Page:A Prisoner of the Khaleefa.djvu/383

310 two months before Gordon's name had been suggested to the Egypttan Government, yet, in the face of this, we are first asked —

and then told —

Then,

and,

One is simply staggered by such an assertion. When Gordon arrived in Khartoum, the whole of the western Soudan had fallen.. The town was overrun with the mourning women and children — the widows and orphans, I should say — of the troops who, under Hicks Pasha, had been annihilated a few months before on their way to extricate the garrisons. Slatin had surrendered Dara to Zoghal. Said Bey Gumaa, the last man to fight for the Government in the western Soudan, was compelled to capitulate very shortly before Gordon's arrival, and this only after a second siege when his men were dying with thirst.