Other witnesses told a very
different story. The man whom they saw die was not a saint but a
warrior. With intrepidity, with skill, with desperation, he flew
at his enemies. When his pistol was exhausted, he fought on with
his sword; he forced his way almost to the bottom of the
staircase; and, among, a heap of corpses, only succumbed at
length to the sheer weight of the multitudes against him.
That morning, while Slatin Pasha was sitting in his chains in the
camp at Omdurman, he saw a group of Arabs approaching, one of
whom was carrying something wrapped up in a cloth. As the group
passed him, they stopped for a moment, and railed at him in
savage mockery. Then the cloth was lifted, and he saw before him
Gordon's head. The trophy was taken to the Mahdi: at last the two
fanatics had indeed met face to face. The Mahdi ordered the head
to be fixed between the branches of a tree in the public highway,
and all who passed threw stones at it. The hawks of the desert
swept and circled about it--those very hawks which the blue eyes
had so often watched.
The news of the catastrophe reached England, and a great outcry
arose. The public grief vied with the public indignation. The
Queen, in a letter to Miss Gordon, immediately gave vent both to
her own sentiments and those of the nation. 'HOW shall I write to
you,' she exclaimed, 'or how shall I attempt to express WHAT I
FEEL! To THINK of your dear, noble, heroic Brother, who served
his Country and his Queen so truly, so heroically, with a self-
sacrifice so edifying to the World, not having been rescued.
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