lied the shortcomings of all the rest. When it was a
matter of pulling the boats up the river, he was the first at the
ropes, and the last to leave them, wading through the water with his
trousers up. If it was his steamer that had run aground, all the
active labour, as well as the organisation, fell on him. Sooner than
add to the work of those in attendance on him, he would be seen
preparing and cooking his own food; and because he could do it better
than his native servant, he would clean his duck-gun, with the whole
camp agape, until his ways were realised, at an Excellency doing his
own work. Nor did he spare himself physically. His average day's walk,
which satisfied him that he was in good health, was fourteen miles;
but he often exceeded twenty miles, and on one occasion he even walked
thirty-five miles under a tropical sun. Of the conduct of his soldiers
against an enemy, or in coping with the difficulties of river
navigation, he was always nervous, and whether for work or for
fighting he used, he said, "to pray them up as he did his men in
China"; but without his knowledge, one of his own soldiers was
vigilantly observant of his conduct, and has recorded, through the
instrumentality of Slatin Pasha, his recollections of Gordon as a
fighter and leader of soldiers:--

"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