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The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > A Singularly Unpleasant Creature: Let's Read Flashman!
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Arbite
Nov 4, 2009

quote:

I was interested to see the way they railed at each other, as only very close friends do. Brooke obviously had an immense respect for Paitingi Ali; however, now that the talk had touched on religion, he began to hold forth again on an interminable prose about how he had recently written a treatise against Article 90 of the “Oxford Tracts”, whatever they were, which lasted to the end of the meal. Then, with due solemnity, he proposed the Queen, which was drunk sitting down, Navy fashion, and while the rest of us talked and smoked, Brooke went through a peculiar little ceremony which, I suppose, explained better than anything else the hold he had on his native subjects.

All through the meal, a most curious thing had been happening. While the courses and wine had come with all due ceremony, and we had been buffing in, I’d noticed that every few minutes a Malay, or Dyak, or half-breed would come into the room, touch Brooke’s hand as they passed his chair, and then go to squat near the wall by Jingo. No one paid them any notice; they seemed to be all sorts, from a near-naked beggarly rascal to a well-dressed Malay in gold sarong and cap, but they were all armed—I learned later that it was a great insult to come into the White Raja’s presence without your krees, which is the strange, wavy-bladed knife of the people.

In any event, while the rest of us gassed, Brooke turned his chair, beckoned each suppliant in turn, and talked with him quietly in Malay. One after another they came to hunker down beside him, putting their cases or telling their tales, while he listened, leaning forward with elbows on knees, nodding attentively. Then he would pronounce, quietly, and they would touch hands again and go; the rest of us might as well not have been there. When I asked Stuart about it later, he said: “Oh, that’s J.B. ruling Sarawak. Simple, ain’t it?

Author's Note posted:

Whatever Flashman’s opinion of Brooke, he has been an honest reporter of the White Raja’s background and conversation. The picture of The Grove—the furnishings and routine, the formal dinners, the reception of petitioners, even his interest in gardening, his pleasure in comfortable armchairs and home newspapers, and his eccentric habit of playing leap-frog—is confirmed by other sources. Much more important, virtually all the opinions which he expressed in Flashman’s presence, throughout this narrative, are to be found elsewhere in Brooke’s own writings. His views on native peoples, piracy, Borneo’s future, missionaries, colonial development, religion and ethics, honours and decorations, personal ambitions and private tastes—all the philosophy of this remarkable man, in fact, is contained at length in his journals and letters, and his conversation as reported by Flashman reflects it accurately, often in identical words. Even the style of his talk seems to have been like his writing, brisk, assertive, eager, and highly opinionated. (See Brooke’s papers, as quoted in St John, Jacob, et al.)

Even moreso than usual Fraser seems to have taken the exact words used and recorded elsewhere from this historical figure and inserted them into his few days of conversation with Flash.

quote:

When the last native had gone Brooke sat in a reverie for a moment or two, and then swung abruptly to the table.

“No singing tonight,” says he. “Business. Let’s have that map, Crimble.” We crowded round, the lamps were turned up, shining on the ring of sunburned faces under the wreath of cigar smoke, and Brooke tapped the table. I felt my belly muscles tightening.

“We know what’s to do, gentlemen,” cries he, “and I’ll answer that the task is one that strikes a spark in the heart of every one of us. A fair and gentle lady, the beloved wife of one here, is in the hands of a bloody pirate; she is to be saved, and he destroyed. By God’s grace, we know where the quarry lies, not sixty miles from where we sit, on the Batang Lupar, the greatest lair of robbers in these Islands, save Mindanao itself. Look at it”—his finger subbed the map—“first. Sharif Jaffir and his slaver fleet, at Fort Linga; beyond him, the great stronghold of Sharif Sahib at Patusan; farther on, at Undup, the toughest nut of all—the fortress of the Skrang pirates under Sharif Muller.

I doubt it's what he was going for but I'm getting a real 'Sungs, Tangs, Hongs, Fangs, and McSweeneys' feeling from this list.

quote:

Was ever a choicer collection of villains on one river? Add to ’em now the arch-devil. Suleiman Usman, who has stolen away Mrs Flashman in dastardly fashion. She is the key to his vile plan, gentlemen, for he knows we cannot leave her in his clutches an hour longer than we must.” He gave my shoulder a manly squeeze; everyone else was carefully avoiding my eye. “He realises that chivalry will not permit us to wait. You know him, Flashman; is this not how his scheming mind will reason?”

I didn’t doubt it, and said so. “He’s made a fortune in the City, too, and plays a damned dirty game of single-wicket,” I added, and Brooke nodded sympathetically.

“He knows I dare not delay, even if it means going after him with only the piecemeal force I have here—fifty praus and two thousand men, a third of which I must leave to garrison Kuching. Even so, Usman knows I must take at least a week to prepare—a week in which he can muster his praus and savages, outnumbering us ten to one, and make ready his ambushes along the Lupar, confident that we’ll stumble into them half-armed and ill-prepared—”

“Stop it, before I start wishin’ I was on their side,” mutters Wade, and Brooke laughed in his conceited fashion and threw back his black curls.

“Why, he’ll wipe us out to the last man!” cries he. “That’s his beastly scheme. That,” he smiled complacently round at us, “is what Suleiman Usman thinks.”

Paitingi sighed. “But, of course, he’s wrong, the puir heathen,” says he with heavy sarcasm. “Ye’ll tell us how.”

“You may wager the Bank to a tinker’s dam he’s wrong!” cries Brooke, his face alive with swank and excitement. “He expects us in a week—he shall have us in two days! He expects us with two-thirds of our strength—well, we’ll show him all of it! I’ll strip Kuching of every man and gun and leave it defenceless—I’ll stake everything on this throw!” He beamed at us, bursting with confidence. “Surprise, gentlemen—that’s the thing! I’ll catch the rascal napping before he’s laid his infernal toils! What d’you say?”

I know what I’d have said, if I’d been talking just then. I’d never heard such lunacy in my life, and neither had the others by the look of them. Paitingi snorted.

“Ye’re mad! It’ll no’ do.”

“I know, old fellow,” grins Brooke. “What then?”

“Ye’ve said it yersel’! There’s a hundred mile o’ river between Skrang creek and the sea, every yard o’ it hotchin’ wi’ pirates, slavers, nata-hutan (blowpipe), an’ heid-hunters by the thousand, every side-stream crawlin’ wi’ war-praus an’ bankongs, tae say nothin’ o’ the forts! Surprise, says you? By Eblis, I ken who’ll be surprised! We’ve done oor share o’ river-fightin’, but this—” he waved a great red hand. “Withoot a well-fitted expedition in strength—man, it’s fatal folly.”

“He’s right, J.B.,” says Keppel. “Anyway, even the poor force we’ve got couldn’t be ready in two days—”

“Yes, it can, though. In one, if necessary.”

“Well, even then—you might catch Fort Linga unprepared, but after that they’ll be ready for you upriver.”

“Not at the speed I’ll move!” cries Brooke. “The messenger of disaster from Linga to Patusan will have us on his heels! We’ll carry all before us, all the way to Skrang if need be!”

“But Kuching?” Stuart protested. “Why, the Balagnini or those beastly Lanun could sweep it up while our back was turned.”

“Never!” Brooke was exultant. “They won’t know it’s naked! And suppose they did—why, we’d just have to begin all over again, wouldn’t we? You talk about the odds against us on the Lupar—were they a whit better at Seribas, or Murdu? Were they any better when you and I, George, took all Sarawak with six guns and a leaky pleasure-yacht? I tell you, gentlemen, I can have this thing over and done in a fortnight! D’you doubt me? Have I ever failed, and will I fail now, when there is a poor, weak creature crying out for rescue, and I, a Briton, hear that cry? When I have the stout hearts and good keels that will do the thing, and crush this swarm of hornets, too, before they can scatter on their accursed errands? What? I tell you, all the Queen’s ships and all the Queen’s men could not bring such a chance together again,23 and I mean to take it!”

I’d never seen it before, although I’ve seen it more times than I care to count since—one man, mad as a hatter and drunk with pride, sweeping sane heads away against their better judgement. Chinese Gordon could do it, and Yakub Beg the Kirghiz; so could J. E. B. Stuart, and that almighty maniac George Custer. They and Brooke could have formed a club. I can see him still: erect, head thrown back, eyes blazing, like the worst kind of actor mouthing the Agincourt speech to a crowd of yokels in a tent theatre in the backwoods. I don’t believe he convinced them—Stuart and Crimble, perhaps, but not Keppel and the others; certainly not Paitingi. But they couldn’t resist him, or the force that beat out of him. He was going to have his way, and they knew it. They stood silent; Keppel, I think, was embarrassed. And then Paitingi says:

“Aye. Ye’ll want me to have charge o’ the spy-boats, I suppose?”

That settled it, and at once Brooke quieted down, and they set to earnestly to discuss ways and means, while I sat back contemplating the horror of the whole thing, and wondering how I could weasel out of it. Plainly they were going to catastrophe, lugging me along with them, and not a thing to be done about it. I turned over a dozen schemes in my mind, from feigning insanity to running away; finally, when all but Brooke had hurried off to begin the preparations which were to take them all night and the following day, I had a feeble shot at turning him from his hare-brained purpose. Perhaps, I suggested diffidently, it might be possible to ransom Elspeth; I’d heard of such things being done among the Oriental pirates, and old Morrison was stiff with blunt which he’d be glad…

Another clear sign we're dealing with the younger and less sharp Flashman, the older one would have seen that this idea couldn't possibly play with this audience.

quote:

“What?” cries Brooke, his brow darkening. “Treat with these scoundrels? Never! I should not contemplate such—ah, but I see what it is!” He came over all compassionate, and laid a hand on my arm. “You are fearful for your dear one’s safety, when battle is joined. You need have no such fear, old fellow; no harm will come to her.”

Well, it was beyond me how he could guarantee that, but then he explained, and I give you my word that this is what he said. He sat me down in my chair and poured me a glass of arrack first.

“It is natural enough, Flashman, that you should believe this pirate’s motives to be of the darkest kind…where your wife is concerned. Indeed, from what I have heard of her grace and charm of person, they are such as might well excite…ah, that is, they might awaken—well, unworthy passion—in an unworthy person, that is.” He floundered a bit, and took a pull at his glass, wondering how to discuss the likelihood of her being rogered without causing me undue distress. At last he burst out:

“He won’t do it!—I mean, that is—I cannot believe she will be…ill-used, in any way, if you follow me. I am confident that she is but a pawn in a game which he has planned with Machiavellian cunning, using her as a bait to destroy me. That,” says this swollen-headed lunatic smugly, “is his true purpose, for he and his kind can know no safety while I live. His design is not principally against her, of that I am certain. For one thing, he is married already, you know. Oh, yes, I have gleaned much information in the past few days, and it’s true—five years ago he took to wife the daughter of the Sultan of Sulu, and while Muslims are not, of course, monogamous,” he went on earnestly, “there is no reason to suppose that their union was not a…a happy one.” He took a turn round the room, while I gaped, stricken speechless. “So I’m sure your dear lady is perfectly safe from any…any…anything like that. Anything…” he waved his glass, sloshing arrack broadcast “…anything awful, you know.”

Well, that is what he said, as I hope to die. I couldn’t credit my ears. For a moment I wondered if having his love-muscle shot off had affected his brain; then I realised that, in his utterly daft way, he was simply talking all this rubbish to reassure me. Possibly he thought I was so distraught that I’d be ready to believe anything, even that a chap with one wife would never think of bulling another. Maybe he even believed it himself.

“She will be restored to you…” he searched for a suitable word, and found one. “unblemished, you may be sure. Indeed. I am certain that her preservation must be his first concern, for he must know what a terrific retribution will follow if any harm should come to her, either in the violence of battle or…in any other way. And after all,” says he, apparently quite struck with the thought, “he may be a pirate, but he has been educated as an English gentleman. I cannot believe that he is dead to all feelings of honour. Whatever he has become—here, let me fill your glass, old chap—we must remember that there was a time when he was, well…one of us. I think you can take comfort in that thought, what?”

Good grief. Let's check in with the dear lady:




Double fictional editorial powers. Delightful. Pity that even the uncensored audiobooks keep out Elspeth's unflattering comments towards Griselda.

Well, that's another chapter down, tune in next time for the jaunt upriver.

* # ? Sep 6, 2021 07:12
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TheGreatEvilKing
Mar 28, 2016





 Didn't Flashy catch Elspeth with Lord Haw Haw in another book?

* # ? Sep 6, 2021 23:38
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Norwegian Rudo
May 9, 2013

TheGreatEvilKing posted:

Didn't Flashy catch Elspeth with Lord Haw Haw in another book?

Probably. There's enough doubt that he decides to let it go (plus of course, Elspeth is the one with the money).

* # ? Sep 7, 2021 08:06
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Beefeater1980
Sep 12, 2008

My God, it's full of Horatios!






 Elspeth is a saucy little minx and knows how to leave a safe paper trail.

Incidentally this little segment explains so much bad decision making:

“I don’t believe he convinced them—Stuart and Crimble, perhaps, but not Keppel and the others; certainly not Paitingi. But they couldn’t resist him, or the force that beat out of him”

* # ? Sep 8, 2021 10:54
  • Quote
Arbite
Nov 4, 2009

quote:

We dropped down Kuching river on the evening tide of the day following, a great convoy of ill-assorted boats gliding silently through the opened booms, and down between banks dark and feathery in the dusk to the open sea. How Brooke had done it I don’t know—I dare say you can read in his journal, and Keppel’s, how they armed and victualled and assembled their ramshackle war fleet of close on eighty vessels, loaded with the most unlikely crew of pirates, savages, and lunatics, and launched them on to the China Sea like a damned regatta; I don’t remember it too clearly myself, for all through a night and a day it had been bedlam along the Kuching wharves, in which, being new to the business, I’d borne no very useful part.

I have my usual disjointed memories of it, though. I remember the long war-praus with their steep sheers and forests of oars, being warped one after another into the jetty by sweating, squealing Malay steersmen, and the Raja’s native allies pouring aboard—a chattering, half-naked horde of Dyaks, some in kilts and sarongs, others in loin-cloths and leggings, some in turbans, some with feathers in their hair, but all grinning and ugly as sin, loaded with their vile sumpitan-pipes and arrows, their kreeses and spears, all fit to frighten the French.

Then there were the Malay swordsmen who filled the sampans—big, flat-faced villains with muskets and the terrible, straight-bladed kampilan cleavers in their belts; the British tars in their canvas smocks and trousers and straw hats, their red faces grinning and sweating while they loaded Dido’s pinnace, singing “Whisky, Johnny” as they stamped and hauled; the silent Chinese cannoneers whose task it was to lash down the small guns in the bows of the sampans and long-boats, and stow the powder kegs and matches; the slim, olive-skinned Linga pirates who manned Paitingi’s spy-boats—astonishing craft these, for all the world like Varsity racing-shells, slim frail needles with thirty paddles that could skim across the water as fast as a man can run. They darted among the other vessels—the long, stately praus, the Dido’s pinnace, the cutters and launches and canoes, the long sloop Jolly Bachelor, which was Brooke’s own flagship; and the flower of our fleet, the East India paddle-steamer Phlegethon, with her massive wheel and platform, and her funnel belching smoke. They all packed the river, in a great tangle of oars and cordage and rubbish, and over it rang the constant chorus of curses and commands in half a dozen languages; it looked like a waterman’s picnic gone mad.

The variety of weapons was an armourer’s nightmare; aside from those I’ve mentioned there were bows and arrows, every conceivable kind of sword, axe, and spear, modern rifled muskets, pepper-pot revolvers, horse-pistols, needle-guns, fantastically-carved Chinese flintlocks, six-pounder naval guns, and stands of Congreve rockets with their firing-frames mounted on the forecastles of three of the praus. God help whoever gets in the way of this collection, thinks I—noting especially a fine comparison on the shore: a British naval officer in tail-coat and waterproof hat testing the hair-triggers of a pair of Mantons, his blue-jackets sharpening their brass-hilted cutlasses on a grindstone, and within a yard of them a jabbering band of Dyaks dipping their langa darts in a bubbling cauldron of the beastly white radjun poison.

