“Well” says I, “I don’t know about that. I don’t think I care for your tone, Mr Spring, and—”
“Captain Spring,” says he, and sat forward. “Now see here, Mr Flashman, I don’t beat about. You’re nothing to me; I gather you’ve half-killed someone and that you’re a short leap ahead of the law. I’m to give you passage out, on the instructions of Mr Morrison.” Suddenly his voice rose to a shout, and he crashed his hand on the table. “Well, I don’t give a d - - n! You can stay or run, d’ye see? It’s all one to me! But you don’t waste my time!” The scar on his head was crimson, and then it faded and his voice dropped. “Well?”
I didn’t like the look of this one, I can tell you. But what could I do?
“Well,” says I, “you say Mr Morrison is your ship’s owner—I didn’t know he had ships.”
“Part owner,” says he. “One of my directors.”
“I see. And where is your ship bound, Captain Spring, and where are you to take me?”
The pale eyes flickered. “We’re going foreign,” says he. “America, and home again. The voyage may last six months, so by Christmas you’ll be back in England. As supercargo you take a share of profit—a small share—so your voyage won’t be wasted.”
“What’s the cargo?” says I, interested, because I remembered hearing that these short-haul traders on the Atlantic run did quite well.
“General stuffs on the way out—Brummagem, cloths, some machinery. Cotton, sugar, molasses and so forth on the trip home.” He snapped the words out. “You ask too d - - - - d many questions, Mr Flashman, for a runner.”
“I’m not all that much of a runner,” says I. It didn’t sound too bad a way of putting by the time till the Bryant business was past. “Well, in that case, I suppose—”
“Good,” says he. “Now then: I know you’re an Army officer, and it’s in deference to that I’m making you supercargo, which means you mess aft. You’ve been in India, for what that’s worth—what d’you know of the sea?”
“Little enough,” says I. “I’ve voyaged out and home, but I sailed in Borneo waters with Rajah Brooke, and can handle a small boat.”
“Did you now?” The pale eyes gleamed. “That means you’ve been part-pirate, I daresay. You look like it—hold your tongue, sir, it doesn’t matter to me! I’ll only tell you this: on my ship there is no free-and-easy sky-larking! I saw that slut in here just now—well, henceforth you’ll fornicate when I give you leave! By God, I’ll not have it otherwise!” He was shouting again; this fellow’s half-mad, thinks I. Then he was quiet. “You have languages, I understand?”
“Why, yes. French and German, Hindoostani, Pushtu—which is a tongue …”
“… of Northern India,” says he impatiently. “I know. Get on.”
“Well, a little Malay, a little Danish. I learn languages easily.”
“Aye. You were educated at Rugby—you have the classics?”
“Well,” says I, “I’ve forgotten a good deal …”
“Hah! Hiatus maxime deflendus,”a says this amazing fellow. “Or if you prefer it, Hiatus valde deflendus.” He glared at me. “Well?”
I gaped at the man. “You mean?—oh, let’s see. Great—er, letting down? Great—”
“Christ’s salvation!” says he. “No wonder Arnold died young. The priceless gift of education, thrown away on brute minds! You speak living languages without difficulty, it seems—had you not the grace to pay heed, d - - n your skin, to the only languages that matter?” He jumped up and strode about.
I was getting tired of Mr Charity Spring. “They may matter to you,” says I, “but in my experience it’s precious little good quoting Virgil to a head-hunter. And what the d - - - l has this to do with anything?”
He stood lowering at me, and then sneered: “There’s your educated Englishman, right enough. Gentlemen! Bah! Why do I waste breath on you? Quidquid praecipies, esto brevis,b by God! Well, if you’ll pack your precious traps, Mr Flashman, we’ll be off. There’s a tide to catch.” And he was away, bawling for my account at the stairhead.
It was obvious to me that I had fallen in with a lunatic, and possibly a dangerous one, but since in my experience a great many seamen are wanting in the head I wasn’t over-concerned. He paid not the slightest heed to anything I said as we made our way down to the jetty with my valise behind on a hand-cart, but occasionally he would bark a question at me, and it was this that eventually prodded me into recollecting one of the few Latin tags which has stuck in my mind—mainly because it was flogged into me at school as a punishment for talking in class. He had been demanding information about my Indian service, mighty offensively, too, so I snapped at him:
“Percunctatorem fugitus nam garrulus idem est”,c which I thought was pretty fair, and he stopped dead in his tracks.
