Page:A Prisoner of the Khaleefa.djvu/414

Rh Katimeh speared the Pasha in the right hip, but I shot him, and the Pasha fell down on the cavasses' mat at the door, and he was dead, and as I turned to seek refuge in the financeoffice (F plan), I was struck down and lost my senses, and I was lying down with the dead. In the afternoon, a man of El Katimeh — Abd-el-Rahman, whom I knew, helped me to go to the river for water, and I saw the body of the Pasha at the door (D), but the head was not there. I was helped to my house, and found my wife and children and property all missing. . . . I was taken by a friend and Abd-el-Rahman to FE] Dem-el-Darawish, and left on the plain all night, and in the morning I was taken before Wad en Nejoumi. . . and I was stripped to see if I had any money and papers, but I had not; and when I said that I was ignorant of any treasure, I was heavily beaten, though much wounded, and was very ill for seventeen days, and my wife found me.

All who were taken to see the steps where Gordon fell remarked upon the number and extent of the blood stains, for they could not believe that all had come from one body. These stains were shown to me in 1887. It has been stated on good authority that "Stains of blood marked the spot where this atrocity took place, and the steps from top to bottom for weeks bore the same sad traces." Here is what I choose to consider not only a confirmation of Gordon having died fighting, but a confirmation of Orphali's narrative, for there were only two people on the upper floor — Gordon and Orphali, and all the fighting must have been done by them. It is quite impossible that the steps "from top to bottom" — four flights — could have been stained as they were stained with large patches of blood left by a body which had been dragged downstairs some time after death. The steps were stained with the blood of the dervishes through whom I have said Gordon shot and hacked his way in his heroic attempt to reach his troops.