Striking indeed.

quote:

“Let’s see you puff your pop-gun, Johnny,” cries one of the tars, and they swung a champagne cork on a string as a target, twenty yards off; one of the grinning little brutes slipped a dart into his sumpitan, clapped it to his mouth—and in a twinkling there was the cork, jerking on its string, transfixed by the foot-long needle. “Christ!” says the blue-jacket reverently, “don’t point that bloody thing at my backside, will you?” and the others cheered the Dyak, and offered to swap their gunner for him.

So you can see the kind of army that James Brooke took to sea from Kuching on the morning of August 5, 1844, and if, like me, you had shaken your head in despair at the motley, rag-bag confusion of it as it assembled by the wharves, you would have held your breath in disbelief as you watched it sweeping in silent, disciplined order out on to the China Sea in the breaking dawn. I’ll never forget it: the dark purple water, ruffled by the morning wind; the tangled green mangrove shore a cable’s length to our right; the first blinding rays of silver turning the sea into a molten lake ahead of our bows as the fleet ploughed east.

First went the spy-boats, ten of them in line abreast a mile long, seeming to fly just above the surface of the sea, driven by the thin antennae of their oars; then the praus, in double column, their sails spread and the great sweeps thrashing the water, with the smaller sampans and canoes in tow; the Dido’s pinnace and the Jolly Bachelor under sail, and last, shepherding the flock, the steamer Phlegethon, her big wheel thumping up the spray, with Brooke strutting under her awning, monarch of all he surveyed, discoursing to the admiring Flashy. (It wasn’t that I sought his company, but since I had to go along, I’d figured it would be safest to stick close by him, on the biggest boat available; something told me that whoever came home feet first, it wasn’t going to be him, and the rations would probably be better. So I toadied him in my best style, and he bored me breathless in return.)

“There’s something better than inspecting stirrup straps on Horse Guards!” cries he gaily, flourishing a hand at our fleet driving over the sunlit sea. “What more could a man ask, eh?—a solid deck beneath, the old flag above, stout fellows alongside, and a bitter foe ahead. That’s the life, my boy!” It seemed to me it was more likely to be the death, but of course I just grinned and agreed that it was capital. “And a good cause to fight in,” he went on. “Wrongs to punish, Sarawak to defend—and your lady to rescue, of course. Aye, it’ll be a sweeter, cleaner coast by the time we’ve done with it.”

I asked him if he meant to devote his life to chasing pirates, and he came all over solemn, gazing out over the sea with the wind ruffling his hair.

“It may well be a life’s work,” says he. “You see, what our people at home will not understand is that a pirate here is not a criminal, in our sense; piracy is the profession of the Islands, their way of life—just as trading or keeping shop is with Englishmen. So it is not a question of rooting out a few scoundrels, but of changing the minds of whole nations, and turning them to honest, peaceful pursuits.” He laughed and shook his head. “It will not be easy—d’you know what one of them said to me once?—and this was a well-travelled, intelligent head-man—he said: ‘I know your British system is good, tuan besar; I have seen Singapura and your soldiers and traders and great ships. But I was brought up to plunder, and I laugh when I think that I have fleeced a peaceful tribe right down to their cooking-pots.’ Now, what d’you do with such a fellow?”

“Hang him,” says Wade, who was sitting on the deck with little Charlie Johnson, one of Brooke’s people,24 playing main chatter.* “That was Makota, wasn’t it?”

Charles Johnson, Brooke's Nephew, would become the second white rajah, and main chatter is a Malay varient of chess where the king can flee like a knight.

quote:

“Yes, Makota,” says Brooke, “and he was the finest of ’em. One of the stoutest friends and allies I ever had—until he deserted to join the Sadong slavers. Now he supplies labourers and concubines to the coast princes who are meant to be our allies, but who deal secretly with the pirates for fear and profit. That’s the kind of thing we have to fight, quite apart from the pirates themselves.”

“Why d’you do it?” I asked, for in spite of what Stuart had told me, I wanted to hear it from the man himself; I always suspect these buccaneer-crusaders, you see. “I mean, you have Sarawak; don’t that keep you busy enough?”

“It’s a duty,” says he, as one might say it was warm for the time of year. “I suppose it began with Sarawak, which at first seemed to me like a foundling, which I protected with hesitation and doubt, but it has repaid my trouble. I have freed its people and its trade, given it a code of laws, encouraged industry and Chinese immigration, imposed only the lightest of taxes, and protected it from the pirates. Oh, I could make a fortune from it, but I content myself with a little—I’m either a man of worth, you see, or a mere adventurer after gain, and God forbid I should ever be that. But I’m well rewarded,” says he blandly, “for all the good that I do ministers to my satisfaction.”

Pity you couldn’t set it to music and sing it as an anthem, thinks I. Old Arnold would have loved it. But all I said was that it was undoubtedly God’s work, and it was a crying shame that it went unrecognised; worth a knighthood at least, I’d have said.

“Titles?” cries he, smiling. “They’re like fine clothes, penny trumpets, and turtle soup—all of slight but equal value. No, no. I’m too quiet to be a hero. All my wish is for the good of Borneo and its people—I’ve shown what can be done here, but it is for our government at home to decide what means, if any, they put at my disposal to extend and develop my work.” His eyes took on that glitter that you see in camp-meeting preachers and company accountants. “I’ve only touched the surface here—I want to open the interior of this amazing land, to exploit it for the benefit of its people, to correct the native character, to improve their lot. But you know our politicians and departments—they don’t care for foreign ventures, and they’re jolly wary of me, I can tell you.”

He laughed again. “They suspect me of being up to some job or other, for my own good. And what can I tell ’em?—they don’t know the country, and the only visits I ever get are brief and official. Well, what can an admiral learn in a week? If I’d any sense I’d vamp up a prospectus, get a board of directors, and hold public meetings. ‘Borneo Limited’, what? That’d interest ’em, all right! But it would be the wrong thing, you see—and it’d only convince the government that I’m a filibuster myself—Blackbeard Teach with a clean shirt on. No, no, it wouldn’t do.” He sighed. “Yet how proud I should be, some day, to see Sarawak, and all Borneo, under the British flag—for their good, not ours. It may never happen, more’s the pity—but in the meantime, I have my duty to Sarawak and its people. I’m their only protector, and if I leave my life in the business, well, I shall have died nobly.”

Well. Certainly a believer.

quote:

Well, I’ve seen pure-minded complacency in my time, and done a fair bit in that line myself, when occasion demanded, but J.B. certainly beat all. Mind you, unlike most Arnoldian hypocrites, I think he truly believed what he said; at least, he was fool enough to live up to it, so far as I could see, which is consistent with my conclusion that he was off his head. And when you remember that he excited the wrath of Gladstone25—well, that speaks volumes in a chap’s favour, doesn’t it? But at the time I was just noting him down as another smug, lying, psalm-smiter devoted to prayer and profit, when he went and spoiled it all by bursting into laughter and saying:

“Mind you, if it’s in a good cause, it’s still the greatest fun! I don’t know that I’d enjoy the protection and improvement of Sarawak above half, if it didn’t involve fighting these piratical, head-taking vagabonds! It’s just my good luck that duty combines with pleasure—maybe I’m not so different from Makota and the rest of these villains after all. They go a-roving for lust and plunder, and I go for justice and duty. It’s a nice point, don’t you think? You’ll think me crazy, I dare say”—he little knew how right he was—“but sometimes I think that rascals like Sharif Sahib and and Suleiman Usman and the Balagnini sea-wolves are the best friends I’ve got. Perhaps our radical M.P.s are right, and I’m just a pirate at heart.”

Author's note posted:

W. E. Gladstone was one of several liberal politicians who pressed for charges to be brought against Brooke on the ground that his actions against the Borneo pirates were cruel, illegal, and excessive. St John comments bluntly: “James Brooke’s sympathies were with the victims, Gladstone’s with the pirates.” (See Gladstone’s article on “Piracy in Borneo, and the Operations of 1849”.)

quote:

“Well, you look enough like one, J.B.,” says Wade, getting up from the board. “Main chatter, sheikh matter—it’s my game, Charlie.” He came to the rail and pointed, laughing, at the Dyaks and Malay savages who were swarming on the platform of the prau just ahead of us. “They don’t look exactly like a Sunday School treat, do they, Flashman? Pirates, if you like!”

“Flashman hasn’t seen real pirates yet,” says Brooke. “He’ll see the difference then.”

I did, too, and before the day was out. We cruised swiftly along the coast all day, before the warm breeze, while the sun swung over and dropped like a blood-red rose behind us, and with the cooler air of evening we came at last to the broad estuary of the Batang Lupar. It was miles across, and among the little jungly islands of its western shore we disturbed an anchorage of squalid sailor-folk in weather-beaten sampans—orang laut, the Malays called them, “sea-gipsies”, the vagrants of the coast, who were always running from one debt-collector to another, picking up what living they could.

Paitingi brought their headman, a dirty, bedraggled savage, to the Phlegethon in one of the spy-boats, and after Brooke had talked to him he beckoned me to follow him down into Paitingi’s craft, saying I should get the “feel” of a spy-boat before we got into the river proper. I didn’t much care for the sound of it, but took my seat behind him in the prow, where the gunwales were tight either side, and you put your feet delicately for fear of sending them clean through the light hull. Paitingi crouched behind me, and the Linga look-out straddled above me, a foot on either gunwale.

“Don’t like it altogether,” says Brooke. “Those bajoos say there are villages burning up towards the Rajang, and that ain’t natural, when all that’s sinful should be congregated up the Lupar, getting ready for us. We’ll take a sniff about. Give way!”

The slender spy-boat shot away like a dart, trembling most alarmingly under my feet, with the thirty paddlers sweeping us silently forward. We threaded through the little islands, Brooke staring over towards the far shore, which was fading in the gathering dusk. There was a light mist coming down behind us, concealing our fleet, and a great bank of it was slowly rolling in from the sea, ghostly above the oily water. It was dead calm now, and the dank air made your flesh crawl; Brooke checked our pace, and we glided under the overhanging shelter of a mangrove bank, where the fronds dripped eerily. I saw Brooke’s head turning this way and that, and then Paitingi stiffened behind me.

“Bismillah! J.B.!” he whispered. “Listen!”

Brooke nodded, and I strained my ears, staring fearfully across that limpid water at the fog blanket creeping towards us. Then I heard something—at first I thought it was my heart, but gradually it resolved itself into a faint, regular, throbbing boom, coming faintly out of the mist, growing gradually louder. It was melodious but horrible, a deep metallic drumming that raised the hairs on my neck; Paitingi whispered behind me:

“War-gong. Bide you; don’t even breathe!”

Brooke gestured for silence, and we lay hidden beneath the mangrove fronds, waiting breathlessly, while that hellish booming grew to a slow thunder, and it seemed to me that behind it I could hear a rushing, as of some great thing flying along; my mouth was dry as I stared at the fog, waiting for some horror to appear—and then suddenly it was upon us, like a train rushing from a tunnel, a huge, scarlet shape bursting out of the mist. I only had a glimpse as it swept by, but the image is stamped on my memory of that long, gleaming red hull with its towering forecastle and stern; the platform over its bulwark crowded with men—flat yellow faces with scarves round their brows, lank hair flowing down over their sleeveless tunics; the glitter of swords and spear-heads, the ghastly line of white bobbing globes hanging like a horrible fringe from stem to stern beneath the platform—skulls, hundreds of them; the great sweeps churning the water; the guttering torches on the poop; the long silken pennants on the upper works writhing in the foggy air like coloured snakes; the figure of a half-naked giant beating the oar-stroke on a huge bronze gong—and then it was gone as swiftly as it had come, the booming receding into the mist as it drove up the Batang Lupar.



Well, so much for catching them unawares.

quote:

The sweat was starting out on me as we waited, while two more praus like the first emerged and vanished in its wake; then Brooke looked past me at Paitingi.

“That’s inconvenient,” says he. “I made ’em Lanun, the first two; the third one Maluku. What d’ye think?”

“Lagoon pirates from Mindanao,” says Paitingi, “but what the hell are they doin’ here?” He spat into the water. “There’s an end tae our expedition, J.B.—there’s a thousand men on each o’ those devil-craft, more than we muster all told, and—”

“—and they’ve gone to join Usman,” says Brooke. He whistled softly to himself, scratching his head beneath the pilot cap. “Tell you what, Paitingi—he’s taking us seriously, ain’t he just?”

“Aye, so let’s pay him the same compliment. If we beat back tae Kuching in the mornin’, we can put oursel’s in a state o’ defence, at least, because, by God’s beard, we’re goin’ tae have such a swarm roond oor ears—”

“Not us,” says Brooke. “Them.” His teeth showed white in the gathering dark; he was quivering with excitement. “D’ye know what, old ’un? I think this is just what we wanted—now I know what we can expect! I’ve got it all plain now—just you watch!”

“Aye, weel, if we get home wi’ all speed—”

“Home nothing!” says Brooke. “We’re going in tonight! Give way, there!”

For a moment I thought Paitingi was going to have the boat over; he exploded in a torrent of disbelief and dismay, and expostulations concerning Scottish Old Testament fiends and the hundred names of Allah flew over my head; Brooke just laughed, fidgeting with impatience, and Paitingi was still cursing and arguing when our spy-boat reached Phlegethon again. A hasty summons brought the commanders from the other vessels, and Brooke, who looked to me as though he was in the grip of some stimulating drug, held a conference on the platform by the light of a single storm lantern.

“Now’s the time—I know it!” says he. “Those three lagoon praus will be making for Linga—they’ve been butchering and looting on the coast all day, and they’ll never go farther tonight. We’ll find ’em tied up at Linga tomorrow dawn. Keppel, you’ll take the rocket-praus—burn those pirates at their anchorage, land the blue-jackets to storm the fort, and boom the Linga river to stop anything coming down. You’ll find precious little fight in Jaffir’s people, or I’m much mistaken.

“Meanwhile, the rest of us will sweep past upriver, making for Patusan. That’s where we’ll find the real thieves’ kitchen; we’ll strike it as soon as Keppel’s boats have caught us up—”

“You’ll leave no one at Linga?” says Keppel. “Suppose more praus arrive from Mindanao?”

“They won’t,” says Brooke confidently. “And if they do, we’ll turn in our tracks and blow them all the way back to Sulu!” His laugh sent shivers down my spine. “Mind, Keppel, I want those three praus destroyed utterly, and every one of their crews killed or scattered! Drive ’em into the jungle; if they have slaves or captives, bring ’em along. Paitingi, you’ll take the lead to Linga, with one spy-boat; we don’t need more while the river’s still wide. Now then, what time is it?”

It may have been my army training, or my experience in Afghanistan, where no one even relieved himself without a staff conference’s approval, but this haphazard, neck-or-nothing style appalled me. We were to go careering upriver in the dark, after those three horrors that I’d seen streaking out of the mist—I shuddered at the memory of the evil yellow faces and that hideous skull fringe—and tackle them and whatever other cutthroat horde happened to be waiting at this Linga fort. He was crazy, whipped into a drunken enthusiasm by his own schoolboy notions of death or glory; why the devil didn’t Keppel and the other sane men take him in hand, or drop him overboard, before he wrecked us all? But there they were, setting their watches, hardly asking a question even, suggesting improvisations in an offhand way that made your hair curl, no one so much as hinting at a written order—and Brooke laughing and slapping Keppel on the back as he went down into his long-boat.

“And mind now. Paitingi,” he cries cheerily, “don’t go skedaddling off on your own. As soon as those praus are well alight, I want to see your ugly old mug heading back to Phlegethon, d’you hear? Look after him, Stuart—he’s a poor old soul, but I’m used to him!”

The spy-boat vanished into the dark, and we heard the creak of the long-boats’ oars as they dispersed. Brooke rubbed his hands and winked at me. “Now’s the day and now’s the hour,” says he. “Charlie Johnson, pass my compliments to the engineer, and tell him I want steam up. We’ll have Fort Linga for our chota hazri (morning tea)!”

Yes, Flash's only extended experience by this point was with the rightly disparaged Elphinstone.

Also even when he isn't present the book manages to put over how persuasive and influential our pirate host can be.

Anyway, steams going up, guns are being primed, we're all set for a grand fight on the river! Until next time...

* # ? Sep 9, 2021 05:25
  • Quote
sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









 He's such a good writer, drat.