“Horace, by G - d!” he shouted. “We’ll make something of you yet. But it is fugito, d’ye see, not fugitus. Come on, man, make haste.”
He got little opportunity to catechise me after this, for the first stage of our journey was in a cockly little fishing boat that took us out into the Channel, and since it was h - - lish rough I was in no condition for conversation. I’m an experienced sailor, which is to say I’ve heaved my guts over the rail into all the Seven Seas, and before we were ten minutes out I was sprawled in the scuppers wishing to God I’d gone back to London and faced the music. This spewing empty misery continued, as it always does, for hours, and I was still green and wobbly-kneed when at evening we came into a bay on the French coast, and sighted Mr Spring’s vessel riding at anchor. Gazing blearily at it as we approached, I was astonished at its size; it was long and lean and black, with three masts, not unlike the clippers of later years. As we came under her counter, I saw the lettering on her side: it read Balliol College.
“Ah,” says I to Spring, who was by me just then. “You were at Balliol, were you?”
“No,” says he, mighty short. “I am an Oriel man myself.”
“Then why is your ship called Balliol College?”
I saw his teeth clench and his scar darkened up. “Because I hate the b - - - - y place!” he cried in passion. He took a turn about and came back to me. “My father and brothers were Balliol men, d’you see? Does that answer you, Mr Flashman?”
Well, it didn’t, but at that moment my belly revolted again, and when we came aboard I had to be helped up the ladder, retching and groaning and falling a-sprawl on the deck. I heard a voice say, “Christ, it’s Nelson”, and then I was half-carried away, and dropped on a bunk somewhere, alone in my misery while in the distance I heard the hateful voice of John Charity Spring bawling orders. I vowed then, as I’ve vowed fifty times since, that this was the last time I’d ever permit myself to be lured aboard a ship, but my mind must still have been working a little, because as I dropped off to sleep I remember wondering: why does a British ship have to sail from the French coast? But I was too tired and ill to worry just then.
Sometime later someone brought me broth, and having spewed it on to the floor I felt well enough to get up and stagger on deck. It was half-dark, but the stars were out, and to port there were lights twinkling on the French coast. I looked north, towards England, but there was nothing to be seen but grey sea, and suddenly I thought, my G - d, what am I doing here? Where the deuce am I going? Who is this man Spring? Here I was, who only a couple of weeks before had been rolling down to Wiltshire like a lord, with the intention of going into politics, and now I was shivering with sea-sickness on an ocean-going barque commanded by some kind of mad Oxford don—it was too much, and I found I was babbling to myself by the rail.
It’s always the way, of course. You’re coasting along and then the current grips you, and you’re swept into events and places that you couldn’t even have dreamed about. It seemed to have happened so quickly, but as I looked miserably back over the past fortnight there wasn’t, that I could see, anything I could have done that would have prevented what was now happening to me. I couldn’t have resisted Morrison
, or refused Spring—I’d had to do what I was told, and here I was. I found myself blubbering as I gazed over the rail at the empty waste of sea—if only I hadn’t got lusty after that little b - - - h Fanny, and played cards with her, and hit that swine Bryant—ah, but what was the use? It was done, and I was going God knew where, and leaving Elspeth and my life of ease and drinking and guzzling and mounting women behind. But it was too bad, and I was full of self-pity and rage as I watched the water slipping past.
