Zobeir himself had been lured to Cairo,
where he was detained in a state of semi-captivity; but his son,
Suleiman, ruled in his stead, and was now defying the Governor-
General. Gordon determined upon a hazardous stroke. He mounted a
camel, and rode, alone, in the blazing heat, across eighty-five
miles of desert, to Suleiman's camp. His sudden apparition
dumbfounded the rebels; his imperious bearing overawed them; he
signified to them that in two days they must disarm and disperse;
and the whole host obeyed. Gordon returned to Khartoum in
triumph.
But he had not heard the last of Suleiman. Flying southwards from
Darfur to the neighbouring province of Bahr-el-Ghazal, the young
man was soon once more at the head of a formidable force. A
prolonged campaign of extreme difficulty and danger followed.
Eventually, Gordon, summoned again to Cairo, was obliged to leave
to Gessi the task of finally crushing the revolt. After a
brilliant campaign, Gessi forced Suleiman to surrender, and then
shot him as a rebel. The deed was to exercise a curious influence
upon Gordon's fate.
Though Suleiman had been killed and his power broken, the slave-
trade still flourished in the Sudan. Gordon's efforts to suppress
it resembled the palliatives of an empiric treating the
superficial symptoms of some profound constitutional disease.
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