* # ? Sep 9, 2021 08:55
  • Quote
Trin Tragula
Apr 22, 2005

Arbite posted:

Now's the day and now's the hour

This is a Robert Burns quote, being the first line of the second stanza of Scots Wha Hae. It's an early example of post-Union Scottish patriotism, casting Scotland as a plucky underdog nation on the side of right and justice, with liberal reference made to the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314. When originally published in 1794 it had to be done carefully to avoid being seen as dangerously seditious.

quote:

Now's the day, an now's the hour:
See the front o battle lour,
See approach proud Edward's power –
Chains and Slaverie.

It's presented as a speech that might have been made by yer actual Robert the Bruce to his men shortly before the battle, at which their army defeated Edward II of England and helped win 400 more years of independent nationhood.

* # ? Sep 9, 2021 09:18
  • Quote
Arbite
Nov 4, 2009

quote:

It sounded like madman’s babble at the time, but as I look back, it seems reasonable enough—for, being J.B., he got what he wanted. He spent all night in the Phlegethon’s wheel-house, poring over maps and sipping Batavia arrack, issuing orders to Johnson or Crimble from time to time, and as we thrashed on into the gloom the spy-boats would come lancing out of the misty darkness, hooking on, and then gliding away again with messages for the fleet strung out behind us; one of them kept scuttling to and fro between Phlegethon and the rocket-praus, which were somewhere up ahead. How the deuce they kept order I couldn’t fathom, for each ship had only one dark lantern gleaming faintly at its stern, and the mist seemed thick all round. There was no sign, in that clammy murk, of the river-banks, a mile either side of us, and no sound except the steady thumping of Phlegethon’s engines; the night was both chill and sweating at once, and I sat huddled in wakeful apprehension in the lee of the wheel-house, drawing what consolation I could from the knowledge that Phlegethon would be clear of the morning’s action.

She had a grandstand seat, though; when dawn came, pale and sudden, we were thrashing full tilt up the oily river, a bare half-mile from the jungle-covered bank to starboard, and nothing ahead of us but one spy-boat, loitering on the river bend. Even as we watched her, there was a distant crackle of musketry from up ahead, and from the spy-boat a blue light shot into the foggy air, barely visible against the pale grey sky; “Keppel’s there!” yells Brooke. “Full ahead. Charlie!” and right on the heels of his words came a thunderous explosion that seemed to send a tremor across the swirling water.

Phlegethon tore down on the spy-boat, and then as we rounded the bend, I saw a sight I’ll never forget. A mile away, on the right-hand shore, was a great clearing, with a big native village sprawling down to the shore, and behind it, on the fringe of the forest, a stockaded fort on a slight rise, with a green banner waving above its walls. There were twists of smoke, early cooking-fires, rising above the village, but down on the river-bank itself there was a great pall of sooty cloud rising from the glittering red war-prau which I recognised as one of those we had seen the previous evening; there was orange flame creeping up her steep side. Beyond her lay the two other praus, tied up to the bank and swinging gently in the current.

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.

“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.

“And a cutlass, of course,” says he, “you’ll feel naked without that.”




Well. So far so good, then.

quote:

He little knew that I could feel naked in a suit of armour in the bowels of a dreadnought being attacked by an angry bum-boat-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 damned 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.

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’, ye’ll 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!”



At this point it's going rather too well to be a detailed Flashman expedition.

quote:

“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.

That is so true, even on short trips. Make absolutely sure if you're ever invited on a boat for an evening dinner or anything that will be longer than an hour pack extra water and Cliff Bars or something with high calories and compact. Much like Flashman's tin of goodies before setting off for Crimea you'll probably not need it if you pack it but will surely be sorry if you don't.

Short one today but next time we finish the chapter and have another entry from Elspeth.

* # ? Sep 12, 2021 09:58
  • Quote
Arbite
Nov 4, 2009

quote:

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—”

Graphically illustrating the mistreatment your foe may or may not have inflicted for propaganda purposes is far older than colonialism but it certainly was a popular way to sell the 'civilizing' hooey.

Also, awww.

quote:

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.


As ever Fraser finds himself in the delicate position of writing Flashman unlikeable enough while still dragging him through these heroic adventures. So far and in the next bit he succeeds well enough, though at the end of this book it does fall rather far onto one side.

Before we move on to Elspeth's letter I just want to draw attention to the very perfect adventure that's been happening around our miserable bastard. A brave expedition well outnumbered, a worthy cause to start it, enemies who remain cheerful even when sentenced to death... A hell of a thing through a hell of a lens.







https://i.imgur.com/euoupcn.mp4

Thanks to this split perspective we now have an excellent idea of what two forces will be facing each other... next chapter!

* # ? Sep 14, 2021 03:34
  • Quote
Drakyn
Dec 26, 2012

Arbite posted:

Thanks to this split perspective we now have an excellent idea of what two forces will be facing each other... next chapter!
I absolutely am on the edge of my seat to see an orangutan beat the living poo poo out of Harry Flashman.

* # ? Sep 14, 2021 15:33
  • Quote
90s Cringe Rock
Nov 29, 2006
:gay:

Drakyn posted:

I absolutely am on the edge of my seat to see an orangutan beat the living poo poo out of Harry Flashman.
* # ? Sep 14, 2021 15:46
  • Quote
Remulak
Jun 8, 2001
I can't count to four.
Yams Fan

Drakyn posted:

I absolutely am on the edge of my seat to see an orangutan beat the living poo poo out of be a better person than Harry Flashman.
* # ? Sep 15, 2021 12:05
  • Quote
Drakyn
Dec 26, 2012

Remulak posted:

Drakyn posted:

I absolutely am on the edge of my seat to see an orangutan beat the living poo poo out of be a better person than Harry Flashman by beating the living poo poo out of him.
* # ? Sep 15, 2021 13:34
  • Quote
90s Cringe Rock
Nov 29, 2006
:gay:

Drakyn posted:

I absolutely am on the edge of my seat to see an orangutan
* # ? Sep 15, 2021 14:39
  • Quote
Arbite
Nov 4, 2009

quote:

I was back in Patusan just a few years ago, and it’s changed beyond belief. Now, past the bend of the river, there is a sleepy, warm little village of bamboo huts and booths, hemmed in by towering jungle trees, drowsing in the sunlight; fowls scratching in the dirt, women cooking, and no greater activity than a child tumbling and crying. However much I walked round, and squinted at it from odd angles, I couldn’t match it to my memory of bristling stockades along the banks, with five mighty wooden forts fringing the great clearing—the jungle must have been farther back then, and even the river has changed: it is broad and placid now, but I remember it narrow and choppy, and everything more cramped and enclosed; even the sky seems farther away nowadays, and there’s a great peace where once there was pandemonium of smoke and gunfire and rending timber and bloody water.

They were waiting for us when we swept round the bend in line abreast. Phlegethon and the rocket-praus leading, with our spy-boats lurking under the counters waiting to strike. Although it was broad dawn you couldn’t see the water at all; there was a blanket of mist a yard deep on its surface, cutting off not only sight but sound, so that even the Phlegethon’s wheel gave only a muffled thump as it hit the water, and the splash of the sweeps was a dull, continuous churning as we ploughed the fog.

There was a huge log-boom just visible above the mist fifty yards ahead, and beyond it a sight to freeze your blood—from bank to bank, a line of great war-praus, swarming with armed men, pennants hanging from their masts, skull-fringes bobbing, and as we came into view, a hideous yell going up from every deck, the war-gongs booming, and that devil’s horde shaking their fists and brandishing their weapons. It was taken up from the manned stockades on the right bank, and the wooden forts behind—and then the fort guns and the praus’ bow-chasers belched smoke, and the air was thick with screaming shot, whining overhead, driving up jets of water from the misty surface or crashing home into the timbers of our craft. The rocket-praus fired back, and in a moment the still air was criss-crossed with the smoky vapour trails, and the pirate battle-line shuddered under the pounding of the Congreves; shattering explosions on their decks, bursts of flame and smoke, men diving from their upper works, and then their cannon roaring back again, turning the narrow river into an inferno of noise and destruction.

“Spy-boats away!” bawls Brooke from the Phlegethon’s rail, and out from under the counters raced half a dozen of Paitingi’s shells, darting in towards the boom, only the rowers visible above the mist, so that each crew was just a line of heads and shoulders cleaving through that woolly blanket. Just beyond the boom the foggy water was thick with enemy canoes, their musketeers firing raggedly at our spy-boats. I saw heads vanish here and there as the shots took effect, but the spy-boats forged on, and now the pirates were closing on the boom itself, scrambling on to the huge logs, swords and parangs in hand, to deny our men a foot-hold. And above both sides the great gun duel continued, between our praus and theirs, in one continuous hellish din of explosion and crashing timber, punctuated by screams of wounded men and bellowed commands.

You couldn’t hear yourself think, but at such times it’s best not to, anyway. I was at Brooke’s elbow, straining every nerve to keep his body between mine and the enemy’s fire without being too obvious about it. Now he was directing our musketeers’ fire from the Phlegethon’s bow, to cover our spy-boatmen, who were fighting furiously to drive the pirates from the boom so that the great binding-ropes could be cut and the boom broken to give our vessels passage; I flung myself down, yelling nonsense, between two of our riflemen, seizing a piece myself and making great play at loading it. Brooke, on his feet, was walking from man to man, pointing out targets.

“That one in the yellow scarf—lively, now! Got him! The big fellow with the spear—the Malay beyond Paitingi—there, now, the fat one in the stern of yon canoe. Blaze away, boys! They’re failing—go on, Stuart, get the axes going on those cables! Come on, Flashman, off we go!”

He slapped me on the shoulder—just when I’d got myself nice and snug behind the sandbags, too—and perforce I had to tumble after him over the Phlegethon’s side into the Jolly Bachelor, which was bobbing alongside, packed with Dido’s men. I heard a shot clang on the Phlegethon’s plates just above my head as I went sprawling into the sloop, and then hands were hauling me upright, and a bearded tar was grinning and yelling: “’Ere we go, sir! Twice round the light’ouse for a penny!” I plunged after Brooke, stumbling over the cursing, cheering men who squatted on the deck, and fetched up beside him near the bow-chaser, where he was trying to make himself heard above the din, and pointing ahead.

And off he goes kicking and screaming into hell.

quote:

We were driving in towards the boom, under a canopy of rocket-smoke, and now the gunfire was dispersing the mist, and you could see the oily water, already littered with broken timbers, and even a body here and there, rolling limp. On the boom it was a hand-to-hand mêlée between the pirate canoes and our spy-boatmen, a slippering, slashing dog-fight of glittering parangs and thrusting spears, with crashing musketry at point-blank range over the logs. I saw Paitingi, erect on the boom, laying about him with a broken oar; Stuart, holding off a naked pirate with his cutlass, shielding two Chinese who were swinging their axes at the great rattan cables securing the boom. Even as I watched, the cables parted, and the logs rolled, sending friend and foe headlong into the water; the Jolly Bachelor gave a great yell of triumph, and we were heading for the gap, into the smoke, while from our bow a blue light went up to signal the praus.

There was a frantic five minutes while we backed water in the space between the broken sides of the boom, Brooke and the bow-chaser crew spraying grape ahead of us, and the rest of us banging away at anything that looked like a hostile shape, either on the boom itself or in the canoes beyond. I used my Colt sparingly, crouched down by the bulwark, and keeping as well snuggled into the mob of tars as possible; once, when a canoe came surging out of the smoke, with a great yellow devil in a quilted tunic and spiked helmet in the prow, brandishing a barbed lance. I took a steady sight and missed him twice, but my third shot got him clean amidships as he was preparing to leap for our rail, and he tumbled into the water.

“Bravo. Flashman!” cries Brooke. “Here, come up beside me!” And there I was again, red in the face with panic, stumbling up beside him as he leaned over the side, helping to haul Stuart out of the water—he’d swum from the broken boom, and was gasping on the deck, sodden wet, with a trickle of blood running from his left sleeve.

“Steady all!” roars Brooke. “Ready, oarsmen! Every musket primed? Right, hold on, there! Wait for the praus!”

Beyond the tangle of wreckage and foundering canoes, beyond the struggling swimmers and floating bodies, the two ends of the boom were now a good fifty yards apart, drifting slowly behind us on the current. The spy-boats had done their work, and our praus were moving ahead under their sweeps, coming up into line, half a dozen on either side, while the rocket-praus, farther back, were still cannonading away at the pirate line, perhaps two cables’ lengths ahead. Three or four of them were burning furiously, and a great reek of black smoke was surging down river towards us, but their line was still solid, and their bow guns fired steadily, sending up clouds of water round our praus and battering their upper works. Between them and us their canoes were in retreat, scurrying for the safety of the larger craft; Brooke nodded with satisfaction.

“So far, so good!” cries he, and standing up in the bows, he waved his hat. “Now then, you fellows, put your backs into it! Two blue lights, there—signal the advance! Cutlasses and small arms, everyone—tally-ho!”

The blue-jackets yelled and stamped, and as the blue lights went up the cheering spread along our line, and on either side the praus drove forward, bow-chasers blazing away, musketeers firing from the platforms, the crews crowding forward to the bows. As our line steadied the gunfire rose to a new crescendo; we were crouching down as the shot whined above us, and suddenly there was an appalling smash, a chorus of shrieks, and I found myself sodden with blood, staring in horror at two legs and half a body thrashing feebly on the deck in front of me, where an instant before a seaman had been ramming shot into the bow-chaser. I sat down heavily, pawing at the disgusting mess, and then Brooke had me on my feet again, yelling to know if I was all right, and I was yelling back that the corn on my big toe was giving me hell—God knows why one says these things, but he gave a wild laugh and pushed me forward to the bow rail. I crouched down, shuddering and ready to vomit, helpless with fear—but who would have recognised it then?


Suddenly the cannonading died, and for a few seconds there was a silence in which you could hear the water chuckling under the Jolly Bachelor’s forefoot as she went gliding forward. Then the musketry crashed out again, as our sharpshooters on the praus poured their fire into the pirate line, and the pirates gave us back volley for volley. Thank God the Jolly Bachelor was too low and too close now for them to get at us with cannon, but as we drove in towards them the water either side was boiling with their small shot, and behind me there were cries and oaths of men hit; our whole line was charging across the water, praus on the flanks. Jolly Bachelor in the centre, towards the pirate vessels; they were barely fifty yards off, and I could only stare in horror at the nearest one, dead ahead, the platform which jutted out from her rails crowded with savage howling faces, brandished steel, and smoking barrels—“They’ll shoot us to pieces! We’ll founder—Jesus loves me!” someone was shouting, but nobody heard me in that fearful din. A seaman at my elbow screamed and stood up, tearing at a sumpitan dart in his arm; as I dived for the cover of the rail another stood quivering in a cable a foot from my face; Brooke leaned over, grinning, snapped it off, tossed it away, and then did an unbelievable thing. I didn’t credit it then, and scarcely do now, but it’s a fact.

He stood up, full height in the bows, one foot on the rail, threw away his straw hat, and folded his arms, staring straight ahead at that yelling, grimacing Death that was launching shot, steel, and poisoned arrows at us in clouds. He was smiling serenely, and seemed to be saying something. “Get down, you mad bugger!” I shouted, but he never even heard, and then I realised that he wasn’t speaking—he was singing. Above the crash of musketry, the whistle and thump of those horrid darts, the screams and the yells, you could hear it:

“Come, cheer up, my lads,

’Tis to glory we steer,

To add something new

To this wonderful year—”

He was turning now, one hand on a stay for balance, thumping the time with his other fist, his face alight with laughter, roaring to us to sing—and from the mob behind it came thundering out:

“Heart of oak are our ships,

Jolly tars are our men,

We always are ready,

Steady, boys, steady,

We’ll fight and we’ll conquer again and again!”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NXFCDgyanA

My favourite line is:

"To honour we call you, not press you like slaves,
For who are so free as the sons of the waves?"

