“In God’s name, angliski!” cries Kutebar. “Let us be about it! See the Mikhail yonder, with enough munitions aboard to blow the Aral dry – for the love of women, let us fire on her!”
“All right, old fellow,” says I. “Let’s see how we stand.” I squinted along the half-pipe, which was at full elevation. “Give us a box beneath the pipe, to lift her. So – steady.” I adjusted the ranging-screw, and now the great conical head of the rocket was pointing just over her main mast. “That’s about it. Right, give me a slow-match, someone.”
Suddenly there wasn’t a sound in the go-down, apart from me whistling to myself as I took a last squint along the rocket and glanced round to see that everything was ready. I can see them still – the eager, bearded hawk-faces, the glistening half-naked bodies running sweat in the stuffy go-down, even Kutebar with his mouth hanging open, quiet for once, Ko Dali’s daughter with her face chalk-white and her eyes fixed on me. I gave her a wink.
“Stand clear, boys and girls,” I sang out. “Papa’s going to light the blue touch-paper and retire immediately!” And in that instant before I touched the match to the firing-vent, I had a sudden vivid memory of November the Fifth, with the frosty ground and the dark, and little boys chattering and giggling and the girls covering their ears, and the red eye of the rocket smouldering in the black, and the white fizz of sparks, and the chorus of admiring “oohs” and “aahs” as the rocket bursts overhead – and it was something like that now, if you like, except that here the fizzing was like a locomotive funnel belching sparks, filling the go-down with acrid, reeking smoke, while the firing-frame shuddered, and then with an almighty whoosh like an express tearing by the Congreve went rushing away into the night, clouds of smoke and fire gushing from its tail, and the boys and girls cried “By Shaitan!” and “Istagfarullah!”, and Papa skipped nimbly aside roaring “Take that, you sons of bitches!” And we all stood gaping as it soared into the night like a comet, reached the top of its arc, dipped towards the Mikhail – and vanished miles on the wrong side of it.
“Bad luck, dammit! Hard lines! Right, you fellows, let’s have another!” And laughing heartily, I had another box shoved under the pipe to level it out. We let fly again, but this time the rocket must have been faulty, for it swerved away crazily into the night, weaving to and fro before plunging into the water a bare three hundred yards out with a tremendous hiss and cloud of steam. We tried three more, and all fell short, so we adjusted the range slightly, and the sixth rocket flew straight and true, like a great scarlet lance searching for its target; we watched it pass between the masts of the Mikhail, and howled with disappointment. But now at least we had the range, so I ordered all the pipes loaded, and we touched off the whole battery at once.
It was indescribable and great fun – like a volcano erupting under your feet, and a dense choking fog filling the go-down; the men clinging to steady the firing-frame were almost torn from their feet, the rush of the launching Congreves was deafening, and for a moment we were all staggering about, weeping and coughing in that filthy smoke. It was a full minute before the reek had cleared sufficiently to see how our shots had fared, and then Kutebar was flinging himself into the air and rushing to embrace me.
“Ya’allahah! Wonder of God! Look – look yonder, Flashman! Look at the blessed sight! Is it not glorious – see, see how they burn!”
And he was right – the Mikhail was hit! There was a red ball of fire clinging to her timbers just below the rail amidships, and even as we watched there was a climbing lick of flame – and over to the right, by some freakish chance, the ketch had been hit, too: there was a fire on her deck, and she was slewing round at anchor. All about me they were dancing and yelling and clapping hands, like school girls when Popular Penelope has won the sewing prize.
All except Ko Dali’s daughter. While Kutebar was roaring and I was chanting “For we are jolly good fellows,” she was barking shrill commands at the men on the frame, having them swivel the pipes round for a shot at the Obrucheff – trust women to interfere, thinks I, and strode over.
“Now then, my dear, what’s this?” says I, pretty short. “I’ll decide when we leave off shooting at our targets, if you don’t mind. You, there –”
“We have hit one, angliski – it is time for the other.” She rapped it out, and I was aware that her face was strained, and her eyes seemed to be searching mine anxiously. “There is no time to waste – listen to the firing! In a few moments they will have broken through Yakub’s line and be upon us!”
