Flashmans' Lady fp-6

by George MacDonald Fraser

  Keppel's praus were standing in towards them, in line ahead, like ghost ships floating on the morning mist which swirled above the river's surface. There was white smoke wreathing up from Keppel's own prau, and now the prau behind rocked and shuddered as fire blinked on her main-deck, and the white trails of the Congreves went streaking out from her side; you could see the rockets weaving in the air before they smashed into the sides of the anchored vessels at point-blank range; orange balls of fire exploded into torrents of smoke, with debris, broken sweeps, and spars flying high into the air, and then across the water came the thunder of the explosions, seconds later.

  There were human figures swarming like ants on the stricken pirate vessels, dropping into the river or scattering up the shore; another salvo of rockets streaked across the smoking water, and as the reek of the explosions cleared we could see that all three targets were burning fiercely, the nearest one, a flaming wreck, already sinking in the shallows. From each of Keppel's craft a longboat was pulling off for the shore, and even without the glass I could make out the canvas shirts and straw hats of our salts. As the boats pulled past the blazing wrecks and touched shore, Keppel's rockets began firing at higher elevation, towards the stockaded fort, but at that range the rockets weaved and trailed all over the place, most of them plunging down somewhere in the jungle beyond. Brooke handed me his glass.

  "That's cost the Sultan of Sulu a penny or two," says he. "He'll think twice before he sends his skull-fanciers this way again.

  I was watching our seamen landing through the glass: there was Wade's burly figure leading them at a fast trot through the village towards the fort, the cutlasses glittering in the early light. Behind, the boat crews were hauling their bow-chasers ashore, manhandling them on to wheeled sledges to run them forward so that they could be brought to play against the fort. Others were trailing bamboo ladders, and from one of the boats there were landing a group of Malay archers, with firepots - it was beginning to dawn on me that for all his bull-at-a-gate style, Brooke - or someone - knew his business; they had all the right gear, and were moving like clockwork. Keppel's praus must have rounded the bend and come in sight of the town at the precise minute when there was light enough to shoot by; any later and their approach might have been seen, and the pirates been on the q.v. .

  "Wonder if Sharif Jaffir's awake yet, what?" Brooke was striding about the platform, grinning like a schoolboy. "What d'you bet, Charlie, he'll be scampering out of the fort this minute, taking to the jungle? We can leave it to Keppel, now, I think - full ahead!"

  While we had been watching, the rest of our fleet had passed by, and was surging upriver, the sweeps going like billy-oh, and the square sails of the praus set to catch the light sea-breeze. A spy-boat was scooting out towards us from Keppel's prau, the burly figure of Paitingi in the bow; beyond him the village was half-hidden by the smoke from the pirate praus, which were burning down to the waterline, and the rockets were firing again, this time against the smaller praus which were assembled farther up, near the Linga river mouth. I watched until my eye ached, and just before the Phlegethon rounded the next bend, a couple of miles upstream, cheering broke out from the vessels around us - I turned my glass, and saw that the green flag on the distant fort was coming down, and the Union Jack was running up in its place.

  Well, I was thinking, if it's as easy as this, we don't need to break much sweat; with any luck you'll have a quiet passage, Flash, my boy - and at that very moment Brooke was at my elbow.

  "Tame work for you?" says he. "Don't you fret, old fellow, you'll get a swipe at them presently, when we come to Patusan! There'll be some capital fun there, you'll see!" And just to give me the idea, he took me below and offered me the choice of some Jersey revolvers with barrels as long as my leg.27 "And a cutlass, of course," says he, "you'll feel naked without that."

  He little knew that I could feel naked in a suit of armour in the bowels of a dreadnought being attacked by an angry bumboat-woman. But one has to show willing, so I accepted his weapons with a dark scowl, and tried a cut or two with the cutlass for display, muttering professionally and praying to God I'd never have the chance to use it. He nodded approvingly, and then laid a hand on my shoulder.

