After the refusal to send Zebehr to the Soudan, the Government seem to have treated Gordon as if they desired to provoke him to take the bit in his mouth, and in a fit of indignation leave Khartoum without definite orders. Had he done so Ministers could have successfully argued that having deserted his post without authority, they were no longer responsible for him. This game was keenly played between Gordon at Khartoum and Mr. Gladstone’s Cabinet in London, aided by the Egyptian Government and its English advisers, Egerton and Baring, at Cairo. But every point in it was won by Gordon, who in March warned Egerton and Baring that they must decide quickly, for the sands were running fast in the hour-glass. He also put in their hands a plan for getting the Government out of the difficulty without sending a relief expedition. He had not at that time so far committed the people at Khartoum against the Mahdi that it would be dangerous to leave them to make terms with the False Prophet. He had to prevent his armed steamers from falling into the Mahdi’s hands, and Khartoum from being utilised as a base of operations against Lower Egypt. He therefore told the Government that if they held Berber, and accepted his proposal as to Zebehr, it was worth while to keep him (Gordon) at Khartoum. But if not, then he warned his masters that it was useless to hold on to Khartoum, for, he wrote, “it is impossible for me to help the other garrisons, and I shall only be sacrificing the whole of the troops and _employés_ here. In the latter case your order to me had better be to evacuate Khartoum.” On receipt of that order he proposed to send his intrepid lieutenant, Colonel Stewart, and the fugitives who wished to return to Egypt, down the Nile to Berber. He himself, and as many of his black troops as would go with him, were then to take the armed steamers, and the munitions of war from the arsenal of Khartoum, and make their escape southwards up the White Nile. He guaranteed, in that event, to hold the Bahr Gazelle country and Equatorial regions against the slave-traders, and pin the Mahdi in Khartoum by organising a negro State in his rear, which, like the Congo Free State, he suggested might be put under Belgian protection. But he warned the Government that if this plan were to be attempted he must get the order to quit Khartoum at once, for in a few days the way of retreat to Berber would be closed. The order never came. In fact, the only order he got from his superiors at this time, was to hold on to Khartoum till further notice. Had the instructions which he asked for been sent, there would have been no Nile Expedition with its many disasters, including the fall of Khartoum, and the massacre of its inhabitants.[218]