After all,
what could he do? He was still only a secondary figure; his
resignation would be accepted; he would be given a colonial
governorship and Gordon would be no nearer safety. But then,
could he sit by and witness a horrible catastrophe, without
lifting a hand? Of all the odious dilemmas which that man had put
him into this, he reflected, was the most odious. He slightly
shrugged his shoulders. No; he might have 'power to hurt', but he
would 'do none'. He wrote a dispatch--a long, balanced, guarded,
grey dispatch, informing the Government that he 'ventured to
think' that it was 'a question worthy of consideration whether
the naval and military authorities should not take some
preliminary steps in the way of preparing boats, etc., so as to
be able to move, should the necessity arise'. Then, within a
week, before the receipt of the Government's answer, he left
Egypt. From the end of April until the beginning of September--
during the most momentous period of the whole crisis, he was
engaged in London upon a financial conference, while his place
was taken in Cairo by a substitute. With a characteristically
convenient unobtrusiveness, Sir Evelyn Baring had vanished from
the scene.
Meanwhile, far to the southward, over the wide-spreading lands
watered by the Upper Nile and its tributaries, the power and the
glory of him who had once been Mohammed Ahmed were growing still.
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