Of course, if I’d been like Jack Merry or Dick Champion, or any of the other plucky little prigs that Tom Brown and his cronies used to read about, setting off to seek my fortune on the bounding wave, I’d have brushed aside a manly tear and faced the future with the stout heart of youth, while old Bosun McHearty clapped me on the shoulder and held me enthralled with tales of the South Seas, and I would have gone to bed at last thinking of my mother and resolving to prove worthy of my resolute and Christian commander, Captain Freeman. (God knows how many young idiots have gone to sea after being fed that kind of lying pap in their nursery books.) Perhaps at twenty-six I was too old and hard-used, for instead of a manly tear I did another manly vomit, and in place of Bosun McHearty there came a rush of seamen tailing on a rope across the deck, hurling me aside with a cry of “Stand from under, you - - - - farmer!”, while from the dark above me my Christian commander bellowed at me to get below and not hinder work. So I went, and fell asleep thinking not of my mother, or of the credit I’d bring my family, but of the chance I’d missed in not rogering Fanny Locke that afternoon at Roundway Down. Aye, the vain regrets of youth.
You will judge from this that I wasn’t cut out for the life on the ocean wave. I can’t deny it; if Captain Marryat had had to write about me he’d have burned his pen, signed on a Cardiff tramp, and been buried at sea. For one thing, in my first few days aboard I did not thrash the ship’s bully, make friends with the nigger cook, or learn how to gammon a bosprit from a leathery old salt who called me a likely lad. No, I spent those days in my bunk feeling d - - - - d ill, and only crawling on deck occasionally to take the air and quickly scurry below again to my berth. I was a sea-green and corruptible Flashy in those days.
Nor did I make friends, for I saw only four people and disliked all of them. The first was the ship’s doctor, a big-bellied lout of an Irishman who looked as though he’d be more at home with a bottle than a lancet, and had cold, clammy hands. He gave me a draught for my sea-sickness which made it worse, and then staggered away to be ill himself. He was followed by a queer, old-young creature with wispy hair who shuffled in carrying a bowl from which he slopped some evil-looking muck; when I asked him who the d - - - l he was he jerked his head in a nervous tic and stammered:
“Please, sir, I’m Sammy.”
“Sammy what?”
“Nossir, please sir, Sammy Snivels, cap’n calls me. But they calls me Looney, mostly.”
“And what’s that?”
“Please sir, it’s gruel. The doctor sez for you to eat it, please, sir,” and he lumbered forward and spilled half of it over my cot.
“D - - n you!” cries I, and weak and all as I was I caught him a back-handed swipe on the face that sent him half across the cabin. “Take your filth and get out!”
He mowed at me, and tried to scrape some of the stuff off the floor back into the bowl. “Doctor’ll thump me if you don’t take it, please, sir,” says he, pushing it at me again. “Please, sir, it’s nice tack, an’ all—please, sir,” and then he squealed as I lunged out at him, dropped the bowl, and fairly ran for it. I was too weak to do more than curse after him, but I promised myself that when I was better I would put myself in a better frame of mind by giving the blundering half-wit a thumping on my own account, to keep the doctor’s company.
Next man in was no half-wit, but a nimble little ferret of a ship’s boy with a loose lip and a cast in one eye. He gave me a shifty grin and sniffed at the spilled gruel.
“Looney didn’t ’ave no luck, did ’e?” says he. “I told ’em gruel wouldn’t go down, no’ow.”
I told him to go to blazes and leave me alone.
“Feelin’ groggy, eh?” says he, moving towards the bunk. “Grub’s no good ter you, mate. Tell yer wot; I’ll get in bed wiv yer for a shillin’.”
“Get out, you dirty little b - - - - - d,” says I, for I knew his kind; Rugby had been crawling with ’em. “I’d sooner have your great-grandmother.”
“Snooks!” says he, putting out his tongue. “You’ll sing a different tune after three months at sea an’ not a wench in sight. It’ll be two bob then!”
I flung a pot at him, but missed, and he let fly a stream of the richest filth I’ve ever listened to. “I’ll get Mister Comber ter you, yer big black swine!” he finished up. “’E’ll give you what for! Ta-ta!” And with that he slipped out, thumbing his nose.
Mr Comber was the fourth of my new acquaintances. He was third mate, and shared the cabin with me, and I couldn’t make him out. He was civil, although he said little enough, but the odd thing was, he was a gentleman, and had obviously been to a good school. What a playing-field beauty like this was doing on a merchantman I couldn’t sec, but I held my tongue and watched him. He was about my age, tall and fair haired, and too sure of himself for me to get on the wrong side of. I guessed he was as puzzled about me as I was about him, but I was feeling too poorly at first to give much heed to him. He didn’t champion the cabin boy, by the way, so that worthy’s threat had obviously been bluff.
