"None whatever," replied Gordon, and the King, who was used to rule by terror, had no more to say. This mission over, Gordon, utterly worn out, and broken in health, returned to Egypt, and resigned his post as Governor-General of the Soudan. The slaves that he had set free used to try to kiss his feet and the hem of his garment. To this day there is a name known in Egypt and in the Soudan as that of a man who scorned money, who had no fear of any man, who did not even fear death, whose mercy was as perfect as his uprightness. And the name of that man is Gordon Pasha. "Give us another Governor like Gordon Pasha," was the cry of the Soudanese when the Mahdi uprose to be a scourge to the Soudan. CHAPTER VI KHARTOUM Gordon left Egypt in December 1879, "not a day too soon," the doctor said, for he was ill, not only from hard work, but from overwork. The burden he had carried on his shoulders through those years was the burden of the whole of the Soudan. He was ordered several months of complete rest. But those days of rest were only castles that Gordon had built in his day-dreams, when burning days and bitter nights had made him long for ease. Early in 1880 he became Secretary to Lord Ripon, Viceroy of India. He remained only a few months in India, and then went to China, in answer to an urgent message from his old friend, Li Hung Chang. China and Russia were on the brink of a great war. The Chinese courtiers wished to fight, but Li Hung Chang longed for peace. "Come and help me to keep peace," he said to Gordon. And "Chinese Gordon" did not fail him. "I cannot desert China in her present crisis," he wrote. His stay in China was not long, but when he returned to England he had made peace between two empires. He had only been home for a short time when again he was on the wing. One day at the War Office he met a brother officer, who complained of his bad luck at having to go and command the Engineers at such a dull place as the Island of Mauritius. "Oh, don't worry yourself," said Gordon, "I will go for you: Mauritius is as good for me as anywhere else." For a year he remained there--a peaceful, if dull year, but in March 1882 he was made a Major-General, and relieved from his post. For a short time he was in South Africa, trying to put to rights affairs between the Basutos--a black race--and the Government at the Cape. The Government, who had asked him to come, treated him badly, and even put his life in danger. He made them very angry by telling them that they were wholly in the wrong, and that he would not fight the Basutos, who had right and justice on their side; and, having failed in his mission, he returned to England. To find the rest and peace he so much needed, Gordon now went to the Holy Land. Long ago, the day before a brave warrior was made a knight, he spent the hours from sunset till dawn alone in a chapel beside his armour, watching and praying. This was called "watching his armour."