tions are more painful than responsibility
without control. The General could not supervise the defence. The
officers robbed the soldiers of their rations. The sentries slumbered at
their posts. The townspeople bewailed their misfortunes, and all ranks
and classes intrigued with the enemy in the hope of securing safety
when the town should fall. Frequent efforts were made to stir up the
inhabitants or sap their confidence. Spies of all kinds pervaded the
town. The Egyptian Pashas, despairing, meditated treason. Once an
attempt was made to fire the magazine. Once no less than eighty thousand
ardebs of grain was stolen from the arsenal. From time to time the
restless and ceaseless activity of the commander might discover some
plot and arrest the conspirators; or, checking some account, might
detect some robbery; but he was fully aware that what he found out
was scarcely a tithe of what he could not hope to know. The Egyptian
officers were untrustworthy. Yet he had to trust them. The inhabitants
were thoroughly broken by war, and many were disloyal. He had to feed
and inspirit them. The town itself was scarcely defensible. It must
be defended to the end. From the flat roof of his palace his telescope
commanded a view of the forts and lines. Here he would spend the greater
part of each day, scrutinising the defences and the surrounding country
with his powerful glass. When he observed that the sentries on the forts
had left their posts, he would send over to have them flogged and
their superiors punished. When his 'penny steamers' engaged the Dervish
batteries he would watch, 'on tenter-hooks,' a combat which might be
fatal to the defence, but which, since he could not direct it, must be
left to officers by turns timid and reckless: and in the dark hours of
the night he could not even watch. The Journals, the only receptacle of
his confidences, display the bitterness of his sufferings no less than
the greatness of his character. 'There is no contagion,' he writes,
'equal to that of fear. I have been rendered furious when from anxiety I
could not eat, I would find those at the same table were in like manner
affected.'

To the military anxieties was added every kind of worry which may
weary a man's soul. The women clamoured for bread. The townsfolk heaped
reproaches upon him. The quarrel with the British Government had cut
him very deeply. The belief that he was abandoned and discredited, that
history would make light of his