You know, I’d been so taken up with our target practice, I’d almost forgotten about the fighting that was going on outside. But she was right; it was fiercer than ever, and getting closer. And she was probably right about the Mikhail, too – with any luck that fire aboard her would do the business.
“You’re a clever girl, Silk One, so you are,” says I. “Right-ho, bonny boys, heave away!” And I flung my weight on the frame, chanting “Yo-ho”, while the gleeful niggers dragged up more rockets – they were loving this as much as I was, grinning and yelling and inviting God and each other to admire the havoc we had wrought.
“Aye, now for the steamer!” shouts Kutebar. “Hasten, Flashman bahadur! Fling the fire of God upon them, the spawn of Muscovy! Aye, we shall burn you here, and Eblis will consume your souls thereafter, you thieves, you disturbers, you dunghill sons of whores and shameless women!”
It wasn’t quite as easy as that. Perhaps we’d been lucky with the Mikhail, but I fired twenty single rockets at the Obrucheff and never came near enough to singe her cable – they snaked over her, or flew wide, or hit the water short, until the smoky trails of their passing blended into a fine mist across the bay; the go-down was a scorching inferno of choking smoke in which we shouted and swore hoarsely as we wrestled sticks and canisters into pipes that were so hot we had to douse them with water after every shot. My good humour didn’t survive the twentieth miss; I raged and swore and kicked the nearest nigger – I was aware, too, that as we laboured the sounds of battle outside were drawing closer still, and I was in half a mind to leave these infernal rockets that wouldn’t fly straight, and pitch into the fighting on the beach. It was like hell, outside and in, and to add to my fury one of the ships in the bay was firing at us now; the pillar of cloud from the go-down must have made a perfect target, and the rocket trails had long since advertised to everyone on that beach exactly what was going on. The smack of musket balls on the roof and walls was continuous – although I didn’t know it then, detachments of Russian cavalry had tried three times to drive through the lumbered beach in phalanx to reach the go-down and silence us, and Yakub’s riders had halted them each time with desperate courage. The ring round our position was contracting all the time as the Khokandian riders fell back; once a shot from the sea pitched right in front of the go-down, showering us with spray, another howled overhead like a banshee, and a third crashed into the pier alongside us.
“Damn you!” I roared, shaking my fist. “Come ashore, you swine, and I’ll show you!” I seemed to be seeing everything through a red mist, with a terrible, consuming rage swelling up inside me; I was swearing incoherently, I know, as we dragged another rocket into the reeking pipe; half-blinded with smoke and sweat and fury I touched it off, and this time it seemed to drop just short of the Obrucheff – and then, by God, I saw that the ship was moving; they must have got steam up in her at last, and she was veering round slowly, her stern-wheel churning as she prepared to draw out from the shore.
“Ah, God, she will escape!” It was Ko Dali’s daughter, shrill beside me. “Quickly, quickly, angliski! Try again, with all the rockets! Kutebar, all of you, load them all together before she has gone too far!”
“Cowardly rascals!” I hollered. “Turn tail, will you? Why don’t you stand and fight, you measly hounds? Load ’em up, you idle bastards, there!” And savagely I flung myself among them as they hauled up the five rockets – one of ’em was still half off its stick, I remember, with a little nigger
still wrestling to fix it home even as the man with the match was touching the fuse. I crammed the burning remnant of my match against a vent, and even as the trail of sparks shot out the whole go-down seemed to stand on end, I felt myself falling, something hit me a great crack on the head, and my ears were full of cannonading that went on and on until the pain of it seemed to be bursting my brain before blackness came.
I’ve reckoned since that I must have been unconscious for only a few minutes, but for all I knew when I opened my eyes it might have been hours. What had happened was that a cannon shot had hit the go-down roof just as the rockets went off, and a falling slat had knocked me endways; when I came to the first thing I saw was the firing-frame in ruins, with a beam across it, and I remember thinking, ah well, no more Guy Fawkes night until next year. Beyond it, through the smoke, I could see the Mikhail, burning quite nicely now, but not exploding, which I thought strange; the ketch was well alight, too, but the Obrucheff was under way, with smoke pouring from her funnel and her wheel thrashing great guns. There was a glow near her stern, too, and I found myself wondering, in a confused way, if one of the last salvo had got home. “Serve you right, you Russian scoundrels,” I muttered, and tried to pull myself up, but I couldn’t; all the strength had gone from my limbs.
