Emin called his people together to make an agreement with them and the same discouraging result was repeated which had so sorely tried Stanley’s patience. One party was willing to go with the Pasha, conditional, however, upon taking the nearest route to the coast. But, as we know, Emin had projected bolder plans, in the development of which he counted upon the help of the Soudanese. The usual delays occurred and the evil-disposed circulated all kinds of senseless stories. They said that the Khedive, enraged because Emin had left his soldiers in the interior and set out for the coast alone, had driven him off and that he was wandering about trying to find a habitation. Notwithstanding these reports, he could not find it in his heart to leave the malicious inventors of them in the lurch. He writes to his sister: “I am foolish enough, in spite of everything, to keep my interest in these people.” There were a few faithful souls whom he would save even as Abraham appealed to his God: “Peradventure there shall lack five of the fifty righteous, wilt thou destroy all the city [Sodom] for lack of five?” After long delay twenty-nine men, one hundred and one women, and eighty-one children decided to go with their former governor, though the little band promised to be much more troublesome than useful to him. But Emin was not discouraged at this turn of events. He made no complaints and was only concerned that the people who had been assured of help should not suffer. Chapter XX To the West On the tenth of August, 1891, Emin went farther west, and considerably farther north than Stanley had gone, in hopes of making a union with Cameron. All were of good courage except Dr. Stuhlmann, who had grave doubts, for Emin’s health was broken. The saddest feature was his failing eyesight and the certainty that the day was not far distant when he would be blind. The Pasha himself realized it and therefore kept steadily forwards with the energy of desperation instead of going back by a safer way. “What is there behind me?” he would reply to Stuhlmann’s protests. “The work to which I have devoted my life is in confusion and my activity in the German service has not been appreciated. Of what use is life if one does not accomplish something that is recognized as important?” These few words give us a glimpse into his proud nature. His important services had not been justly recognized. The Khedive had written him a formal letter of thanks and invested him with an empty title: his own subordinates had proved ungrateful; Stanley had so misjudged him that it grieved him, and now he had been censured by the authorities of the German colony. Notwithstanding all this, Emin now ventured one last effort to secure the recognition of a world which had so obstinately refused it.