  "That's the spirit!" says he, "but, I say, Flashman - I know you feel you've got a lot to repay, and the thought of that dear, sweet creature of yours - well, I can see from your face the rage that is in you - and I don't blame you, mind. But, d'you know what? - whenever I go to battle, I try to remember that Our Saviour, when He had laid out those money-changing chaps in the temple, felt remorse, didn't He, for having got in such a bait? So I try to restrain my anger, and temper justice with mercy - not a bad mixture, what? God bless you, old chap." And off he went, no doubt for another gloat over the burning praus.

  He baffled me, but then so many good Christians do, probably because I'm such a d----d bad one myself. And not having much of a conscience, I'm in no position to judge those that are apparently made of indiarubber - not that I gave a rap how many pirates he'd roasted before giving me his cautionary pi jaw. As it turned out, not many - when Keppel caught us up he reported that the fort had fallen without a shot, Sharif Jaffir having legged it for the jungle with most of the Lanun pirates in tow; those remaining had thrown in their hand when they saw their vessels destroyed and the size of our fleet. So that was all good business, and what pleased Brooke most was that Keppel had brought along three hundred women whom the Lanuns had been carrying off as slaves; he visited them on Keppel's prau, patting their heads and promising them they'd soon be safe home again; I'd have consoled some of 'em more warmly than that, myself- good taste, those Lanun pirates had - but of course there was none of that, under our peckerless leader.

  Thereafter he had a quick look at the pirates and slavers who'd been taken prisoner, and ordered the execution of two of them on the spot. One of them was the renegade Makota, I think; at any rate he and Brooke conversed earnestly for about five minutes, while the squat little villain grinned and shuffled his bare feet, looking bashful - according to Stuart, he was confessing to indescribable tortures which he and his pal had inflicted on some of the women prisoners the previous evening - Keppel's party had found the grisly evidence in the village. Finally, when Brooke told him his course was run, the horrid fellow nodded cheerfully, touched hands, and cries "Salaam, tuan besar", the hovering Jingo slipped a mosquito net and a rope over his head, and pfft! - one quick jerk and that was Makota off to the happy head-hunting grounds.28

  The other condemned chap kicked up a frightful row at this, exclaiming "Krees, krees!" and eyeing the rope and mosquito net as though they were port being passed to the right. What his objection to strangulation was, I'm not certain, but they humoured him, taking him ashore so as not to make a mess. I watched from the rail; he stood up straight, his toad-like face impassive, while Jingo laid his krees point delicately inside the clavicle on the left side, and thrust down hard. The fellow never even twitched.

  "A sorry business," says Brooke, "but before such atrocities I find it hard to remain composed."

  After that it was all aboard the Skylark again, bound for Patusan, which lay about twenty miles farther upstream. "They'll stand and fight there, where the river narrows," says Keppel. "Two hundred praus, I dare say, and their jungle-men peppering us with blow-pipes from the trees."

  "That don't matter," says Brooke. "It'll be a case of bursting the booms, and then run up and board, hand-to-hand. It's the forts that count - five of 'em, and you may be sure there'll be a thousand men in each-we must smoke 'em out with rockets and cannon and then charge home, in the old style. That'll be your innings, Charles, as usual," says he to Wade, and to my horror he added: "We'll take Flashman with us - make use of your special talents, what?" And he grinned at me as though it were my birthday.

  "Couldn't be better!" cries Wade, slapping me on the back. "Sure an' we'll show you some pretty mixed scrappin', old son. Better than Afghanistan, and you may lay to that. I'll wager ye didn't
see many praus rammed in the Khyber Pass, or have obligin' Paythans droppin' tree-trunks on you! What the devil, though - as long as ye can run, swim, scale a bamboo wall, an' keep your sword-arm swingin', yell soon get the hang of it. Like Trafalgar an' Waterloo rolled into one, with a row in a Silver Street pub thrown in!"

  They all crowed at this delightful prospect, and Stuart says:

  "Remember Seribas last year, when they dropped the booms behind us? My stars, that was a go! Our Ibans had to shoot 'em out of the trees with sumpitans!"

  "An' Buster Anderson got shot in the leg when he boarded that bankong - the one that was sinkin'," cries Wade, "an' Buster had to swim for it, wi' the pirates one side of him an' crocodiles on t'other - an' he comes rollin' ashore, plastered wi' mud an' gore, yellin': `Anyone seen me baccy pouch? - it's got me initials on it!' "

  They roared again, and said Buster was a rare card, and Wade recalled how he'd gone ploughing through the battle, performing prodigies in search of his pouch. "The best of it was," says he, spluttering, "Buster didn't smoke!"