Hilarious.

quote:

The Jolly Bachelor shuddered in the water as we scraped under the platform of the pirate prau, and then shrieking, slashing figures were dropping among us; I went sprawling on the deck, with someone treading on my head, and came up to find myself staring into a contorted, screaming yellow face; I had an instant’s glimpse of a jade earring carved like a half-moon, and a scarlet turban, and then he had gone over the side with a cutlass jammed to the hilt in his stomach; I fired at him as he fell, slipped in the blood on the deck, and finished up in the scuppers, glaring about me in panic. The deck was in turmoil, resolving itself into knots of blue-jackets, each killing a struggling pirate in their midst and heaving the bodies overside; the prau we had scraped was behind us now, and Brooke was yelling:

“Steady, oarsmen! Pull with a will! There’s our quarry, you chaps! Straight ahead!”

He was pointing to the right bank, where the stockade, hit by rocket fire, was collapsed in smouldering ruin; beyond it lay one of the forts, its stockade blazing fiercely, with figures scattering away, and a gallant few trying to douse the flames. Behind us was an unbelievable carnage; our praus and the pirates’ locked together in a bloody hand-to-hand struggle, and through the gaps our longboats surging in the wake of the Jolly Bachelor, loaded with Malay swordsmen and Dyaks. The water was littered with smoking wreckage and struggling forms; men were falling from the platforms, and our boats were picking them up when they were friends, or butchering them in the bloody current if they were pirates. Smoke from the burning praus was swirling in a great pall above the infernal scene; I remembered that line about “a death-shade round the ships”—and then someone was shaking my arm, and Brooke was shouting at me, pointing ahead to the nearing shore and the smoking breach in the stockade.

“Take that fort!” he was yelling. “Lead the blue-jackets! Charge in, d’ye hear, no covering, no halting! Just tear in with the cutlass—watch out for women and kids, and prisoners! Chase ’em, Flashy! Good luck to you!”

I inquired tactfully if he was bloody mad, but he was ten yards away by then, plunging through the shallows as our boat scraped into the shelving bank; he scrambled up the shore, waving to the other longboats to close on him; they were turning at his signal—and there was I, revolver in shaking fist, staring horrified over the bows at the charred ruins of the stockade, and beyond it, a good hundred yards of hard-beaten earth, already littered with cannon casualties, and beyond that again, the blazing barrier of the fort’s outer wall. Christ knew how many slashing fiends were waiting in there, ready to blast us with musketry and then rip us up at close quarters—if we ever got that far. I looked round at the Jolly Bachelor, crammed with yelling sailors, straw hats, bearded faces, white smocks, glaring eyes, cutlasses at the ready, waiting for the word. And the word, no doubt about it, was with old Flash.

This chapter is basically one long action scenes with fairly minimal dialogue. Fraser seems to be challenging himself, and we'll see if it keeps working... next time!

* # ? Sep 16, 2021 12:29
  • Quote
Arbite
Nov 4, 2009





 Content warning: The third set of quotations contains rape.

quote:

Well, whatever you may say of me, I know my duty, and if there was one thing Afghanistan had taught me, it was the art of leadership. In a trice I had seized a cutlass, thrust it aloft, and turned to the maddened crew behind me. “Ha, ha, you fellows!” I bellowed. “Here we go, then! Who’ll be first after me into yonder fort?” I sprang to the bank, waved my cutlass again, and bawled. “Follow me!”

They came tumbling out of the boat on my heels, yelling and cheering, brandishing their weapons, and as I stood shouting, “On! On! Rule. Britannia!” they went pouring up the shore, scattering the embers of the stockade. I advanced with them, of course, pausing only to encourage those in the rear with manly cries, until I reckoned there were about a score in front of me; then I lit out in pursuit of the vanguard, not leading from behind, exactly—more from the middle, really, which is the safest place to be unless you’re up against civilised artillery.

We charged across the open space, howling like hounds; as we ran, I saw that on our right flank Brooke was directing the Malay swordsmen towards another fort; they were drawing those dreadful kampilans with the hair-tufts on their hilts, and behind them came a second wave from the boats, of half-naked Iban, carrying their sumpitan spears and screeching “Dyak! Dyak!” as they ran. But none of ’em matched the speed and fury of my tars, who were now almost up to the blazing fort stockade; just as they reached it the whole thing, by great good luck, fell inwards with a great whooshing of sparks and smoke, and as the foremost leaped through the burning rubbish I was able to see how wise I’d been in not leading the charge myself—there, in a ragged double line, was a troop of pirate musketeers presenting their pieces. Out crashed their volley, knocking over one or two of our first fellows, and then the rest were into them, cutlasses swinging, with old Flash arriving full of noble noise at the point where our chaps were thickest.

It seemed to me that I could employ my best efforts picking off the enemy with my Colt, and this gave me the opportunity to watch something which is worth going a long way to see, provided you can find a safe vantage—the terrible cut-and-thrust, shoulder to shoulder, of British blue-jackets in a body. I dare say the Navy has been teaching it since Blake’s day, and Mr Gilbert, who never dreamed what it was like, makes great fun of it nowadays, but I’ve seen it—and I know now why we’ve been ruling the oceans for centuries. There must have been a hundred pirates to our first line of twenty, but the tars just charged them in a solid wedge, cutlasses raised for the backhand cut—stamp and slash, then thrust, stamp and slash, then thrust, stamp-slash-thrust, and that pirate line melted into a fallen tangle of gashed faces and shoulders, through which the sailors ploughed roaring. Those pirates who still stood, turned tail and fairly pelted for the fort gates, with our chaps chasing and d-ning ’em for cowardly swabs—made me quite proud to be British, I can tell you.

I was fairly close up with the front rank, by now, bellowing the odds and taking a juicy swipe at any wounded who happened to be looking t’other way. The defenders had obviously hoped their musketeers would hold us beyond the gate, but we were in before they knew it. There was a party of pirates trying to swing a great gun round to blast us at the entrance; one of ’em was snatching at a linstock, but before he could touch it off there were half a dozen thrown sheath-knives in his body, and he sprawled over the gun while the others turned and fled. We were in, and all that remained was to ferret out every pirate for the place to be ours.



quote:

This presented no difficulty, since there weren’t any—for the simple reason that the cunning bastards had all sneaked out the back way, and were even now scurrying round to take us in the rear at the gate. I didn’t know this, of course, at the time; I was too busy despatching armed parties under petty officers to overrun the interior, which was like no fort I’d ever seen. In fact, it was Sharif Sahib’s personal bamboo palace and head-quarters, a great labyrinth of houses, some of ’em even three storeys high, with outside staircases, connecting walkways, verandahs, and screened passages everywhere. We had just begun to ransack and loot, and had discovered the Sharif’s private wardrobe—an astonishing collection which included such varying garments as cloth-of-gold turbans, jewelled tiaras, toppers, and morning dress—when all hell broke out from the direction of the main gate, and there was a general move in that direction. General, but not particular—while the loyal tars surged off in search of further blood, I was skipping nimbly out of Sharif Sahib’s wardrobe in the opposite direction. I didn’t know where it would lead, but it was at least away from the firing—I’d seen enough gore and horror for one day, and I sped quickly across a bamboo bridge into the adjoining house, which appeared to be deserted. There was a long passage, with doors on one side, and I was hesitating over which would be the safest bolt-hole, when one of them shot open and out rushed the biggest man I’ve ever seen in my life.

He was at least seven feet tall, and as hideous as he was big—a great yellow, globular face set on massive shoulders, with a tasselled cap on top, staring pop-eyes, and a great sword clutched in his pudgy hands. He screamed at the sight of me, backing down the passage in a strange, waddling run, and then he swung his sword back over his head, squealing like a steam-whistle, overbalanced, and vanished with a rending crash down a steep flight of stairs. By the sound of it he must have carried away two floors with him, but I wasn’t waiting about for any more like him—I leaped through the nearest door, and stopped dead in my tracks, unable to believe my eyes. I was in a great room full of women.

I closed my eyes, and opened them, wondering if I was dreaming, or having hallucinations after my trying day. It was still there, like something out of Burton’s “Arabian Nights”—the illustrated one that you can only get on the Continent. Silken hangings, couches, carpets, cushions, a stink of perfume coming at you in waves—and the ladies, a round score of them—beautifully round. I realised, and evidently proud of it, for there wasn’t clothing enough among the lot of ’em to cover one body respectably. A few sarongs, wisps of silk, bangles, satin trousers, a turban or two, but not worth a drat when it came to concealing those splendid limbs, shapely hips, plump buttocks, and pouting tits. I could only gape, disbelieving, and tear my eyes from the bodies to the faces—every shade from coffee and beige to honey and white, and all beautiful; red lips parted and trembling, dark, kohl-fringed eyes wide with terror.

Oh Christ. Reminder, here's where the warned about content starts.

quote:

I closed my eyes, and opened them, wondering if I was dreaming, or having hallucinations after my trying day. It was still there, like something out of Burton’s “Arabian Nights”—the illustrated one that you can only get on the Continent. Silken hangings, couches, carpets, cushions, a stink of perfume coming at you in waves—and the ladies, a round score of them—beautifully round. I realised, and evidently proud of it, for there wasn’t clothing enough among the lot of ’em to cover one body respectably. A few sarongs, wisps of silk, bangles, satin trousers, a turban or two, but not worth a drat when it came to concealing those splendid limbs, shapely hips, plump buttocks, and pouting tits. I could only gape, disbelieving, and tear my eyes from the bodies to the faces—every shade from coffee and beige to honey and white, and all beautiful; red lips parted and trembling, dark, kohl-fringed eyes wide with terror.

I wondered for a moment if I’d been killed in the fight and transported to some delightful paradise; but celestial or earthly, I couldn’t pass up a chance like this, and the thought must have shown in my expression, for with one accord the whole gorgeous assembly screamed in unison, and turned to flee—mind, I don’t blame ’em, for Flashy leering in your doorway, covered in blood and grime, pistol in one hand and bloody cutlass in t’other, ain’t quite the vicar dropping in to tea. They ran pell-mell, falling over cushions, blundering into each other, scrambling for the other doors in the room, and it seemed only common sense to grab for the nearest, a voluptuous little thing whose entire wardrobe was a necklace and gauzy trousers; it may have been my hand on her ankle, or her top-heavy bosom, that made her overbalance; either way, she fell through a curtained alcove and slithered headlong down a narrow stairway, scrambling and shrieking with Flashy in hot pursuit. She fetched up against a screen wall at the bottom, I seized her joyfully—and in that moment I was recalled to a sense of my true position by a sound that drove all carnal thoughts from my mind: a deafening volley of musketry crashed in the street just outside the flimsy house-wall, there was a clash of steel, a jabber of native voices—pirates, for certain—and in the distance an English voice bawling orders to take cover.

It seemed a capital notion; I pinned the wriggling wench to the floor, brandished my pistol, and mouthed at her to be silent. She lay shuddering in my grip, her face working with terror—lovely little face it was, part Ch*nk-Indian-Malay, probably, great eyes filled with tears, short nose, plump little lips—and, by George, she was handsomely built, too; more by instinct than a-purpose, I found myself taking an appraising fondle, and she trembled under my hand, but had sense enough to keep her mouth shut.

I listened fearfully; the pirates were moving just beyond our screen wall, and then suddenly they were blazing away again, yelling and cursing or crying out in agony, feet running and shots whining horribly near—I clapped a hand over her mouth and gripped her close, terrified that she would scream and bring some bestial savage cleaving through the flimsy wall to fillet me; we lay there, in the stuffy dimness of the stair-foot, with the noise of battle pounding by not six feet away, and once, during a second’s lull in the tumult, I heard the sounds of squealing and wailing somewhere overhead—the other young ladies of the Patusan finishing school waiting to be ravished and murdered, presumably. I found I was hissing hysterically in her ear; “Quiet, quiet, quiet, for God’s sake!” and to my astonishment she was whimpering tearfully back. “Amiga sua, amiga sua!” stroking my sweating face with her hand, a look of terrified entreaty in her eyes—she was even trying to smile, too, a pathetic little grimace, straining to bring her slobbering lips up to mine, making little moaning noises.

Well, I’ve seen women in the grip of terror often enough, but I couldn’t account for this passionate frenzy—until I realised that my shuddering was of a curiously rhythmic nature, that I had a quivering tit in one hand and a plump thigh in the other, that our nether garments seemed to have come adrift somehow, and that my innards were convulsing with another sensation besides fear. I was so startled I nearly broke stride—I’d never have believed that I could gallop a female without realising I was doing it, yet here we were, thundering away like King Hal on honeymoon, after all I’d been through that day, and with battle, murder, and sudden death raging around us. It just shows how your better instinct will prevail in a crisis—some fall to prayer, others cry upon Queen and Country, but here’s one, I’m proud to say, who instinctively fornicated in the jaws of death, gibbering with fright and reckless lust, but giving of his best, for when you realise it may be your last ride you make the most of it. And, d’you know, it may well be true that perfect love casteth out fear, as Dr Arnold used to say; leastways. I doubt if I can ever have been in finer tupping trim, for in the last ecstatic moment my partner fainted clean away, and you can’t do better by ’em than that.

They were still going at it hammer and tongs outside, but after a while the action seemed to move along, and when presently I heard in the distance the unmistakable sound of a British cheer, I judged it was safe to venture forth again. My wench had come to, and was lying limp and blubbering, too scared to stir; I had to lay the flat of my sword across her rump to drive her up the stairs, and then, after a cautious prowl, I sallied out.

Well. Fraser certainly miscounted when he said Flashman had raped once. Let's get the hell out of here.

quote:

It was all over by then. My blue-jackets, who didn’t seem to have missed me, had driven off the pirate attack, and were busy emptying the fort of its valuables before it was burned, for Brooke was determined to destroy the pirate nests utterly. I told ’em that during the fighting I’d heard the cries of women in one of the buildings, and that the poor creatures must be sought out and treated with all consideration—I was very stern about that, but when they went to look it appeared that the whole gaggle had decamped into the jungle; there wasn’t a living soul left in the place, so I went off to find Brooke and report.

Outside the fort it was a nightmare. The open space down to the river was littered with enemy corpses—most of them headless, for the victorious Dyaks had been busy at their ghastly work of collecting trophies, and the river itself was just a mess of smoking wreckage. The pirate praus had either been burned in the battle or had fled upriver; fewer than a quarter of them had escaped, scores of their crews had been killed or driven into the jungle, and great numbers of wounded and prisoners had been herded into one of the captured forts. All five of them had been taken, and two of them were already alight; when night came down on Patusan it was still as bright as day from the orange glare of the burning buildings, the heat was so intense that for a time we had to retire to our boats, but all through the night the work had to go on—prisoners to be guarded and fed, our own wounded to be cared for, the loot of the forts assessed and shipped, our vessels repaired, stores replenished, fresh weapons and ammunition issued, dead counted, and the whole sickening confusion restored to some sort of order.

I’ve seen the aftermath of battle fifty times if I’ve seen it once, and it’s h-ll, but through all the foulness and exhaustion there’s always one cheery thought—I’m here. Sick and sore and weary, perhaps, but at least alive and sound with a place to lie down—and I’d had a good if somewhat alarming rattle into the bargain. The one snag was that there’d been no sign of the Sulu Queen, so the whole filthy business would have to be gone through again, which was not to be contemplated.

I said as much to Brooke, in the faint hope that I might get him to give up—of course, I played it full of manly anguish, torn between love of Elspeth and concern at what her rescue had already cost. “T’ain’t right, raja,” says I, looking piously constipated. “I can’t ask this kind of…of sacrifice from you and your people. God knows how many lives will be lost—how many noble fellows…no, it won’t do. She’s my wife, and—well, it’s up to me, don’t you see…”

It was dreadful humbug, hinting I’d take on the job single-handed, in some unspecified fashion—given the chance I’d have legged it for Singapore that instant, sent out reward notices, and sat back out of harm’s way. From which you may gather that a busy day among the Borneo pirates had quite dissipated the conscientious lunacy which had temporarily come over me in the stokehold the previous night. But I was wasting my time, of course; he just gripped my hand with tears in his eyes and cried:

“Do you truly think there’s a man of us who would fail you now? We’ll win her back at any cost! Besides,” and he gritted his teeth, “there are these pirate rascals to stamp out still—we’ve won the decisive battle, thanks to valour such as yours, but we must give ’em the coup de grâce! So you see. I’d be bound to go on, even if your loved one were not in their foul hands.” He gripped my shoulder. “You’re a white man, Flashman—and I know you’d go on alone if you had to; well, you can count on J.B. to blazes and beyond, so there!” That was what I’d been afraid of.

And if you aren't gone yet there ain't much in these books that can drive you away.

