don"
II. Gordon's First Battles
III. "Chinese Gordon"
IV. "The Kernel"
V. Gordon and the Slavers
VI. Khartoum

ILLUSTRATIONS

He would lead the troops onwards with the little cane
he nearly always carried . . . . . . . . . _Frontispiece_

The Corporal was butted downstairs

The shell struck the ground five yards in front of him

With his own hands he dragged him from the ranks

Gordon appeared with soap, towels, a brush, a sponge,
and a fresh suit of clothes

In the Soudan buying two children for a basketful of dhoora

There rode into their camp Gordon Pasha

Looking for the help that never came

THE STORY OF

GENERAL GORDON

CHAPTER I

"CHARLIE GORDON"

Sixty years ago, at Woolwich, the town on the Thames where the gunners
of our army are trained, there lived a mischievous, curly-haired,
blue-eyed boy, whose name was Charlie Gordon.

The Gordons were a Scotch family, and Charlie came of a race of
soldiers. His great-grandfather had fought for King George, and was
taken prisoner at the battle of Prestonpans, when many other Gordons
were fighting for Prince Charlie. His grandfather had served bravely
in different regiments and in many lands. His father was yet another
gallant soldier, who thought that there was no life so good as the
soldier's life, and nothing so fine as to serve in the British army.
Of him it is said that he was "kind-hearted, generous, cheerful, full
of humour, always just, living by the code of honour," and "greatly
beloved." His wife belonged to a family of great merchant adventurers
and explorers, the Enderbys, whose ships had done many daring things on
far seas.

Charlie Gordon's mother was one of the people who never lose their
tempers, who always make the best of everything, and who are always
thinking of how to help others and never of themselves.

So little Charlie came of brave and good people, and when he was a very
little boy he must have heard much of his soldier uncles and cousins
and his soldier brother, and must even have seen the swinging kilts and
heard the pipes of the gallant regiment that is known as the Gordon
Highlanders.

Charles George Gordon was born at Woolwich on the 28th January 1833,
but while he was still a little child his father, General Gordon, went
to hold a command in Corfu, an island off the coast of Turkey, at the
mouth of the Adriatic Sea. The Duke of Cambridge long afterwards spoke
of the bright litt