  This tickled them immensely of course, and Keppel asked where old Buster was these days.

  "Alas, we lost him at Murdu," says Brooke. "Same cutting-out party I got this"— he tapped his scar —"and a slug in the bicep. Balagnini jumped on him as he was scrambling up their stern-cable - Buster's pistol misfired - he was the most confounded careless chap imaginable with firearms, you know - and the Balagnini took the dear old chap's head almost clean off with his parang. Bad business."

  They shook their heads and agreed it was a damned shame, but cheered up presently when someone recalled that Jack Penty had settled the Balagnini with a lovely backhand cut soon after, and from this they passed to recalling similar happy memories of old pals and enemies, most of 'em deceased in the most grisly circumstances, apparently. Just the kind of thing I like to hear before breakfast - but, d'you know, I learned from Brooke afterwards, that they'd absolutely been trying to raise my spirits.

  "Forgive their levity," says he, "it is kindly meant. Charlie Wade sees you are quite down in the dumps, fretting about your lady, and he tries to divert you with his chatter about battles past and brave actions ahead - well, when the warhorse hears the trumpets, he don't think about much else, does he? If you just give your mind to what's to do - and I know you're itching to be at it - you'll feel ever so much better." He muttered something else about my heart being tender enough to suffer, but tough enough not to break, and tooled off to see that we were still headed in the right direction.

  By this time I was ready to bolt, but that's the trouble with being afloat - you can only run in circles. There was land not far off, of course, if one could have reached it through water that was no doubt well-stocked with crocodiles, and was prepared to wander in unexplored jungle full of head-hunters. And the prospect got worse through that steaming, fevered day; the river twisted and got narrower, until there was a bare few hundred yards of sluggish water either side of the vessels, with a solid jungle wall hemming us in. Whenever a bird screamed in the undergrowth I almost had a seizure, and we were tormented by mosquito clouds which added their unceasing buzzing to the monotonous throb of Phlegethon's engines and the rhythmic swish of the praus' sweeps.

  Worst of all was the stench - the farther we went on, the closer the jungle loomed in on us, the more unbearable became that rotten, musky, choking atmosphere, stifling in its steaming intensity. It conjured up nightmares of corpses decaying in loathsome swamps - I found the sweat which bathed me turning to ice as I watched that hostile green forest wall, conjuring up hideous faces in its shadows, imagining painted horrors lurking in its depths, waiting.

  If day was bad, night was ten times worse. Dark found us still a few miles from Patusan, and the mist came with the dusk; as we swung at anchor in midstream there was nothing to be seen but pale white wraiths coming and going in the festering gloom. With all engines stopped you could hear the water gurgling oozily by, even above the devil's chorus of screams and yells from the darkness - I was new to jungle, and had no conception of the appalling din with which it is filled at night. I stayed on deck about ten minutes, in which time I saw at least half a dozen skull-laden praus crammed with savages starting to emerge from the shadows, at which point they dissolved into shadows themselves - after that I decided I might as well turn in, which I did by plumbing the depths of that sweltering iron tub, finding a hole in the corner of the engine-room, and crouching there with my Colt in my fist, listening to the evil whispers of head-hunters congregating on the other side of the half-inch plate.

  And barely ten days before I'd been unbuttoning in that Singapore chop-house, bursting with best meat and drink, and running a lascivious eye over Madame Sabba! Now, thanks to Elspeth's wantoning, I was on the eve of death, or worse - if I get out of this, thinks I, I'll divorce the bitch, that's flat. I'd been a fool ever to marry her - and brooding on that I must have dozed, for I could see her in that sunny field by the river, golden hair tumbled in the grass, cheeks moist and pink from the ecstasy of our first acquaintance, smiling at me. That lovely white body - and then like a black shadow came the recollection of the hideous fate of those captive women at Linga - those same bestial savages had Elspeth at their mercy - even now she might be being ravished by some filthy dacoit, or suffering unmentionable agonies … I was awake, gasping, drenched on the cold iron.

