"Gordon was indeed a brave man. I was one of his chiefs in the fight against the Mima and Khawabir Arabs; it was in the plain of Fafa, and a very hot day. The enemy had charged us, and had forced back the first line, and their spears were falling thick around us; one came within a hair's-breadth of Gordon, but he did not seem to mind it at all, and the victory we won was entirely due to him and his reserve of 100 men. When the fight was at its worst he found time to light a cigarette. Never in my life did I see such a thing; and then the following day, when he divided the spoil, no one was forgotten, and he kept nothing for himself. He was very tender-hearted about women and children, and never allowed them to be distributed, as is our custom in war, but he fed and clothed them at his own expense, and had them sent to their homes as soon as the war was over." This picture of Gordon lighting a cigarette in the press of a doubtful battle may well be coupled with that already given during the Taeping rebellion, of his standing unarmed in the breach of an assaulted stockade, while around him pressed on or wavered the individuals of a forlorn hope. It will be difficult for anyone to find in all the annals of war another instance of human courage more nearly approaching the sublime. In November 1875 General Gordon had fully made up his mind to resign and return to Cairo, in consequence of the indifference with which he was treated by the Khedive's Government, and he had actually written the telegrams announcing this intention, and given orders to pack up the stores for the passage down the Nile, when the receipt of a long letter full of praise and encouragement from the Khedive Ismail induced him to alter his plans, to tear up the telegrams, and to continue his work. General Gordon gives his reason for changing his mind very briefly: "The man had gone to all this expense under the belief that I would stick to him; I could not therefore leave him." So he stayed on for another year. In July 1876 he formally and more deliberately resigned, but the execution of this decision had to be postponed by the necessity he felt under, as already explained, of solving the geographical questions connected with the Nile and the Lakes, and also of securing the southern frontier against Kaba Rega and Mtesa.