But the strangest thing was, that my head seemed to have floated loose from my shoulders, and I couldn’t seem to focus properly on things around me. The great berserk rage that had possessed me only a moment since seemed to have gone and I felt quite tranquil, and dreamy – it wasn’t unpleasant, really, for I felt that nothing much mattered, and there was no pain or anxiety, or even inclination to do anything, but just lie there, resting body and brain together.
And yet I have a pretty clear recollection of what was happening around me, although none of it was important at the time. There were folk crawling about the go-down, among the smoke and wreckage, and Kutebar was thundering away blasphemously, and then Ko Dali’s daughter was kneeling beside me, trying to raise my head, which was apparently swollen as big as a house. Outside, the fight was raging, and among the shots and yells I could hear the actual clash of steel – it didn’t excite me now, though, or even interest me. And then Yakub Beg was there, his helmet gone, one arm limp with a great bloodied gash near the shoulder, and a naked sabre in his good hand. Strange, thinks I, you ought to be out on the beach, killing Russians; what the deuce are you doing here?
“Away!” he was shouting. “Away – take to the water!” And he dropped his sabre and took Ko Dali’s daughter by the shoulder. “Quickly, Silk One – it is done! They have driven us in! Swim for it, beloved – and Kutebar! Get them into the sea, Izzat! There are only moments left!”
Ko Dali’s daughter was saying something that I couldn’t catch, and Yakub was shaking his head.
“Sahib Khan can hold them with his Immortals – but only for minutes. Get you gone – and take the Englishman. Do as I tell you, girl! Yes, yes, I will come – did I not say Sahib Khan is staying?”
“And you will leave him?” Her voice seemed faint and far away.
“Aye, I will leave him. Khokand can spare him, but it cannot spare me; he knows it, and so do I. And he seeks his wife and little ones. Now, in God’s name, get out quickly!”
She didn’t hesitate, but rose, and two of the others half-dragged, half-carried me to the mouth of the go-down. I was so dazed I don’t think it even crossed my mind that I was in no case to swim; it didn’t matter, anyway, for some clever lads were cutting loose the lighter that swung under the edge of the go-down, and men were tumbling into it. I remember a fierce altercation was going on between Yakub Beg and Kutebar, the latter protesting that he wanted to stay and fight it out with Sahib Khan and the others, and Yakub more or less thrusting him down into the lighter with his sound arm, and then jumping in himself. I was aware that one wall of the go-down was burning, and in the glare and the smoke I caught a glimpse of a swirling mass of figures at the doors, and I think I even made out a Cossack, laying about him with a sabre, before someone tumbled down on top of me and knocked me flat on the floor of the lighter.
Somehow they must have poled the thing off, for when I had recovered my breath and pulled myself up to the low gunwale, we were about twenty yards from the go-down, and drifting away from the pier as the eddy from the river mouth, I suppose, caught the lighter and tugged it out to sea. I had only a momentary sight of the interior of the go-down, looking for all the world like a mine-shaft, with the figures of miners hewing away in it, and then I saw a brilliant light suddenly glowing on its floor, growing in intensity, and then the rush-rush-rush sound of the Congreves as the flames from the burning wall reached them, and I just had sense enough to duck my head below the gunwale before the whole place dissolved in a blinding light – but strangely enough, without any great roar of explosion, just the rushing noise of a huge whirlwind. There were screams and oaths from the lighter all around me, but when I raised my head there was just one huge flame where the go-down had been, and the pier beside it was burning at its landward end, and the glare was so fierce that beyond there was nothing to be seen.
