Later on, when Hassan Bey, who was then but “effendi,” had had a particularly hard spell of night and day work, Gordon asked him which he would prefer—an increase of pay or a rank. Hassan Bey left the matter to Gordon, and he gave him both, writing the “firman” himself. On the Friday following, Hassan Bey presented himself to Gordon in Bussati’s uniform—for uniform was worn on Fridays and feast days. Gordon was evidently much amused at his interpreter and telegraph-clerk appearing in the uniform of a lieut.-colonel, although the rank he had bestowed upon him was nothing more nor less. Telling Hassan Bey that such a uniform did not look well without a decoration, he pinned on to his right breast one of the decorations he had had struck to commemorate the siege of Khartoum, and Hassanein walked off a proud man to delight the eyes of his wife, then nearing her confinement. Fifteen days before the departure of the _Abbas_, he presented himself to Gordon, and told him that he was the father of a boy. “No, I am the father,” replied Gordon, and, knowing Hassan Bey’s house, he hurried off at a quick walk, which Hassan Bey had to run to keep up with. Pushing his way through the women assembled in the outer room, he tapped gently on the door where mother and child were lying, and asked, “Mary, tyeeb-tyeeb?” (“Is all well?”) and then, as the child’s “father,” he insisted upon entering, took the child in his arms, crooned to it, kissed it, and then hurried off and wrote a note to the Finance Office to pay a hundred pounds _from his salary_ “to his boy.” Mother and child were to meet with a tragic death. |328| Two days before the departure of the _Abbas_, Gordon told Hassan Bey that he had selected him to accompany Colonel Stewart as interpreter. He was to accompany the party as far as Dongola, at all events, but there was the possibility of Stewart requiring him as far as Cairo, therefore his wife collected a number of presents for her relatives in Cairo, which Hassan Bey was to present in uniform and decorations, so that all should understand how highly she had married. I must now, having given an idea of the relations existing between Gordon and the man who “betrayed” Colonel Stewart, and who had left with Gordon his wife and fifteen-day-old boy, give his account of what actually occurred. I purposely leave out all the incidents of the voyage until the boats reach the island opposite the village of El Salamanieh.