"General, you must pardon me if I tell you that you don't know what you
are asking me to do."
The three old men looked sharply round at him, but he was now keyed up
and did not care.
"No, sir--none of you! You think you are merely asking me to drive out
of El Azhar a number of rebellious students and their teachers. But you
are really asking me to kill hundreds, perhaps thousands of them."
"Fudge! Fiddlesticks!" cried the General, and then, forgetting the
presence of the Pasha, he said, "These people are Egyptians--miserable,
pigeon-livered Egyptians! Before you fire a shot they'll fly away to a
man. But even if they stay the responsibility will be their own--so
what the dev----"
"That's just where we join issue, General," said Gordon. "There isn't a
worm that hasn't a right to resent a wrong, and this will be a wrong,
and the people will be justified in resenting it."
The General, who was breathing hard, turned to the Consul-General and
said, "I'm sorry, my lord, very sorry, but you see----"
There was a short silence, and then the Consul-General, still calm on
the outside as a frozen lake, said, "Gordon, I presume you know what you
will be doing if you refuse to obey your General's order?"