Flashman and the Cobra

by Robert Brightwell

  Poorun Singh looked down at me from his horse. “A troop of Company cavalry with a British civilian will be noticed and remembered, especially if people are looking for a British civilian. No one will remember just a troop of Company cavalry out on patrol.” It was hard to tell with the beards, but I was pretty sure that he and the rest of them were smirking at the thought of this arrogant white man being forced to join their ranks.

  “You want me to wear these?” I asked, moving the clothes with my foot. They were well worn and in some places patched but at least they looked clean. There was a uniform coat, breeches, well-worn riding boots, a sash, some other long strip of cloth that I took to be a turban from the colour and a sword belt with a heavy sabre in it.

  “If you want to live, it would be wise,” replied Poorun Singh. “But the choice is yours,” he added, as though he did not really care if I lived or not. Well, he certainly knew how to appeal to my basic instincts and what he said actually made a great deal of sense. Hardly anybody knew I was back in Madras; many thought I was still on the main road to Hyderabad. Leaving in disguise would buy us a lot more time, and if these pindaree people were in on the hunt too then I needed all the help I could get. So, after a moment’s hesitation, I picked up my new costume and headed back into the house.

  If I suspected that the sowars were smirking when I came out the first time there was no doubt about it when sowar Flashy emerged a little while later. They roared with laughter. I nearly tripped over my sabre coming down the steps and my turban, which resembled a cloth cow turd, was already starting to slip down my ears. There are times to stand on your dignity and also times to recognise that your dignity has sailed without you. This was one of the latter occasions. I knew I looked ridiculous and that this was Poorun Singh’s victory, but if he kept me alive then it did not matter. I turned to find him grinning in amusement as my turban slid down to cover my left eye and I asked with heavy irony, “Are you sure this getup will not attract attention?”

  He gave some orders and a sowar sprang forward and took the cloth turd off my head and within a few moments was expertly tying it into a proper turban. I saw that all the soldiers had badges on the front of their turbans and asked if I should have one too.

  “They are for proper soldiers,” said Poorun Singh in a tone that indicated there was no room for debate on that point. The sowar adjusted my sabre belt so that the sword did not keep falling between my legs and then I thought we were ready to go, but Poorun Singh barked out more orders. Now the sowars I knew as Flora and Daisy were coming forward. Flora had a pot with a brush in it and Daisy was holding what appeared to be a bundle of shaved pubic hair. “You must have a beard too,” explained Poorun Singh as Flora liberally laid about my chin with his glue brush. I was more worried about the hair and asked where it had come from, miming my suspicion. The troops roared with laughter again, evidently thinking I was quite the comedian, but Daisy used his fingers to indicate the horns of a goat and bleated. Wherever it came from, the hair and glue combination stank, and despite Daisy’s best efforts it was not likely to fool a child at close quarters. Even Poorun Singh suggested that I stay in the middle rank when he saw the finished result.

  Eventually the troop of fifty-one Company cavalry headed down the governor’s drive and out onto the main road. I did not have to worry about controlling the horse as he kept himself in perfect station with the mounts around him. Few people paid us any attention. I even spotted one or two people I knew as we rode out of town, but they just looked up and saw Company cavalry and went on with what they were doing. Nobody noticed the strange fellow in the middle.

  A few miles out of town we turned off the main road to go down a jungle path, but Poorun Singh knew his business when it came to avoiding a tail. He ordered us to halt and dismount on the main road and we walked our horses off the road and down the first few hundred yards of the trail to avoid the hooves hacking up the grass by the side of the road. Then a couple of sowars were detailed to cut down some foliage and use it to block the path entrance. Finally he left one sowar behind to watch for someone trying to follow. Then we set off again. Fifty horses leave a trail that is not hard to track, but soon we reached a large, shallow lake similar to the one I had crossed with the elephant; indeed it might have been the same one, as it was in the right area. This time we did not cross it but, wading the horses knee-deep, we went some distance along the shore to come out by a small temple that stood alone in the jungle.

  There at last Poorun Singh called a halt. They were soon starting fires to make tea and sharing flatbreads and other food. A corporal or jemadar called Lal, who had ridden alongside me for the afternoon, invited me to join his section, which also included Flora and Daisy. I thought I had nothing to offer but discovered that my saddlebags were filled with rations too. I was not sure what some of it was, but after four hours in the saddle I was hungry and thirsty. I noticed Poorun Singh set himself apart from his troop to eat alone. The horses were left to crop grass and many of us rested in the shade from the trees dotted around the lakeside. Daisy, it turned out, was a bit of a fisherman and sat at the edge of the lake. He obviously knew where to find fish for by the time we left he had five plump trout in his saddlebag.

  We stayed there until the trooper we had left by the road came splashing along the lake shore to report he had waited two hours and there had been no sign of us being followed from town. We started off again then, riding for another four hours to higher ground away from the lake to camp for the night. The evening campsite had fewer mosquitoes, as the air had been black with them by the water. I followed the men’s example of looking after my horse first and then campfires were burning again. For Lal’s section, including me, there was grilled trout and rice for dinner.

