3
discover that you can neither gain the centre of the maze or return to the starting-point; you must either wander round for an eternity, or do as I shall do, cut your way through the hedges planted to bewilder you, and thank Heaven when on the outside that you are clear of the tortuous passages. Compare, for instance —
"He (Cudzi) added that Gordon should have no anxiety about Berber as long as Hussein Pasha Khaleefa was Mudir,"
with,
"Gordon himself committed a mistake by which he gave a deathblow to himself and his mission. On his way to Khartoum, he stopped at Berber, and interviewed the Mudir Hussein Pasha Khaleefa; he imprudently told him that he had come up to remove the Egyptian garrisons, as Egypt had abandoned the Soudan."
Gordon cannot be blamed for confirming, as Governor-General of the Soudan, the news telegraphed to his subordinate, the Mudir of Berber, through whose hands the retiring garrisons must pass, nor can he be blamed if, when his suspicions were aroused, he deferred to the opinion of the man who was acting British Consul, Government representative, and his own agent, when he wrote and telegraphed as he did, "Trust in Hussein Pasha."
"The catastrophe which had overtaken Hicks filled the inhabitants of Khartoum with indescribable dismay. Several of them returned to Egypt, and the members of the Austrian Mission, with their blacks, quitted Khartoum on the 11th December, 1883."
I therefore take it for granted that Father Ohrwalder's fellow-workers saw that all was hopeless