Also, despite Harry and Elspeth being very fictional the series of battles being described on this campaign did go down at this time in history helped with the expansion of Sarawak.

* # ? Sep 19, 2021 04:35
  • Quote
How are u
May 19, 2005

by Azathoth
Visceral, in all the ways. Fraser is a hell of a writer.

* # ? Sep 19, 2021 04:59
  • Quote
Xander77
Apr 6, 2009

Fuck it then. For another pit sandwich and some 'tater salad, I'll post a few more.



 That's the second or third time Fraser remarks about the exceptional hand-to-hand skills of the common British soldier \ sailor, neither of which were ever noted as particularly capable melee fighters in the real world. He also goes on about Tommy's incredible sharpshooting proficiency in Quartered Safe Out Here.

* # ? Sep 19, 2021 09:14
  • Quote
Trin Tragula
Apr 22, 2005

 Expecting an old soldier who served when he did to not wholeheartedly embrace and perpetrate the myth of Tommy Atkins single-handedly winning the war, hammering away at the mad minute, killing three enemies with every shot, with a Woodbine out of the corner of his mouth and a dixie of tea at his elbow (etc), is kind of like expecting him to believe in the Fairy Tinkerbell.

* # ? Sep 19, 2021 16:55
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Cobalt-60
Oct 11, 2016

by Azathoth

Arbite posted:

Content warning: The third set of quotations contains rape.

Also, despite Harry and Elspeth being very fictional the series of battles being described on this campaign did go down at this time in history helped with the expansion of Sarawak.



I always wondered where that chunk of Malaysia came from.

"Instinctively fornicated in the jaws of death" just cracks me up, even if he is a scumbag (again). [insert "la petit mort" joke here]

* # ? Sep 20, 2021 01:29
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Genghis Cohen
Jun 29, 2013
 I have read (and re-read) these books many times since I was an adolescent. One thing that strikes me on your read-through here is that Fraser doesn't specifically note this 'instinctive fornication' as a rape, and it really doesn't come across that Flashman, at least, thinks it's any huge deal, presuming his victim has fainted from ecstasy rather than terror. I'd like to think there's some tongue-in-cheek intent from the author there, but actually, reflecting, when I read this for the first time (I must have been 13 or 14?) I probably didn't read it as a rape either. Quite unlike how his behaviour in Afghanistan is represented. It's just actually quite chilling that Flashman can reflect on this as a bit of amorous fun - he's a complete sociopath. From this woman's presumable POV, a bloodstained, armed maniac burst in, caught her while she attempted to flee, then held a gun on her and raped her, while she tried to act compliant to lessen the chance of being murdered. To Flashman (and arguably to readers like young me) it doesn't even register, as a 'native' woman in a harem (and as a secondary extra in an adventure novel) she doesn't rate any such perspective.

Xander77 posted:

That's the second or third time Fraser remarks about the exceptional hand-to-hand skills of the common British soldier \ sailor, neither of which were ever noted as particularly capable melee fighters in the real world. He also goes on about Tommy's incredible sharpshooting proficiency in Quartered Safe Out Here.

He does romanticise British prowess, but I think if you challenged him with it he'd have brought out any number of examples where outnumbered British soldiers or seaman did triumph against long odds. In my opinion, this has bugger all to do with native tendencies and very little with cultural martial prowess. Basically, a bunch of fighters who are professionals, paid, motivated and led, with a long tradition and commensurate expectation of victory, are usually going to outdo ad-hoc forces of amateurs thrown up against them. The British seamen at Brooke's historical battles probably were some of his best and most reliable troops, but it was because of the organisation behind them and how it prepared them for military operations, not because they were a bunch of rough-and-hearty bull-necked true blue British tars with hearts of oak.

* # ? Sep 20, 2021 19:50
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Arbite
Nov 4, 2009

quote:

We were another two days at Patusan, waiting for news from Brooke’s spies and keeping to windward of the Dyaks’ funeral pyres on the river-bank, before word came that the Sulu Queen had been sighted twenty miles farther upstream, with a force of enemy praus, but when we cruised up there on the 10th the birds had flown to Sharif Muller’s fort on the Undup river, so for two more days we must toil after them, plagued by boiling heat and mosquitoes, the stream running stronger all the time and our pace reduced to a struggling crawl. The Phlegethon had to be left behind because of the current and snags, to which the pirates had added traps of tree-trunks and sunken rattan nets to trammel our sweeps; every few minutes there would have to be a halt while we cut our way loose, hacking at the creeper ropes, and then hauling on, drenched with sweat and oily water, panting for breath, eyes forever turning to that steaming olive wall that hemmed us in either side, waiting for the whistle of a sumpitan dart that every now and then would come winging out of the jungle to strike a paddler or quiver in the gunwales. Beith, Keppel’s surgeon, was up and down the fleet constantly, digging the beastly things out of limbs and cauterising wounds; fortunately they were seldom fatal, but I reckoned we were suffering a casualty every half-hour.

It wouldn’t have been too bad if I’d still had the Phlegethon’s iron sheets to skulk behind, but I had been assigned to Paitingi’s spy-boat, which was as often as not in the lead; only at night did I go back aboard the Jolly Bachelor with Brooke, and that wasn’t much comfort—huddled up for sleep at the foot of her ladder after the tintacks had been scattered on her deck against night attack, sweating in the cramped dark, filthy and unkempt, listening to the screaming noise of the jungle and the occasional distant thob of a war-gong—doom, doom, doom, out of the misty dark.

“Drum away, Muller,” Brooke would say, “we’ll be playing you a livelier tune presently, just you wait. We’ll see some fun then—eh, Flashy?”

By his lights. I suppose that what happened on the third day along the Undup was fun—a dawn attack on Muller’s fort, which was a great stockaded bamboo castle on a steep hill. The rocket-praus pounded it, and the remnants of the pirate fleet in their anchorage, and then Dido’s men and the Dyaks swarmed ashore, the latter war-dancing on the landing-ground before the assault, leaping, shaking their sumpitans and yelling “Dyak!” (“that’s aye their way,” says Paitingi to me as we watched from the spy-boat, “they’d sooner yelp than fight”—which I thought pretty hard). Poor Charlie Wade was killed storming the fort; I heard later he’d been shot while carrying a Malay child to shelter, which shows what Christian charity gets you.

Sure he was. Also Fraser seems to have decided that this section of the book has gone on long enough and is hurrying towards the next part.

quote:

storming the fort; I heard later he’d been shot while carrying a Malay child to shelter, which shows what Christian charity gets you.

The only part I took in the fight, though, was when a prau broke free from the pirate anchorage and made off upriver, sweeps going like blazes and war-gong thundering. Paitingi danced up and down, roaring in Scotch and Arabic that he could see Muller’s personal banner on her, so our spy set off in pursuit. The prau foundered, burning from rocket-fire, but Muller, a persevering big villain in quilted armour and black turban, took to a sampan; we overhauled it, banging away, and I was having the horrors at the thought of boarding when the sensible chap dived overboard with his gang at his heels and swam for it. We lost him near the jungle-edge, and Paitingi tore his beard, cussing as only an Arab can.

“Come back and fight, ye son-of-a-Malay-bitch!” cries he, shaking his fist. “Istagfurallah! Is it thus that pirates prove their courage? Aye, run to the jungle, ye Port Said pimp, you! By the Seven Heroes, I shall give thy head to my Lingas yet, thou uncircumcised carrion! Ach! Burn his grandmither—he’s awa’ wi’ it, so he is!”

By this time the fort was taken, and we left it burning, and the dead unburied, for it had been discovered from a prisoner that our principal quarry, Suleiman Usman, with the Sulu Queen—and presumably my errant wife—had taken refuge up the Skrang river with a force of praus. So it was back down the Undup again, a good deal faster than we had come up, to the mainstream, where Phlegethon was guarding the junction.

“You can’t run much farther now. Usman, my son,” says Brooke. “Skrang’s navigable for a few miles at most; if he takes Sulu Queen any distance up he’ll ground her. He’s bound to stand and fight—why, he’s still got more men and keels than we have, and while we’ve been chasing Muller he’s had time to put ’em in order. He must know we’re pretty used up and thinned out, too.”

That was no lie, either. The faces round the table in Phlegethon’s tiny ward-room were puffy and hollow-eyed with fatigue; Keppel, the spruce naval officer of a week ago, looked like a scarecrow with his unshaven cheeks and matted hair, his uniform coat cut and torn and the epaulette burned away; Charlie Johnson, with his arm in a blood-stained sling, was dozing and waking like a clockwork doll; even Stuart, normally the liveliest of fellows, was sitting tuckered out, with his head in his hands, his half-cleaned revolver on the table before him. (I can see it now, with the little brass ram-rod sticking out of the barrel, and a big black moth perched on the foresight, rubbing its feelers.) Only Brooke was still as offensively chipper as ever, clean-shaven and alert, for all that his eyes looked like streaky bacon; he glanced round at us, and I could guess that he was thinking: this pack can’t follow much longer.

I suppose the book trying to show you'd need to be just Brooke's kind of mad in order to carve out a kingdom like this the way he did. Just listen to him:

quote:

“However,” says he, grinning slyly, “we ain’t as used up as all that, are we? I reckon there’s three days’ energy left in every man here—and four in me. I tell you what…” he squared his elbows on the table “…I’m going to give a dinner-party tomorrow night—full dress for everyone, of course—on the eve of what is going to be our last fight against these rascals—”

“Bismillah! I’d like tae believe that,” says Paitingi.

“Well, our last on this expedition, anyway,” cries Brooke. “It’s bound to be—either we wipe them up or they finish us—but that ain’t going to happen, not after the drubbings we’ve given ’em already. I’ve got a dozen of champagne down below, and we’ll crack ’em to our crowning success, eh?”

“Wouldn’t it be better to keep ’em for afterwards?” says Keppel, but at this Stuart raised his head and shook it, smiling wearily.

“Might not all be here by then. This way, everyone’s sure of a share beforehand—that’s what you said the night before we went in against the Lingas in the old Royalist, ain’t it, J.B.? Remember—the nineteen of us, four years ago? ‘There’s no drinking after death.’ By Jove, though—there ain’t many of the nineteen left…”

“Plenty of new chums, though,” says Brooke quickly, “and they’re going to sing for their supper, just the way we did then, and have done ever since.” He shoved Charlie Johnson’s nodding head to and fro. “Wake up, Charlie! It’s singing night, if you want your dinner tomorrow! Come on, or I’ll shove a wet sponge down your back! Sing, laddie, sing! George has given you the lead!”

Johnson blinked and stammered, but Brooke gave tongue with “Here’s a health to the King, and a lasting peace”, thumping the table, and Charlie came in, croaking, on the lines

"So let us drink while we have breath

For there’s no drinking after death"

and carried on solo to the end, goggling like an owl, while Brooke beat the table and cried, good boy. Charlie, sick ’em, pup. The others looked embarrassed, but Brooke rounded on Keppel, badgering him to sing; Keppel didn’t want to, at first, and sat looking annoyed and sheepish, but Brooke worked away at him, full of high spirits, and what else was the chap to do? So he sang “Spanish Ladies”—he sang well, I’m bound to say, in a rolling bass—and by this lime even the tiredest round the table were grinning and joining in the chorus, with Brooke encouraging and keeping time, and watching us like a hawk. He sang “The Arethusa” himself, and even coaxed Paitingi, who gave us a psalm, at which Charlie giggled hysterically, but Keppel joined in like thunder, and then Brooke glanced at me, nodding quietly, so I found myself giving ’em “Drink, Puppy, Drink”, and they stamped and thumped to make the cabin shiver.

It was a shameful performance—so forced and false it was disgusting, this jolly lunatic putting heart into his men by making ’em sing, and everyone hating it. But they sang, you’ll notice, and me along with ’em, and at the finish Brooke jumps up and cries:

“Come, that’s none so bad! We’ll have a choir yet. Spy-boats will lead tomorrow—5 a.m. sharp, then Dido’s pinnace, the two cutters, gig. Jolly Bachelor, then the small boats. Dinner at seven, prompt. Good-night, gentlemen!”

And off he went, leaving us gawking at each other; then Keppel shook his head, smiling, and sighed, and we dispersed, feeling pretty foolish, I dare say. I found myself wondering why they tolerated Brooke and his schoolboy antics, which were patently pathetic; why did they humour him?—for that is what it was. It wasn’t fear, or love, or even respect; I suspect they felt it would somehow be mean to disappoint him, and so they fell in with every folly, whether it was charging a pirate prau in a jolly-boat or singing shanties when they ought to have been nursing their wounds or crawling away to sink into an exhausted sleep. Yes, they did humour him—God only knows why. Mind you, mad and dangerous as he was, I’m bound to say he was difficult to refuse, in anything.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdAif-z1hHQ

I showed you the moving map of Sarawak last time, Brunei went from offering a limited mandate to this Englishman to being utterly fenced as his successor continued his creep north. The book freely admits Brooke got a hell of a lot of help from local and distant sources but here he is driving it all forward when it should have collapsed through force of charisma and drat anyone and anything that tries to stop him. Small wonder he vexes Flashman so.

* # ? Sep 21, 2021 11:23
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Arbite
Nov 4, 2009

quote:

I managed it later that night, though, admittedly not to his face. I was snug under the Jolly Bachelor’s ladder when the pirates came sneaking silently out of the mist in sampans and tried to take us by surprise. They were on the deck and murdering our look-outs before we were any the wiser, and if it hadn’t been that the deck was littered with tacks to catch their bare feet, that would have been the end of the ship, and everyone aboard, including me. As it was, there was the deuce of a scrap in the dark, with Brooke yelling for everyone to pitch in—I burrowed closer into cover myself, clutching my pistol, until the hurroosh had died down, when I scuttled up quickly and blundered about, glaring and letting on that I’d been there all the time. I did yeoman work helping to heave dead pirates overside, and then we stood to until daylight, but they didn’t trouble us again.

Next day it began to rain like fury, and we set off up the Skrang into a perfect sheet of water which cut visibility almost to nothing and pitted the river like small-shot. All day we toiled slowly into the murk, with the river narrowing until it was a bare furlong wide, and devil an enemy did we see. I sat sodden in Paitingi’s spy-boat, reduced to the nadir of misery, baling constantly until my whole body cried out with one great ache; by dark I was dropping with fatigue—and then, when we anchored, drat my skin if we didn’t have to shave and wash and dig out clean duds for Brooke’s dinner-party on the Jolly Bachelor. Looking back. I can’t imagine why I put up with it—I don’t attempt to fathom the minds of the others; they all dressed in their best, soaking wet, and I couldn’t show unwilling, could I? We assembled in the Jolly Bachelor’s cabin, steaming and dripping, and there was the table laid for dinner, silver, glass, and all, with Brooke in his blue swallow-tail and brass buttons, welcoming us like a bloody governor-general, taking wine with Keppel, waving us to our seats, and frowning because the turtle soup was cold.

I don’t believe this is happening, thinks I; it’s all a terrible nightmare, and Stuart isn’t sitting opposite me in his black broadcloth with his string-cravat tied in a fancy bow, and this ain’t real champagne I’m drinking by the light of reeking slush-lamps, with everyone crowded round the board in the tiny cabin, and they’re not listening breathlessly while I tell ’em about getting Alfred Mynn leg-before at Lord’s. There aren’t any pirates, really, and we’re not miles up some stinking creek in Borneo, drinking the loyal toast with the thunder bellowing outside and the rain gushing down the companion, and Brooke clipping cigars and passing them round while the Malay steward puts the port on the table. I couldn’t bring myself to believe that all round us was a fleet of sampans and spy-boats, loaded with Dyaks and blue-jackets and other assorted savages, and that tomorrow we would be reliving the horror of Patusan all over again; it was all too wild and confused and unreal, and although I must have accounted for a bottle of warm champagne, and about a pint of port. I got up from that table as sober as I sat down.