  Again Poorun Singh sat apart from his men, and as I had given him no cause to like me I steered clear and stayed with my section. Lal spoke some English and we managed to communicate, with me learning some Hindi along the way. Flora and Daisy only spoke Hindi but we got by with mime. There were no tents; people just settled down on the bedrolls that had been tied to the saddles. But I found a mosquito net in my saddlebags and planted some sticks in the ground to make a tent of it over my head and shoulders. I slept well, although my glue-stained cheek kept sticking to my saddle, which I was using as a pillow.

  That first morning with the troop I remember waking up and watching monkeys jumping around in the tree canopy above me and thinking life was not all bad. I won’t bore you with a daily account of that journey. We generally rode two stretches a day for at least four hours each, and after getting stiff for the first few days, I soon got used to it. Each morning the men would wash if there was a stream and in the evenings some would wash clothes to dry overnight. Despite the journey they kept themselves spotless and there was an inspection each morning. I excused myself from that and Poorun Singh did not insist on it, but I tried to keep myself as clean as the others. God knows what they put in that glue but the stuff on my face took days to wear off with tufts of black hair still attached. I was not shaving and slowly my own beard growth replaced the fake.

  The country changed from jungle to more mixed forests and clearings, and we went through various small villages with no one taking much notice. Despite my circumstances, I found I was enjoying myself. Lal, Flora and Daisy were constantly chattering away and I was picking up Hindi quite quickly and was soon able to have halting conversations. While they found my translations hilarious, they seemed to know what I meant.

  At one point we came across a large river that we needed to cross. There was no bridge or ford but we went down the bank until we came to a village which had half a dozen large, round coracle-type craft made like a huge wickerwork basket and covered with bullock hide. They were like shallow dishes, but they took four men together with their saddles and kit and a ferryman. Once they were floated we tied at least four horses to each one and the horses swam across the river, taking us with them. The ferrymen paddled boats back to bring more men
across.

  On we went into the territory of the nizam of Hyderabad, but the country could still throw some surprises. I remember once filling my water bottle at a stream and looking down to see a huge feline paw-print in the mud. It was much bigger than my splayed-out hand and Lal confirmed my suspicion that it was a tiger-print. He pressed the print; the mud was soft.

  “Tiger drinking. He hear horse come. He watch us now,” said Lal in his halting English and grinning at what I thought was pretty alarming news. I went back to my horse and got out one of my pistols, checked the priming and fired it into the air. The crack and smoke sent several birds up into the air, but I did not hear the sound of a larger animal charging off into the jungle.

  “What on earth do you think you are doing?” asked Poorun Singh, riding up.

  “I was trying to scare off that tiger,” I said, pointing at the huge footprint in the mud.

  “A pistol will not scare off a tiger. They survive by staying absolutely still unless they are sure you have seen them, and then they will often attack.”

  “So it is still out there then?” I asked, looking closely at the nearby forest.

  “Of course, and you will never stop a tiger with a pistol anyway.” He looked down at me from the saddle and, in a slightly sneering tone, he added, “You had better hope that the tiger does not like the taste of white meat.” With that he trotted back to the head of the column.

  Well, that was easy for him to say, but when you come from a country where the most dangerous animal in the wild is an angry squirrel, it comes as a shock to find that you are not the top predator. I reloaded my pistol anyway and kept it in my hand until we were well past that place.

  One evening Poorun Singh had us practise sabre drill. I had used a cutlass with Cochrane the year before and had even disabled two Spanish officers with one. But those victories were down to some dubious tactics taught to me by a Swedish bosun and a large helping of good luck. The sabre has a heavy, curved blade, longer than a cutlass and is designed to be used on horseback. The front edge is sharpened, as is the top third of the reverse edge so that you can cut backhand.

  I was set against a sowar who, Poorun Singh told me, was the weakest swordsman in the company. Well, he might have been the weakest, but the sword was long and unfamiliar and he nicked me twice in the first five minutes. The trouble was that as part of the drill you had to keep your distance, whereas old Eriksson’s favourite trick was to sweep in close and kick your opponent in the balls. Not only had he caught me twice, but the lightweight little pipsqueak was getting cocky. Lal and his section were cheering me on, but my opponent kept darting out of range. I realised that I was not going to beat him with speed and that I would have to beat him with cunning.

  He stepped back a few paces and opened his guard to encourage me to attack. I darted forward, but pretended to slip, going down almost on one knee so that my left hand could pick up a handful of dirt. In he charged, squealing with delight at the thought of another easy win against the white man, but I was up in a flash and throwing the dirt in his face. It distracted him for a second and that was all I needed to get in close, kick his legs out from under him and then fall on his prostrate form with my sword poised over his neck. My squad cheered with delight and I pretended not to notice Poorun Singh shaking his head in disgust.

