Under pretence of intending to submit, Gumaa gained time, and tried to hurry up reinforcements, but this having been suspected, Zoghal ordered Slatin, Tandal, the President of the Civil Court, Aly Bey Ibrahim-el-Khabir, Slatin’s head-clerk Ahmad Riad, and a few others, to send in an ultimatum to Gumaa, |320| and await his reply. The reply travelled quickly; as soon as he read the letter, Gumaa opened fire upon the spot where Slatin and his companions were awaiting him. During the first siege of El Fasher, Gumaa must have accounted for at least fifteen thousand dervishes, and utterly defeated the army which retired to Walad Birra, from whence a party was sent off to Dara to bring up the ammunition which, as appears from Gordon’s Journal, was handed over to the Mahdists by Slatin when he surrendered the province. This occupied eleven days, and then the second siege was laid. The wells were filled up, thus depriving the garrison of water; but for seven or eight days they held out, dying of thirst, while the town was constantly bombarded with Government ammunition. Said Bey Gumaa has always protested that had it not been for the ammunition handed over by Slatin to the Mahdists he could have held out—and more. The knowledge of these things must have influenced Gordon, especially when Slatin writes to him, through Consul Hansal, offering to place his services at his disposal, but only on condition that Gordon should guarantee never to surrender, for, if he did, Slatin would be maltreated by the Mahdists when they laid hands upon him. Gordon was the best judge as to the value of services offered under such conditions. For “moral and political reasons,” Gordon considered it unadvisable to have anything whatever to do with what he called “apostate” Europeans in the Mahdi’s camp, but appreciating the enormous responsibility |321| thrown upon his shoulders, he appealed to the Ulema for their advice, as these apostates were now their co-religionists, and they decided to have nothing whatever to do with their “proposals of treachery,” as no good could come of it. Matters were made still worse by Slatin writing to Gordon asking him to be a party to proceedings very foreign indeed to Gordon’s nature at all events. Slatin’s request to Gordon was to write to him personally one letter in French, and another letter in Arabic, “asking him to obtain permission from his Master to come to Omdurman and discuss with him the conditions of his (Gordon’s) surrender,” which letter he could use in order to obtain permission to come to Omdurman. If Gordon had written that Arabic letter. . . . If all these facts were not known to Father Ohrwalder before 1892, six years is quite long enough time to have learned them, and now I have no hesitation in saying that to assert that Gordon brought about his downfall by refusing the services of people willing to risk their lives in reaching him is, to put it charitably, pure fiction.