It was real enough in the morning, though—the morning of that last dreadful day on the Skrang river. The weather had cleared like magic just before dawn, and the narrow waterway ahead was gleaming brown and oily in the sunlight between its olive walls of jungle. It was deathly hot, and for once the forest was comparatively silent, but there was an excitement through the fleet that you could almost feel beating in waves through the muggy air; it wasn’t only that Brooke had predicted that this would be the last battle—I believe there was a realisation too that if we didn’t reach conclusions with the pirates lurking somewhere ahead, our expedition would come to a halt through sheer exhaustion, and there would be nothing for it but to turn downriver again. It bred a kind of wild desperation in the others; Stuart was shivering with impatience as he dropped beside me into Paitingi’s spy-boat, drawing his pistol and shoving it back in his belt, then doing the same thing over again; even Paitingi, in the bow, was taut as a fiddle-string, snapping at the Lingas and twitching at his red beard. My own condition I leave you to guess.

Gibbering on the inside but having his twitches be misinterpreted would be mine.

quote:

Our boy hero, of course, was his usual jaunty self. He was perched in the Jolly Bachelor’s bows as our spy-boat shoved off, straw hat on head, issuing his orders and cracking jokes fit to sicken you.

“They’re there, old ’un,” cries he to Paitingi. “All right, I dare say you can’t smell ’em, but I can. We’ll fetch up with them by afternoon at latest, probably sooner. So keep a sharp lookout, and don’t get more than a pistol-shot ahead of the second spy, d’you hear?”

“Aye, aye,” says Paitingi. “I don’t like it. J.B. It’s gey quiet. Suppose they’ve taken to the side-creeks—scattered and hid?”

“Sulu Queen can’t hide,” calls Brooke. “She’s bound to hold to the mainstream, and that’s going to shoal on her before long. She’s the quarry, mind—take her, and the snake’s head is cut clean off. Here, have a mango.” He threw the fruit to Paitingi. “Never you mind the side-creeks; the instant you sight that steam-brig, up with a blue light and hold your station. We’ll do the rest.”

Paitingi muttered something about ambush in the narrow water, and Brooke laughed and told him to stop croaking. “Remember the first chap you ever fought against?” cries he. “Well, what’s a parcel of pirates compared to him? Off you go, old lad—and good luck.”

He waved as we shot away, the paddles skimming us into midstream and up to the first bend, with the other spies lining out in our wake and the Dido’s pinnace and Jolly Bachelor leading the heavier craft behind. I asked Stuart what Brooke had meant about the first chap Paitingi had fought, and he laughed.

“That was Napoleon. Didn’t you know? Paitingi was in the Turkish army at the Battle of the Pyramids—weren’t you, gaffer?”

Dammit, now I want to read a book on this guy.

quote:

“Aye,” growls Paitingi. “And got weel beat for my pains. But I tell ye. Stuart. I felt easier that day than I do this.” He fidgeted in the bow, leaning on the carronade to stare upriver under his hand. “There’s something no’ canny; I can feel it. Listen.”

We strained our ears above the swish of the paddles, but except for the cries of birds in the forest, and the hum of the insect clouds close inshore, there was nothing. The river was empty, and by the sound of it the surrounding jungle was, too.

“Don’t hear anything out o’ the way,” says Stuart.

“Precisely,” says Paitingi. “No war-gongs—yet we’ve heard them every day for this week past. What ails them?”

“Dunno,” says Stuart. “But ain’t that a good sign?”

“Ask me this evening,” says Paitingi. “I hope I’ll be able to tell ye then.”

His uneasiness infected me like the plague, for I knew he had as good a nose as any fighting-man I’d ever struck, and when such a one starts to twitch, look out. I had lively recollections of Sergeant Hudson sniffing trouble in the bleak emptiness of the Jallalabad road—by God, he’d been right, against all the signs, and here was Paitingi on the same tack, cocking his head, frowning, standing up from time to time to scan the impenetrable green, glancing at the sky, tugging his whiskers—it got on my nerves, and Stuart’s, too, yet there wasn’t sight nor smell of trouble as we glided up the silent river in the bright sunshine, slow mile after slow mile, through the brilliant bends and reaches, and always the stream brown and empty as far as we could see ahead. The air was empty and still; the sound of a mugger slipping with its heavy splash off a sandbank had us jumping up, reaching for our pistols; then a bird would screech on the other shore, and we would start round again, sweating cold in that steamy loneliness—I don’t know any place where you feel as naked and exposed as an empty jungle river, with that vast, hostile age-old forest all about you. Just like Lord’s, but no pavilion to run to.

Paitingi stood it for a couple of hours and then lost patience. He had been using his glass to rake the mouths of the little, overhung side-creeks that we passed every now and then, dim, silent tunnels into the wild; now he glowered back at the second spy-boat, a hundred yards in our wake, and snapped an order to the paddlers to increase their stroke. The spy surged ahead, trembling beneath us; Stuart looked back anxiously at the widening gap.

“J.B. said not more than a pistol-shot ahead,” says he, and Paitingi rounded on him.

“If J.B. has his way, we’ll spring the trap wi’ our whole fleet! Then where’ll he be? D’ye think he kens more about handling a spy-boat than I do?”

“But we’re to hold steady till we come up with the Sulu Queen—”

“Shaitan take the Sulu Queen! She’s lying up in one o’ these creeks, whatever J.B. likes tae think. They’re not ahead of us. I tell ye—they’re either side! Sit doon, dan ye!” he snaps at me. “Stuart! Pass the word—port paddles be ready to back water at my signal. Keep the stroke going! We’ll win him a half-mile of water to manœuvre in, if we’re lucky! Steady—and wait for my word!”

I couldn’t make anything of this, but it was plainly dreadful news. By what he said, we were inside the jaws of the trap already, and the woods full of hidden fiends waiting to pounce, and he was forging ahead to spring the ambush before the rest of our boats got well inside. I sat gagging with fear, staring at that silent wall of leaves, at the eddies swirling round the approaching bend, at Paitingi’s broad back as he crouched over the prow. The river had narrowed sharply in the last mile, to a bare hundred paces or so; the banks were so close I imagined I could see through the nearest trees, into the dark shadows beyond—was there something stirring there, could I hear some awful presence?—the spy-boat was fairly flying round the bend, and behind us the river was empty for a couple of furlongs, we were alone, far ahead—

“Now!” roars Paitingi, dropping to his knees and clutching the gunwales, and as the port paddlers backed water the spy-boat spun crazily on her heel, her bow rearing clear out of the water so that we had to cling like grim death to avoid being hurled out. For an awful instant she hung suspended at a fearful angle, with the water a good six feet beneath my left elbow, then she came smashing down as though she would plunge to the bottom, wallowed with the water washing over her sides—and we were round and driving downriver, with Paitingi yelling to us to bale for our lives.

The water was ankle deep as I scooped at it with my hat, dashing it over the side; the paddlers were gasping like leaky engines, the current helping to scud us along at a frightening pace—and then there was a yell from Paitingi, I raised my head to look, and saw a sight that froze me in my seat.

A hundred yards ahead, downriver, something was moving from the tangle of the bank—a raft, poling slowly out on the bosom of the stream, crowded with men. At the same moment there was a great rending, tearing noise from the jungle on the opposite bank; the forest seemed to be moving slowly outward, and then it detached itself into one huge tree, a mass of tangled green, falling ponderously with a mighty splash to block a third of the stream on our port bow. From the jungle either side came the sudden thunderous boom of war-gongs; behind the first raft another was setting out; there were small canoes sprouting like black fingers from the banks ahead, each loaded with savages—where a moment since the river had been silent and empty it was now vomiting a horde of pirate craft, baying their war-cries, their boats alive with steel and yelling, cruel faces, cutting us off, swarming towards us. There were others on the banks on our beams, archers and blow-pipemen; the whist-whist-whist of shafts came lancing towards us.

“There—ye see?” roars Paitingi. “Whaur’s your clever J.B. now, Stuart? Sulu Queen, says he! Aye, weel, he’s got clear water tae work in—small thanks to himsel’! These sons o’ Eblis looked to trap a fleet—they’ve got one wee spy-boat!” And he stood up, roaring with laughter and defiance. “Drive for the gap, steersman! On, on! Charge!”

There are moments in life which defy description—in my black moods they seem to have occurred about once a week, and I have difficulty distinguishing them. The last minutes at Balaclava, the moment when the Welsh broke at Little Hand Rock and the Zulus came bounding over our position, the breaching of Piper’s Fort gate, the neck-or-nothing race for Reno’s Bluff with the Sioux braves running among the shattered rabble of Custer’s Seventh—I’ve stretched my legs in all of those, knowing I was going to die, and being damned noisy at the prospect. But in Paitingi’s spy-boat running was impossible—so, depressingly, was surrender. I observed those flat, evil faces sweeping down on us behind their glittering lance-heads and kampilans, and decided they weren’t open to discussion; there was nothing for it but to sit and blaze away in panic—and then a red-hot pain shot through my left ribs, and I looked down bewildered to see a sumpitan shaft in my side. Yellow, it was, with a little black tuft of lint on its butt, and I pawed at it, whimpering, until Stuart reached over and wrenched it clear, to my considerable discomfort. I screamed, twisted, and went over the side.

Fortunately, we actually do see each of these listed struggles.

quote:

I dare say it was that that saved me, although I’m blessed if I know how. I took a glance at the official account of the action before I wrote this, and evidently the historian had a similar difficulty in believing that anyone survived our little water-party, for he states flatly that every man-jack of Paitingi’s crew was slaughtered. He notes that they had got too far ahead, were cut off by a sudden ambush of rafts and praus, and by the time Brooke’s fleet had come storming up belatedly to the rescue, Paitingi and his followers had all been killed—there’s a graphic account of twenty boats jammed together in a bloody mêlée, of thousands of pirates yelling on the bank, of the stream running crimson, with headless corpses, wreckage, and capsized craft drifting downstream—but never a word about poor old Flashy struggling half-foundered, dyeing the water with his precious gore, spluttering “Wait, you callous bastards, I’m sinking!” Quite hurtful, being ignored like that, although I was glad enough of it at the time, when I saw how things were shaping.

It was. I’ve since gathered, touch and go that Brooke’s whole fleet wasn’t wiped out; indeed, if it hadn’t been for Paitingi’s racing ahead, sacrificing his spy-boat like the gallant idiot he was, the pirates would have jumped the whole expedition together, but as it was, Brooke had time to dress his boats into line and charge in good order. It was a horrid near-run thing, though; Keppel confessed later that when he saw the fighting horde that was waiting for him, “for a moment I was at a loss what steps to take”—and there was one chap, treading water upstream with a hole in his belly and roaring for succour, who shared his sentiments exactly. I was viewing the action from t’other side, so to speak, but it looked just as confused and interesting to me as it did to Keppel. I was busy, of course, holding my wounded guts with one hand and clutching at a piece of wreckage with the other, trying to avoid being run down by boats full of ill-disposed persons with swords, but as I came up for the tenth time. I saw the last seconds of Paitingi’s spy-boat, crashing into the heart of the enemy, its bow-gun exploding to tear a bloody cleft through the crew of a raft.

Then the pirate wave swept over them; I had a glimpse of Stuart, stuck like a pin-cushion with sumpitan darts, toppling into the water; of a Linga swordsman clearing a space with his kampilan swinging in a shining circle round his head; of another in the water, stabbing fiercely up at the foes above him; of the steersman, on hands and knees on the raft, being hacked literally into bits by a screaming crowd of pirates; of Paitingi, a bristling, red giant, his turban gone, roaring “Allah-il-Allah!” with a pirate swung up in his huge arms—and then there was just the shell of the spy-boat, overturned, in the swirling, bloody water, with the pirate boats surging away from it, turning to meet the distant, unseen enemy downstream.

I didn’t have time to see any more. The water was roaring in my ears. I could feel my strength ebbing away through the tortured wound in my side, my fingers slipping from their grip on the wreckage, the sky and treetops were spinning slowly overhead, and across the surface of the water something—a boat? a raft?—was racing down on me with a clamour of voices. Air and water were full of the throbbing of war-gongs, and then I was hit a violent blow on the head, something scraped agonisingly over my body, forcing me down, choking with water, my ears pounding, lungs bursting…And then, as old Wild Bill would have said: “Why, boys—I drowned!”

Thankfully, we will someday see Wild Bill too! Very very briefly.

And that's the end of the chapter, no Elspeth excerpt this time. Anyway, I'm glad Flashman's dead. Bye forever!

* # ? Sep 24, 2021 04:46
  • Quote
Alikchi
Aug 18, 2010

Thumbs up I agree

 RIP Flashie. "What a Life Lived"

* # ? Sep 25, 2021 04:03
  • Quote
Xander77
Apr 6, 2009

Fuck it then. For another pit sandwich and some 'tater salad, I'll post a few more.



 I can't believe Flashman from Megaman is loving dead.

* # ? Sep 25, 2021 17:07
  • Quote
Arbite
Nov 4, 2009

quote:

For a moment I thought I was back in Jallalabad, in that blissful awakening after the battle. There was a soft bed under me, sheets at my chin, and a cool breeze; I opened my eyes, and saw that it came from a port-hole opposite me. That wasn’t right, though; no port holes in the Khyber country—I struggled with memory, and then a figure blocked the light, a huge figure in green sarong and sleeveless tunic, with a krees in his girdle, and fingering his earring as he stared down at me, his heavy brown face as hard as a curling-stone.

“You should have died,” says Don Solomon Haslam.

Just what an awakening invalid needs, of course, but it brought the nightmare flooding back—the reeking waters of the Skrang, the overwhelmed spy-boat, the dart in my side—I was conscious of a dull ache in my ribs, and of bandages. But where the devil was I? In the Sulu Queen, sure enough, but even in that dizzy moment of waking I was aware that her motion was a slow, steady heave, there were no jungle noises, and the air blowing from the port was salt. I tried to speak, and my voice came in a parched croak.

“What…what am I doing here?”

“Surviving,” says he. “For the moment.” And then to my amazement he thrust his face into mine and snarled: “But you couldn’t die decently, could you? Oh no, not you! Hundreds perished in that river—but you survive! Every man of Paitingi’s—good men—Lingas who fought to the last—Paitingi himself, who was worth a thousand. All lost! But not you, blubbering in the water where my men found you! They should have left you to drown. I should have—bah!” He wheeled away, fuming.

Well. I hadn’t expected him to be pleased to see me, but even in my confused state so much passion seemed a mite unreasonable. Was I delirious?—but no, I felt not bad, and when I tried to ease myself up on the pillows I found I could do it without much discomfort; one doesn’t care to be raved at lying down, you understand. A hundred questions and fears were jumbled in my mind, but the first one was:

“How long have I been here?”

“Two weeks.” He eyed me malevolently. “And if you wonder where, the Sulu Queen is approximately ten south seventy east, heading west-sou’-west.” Then, bitterly: “What the devil else was I to do, once those fools had hauled you from the water? Let you die of gangrene—treat you as you deserved? Ha! That was the one thing I could not do!”

Being still half-stupid with prolonged unconsciousness, I couldn’t make much of this. The last time I’d seen him, we’d been boon-companions, more or less, but since then he’d tried to murder me, kidnapped my wife, and turned out to be the arch-pirate of the Orient, which shed a different light on things. I tried to steady my whirling thoughts, but couldn’t. Anyway, he was obviously in a fearful wax because he’d felt obliged, God only knew why, not to let me perish of blow-pipe poison. Difficult to know what to say, so I didn’t.

“You can guess why you are alive,” says he. “It is because of her—whose husband you were.”

Oh poo poo!

quote:

For a dreadful second I thought he meant she was dead; then my mind leaped to the conclusion that he meant he had taken her from me, and done the dirty deed on her—and at the very thought of my little Elspeth being abused by this vile n***** pirate, this scum of the East, my confusion and discretion vanished together in rage.

“You bloody liar! I am her husband! She’s my wife! You kidnapped her, you filthy pirate, and—”

“Kidnapped? Saved, you mean!” His eyes were blazing. “Rescued her from a man—no, from a brute—who wasn’t fit to kiss her feet! Oh, no—it’s not kidnapping to take a pearl from a swine, who fouls her with his very touch, who treats her as a mere concubine, who betrays her—”

“It’s a lie! I—”

“Didn’t I see you with my own eyes? Coupling with that slut in my own library—”

“Drawing-room—”

“—that harlot Lade? Isn’t your name a byword in London for debauchery and vice, for every kind of lewdness and depravity?”

