But the hope was in vain. There was no longer any chance of relief from the north. Neither Meshra nor Lado was again to welcome a steamer from Khartoum. The northern road was closed, and the entire situation in the Soudan was critical to a degree of which Dr. Junker in his remote station in the Niam-niam country could form no conception. The situation, in fact, was more than serious. In Kordofan and the Bahr-el-Ghazal district the Arab and the negro were persistently joining the rebels; Sennar and El-Obeid were threatened; the Egyptian corps in Darfur, as well as the detachments under Lupton and Emin, was absolutely cut off from the rest of the Soudan, and the Mahdi, whose audacity increased with his prestige, had under him an army of at least 100,000 men. Moreover, the government troops had met with sanguinary reverses, and were reduced to such a state of alarm that symptoms of rebellion had begun to appear in their ranks. The governor-general, Abd-el-Kadir, was almost overpowered, and compelled no longer to send for a few battalions from Cairo, but to implore that an army might be despatched to his aid. Altogether, things were becoming desperate. It was in this emergency that the British government, rousing itself from its protracted reserve, determined to substitute its own action for the inadequate efforts of the Khedive, and proceeded to equip 10,000 soldiers who should start from Suakin, make forced marches, and re-establish order in Kordofan. All along, throughout this time, at Lado, at Meshra, and at Semmio, anxious eyes were turned towards Khartoum awaiting help. But no help was forthcoming. The drama of the Soudan had commenced. On a stage of which the scenery extended from the Red Sea to Lake Victoria, from the frontier of Abyssinia to the remote confines of Darfur, scenes wild and bloody were about to be enacted. Face to face with the invincible Mahdi and his fierce general Osman Digna were now to appear successively Hicks Pasha, Baker Pasha, General Graham, and Admiral Hewett; in his turn should follow General Gordon, the hero _sans peur et sans reproche_; and then finally a second British army under the command of the renowned Lord Wolseley, the victor at Tel-el-Kebir. And so for three years along the Nile there ensued a series of terrible struggles, of brilliant, sanguinary, yet futile engagements, of which the eventual results were alike disastrous to the cause of civilisation and damaging to English prestige.