"To this they agreed, and at the same time they gave him back his revolver. They all walked towards the Mandarin's house--the two Englishmen alongside their horses. On the way Major Gordon said to his companion, 'Are you ready to mount?' 'Yes,' he answered. So they mounted quietly, and went on with the people. When they reached the Mandarin's they turned horses, and scampered after their carts as fast as they could. The people yelled and rushed after them, but it was too late. "Some way beyond Taiyuen they came upon the pass over the mountains which led down into the country drained by the Peiho. The descent was a terrible one. All along the cold had been intense--so much so that raw eggs were frozen hard as if they had been boiled. To add to their troubles, when they were on in front their carts were attacked by robbers; but the Chinese lad--an ugly imp--kept them off with his gun. When they drew near Paoting-fu they sent on with the lad the two carts and their tired horses, which had now carried them for three weeks without the break of a single day, and they hired a fresh cart in which they thought to ride to Tientsin. But with the boy gone they had no interpreter, and in their impatience, 'their new driver'--to quote our traveller's own words--'got rather crossly dealt with.' They stopped near Paoting-fu for the night. Early next morning as they were washing they heard the gates of the inn open and the rumble of cartwheels. They guessed what was happening. 'Half stripped as I was, I rushed out and saw our cart bolting away. I ran for a mile after it, but had to come back and hire another with which we got to Tientsin--more than fourteen days over our leave.'" From this pleasant but uneventful occupation Gordon was summoned to a scene where important events were in progress, and upon which he was destined to play what was perhaps, after all, the most brilliant part in the long course of his remarkable career. His brother puts the change into a single sentence:-- "On the 28th of April 1862 Captain Gordon left the Peiho and arrived at Shanghai on 3rd of May, and at once dropped into the command of a district with the charge of the engineer part of an expedition about to start, with the intention of driving the rebels out of a circuit of thirty miles from Shanghai."