  "They shan't hurt you, old girl!" I was absolutely croaking in the dark. "They shan't! I'll - I'll—"

  What would I do? Rush to her rescue, like Dick Dauntless, against the kind of human ghouls I'd seen on that pirate prau? I wouldn't dare - it wasn't a question I'd even have asked myself, normally, for the great advantage to real true-blue cowardice like mine, you see, was that I'd always been able to take it for granted and no regrets or qualms of conscience; it had served its turn, and I'd never lost a wink over Hudson or old Iqbal or any of the other honoured dead who'd served me as stepping-stones to safety. But Elspeth … and to haunt me in that stinking stokehold came the appalling question: suppose it was my skin or hers - would I turn tail then? I didn't know, but judging by the form-book I could guess, and for once the alternative to suffering and death was as horrible as death itself. I even found myself wondering if there was perhaps a limit to my funk, and that was such a fearful thought that between it and the terrors ahead I was driven to prayer, along the lines of Oh, kind God, forgive all the beastly sins I've committed, and a few that I'll certainly commit if I get out of this, or rather, pay no attention to 'em, Heavenly Father, but turn all Thy Grace on Elspeth and me, and save us both - but if it's got to be one or t'other of us, for Christ's sake don't leave the decision to me. And whatever Thy will, don't let me suffer mutilation or torment - if it'll save her, you can even blot me out suddenly so that I don't know about it - no, hold on, though, better still, take Brooke - the bastard's been asking for it, and he'll adore a martyr's crown, and be a credit to Thy company of saints. But save Elspeth, and me, too, for I'll get no benefit from her salvation if I'm dead …

  Which was all wasted piety, if you like, since Elspeth was presumably snug in Solomon's bed aboard the Sulu Queen and a damned sight safer than I was, but there's nothing like the fear of violent death for playing havoc with reason and logic. I dare say if Socrates had been up the Batang Lupar that night he might have put my thoughts in order - not that he'd have had much chance; he'd have had a Colt thrust into his fist and been pushed over the side with instructions to lay on like fury, look out for a blonde female in distress, and give me a shout when the coast was clear. As it was, having no counsel but my own, I went to sleep.

  * * *

  [Extract from the diary of Mrs Flashman, August -, 1844]

  An extremely uncomfortable night - oppressive heat - and much plagued by Insects. The noise of the Natives is too much to be borne. Why should they beat their Gongs after dark? No doubt it has some Religious Purpose; if so, it is trying to a degree. I despair of sleep, even in Nature's Garb, so intense is the heat and
drumliness of the air; it is with difficulty that I pen even these few lines; the paper is quite damp, and blots most provokingly.

  No sign of Don S. since this morning, when I was allowed briefly on deck for air and exercise. Almost forgot my pitiful condition in the interest of what I saw, of which I have Rough Notes, and a few modest sketches. The colours of the Forest Blooms are most exquisite, but Pale to Nothing before the Extravagance of the Natives themselves. So many Splendid and Barbaric galleys, adorned with streamers and flags, like Corsairs of yore, manned by Swarthy Crews, many of repulsive appearance, but others quite commanding. As I stood in the bows, one such galley swept by on the bosom of the stream, urged on by the oars plied by Dusky Argonauts, and at the back of the boat, plainly its Chief, a Tall and Most Elegantly Shaped Young Barbarian, clad in a saronga of Shimmering Gold, with many ornaments on his exposed arms and legs - really a most Noble Carriage and quite handsome for a Native, who inclined his head to me and smiled pleasantly, very respectfully, yet with a Natural Dignity. Not at all Yellow, but quite pale of skin, as I had imagined an Aztec God. His name, as I discovered by discreet inquiry of Don S., is Sheriff Saheeb, and I suppose from this title that he is at least a Justice of the Peace.

  I believe he would have come aboard our vessel, but Don S. spoke to him from the Gangway, which I confess was a Disappointment, for he seemed a Personage of some gentility - if one may use the word of a Heathen - and I should have liked time to sketch him, and try if I could not capture some of that Savage Nobility of his bearing.