“Not every kind! I never—”

“A rake, a cheat, a bully and a whoremonger—that’s what I rescued that sweet, brave woman from. I took her from the hell of life with you—”

“You’re mad!” I croaked. “She never said it was hell! She loves me, curse you—as I love her—”

His hand swept across my face, knocking me back on my pillow, and I had sense enough to stay there, for he was a fearsome sight, shaking with fury, his mouth working.

“What did you ever know of love?” cries he. “Let me hear that word on your lips again, and I’ll have them sewn together, with a scorpion in your mouth!”

Well, when he put it like that, I saw there was no point in arguing. I lay there quaking, while he mastered himself and went on, more quietly:

“Love is not for animals like you. Love is what I felt—for the first time—on an afternoon at Lord’s, when I saw her. I knew then, as surely as I know there is One God, that there could be no other woman, that I should worship her for life, a life that would be death without her. Yes. I knew then—what love was.”

Oh, that's what he meant.

quote:

He let out a great breath, and he was trembling. By George, thinks I, we’ve got a maniac here—he means it. He heaved a minute, and then went on, like a poet on opium.

“She filled my life from that moment; there was nothing else. But it was a pure love—she would have been sacred to me, had she been married to a husband truly worthy of her. But when I saw the truth—that she was shackled to the basest kind of brute”—he shot me a withering look—“I asked why my life, and hers (which was infinitely more precious) should be ruined by a stupid convention which, after all, meant nothing to me. Oh, I was a gentleman, trained in the English way, at an English school—but I was also a prince of the House of Magandanu, descended from the Prophet himself—and I was a pirate, as you of the West know the word. Why should I respect your customs; when I could offer her a destiny as high above life with you as the stars are above the slime, why should I hesitate? I could make her a queen, instead of the chattel of a drunken, licentious bully who had only married her at pistol point!”

“That ain’t fair! She was damned glad to get me, and if that poxy little varmint Morrison says other—don’t hit me! I’m wounded!”

“Not by one word, by one gesture, did she complain! Her loyalty, like everything else about her, is perfect—even to a worm like you! But I knew, and I determined to save her for a love worthy of her. So I worked, carefully, patiently, for both our sakes—it was torture to impose on that sweet innocence, but I knew that in time she would bless me for the subterfuge. I was ready to sacrifice anything—millions, what were they to me? I, who was half of the East, half of the West, was prepared to put myself beyond the law, beyond civilisation, for her sake. I would give her a throne, a fortune—and true love. For I still have my kingdom of the East, and she shall share it with me.”

Well, you won’t want me as British Ambassador, thinks I, but I kept mum, tactfully. He paced about the cabin, looking masterful as he prated on.

“So I took her, and I fought for her—in the face of that vicious madman Brooke! Oh, he’ll come too often to Borneo, that one, with his lying piety and promises—he that is the bloodiest pirate of us all! No doubt he made a fine pretext of rescuing her, so that he could come again and harry and burn us, butcher our people—” He was working into a fine froth now, waving his hands. “What’s it to him, how we live? What sacred right has he to war on us and our ways? I’d have eaten his fleet alive on the Skrang, but for Paitingi! As it was, I slipped him in the creeks and came downriver, with this one vessel. He thinks he’s finished Suleiman Usman, does he? Let him come to Maludu, when I return there!”

He paced some more, chewing over Brooke, and then rounded on me. “But he doesn’t matter—not now. You do. You’re here, and you’re inopportune.” He paused, considering me. “Yes…you should have died.”

If only. It's interesting to hear from Solomon with the mask off. Also Flashman, still learning and quite young is making sloppy mistakes in the conversation he would easily avoid later in life.

quote:

I wished to God he’d stop harping on that—you could see where it was going to lead. This wasn’t Don Solomon of Brook Street any longer, not so you’d notice—this was a beastly aborigine who went plundering about in ships festooned with skulls, and I was an inconvenient husband, ’nuff said. In addition, he clearly had more screws loose than a drunk sapper—all that moonshine about worshipping Elspeth, not being able to live without her, making her a queen—well! It would have been laughable if it hadn’t been true; after all, when a man kidnaps a married woman and fights a war over her, it ain’t just a passing fancy.

But one thing was plain—his wooing hadn’t prospered, or I’d have been overside long ago, with a bag of coal round my ankles. Why the helll couldn’t he have rattled her in London, and got tired of it, and we’d have been spared all this? But here we were, in a pickle whose delicacy made my flesh crawl. I considered, took a deep breath, and tried not to talk shrill.

“Well, now, Don Solomon,” says I, “I take note of what you’ve said, and—ah—I’m glad we’ve had this little prose together, you know, and you’ve told me—urn—what you think. Yes—you’ve put it very fair, and while I can’t but deplore what you’ve done, mind—well, I understand your feelings, as any man of sensibility must—and I’m that, I hope—and I see you were deeply affected by…well, by my wife—and I know what it’s like, of course—I mean, she’s a little stunner, we agree—heavens yes.” I babbled on, while he gaped in bewilderment, small blame to him.

“But you’ve got it quite wrong you know; we’re a devoted couple, Elspeth—Mrs Flashman—and I, ask anyone—never a cross word—sublimely happy—”

“And that whore Lade?” he snarled. “Is that your devotion?”

“Why, my dear chap! The merest accident—I mean, that I noticed her at all—pure jealousy at seeing my wife flattered by your attentions—a man of your address, I mean, polished manners, charming, stinking rich—no, no, I mean, I found myself quite cut out—and Mrs Lade, well…heat of the moment—you know yourself how one can be carried away—”

It was touch and go that he didn’t savage me on the bed, considering the drivel I was talking—but it sometimes works, rubbish with a ring of sincerity, when you’re stuck with a hopeless case. It didn’t here; he strode to the bed, seized me by the shoulder, and drew back his great fist.

“You infernal liar!” cries he. “D’you think you can gammon me with your snivelling?”

“I’m not!” I bawled. “I love Elspeth, and she loves me, and you know it! She don’t want you!” I’d done it now, I could see, so I went roaring on: “That’s why you wish I’d died—because you know if you harm me now, your last hope of winning her is gone! Don’t—I’m an invalid—my wound!”

His fingers bit my shoulder like a vice; suddenly he flung me back and straightened up, with an ugly laugh.

“So that’s what you’re counting on! Why, you miserable toad, she doesn’t even know you’re here. I could drop you overboard, and she’d never know. Aye, you go pale at—”

“I don’t believe you! If that were true you’d have done me in already—you tried it in Singapore, rot you, with your foul black gangsters!”

He stared at me. “I’ve no notion what you’re talking about,” and he sounded sincere, curse him. “I don’t expect you to understand it, Flashman, but the reason you’re still alive is that I’m a man of honour. When I take her to her throne—and I shall—it will be with a clean hand, not one fouled with a husband’s blood—even a husband like you.”

That was reassuring enough to banish my immediate terrors; I even recovered sufficiently for a cautious sneer.

“Talk’s cheap, Solomon. Honour, says you—but you ain’t above wife-stealing, and cheating at cricket—oh, aye, breaking a chap’s wicket when you’ve laid him out foul! If you’re such a man of honour,” I taunted him, “you’d let Elspeth choose for herself—but you daren’t, ’cos you know she’d plump for me, warts and all!”

He stood stock still, just looking at me, without expression, fingering his earring again. Then after a moment, he nodded, slowly.

“Yes,” says he quietly. “It must come to that, must it not? Very well.”

Flashman's had extremely abrubt shifts from cowering and pleading for mercy to bullying torturer the instant the power dynamics shift in a scene before in the franchise, but this one may be the most ill-judged.

Anyway, tune in next time for what may come?

* # ? Sep 27, 2021 12:44
  • Quote
Beefeater1980
Sep 12, 2008

My God, it's full of Horatios!






 I do like that he corrects Solomon that it was the library, not the drawing room, where he got caught having it off.

* # ? Sep 28, 2021 13:54
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Arbite
Nov 4, 2009





 And through the door comes...

quote:

Feet sounded—and I felt my heart begin to thump uncontrollably as I sat up in bed; God knows why, but I was suddenly dizzy—and then she was there in the doorway, and for a moment I thought it was someone else—this was some Eastern nymph, in a clinging sarong of red silk, her skin tanned to the gold of honey, whereas Elspeth’s was like milk. Her blonde hair was bleached almost white by the sun—and then I saw those magnificent blue eyes, round with bewilderment like her lips, and I heard a sob coming out of me: “Elspeth!”

She gave a little scream, and stumbled in the doorway, putting her hand to her eyes—and then she was running to my arms, crying “Harry! Oh. Harry!” flinging herself at me, her mouth against mine, clutching my head in wild hands, sobbing hysterically, and I forgot Solomon, and the ache of my wound, and fear, and danger, as I pressed that lovely softness against me and kissed and kissed her until she went suddenly limp, and slid from my arms to the floor in a dead faint. It was only then, as I scrambled out, clutching my bandaged side, that I realised the door was closed, and Solomon was gone.

I tried to haul her up to the bed, but I was still weak as a kitten from my wound and confinement, and couldn’t manage it. So I had to be content with pawing and fondling until her eyes fluttered open, and then she clung to me, muttering my name, and after we had babbled thankfully for a few minutes and exchanged our news, so to speak, we got down to the reunion in earnest—and in the middle of it, while I was just wondering if my wound was about to come asunder, she suddenly pulled her mouth free of mine and cried:

“Harry—what is Mrs Leo Lade to you?”

If it wasn't quite clear from the diary Solomon's been working her since Singapore.

quote:

“Hey?” I yelped. “What? What d’ye mean? Who’s she? I mean—”

“You know her very well! The Duke’s…companion, who paid you such singular attention. What is between you?”

“Good God! At a time like this—Elspeth, my dear, what has Mrs Lade to do with anything?”

“That is what I am asking. No, desist—Don Solomon said…hinted…of an attachment. Is this true?”

You wouldn’t credit it—here she was, on a pirate ship, having been abducted, shanghaied round half the East, through war, ambush, and confounded head-hunters, reunited with her long-lost spouse, and just as he was proving his undying affection at grievous risk to his health, her jealous little pea-brain was off on another tack altogether. Unbelievable—and most unflattering. But I was equal to the occasion.

“Solomon!” cries I. “That viper! Has he been trying to poison your mind against me with his lies? I might have guessed it! Not content with stealing you, the villain traduces me to you—don’t you see? He’ll stop at nothing to win you away from me.”

“Oh.” She frowned up at me—God, she was lovely, if half-witted. “You mean he—oh, how could he be so base? Oh, Harry”—and she began to cry, trembling all down her body in a way that almost brought me to the boil—“all the rest I could bear—the fear and shame and…and all of it, but the thought that you might have been untrue…as he suggested—ah, that would have broken my heart! Tell me it wasn’t so, my love!”

“Course it wasn’t! Good lord, that raddled pudding Lade! How could you think it? I despise the woman—and as though I could even look at her, or any other, when I have my own perfect, angelic Aphrodite—” I tried a couple of cautious thrusts as I saw the suspicion dying in her eyes, but since attack’s the best form of defence I suddenly stopped, frowning thunderously. “That foul kite Solomon! He will stoop to any depth. Oh, dearest, I have been mad these past weeks—the thought of you in his clutches.” I gulped in manly torment. “Tell me—in your ordeal—did he…I mean—well…did he, the scoundrel?”

She was flushed with my attentions anyway, but at this she went crimson, and moaned softly, those innocent eyes brimming with tears.

“Oh, how can you ask? Would I be alive now, if…if…Oh, Harry, I cannot believe it is you, holding me safe! Oh, my love!”

Well, that was that settled (so far as it ever is with Elspeth; I’ve never been able to read those child-like eyes and butter-melting lips, so the devil with it), and Mrs Lade disposed of, at least until we had finished the business in hand and were lying talking in the growing dusk of the cabin.

Almost nice to have a moment like this not get flipped by a punchline.

quote:

Naturally, Elspeth’s story came flooding out in an excited stream, and I was listening with my mind in a great confusion, what with my weakened state, the crazy shock of our reunion, and the anxiety of our predicament—and suddenly, in the middle of describing the rations they’d fed her during her captivity, she suddenly said:

“Harry—you are sure you have not been astride Mrs Lade?”

I was so amazed she had to say it twice.

“Eh? Good God, girl, what d’you mean?”

“Have you mounted her?”

I can’t think how I’ve kept my sanity, talking to that woman for sixty years. Of course, at this time we’d only been married for five, and I hadn’t plumbed the depths of her eccentricity. I could only gargle and exclaim:

“Dammit. I’ve told you I haven’t! And where on earth—it is shocking to use expressions of that kind!”

“Why? You use them—I heard you, at Lady Chalmers’, when you were talking to Jack Speedicut, and you were both remarking on Lottie Cavendish, and whatever her husband could see in such a foolish creature, and you said you expected he found her a good mount. I dare say I was not meant to hear.”

“I should think not! And I can have said no such thing—and anyway, ladies ain’t meant to understand such…such vulgar words.”

“The ladies who get mounted must understand them.”

“They ain’t ladies!”

“Why not? Lottie Cavendish is. So am I, and you have mounted me—lots of times.” She sighed, and nestled close, God help us.

“Well, I have not…done any such thing with Mrs Lade, so there.”

“I’m so glad,” says she, and promptly fell asleep.


Much like his instinctive Victorian classism from book 1 when he reacted to a trooper's criticism of Elphy, Flashman does have some instinctive Victorian moralistic censoriousness.

quote:

Now, I’ve told you this, partly because it’s all of the conversation that I remember of that reunion, and also to let you understand what a truly impossible scatterhead Elspeth was—and still is. There’s something missing there; always has been, and it makes her senselessly unpredictable. (Heaven knows what idiocy she’ll come out with on her deathbed, but I’ll lay drunkard’s odds it’s nothing to do with dying. I only hope I ain’t still above ground to hear it, though.) She’d been through an ordeal that would have driven most women out of their wits—not that she had many to start with—but now she was back with me, safe as she supposed, she seemed to have no notion of the peril in which we both stood; why, when Solomon’s Malays took her away to her own quarters that first night, she was more concerned about the sunburn she’d taken, and if it would spoil her complexion, than about the fate Solomon might have in store for us. What can you do with a woman like that?

Mind you, there was a dead weight off my heart at having seen her, and knowing she’d come to no bodily harm. At least her captivity hadn’t changed her—come to think of it, if she’d wept and raved about her sufferings, or sat numb and shocked, or been terrified of her situation, like a normal woman—she wouldn’t have been Elspeth, and that would have been worse than anything, somehow.

For the next two days I was confined to my cabin, and didn’t see a living soul except the Chink steward who brought my food, and he was deaf to all my demands and questions. I’d no notion what was happening, or where we were going; I knew from what Solomon had said that we were in the South Indian Ocean, and the sun confirmed that we were westering steadily, but that was all. What did Solomon intend?—the one thing that grew on me was that he wasn’t likely to do me in, praise God, not now that Elspeth had seen me, for that would have scuppered any hopes he had of winning her. And that was the nub of it.

You see, lunatic though his behaviour had been, the more I thought about it the more I believed him: the blighter was really mad about her, and not just to board and scuttle her, either, but with all the pure, romantic trimmings, like Shelley or one of those chaps. Astonishing—well, I love her myself, always have, but not to put me off my food.

And with that crystal clear comparison I'll pause for now.

* # ? Oct 1, 2021 03:01
  • Quote
How are u
May 19, 2005

by Azathoth
Now, surely, Don Solomon will recognize the true and pure love that exists between Elspeth and Flashy and let them go on their lives.

* # ? Oct 1, 2021 04:09
  • Quote
Arbite
Nov 4, 2009

quote:

But Solomon had it to the point of obsession, where he’d been willing to kidnap and kill and give up civilisation for her. And he’d believed that, in spite of his behaving like a bloody Barbary corsair, he could eventually woo and win her, given time. But then he’d seen her run to my arms, sobbing, and had realised it was no go; shocking blow it must have been. He’d probably been gnawing his futile passion ever since, realising that he’d bought outlawry and the gallows for nothing. But what was he to do now? Unless he chopped us both (which seemed farfetched, pirate and Old Etonian though he was)...

Hah!

quote:

... it seemed to me he had no choice but to set us free with apologies, and sail away, grief-stricken, to join the Foreign Legion, or become a monk, or an American citizen. Why, he’d as good as thrown up the sponge in letting Elspeth and me spend hours together alone; he’d never have done that if he hadn’t given up all hope of her, surely?