I just lay, with my cheek on the thwart, wondering if the eddy would carry us out of range before they started shooting at us, and thinking how calm and pleasant it was to be drifting along here, after all the hellish work in the go-down. I still wasn’t feeling any sense of urgency, or anything beyond a detached, dreamy interest, and I can’t say even now whether we were fired on or not, for I suddenly became aware that Ko Dali’s daughter was crouched down beside me at the gunwale, staring back, and people were pressed close about us, and I thought, this is a splendid opportunity to squeeze that lovely little rump of hers. There it was, just nicely curved within a foot of me, so I took a handful and kneaded away contentedly, and she never even noticed – or if she did, she didn’t mind. But I think she was too preoccupied with the inferno we had left behind us; so were the others, craning and muttering as we drifted over the dark water. It’s queer, but in my memory that drifting and bum-fondling seems to have gone on for the deuce of a long time – I suppose I was immensely preoccupied with it, and a capital thing, too. But some other things I remember: the flames of the go-down and pier seen at a distance, and a wounded man groaning near me in the press of bodies; Ko Dali’s daughter speaking to Yakub Beg, and Kutebar saying something which involved an oath to do with a camel; and a water-skin being pressed against my lips, and the warm, brackish water making me choke and cough. And Yakub Beg saying that the Mikhail was burning to a wreck, but the Obrucheff had got away, so our work was only half-done, but better half-done than not done at all, and Kutebar growling that, by God, it was all very well for those who had been loafing about on the beach, building sand-castles, to talk, but if Yakub and his saunterers had been in the go-down, where the real business was …
And pat on his words the sun was suddenly in the sky – or so it seemed, for the whole place, the lighter, the sea around, and sky itself, were suddenly as bright as day, and it seemed to me that the lighter was no longer drifting, but racing over the water, and then came the most tremendous thundering crash of sound I’ve ever heard, reverberating over the sea, making the head sing and shudder with the deafening boom of it, and as I tried to put up my hands to my ears to shut out the pain, I heard Kutebar’s frantic yell:
“The Obrucheff! She has gone – gone to the pit of damnation! Now whose work is half-done? By God! – it is done, it is done, it is done! A thousand times done! Ya, Yakub – is it not done? Now the praise to Him and to the foreign professors!”
Chapter 10
More than two thousand Khokandians were killed in the battle of Fort Raim, which shows you what a clever lad Buzurg Khan was to keep out of it. The rest escaped, some by cutting their way eastward off the beach, some by swimming the Syr Daria mouth, and a favoured few travelling in style, by boat and lighter. How many Russians died, no one knows, but Yakub Beg later estimated about three thousand. So it was a good deal bigger than many
battles that are household words, but it happened a long way away, and the Russians doubtless tried to forget it, so I suppose only the Khokandians remember it now.
It achieved their purpose, anyhow, for it destroyed the Russian munition ships, and prevented the army marching that year. Which saved British India for as long as I’ve lived – and preserved Khokand’s freedom for a few years more, before the Tsar’s soldiers came and stamped it flat in the ’sixties. I imagine the Khokandians thought the respite was worth while, and the two thousand lives well lost – what the two thousand would say, of course, is another matter, but since they went to fight of their own free will (so far as any soldier ever does) I suppose they would support the majority.
Myself, I haven’t changed my opinion since I came back to my senses two days afterwards, back in the valley in Kizil Kum. I remember nothing of our lighter being hauled from the water by Katti Torah’s rescue party, or of the journey back through the desert, for by that time I was in the finest hallucinatory delirium since the first Reform Bill, and I came out of it gradually and painfully. The terrible thing was that I remembered the battle very clearly, and my own incredible behaviour – I knew I’d gone bawling about like a Viking in drink, seeking sorrow and raving heroically in murderous rage, but I couldn’t for the life of me understand why. It had been utterly against nature, instinct and judgement – and I knew it hadn’t been booze, because I hadn’t had any, and anyway the liquor hasn’t been distilled that can make me oblivious of self-preservation. It appalled me, for what security does a right-thinking coward have, if he loses his sense of panic?
At first I thought my memory of that night’s work must be playing me false, but the admiring congratulations I got from Yakub Beg and Kutebar (who called me “Ghazi”, of all things) soon put paid to that notion. So I must have been temporarily deranged – but why? The obvious explanation, for some reason, never occurred to me – and yet I knew Ko Dali’s daughter was at the bottom of it somehow, so I sought her out first thing when I had emerged weak and shaky from my brief convalescence. I was too upset to beat about the bush, and although she played the cool arch tart at first, and pretended not to understand what I was talking about, I went at it so hard that at last she told me – not to put my mind at rest, you may be sure, but probably because she knew that the only fun to be had from a secret lies in betraying it, especially if it makes someone wriggle.
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