On the evening of September
9th, just as she was about to start, the English and French
Consuls asked for permission to go with her--a permission which
Gordon, who had long been anxious to provide for their safety,
readily granted. Then Colonel Stewart made the same request; and
Gordon consented with the same alacrity.
Colonel Stewart was the second-in-command at Khartoum; and it
seems strange that he should have made a proposal which would
leave Gordon in a position of the gravest anxiety without a
single European subordinate. But his motives were to be veiled
forever in a tragic obscurity. The Abbas and her convoy set out.
Henceforward the Governor-General was alone. He had now,
definitely and finally, made his decision. Colonel Stewart and
his companions had gone, with every prospect of returning
unharmed to civilisation. Mr. Gladstone's belief was justified;
so far as Gordon's personal safety was concerned, he might still,
at this late hour, have secured it. But he had chosen-- he stayed
at Khartoum.
No sooner were the steamers out of sight than he sat down at his
writing-table and began that daily record of his circumstances,
his reflections, and his feelings, which reveals to us, with such
an authentic exactitude, the final period of his extraordinary
destiny. His Journals, sent down the river in batches to await
the coming of the relief expedition, and addressed, first to
Colonel Stewart, and later to the 'Chief of Staff, Sudan
Expeditionary Force', were official documents, intended for
publication, though, as Gordon himself was careful to note on the
outer covers, they would 'want pruning out' before they were
printed.
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