It was four or five days before I got my sea legs, and by then I was heartily sick of the Balliol College. Nowadays you have no notion of what a sailing-ship was like in the forties; people who travel P.O.S.H. in a steam packet can’t imagine, for one thing, the h - - - ish continual din of a wooden vessel—the incessant creaking and groaning of timber and cordage, like a fiend’s orchestra playing the same discordant notes, regular as clockwork, each time she rolled. And, by G - d, they rolled, far worse than iron boats, bucketing up and down, and stinking too, with the musty stale smell of a floating cathedral, and the bilges plashing like a giant’s innards. Oh, it was the life for a roaring boy, all right, and that was only the start of it. I didn’t know it, but I was seeing the Balliol College at her best.
One morning, when I was sufficiently recovered to hold down the gruel that Looney brought me, and strong enough to kick his backside into the bargain, comes Captain Spring to tell me I’d lain long enough, and it was time for me to learn my duties.
“You’ll stand your watch like everyone else,” says he, “and in the meantime you can start on the work you’re paid for—which is to go through every scrap of that cargo, privatim et seriatim, and see that those long-shore thieves haven’t bilked me. So get up, and come along with me.”
I followed him out on deck; we were scudding along like a flying duck with great billows of canvas spread, and a wind on the quarter deck fit to lift your hair off. There was plenty of shipping in sight, but no land, and I knew we must be well out of the Channel by now. Looking forward from the poop rail along the narrow flush deck, it seemed to me the Balliol College didn’t carry much of a crew, for all her size, but I didn’t have time to stop and stare, with Spring barking at me. He led me down the poop ladder, and then dropped through a scuttle by the mizzen mast.
“There you are,” says he. “Take a good look.”
Although I’ve done a deal more sailing than I care to remember, I’m no canvas-back, and while I know enough not to call the deck the floor, I’m no hand at nautical terms. We were in what seemed to be an enormous room stretching away forward to the foremast, where there was a bulkhead; this room ran obviously the full breadth of the ship, and was well lighted by gratings in the deck about fifteen feet above our heads. But it was unlike the interior of any ship I’d ever seen, it was so big and roomy; on either side, about four feet above the deck on which we stood, there was a kind of half-deck, perhaps seven feet deep, like a gigantic shelf, and above that yet another shelf of t
he same size. The space down the centre of the deck, between the shelves, was piled high with cargo in a great mound—it must have been a good seventy feet long by twelve high.
“I’ll send my clerk to you with the manifest,” says Spring, “and a couple of hands to help shift and stow.” I became aware that the pale eyes were watching me closely. “Well?”
“Is this the hold?” says I. “It’s an odd-looking place for cargo.”
“Aye,” says he. “Ain’t it, though?”
Something in his voice, and in the dank feel of that great, half empty deck, set the worms stirring inside me. I moved forward with the great heap of cargo, bales and boxes, on one side of me, and the starboard shelves on the other. It was all clean and holystoned, but there was a strange, heavy smell about it that I couldn’t place. Looking about, I noticed something in the shadows at the back of the lower shelf—I reached in, and drew out a long length of light chain, garnished here and there with large bracelets. I stood staring at them, and then dropped them with a clatter as the truth rushed in on me. Now I saw why the Balliol College had sailed from France, why her deck was this strange shape, why she was only half-full of cargo.
“My G - d!” cries I. “You’re a slaver!”
“Good for you, Mr Flashman!” says Spring. “And what then?”
“What then?” says I. “Well, you can turn your b - - - - - d boat about, this minute, and let me ashore from her! By G - d, if I’d guessed what you were, I’d have seen you d - - - - d, and old Morrison with you, before I set foot on your lousy packet!”
“Dear me,” says he softly. “You’re not an abolitionist, surely?”
“D - - n abolition, and you too!” cries I. “I know that slaving’s piracy, and for that they stretch your neck below high-water mark! You—you tricked me into this—you and that old swine! But I won’t have it, d’ye hear? You’ll set me ashore, and—”
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