Gordon decided to stay and hold Khartoum despite the orders of the Gladstone government to merely report about the best means of supervising the evacuation of the Sudan. Powers who acted as Gordon's unofficial press attaché wrote in "The Times": "We are daily expecting British troops. We cannot bring ourselves to believe that we are to be abandoned". In his diary, Gordon wrote: "I own to having been very insubordinate to Her Majesty's Government and its officials, but it is my nature, and I cannot help it. I fear I have not even tried to play battledore and shuttlecock with them. I know if "I" was chief I would never employ "myself" for I am incorrigible".