions which were gathering beneath the banners of the Mahdi, who, flushed with victory, was threatening an eruption into Lower Egypt itself.

To extricate these garrisons without bloodshed if possible was Gordon's object. It was a forlorn hope; still if any one man could accomplish it Charles Gordon was that man.

But ere long it was found even beyond his powers; for after sending off a portion of the Khartoum population in safety down the river, the Mahdi's legions closed in upon him, and Khartoum was in a state of siege.

For nearly a year he held the city against all the forces of the enemy; and meantime Great Britain was stirred with a vehement desire to save the life of this devoted man.

In the autumn of 1884 a force under the command of Lord Wolseley was sent out to relieve Khartoum.

Whilst the British troops were slowly forcing their way up the river and across the desert, Khartoum was enduring a death agony.

By January, 1885, the city had been reduced to starvation. Donkeys, dogs, rats, everything indeed in the way of flesh, had been consumed; even boot leather, the straps of native bedsteads, and mimosa gum did not come amiss to the sorely-tried garrison.

Famine had produced lack of discipline on the part of some of the troops; and Gordon foresaw well what the end must be, though without a fear for himself.

You can read for yourself from the reproduction of the last page of his diary, written on the 14th December, 1884, his own estimate of the length of time he could hold out; and, though he managed to keep back the enemy for another month, yet on the 26th January, 1885, whilst yet Sir Charles Wilson and the British troops were fighting their way up the river Nile to his relief, Khartoum fell.

In the early dawn of that day the Mahdi a.s.saulted the town in overwhelming force--whether helped by treachery is not exactly known; and before his well-fed, well-trained hosts, the feeble worn-out garrison gave way, the walls were scaled, the city taken, and the hero who had won the affection of many nations fell amidst the people he had come to save.

[ILl.u.s.tRATION: REDUCED FACSIMILE OF THE LAST PAGE OF GORDON'S DIARY AT KHARTOUM.]

It was on the whole a happy and fitting end. The mind cannot conceive Gordon rusting out; and the man lived so much in the presence of G.o.d that death was a welcome visitor.

"Like Lawrence," he wrote, "I have tried to do my duty"; and England confessed that right n.o.bly he had done it.

Let those who wish to testify their love and veneration for this great man remember the Gordon Home for Boys at Chobham, which was founded to perpetuate his name. It is situated in the midst of Surrey; and here are to be found over two hundred boys rescued from the streets of our great cities.

The bracing life they lead in their country home soon brings the colour to their cheeks, and the training they receive fits them for becoming useful citizens and valuable servants of the State. Most of them join the army, and the Gordon boys are now to be found serving the Queen in every land.