Page:A Prisoner of the Khaleefa.djvu/400

 

Gordon heard of the murder of Colonel Stewart and his companions, he held a sort of court-martial on himself, and, after reviewing all the arrangements which he had made for their safety, he came to the conclusion that Stewart must have been invited on shore and murdered. Then, as if endowed with second sight, he almost exactly described what actually happened. The Abbas, drawing less than two feet of water, ought not to have stranded, as it was High Nile. Treachery on the part of the crew he had guarded against by sending a bodyguard of highly paid Greeks. The cutting adrift of their boats just after passing Berber contributed to the catastrophe, for had they been with the steamer at the time she struck, it is hardly likely that the inhabitants of the village would have planned the treachery they did. As interpreter to the party, Gordon gave them the man he could least spare, and one in whom he had every confidence — Hassan Bey Hassanein. Gordon himself writes, "thus the question of treachery was duly weighed by me and guarded against," yet, in "Ten Years' Captivity," we find the contrary stated. "It is said that the interpreter, Hassan, arranged the betrayal." Moreover, to clinch the matter, and to show that Gordon had selected a traitor in the very man whom the