a follower of the Prophet, and outwardly at least adopted the faith of Islam.  The troops, delighted at his conversion and cheered by the hope of success, renewed their efforts, and the resistance of the Governor of Darfur was prolonged.  The end, however, was deferred, not averted.  After the destruction of General Hicks’s army Slatin was compelled to surrender to the Dervishes.  The religion he had assumed to secure victory he observed to escape death.  The Arab leaders, who admired his courage, treated him at first with respect and kindness, and he was conducted to the Mahdi in his encampment before Khartoum.  There during the siege he remained, closely watched but not imprisoned.  Thence he wrote letters to Gordon explaining his surrender, excusing his apostacy, and begging that he might be allowed—­not even assisted—­to escape to Khartoum.  The letters are extant, and scarcely anyone who reads them, reflecting on the twelve years of danger and degradation that lay before this man, will refuse their compassion.

Gordon was inflexible.  Before the arrival of the letters his allusions to Slatin are contemptuous:  ’One cannot help being amused at the Mahdi carrying all the Europeans about with him—­nuns, priests, Greeks, Austrian officers—­what a medley, a regular Etat-Major!’ [Journals at Khartoum.] He is suspicious of the circumstances of his surrender.  ’The Greek. . . says Slatin had 4,000 ardebs of dura, 1,500 cows, and plenty of ammunition:  he has been given eight horses by the Mahdi.’  He will not vouch for such a man; but he adds, with characteristic justice, ‘all this information must be taken with reserve.’

At length the letters came.  At the peril of his life, when ordered to write and demand the surrender of the town, Slatin substituted an appeal to Gordon to countenance his escape.  This is the uncompromising minute in the Journals:  ’Oct. 16.  The letters of Slatin have arrived.  I have no remarks to make on them, and cannot make out why he wrote them.’  In the afternoon, indeed, he betrays some pity; but it is the pity of a man for a mouse.  ’He is evidently not a Spartan. . . he will want some quarantine . . . one feels sorry for him.’  The next day he is again inexorable, and gives his reasons clearly.  ’I shall have nothing to do with Slatin’s coming here to stay, unless he has the Mahdi’s positive leave, which he is not likely to get; his doing so would be the breaking of his parole which should be as sacred when given to the Mahdi as to any other power, and it would jeopardise the safety of all these Europeans, prisoners with Mahdi.’