  We rode on for another three days, passing villages where we sometimes stopped to buy food, but we always camped out on our own. Poorun had taken to sending scouts on ahead of the column and they would reconnoitre any villages we came across first, to ensure that there were no pindaree bandits in the vicinity. On the fourth day one of these scouts rode back to say that there was a dozen of the nizam’s soldiers at the next village, investigating the disappearance of a local woman. We rode in and came to a halt in the village square, where Poorun Singh had a long discussion in Hindi with the commander of the soldiers. He turned and shouted some orders to the men, who suddenly looked pleased and excited and were dismounting from their horses and hefting their lances. “Tiger!” shouted Lal, pointing to the trees and grinning. I could think of nothing involving a tiger that would make me grin that happily, but now Poorun was walking towards me to explain what was happening in English.

  “The nizam’s men want our help,” he told me. “A woman is missing and one of the villagers says he saw a tiger dragging a body into the forest to the west of the village. There is a clearing on the far side. They will wait there with muskets and they want us to drive the tiger towards them.”

  “I thought you said that they stay still unless they are certain they have been seen and then they often attack?” I was appalled: it was bad enough being watched by an unseen tiger, but now they were expecting me to march straight towards where one, a man-eater at that, was supposed to be waiting.

  “This is how you hunt tigers,” Poorun said simply. “There is no other way. You have lots of men to make noise and then wait for the tiger to break cover.”

  One of the nizam’s soldiers came running over with a musket and cartridge belt and handed it to me.

  Poorun smiled. “Given how you fight with a sword, I have arranged for you to have a musket. It is better at stopping tigers than a pistol.”

  I pulled the belt over my shoulder so that the bayonet holster rested on my hip and checked the priming of the gun. It was loaded. I felt happier with a proper weapon in my hands, but it would be a cold day in hell before I voluntarily went nose to nose with a tiger. The other soldiers were gathering at the end of the wood with their lances and some villagers with sticks and pans or anything else to make a noise were joining them. Soon nearly a hundred people were lined up on the edge of the forest, with yours truly in the middle. A hunting horn was blown and everyone started to move forwards. Well, when I say everyone, there was one white man with a musket who seemed to be holding back. Oh, I stepped into the woods all right, but just a bit slower than everyone else. Gradually the line crept ahead of me, first five yards and then ten. You could hear animals fleeing from the din ahead and I caught a glimpse of a deer darting through the trees. What I did not spot until I nearly stepped on it was a huge black snake that had slithered through the gap in the line that should have been filled by me. The damn thing reared up, hissing, and I stepped back a few more paces to allow it to make its escape through the undergrowth. I got the bayonet out after that and put it on the end of the musket and used that to probe the ground in front of me.

  We had been walking through the woods for nearly half an hour. The rest of the line was fifty yards ahead, close enough for me to rush up when the coast was clear but far enough away for them to flush out anything stripy before it reached me. It was hot and humid and I needed a break. A huge fallen tree now blocked my path and so, before I struggled to climb over or around it, I leant my musket against the trunk and unbuttoned my flies to take a piss. I had just finished when a big droplet of sweat ran down my cheek. I went to brush it away and to my surprise found it was blood and not sweat. Well, I must have been bitten by fifty insects since I had walked into the jungle and so I was not unduly concerned. I picked up my musket and stood back just in time to see another droplet of blood fall to the leaf litter at my feet. I looked up and felt a cold chill run down my spine. There, several feet above me, resting in the branches of the fallen tree, was a huge lump of meat. There was flesh and bone and swarms of flies, but between all of this were a few shreds of cloth to confirm that this had once been human.

  It had to be the missing villager but my mind was already whirling: if the body was here then surely the killer might be close by too. I sprang back a few feet and looked around. I remembered the scientist on the ship out saying that tigers could not climb trees like leopards. I raised the musket and moved round, looking at nearby bushes. But wait, if tigers do not climb trees, how did the body get up there? Was the kill stolen by a leopard? Would a leopard steal from a tiger? I wished I had paid more attention to the naturalist on that boat now. Then a second later I realised that would ha
ve been a waste of time, as the scientist was a lying bastard.

  There, just a few yards away in the tree, two yellow eyes were staring at me. To be fair the trunk of the tree was so thick that my aged Aunt Agatha could have climbed it, but back then I was more worried about the tiger getting down from the tree than how it had got up. It was in the foliage and as I watched I could make out the black, white and yellow of its face, which was camouflaged perfectly with the leaves and shadows from the branches above. I slowly took another step back, while equally slowly I swung the musket around in its direction. The tiger did not move; it just stared at me without even blinking. We looked at each other. The beast knew I was there and that I had seen it. There was no fear or alarm in those eyes; the creature was the king of the jungle and was certain it could kill me any time it wanted. It must have sat up there and watched the others go past and then seen old Flashy blunder in its direction. It was probably mildly annoyed to see me piss my scent all over the bottom of its tree as though marking it as my territory. Well, I was happy to give up any rights to the tree.

  Slowly I started to take another step back, but this time it quietly growled its disapproval. I froze. I knew I could not turn and run, for it would be on me in a second and I sensed shouting for help would invoke a similar response. I was only still alive because the beast was curious and wanted to look at me. It was, I guessed, ten yards away and the only weapon I had was a musket designed to hit a group of men at eighty to a hundred yards range. I didn’t need to just hit the tiger, I had to kill it. If it was wounded it would still tear me apart.