On being asked what his personal impressions of Gordon were, he said that his thoughtfulness for every one, his goodness, justice, and innumerable virtues would take years to relate; and then when he was told that his claim could only be sustained on his proving that Gordon was to blame for the loss of Stewart’s party, ill as he was, he rose from his couch, tore up the petition, and, with his hand raised, prayed Heaven that if the bit of bread to save him from starvation should be purchased with money obtained through laying a fault upon Gordon, it might choke him. One had to witness the scene really to appreciate it. Ruined, broken down in health, too old to make a new start in life, his eyes lost their dulness and glistened as he breathed his prayer and fell back on his couch exhausted with the effort. Nahoum, I am afraid, will have joined Gordon by the time this appears in print. [Illustration: HASSAN BEY HASSANEIN.] |325| APPENDICES APPENDIX I HASSAN BEY HASSANEIN When Gordon heard of the murder of Colonel Stewart and his companions, he held a sort of court-martial on himself, and, after reviewing all the arrangements which he had made for their safety, he came to the conclusion that Stewart must have been invited on shore and murdered. Then, as if endowed with second sight, he almost exactly described what actually happened. The _Abbas_, drawing less than two feet of water, ought not to have stranded, as it was High Nile. Treachery on the part of the crew he had guarded against by sending a bodyguard of highly paid Greeks. The cutting adrift of their boats just after passing Berber contributed to the catastrophe, for had they been with the steamer at the time she struck, it is hardly likely that the inhabitants of the village would have planned the treachery they did. As interpreter to the party, Gordon gave them the man he could least spare, and one in whom he had every confidence—Hassan Bey Hassanein. Gordon himself writes, “thus the question of treachery was duly weighed by me and guarded against,” yet, in “Ten Years’ Captivity,” we find the contrary stated. “It is said that the interpreter, Hassan, arranged the betrayal.” Moreover, to clinch the matter, and to show that Gordon had selected a traitor in the very man whom the |326| lives of the party might depend upon, it is added, “And I was afterwards told that, when he got into difficulties later, he sent a petition to Mohammad-el-Kheir, in which he said that he was entitled to reward for having secured Colonel Stewart’s death. He is still living in Omdurman.”