He was in no hurry to repeat his generosity, however. On the third day a little Chink doctor visited me with the steward, but he didn’t have a word of English, and busied himself impassively examining the sumpitan-wound in my guts—which was fairly healed, and barely ached—while remaining deaf to my demands to see Solomon. In the end I lost patience, and made for the door, roaring for attention, but at this two of the Malay crew appeared, all bulging muscles and evil phizzes, and indicated that if I didn’t hold my tongue they’d hold it for me. So I did, until they’d gone, and then I set about the door with my boots, bawling for Elspeth, and calling Solomon every name I could think of—indulging my natural insolence, if you like, since I figured it was safe enough. By George, wasn’t I young and innocent, though?

Repeating a point made earlier, yes.

quote:

The response to that was nil, and an icy finger of fear traced down my back. For the past two days, with my belly still in a sling, it had seemed natural enough to be in the cabin—but now that the doctor had been, and seemed satisfied, why weren’t they letting me out—or why, at least, wasn’t Solomon coming to see me? Why weren’t they letting me see Elspeth? Why weren’t they letting me take exercise? It didn’t make sense, to keep me cooped here, if he was going to let us go, and—if he was going to let us go. It suddenly rushed in on me that that was pure assumption, probably brought on by my blissful reunion with Elspeth, which had been paradise after the weeks of peril and terror. Suppose I was wrong?

I don’t know anyone who despairs faster than I do—mind you, I’ve had cause—and the hours that followed found me in the depths. I didn’t know what to think or believe, my fears mounted steadily, and by next morning I was my normal self, in a state of abject funk. I was even drawing sinister significance from the fact that this cabin I was in was obviously in the forward part of the vessel, with the engines between me and the civilised quarters where Elspeth—and Solomon—would be. God, was he ravishing her, now that he knew he could never seduce her? Was he bargaining with her for my life, threatening to feed me to the sharks unless she buckled to with him? That was it, for certain—it’s what I’d have done in his place—and I tore my hair at the thought that like as not she’d defy him; she was forever reading trashy novels in which proud heroines drew themselves upright and pointed to the door, crying: “Do your worst, sinister man; my husband would die rather than be the price of my dishonour!” Would he, by jingo?—surrender, you stupid bitch, if that’s all he wants. I found myself muttering; what’s another more or less? Charming husband, ain’t I? Well, why not? Honour’s all very well, but life matters. Besides, I’d do the same to save Elspeth, if any lustful woman threatened me. They never do, though.

With such happy thoughts, in a torture of uncertainty, I passed the days that followed—how many I’m not sure, but I guess about a week. In all that time, no one came near me except the steward, with a Malay thug to back him up—I was alone, hour after hour, night after night, in that tiny box, alternating between shivering panic and black despair—not knowing. That was the worst of it; I didn’t even know what to be afraid of, and by the end of the week I was ready for anything, if it would only end my misery. It’s a dangerous state to be in, as I know, now that I’m old and experienced; I didn’t realise, then, that things can always get worse.

Well there's the story of this book in one half of a sentence.

quote:

Then I saw the American ship, by chance, as I paced past my porthole. She was maybe half a mile off, a sleek black Southern Run clipper with Old Glory at her jackstaff; the morning sun was shining like silver on her topsails as they flapped from the reefs and were sheeted home. Now I’m no shellback, but I’d seen that setting a score of times, when a vessel was standing out from port—God, were we near some harbour of civilisation, where the big ships ran? I hallooed for all I was worth, but of course they were too far off to hear, and then I was rummaging feverishly for matches to start a fire—anything to attract attention and bring that Yankee to my rescue. But of course I couldn’t find any; I nearly broke my neck trying to squint out of the port in search of land, but there was nothing but blue rollers, and the Yankee dwindling towards the eastern horizon.

All day I sat fretting, wondering, and then in mid-afternoon I saw little native craft from my port, and a low green mainland beyond them. Gradually a beach came into view, and a few huts, and then wooden houses with steep roofs—no flags, and nothing but n****** in loin-cloths—no, there was a uniform, an unmistakable navy coat, black with gold braid, and a cocked hat, among a group on a little jetty. But there was the rumble of the Sulu Queen’s cable—we were anchoring a good quarter of a mile out. Never mind, that was close enough for me; I was in a fever of excitement as I tried to figure where it might be—we’d been westering, Southern Indian Ocean, and here was a small port, still important enough for a Yankee clipper to touch. It couldn’t be the Cape, with that coastline. Port Natal—surely we weren’t that far west? I tried to conjure up the map of that huge sea east of Africa—of course, Mauritius! The navy coat, the n******, the Arabi-looking small craft—they all fitted. And Mauritius was British soil.

I was trembling as I took stock. What the devil was Solomon thinking of, putting into Mauritius? Wood and water—he’d probably had no chance of either since bolting from the Skrang. And with me cooped tight, and Elspeth probably likewise, what had he to fear? But it was my chance—there’d never be another like it. I could swim the distance easily…and the lock scraped in my door at that moment.

Haaah, what's a man to do? Also, back to censoring instead of just decensoring. Yay. Tune it next time to find out what he decides to do.

* # ? Oct 4, 2021 08:39
  • Quote
Beefeater1980
Sep 12, 2008

My God, it's full of Horatios!






 It’s lovely because you know they’ve been having a very 21st century kind of marriage but one just doesn’t talk about it.

* # ? Oct 5, 2021 14:22
  • Quote
Arbite
Nov 4, 2009

quote:

There are split seconds when you can’t afford to plan. I watched the steward setting down my tray, and without making a conscious decision I turned slowly towards the door where the Malay thug was hovering, beckoned him, and pointed, frowning, to the corner of the cabin. He advanced a pace, squinting up where I was pointing—and the next instant his courting tackle was half-way up inside his torso, impelled by my right boot, he was flying across the cabin, screaming, and Flashy was out and racing—where? There was a ladder, but I ducked past it instinctively, and tore along a short passage, the Chinese steward squealing in my rear. Round the corner—and there was a piece of open deck, Malays coiling rope, and iron doors flung wide to the sunshine and sea. As I ploughed through the startled Malays, scattering them, I had a glimpse of small craft between me and the shore, a distant jetty and palms, and then I was through those doors like a hot rivet, in an enormous dive, hitting the water with an almighty splash, gliding to the surface, and then striking out, head down, for dear life towards the distant land.

I reckon it took about ten seconds from my cabin to the water, and as many minutes before I was alongside the piles of the wharf. I was half-conscious with the exertion of my swim, and had to cling to the slimy wood while curious n****** in small boats drew up to gape at me, chattering like magpies. I looked back at the Sulu Queen, and there she was, riding peacefully, with a few native craft round her. I looked landward—there was the beach, and a fair-sized native town behind it, and a big building with a verandah and a flag-pole—it was a deuced odd-looking flag, striped and blazoned—some shipping line, perhaps. I hauled myself wearily along the piles, found a ladder, dragged myself up it, and lay panting and sodden on the wooden jetty, conscious of a small crowd forming round me. They were all n******, in loin-cloths or white robes—some pretty Arab-looking, by their noses and head-gear. But there was the navy coat, pushing towards me, and the crowd falling back. I tried to pull myself up, but couldn’t, and then the navy trousers stopped beside me, and their owner was bending down towards me. I tried to control my panting.

“I’m…a British…army officer.” I wheezed. “Escaped from…that ship…pirate…” I raised my head, and the words died on my lips.

The fellow bending towards me was in full navy rig, right enough, even to the hat and epaulette—the green sash looked strange, though. But that wasn’t the half of it. The face beneath the cocked hat was jet black.

Hmm, where could this be going...

quote:

I stared at him, and he stared back. Then he said something, in a language I couldn’t understand, so I shook my head and repeated that I was an army officer. Where was the commandant? He shrugged, showed his yellow teeth in a grin, and said something, and the crowd giggled.

“drat your eyes!” cries I, struggling up. “What the hell’s going on here? Where’s the harbour-master? I’m a British army officer, Captain Flashman, and—” I was stabbing him on the chest with my finger, and now, to my utter amazement, he struck my hand angrily aside and snapped something in his heathen lingo, right in my face! I fell back, appalled at the brute’s effrontery—and then there was a commotion behind, and I looked to see a small boat ploughing up at the seaward end of the jetty, and Solomon, of all people, springing from her bows and striding towards us along the planking, a massive figure in his tunic and sarong, with a face like thunder. Right, my hearty, thinks I, this is where you receive your ration allowance, once these people realise you’re a bloody pirate, and I flung out a hand to denounce him to my epauletted n*****. But before I could get a word out Solomon had seized me by the shoulder and spun me round.

“You infernal fool!” cries he. “What have you done?”

You can be sure I told him, a trifle incoherently, at the top of my voice, drawing the n******* attention to the fact that here was the notorious pirate and brigand, Suleiman Usman, delivered into his hands, and would he mind arresting him and his ship and restoring me and my wife to liberty.

“And you can swing till the crows peck you, you kidnapping tyke!” I informed Solomon. “You’re done for.”

“In God’s name, where d’you think you are?” His voice was shrill.

“Mauritius, ain’t it?”

“Mauritius?” He suddenly pulled me aside. “You booby, this is Tamitave—Madagascar!”

Oh poo poo!

And in an oceanic sense they're fairly close, I'm not surprised Flashman thought they'd travelled to there.



quote:

Well, that startled me, I admit. It explained the n***** in uniform, I supposed, but I couldn’t see it made much difference. I was saying so, when the n***** stepped up and addressed Solomon, pretty sharp, and to my amazement the Don shrugged, apologetically, as though it had been a white official, and replied in French! But it was his abject tone as much as the language that bewildered me.

“Your pardon, excellency—a most unfortunate mistake. This man is one of my crew—a little drunk, you understand. With your permission I shall take him—”

“Balderdash!” I roared. “You’ll take me nowhere, you lying dago!” I swung to the n*****. “You speak French, do you? Well, so do I, and I’m no more one of his crew than you are. He’s a damned pirate, who has abducted me and my wife—”

“Be quiet, you clown!” cries Solomon in English, thrusting me aside. “You’ll destroy us! Leave him to me,” and he began to patter to the black again, in French, but the other silenced him with a flap of his hand.

“Silence,” says he, as if he were the bloody Duke. “The commandant approaches.”

Sure enough, there was a file of soldiers coming from the landward end of the jetty, strapping blacks in white loin-cloths and bandoliers, with muskets at the shoulder. And behind them, carried by coolies in an open sedan, came an unbelievable figure. It is solemn truth—he was black as your boot, and he wore a turban on his head, a flowered red and yellow shirt, and a 42nd Highlanders kilt. He had sandals on his feet, a sabre at his hip, white gloves, and a rolled brolly in his hand. I’ve gone mad, thinks I; it’s been the strain, or the sun. That thing can’t be real.

Solomon was hissing urgently in my ear. “Don’t say a word! Your one chance is to pretend to be one of my crew—”

“Are you mad?” says I. “After what you’ve done, you—”

“Please!” And unless my ears deceived me he was pleading. “You don’t understand—I intend you no harm—you shall both go free—Mauritius, if I can do it safely—I swear—”

“You swear! D’you imagine I’d trust you for an instant?”

As foolish and impulsively as Flashman is behaving, he's right to not trust the latest thing the man who tried to have him killed and stole his wife is telling him, they've already gone past Mauritius.

quote:

And then the black’s voice, speaking harsh French, cut across his reply.

“You.” He was pointing at me. “You say you were a prisoner on that ship. And you are English. Is it so?”

I looked at the commandant, leaning forward from his sedan in that ludicrous Hallowe’en rig, his great ebony head cocked on one side, bloodshot eyes regarding me. As I nodded in reply to the officer’s question, the commandant took a peeled mango from one of his minions and began to cram it into his mouth, juice spurting over his gloved hand and over his ridiculous kilt. He tossed the stone away, wiped his hand on his shirt, and said in careful French, in a croaking rasp:

“And your wife, you say, is also a prisoner of this man?”

“Pardon, excellency.” Solomon pushed forward. “This is a great misunderstanding, as I have tried to explain. This man is of my ship’s company, and is covered by my safe-conduct and trading licence from her majesty. I beg you to allow—”

“He denies it,” croaked the commandant. He cleared his throat and spat comprehensively, hitting one of the soldiers on the leg. “He swam ashore. And he is English.” He shrugged. “Shipwrecked.”

“Oh, Christ,” muttered Solomon, licking his lips.

Heh.

quote:

The commandant wagged a finger the size of a black cucumber, peering at Solomon. “He is plainly not covered by your licence or safe-conduct. Nor is his wife. That licence, Monsieur Suleiman, does not exempt you from Malagassy law, as you should know. It is only by special favour that you yourself escape the fanompoana—what you call…corvée?” He gestured at me. “In his case, there is no question.”

“What the dooce is he talking about?” says I to Solomon. “Where’s the British consul? I’ve had enough—”

“There’s no such thing, you fool!” Solomon was positively wringing his hands; suddenly he was a fat, frightened man. “Excellency, I implore you to make an exception—this man is not a castaway—I can swear he intended no harm in her majesty’s dominions—”

“He will do none,” says the commandant, and jabbered curtly at the officer. “He is lost”—a phrase whose significance escaped me just then. The coolies lifted the sedan, and away it swayed, the officer barked an order, and a file of his soldiers trotted past us, their leader bawling to one of the boatmen, summoning his craft to the jetty.

“No—wait!” Solomon’s face was contorted with anguish. “You idiot!” he shrieked at me, and then he started first this way and that, calling to the commandant, and then running down the jetty after the file of soldiers. The black officer laughed, indicated me, and snapped an order to two of his men. It wasn’t till they grabbed my arms and began to run me off the jetty that I came to my senses; I roared and struggled, bawling for Solomon, shouting threats of what would happen to them for laying their filthy hands on an Englishman. I lashed out, and a musket-butt sprawled me half-conscious on the planking. Then they dragged me up, and one of them, his great black face blasting foul breath all over me, snapped shackles on my wrists; they seized the chain and hauled me headlong up the street, with the blacks eyeing me curiously and children running alongside, squealing and laughing.

That was how I became a captive in Madagascar.

Flashman making things much worse for himself is nothing new for the series but this early tale gives the most naive compound error he ever makes.

* # ? Oct 7, 2021 06:57
  • Quote
Arbite
Nov 4, 2009

quote:

As you know—or rather, you don’t, but if you’re intelligent you’ll have guessed—I’m a truthful man, at least where these memoirs are concerned. I’ve got nothing to lie for any longer, who lied so consistently—and successfully—all my life. But every now and then, in writing, I feel I have to remind you, and myself, that what I tell you is unvarnished fact. There are things that strain belief, you see, and Madagascar was one of them. So I will only say that if, at any point, you doubt what follows, or think old Flash is telling stretchers, just go to your local libraries, and consult the memoirs of my dear old friend Ida Pfeiffer, of the elastic-sided boots, or Messrs Ellis and Oliver, or the letters of my fellow-captives, Laborde of Bombay and Jake Heppick the American shipmaster, or Hastie the missionary. Then you’ll realise that the utterly unbelievable things I tell you of that hellish island, straight out of “Gulliver”, are simple, sober truth. You couldn’t make ’em up.

Nor I won’t bore you by describing the shock and horror I experienced, either at the beginning, when I realised I had escaped from Solomon’s frying-pan into something infinitely worse, or later, as further abominations unfolded. I’ll just recount what I saw and experienced, as plain as I can.

My first thoughts, when they threw me chained and battered into a stuffy go-down at Tamitave, were that this must be some bad dream from which I should soon awake. Then my mind turned to Elspeth; from what had passed on the jetty it had seemed that they’d been going to drag her ashore, too—for what fate I could only guess. You see, I was at a complete nonplus, quite out of my depth; once I’d had my usual little rave and blubber to myself, I tried to remember what Solomon had told me about Madagascar on the voyage out, which hadn’t been much, and what I recalled was far from comforting. Wild and savage beyond description, he’d said…weird customs and superstitions…half the population in slavery…a she-monster of a queen who aped European fashions and held ritual executions by the thousand…a poisonous hatred of all foreigners—well, my present experience confirmed that, all right. But could it truly be as awful as Solomon had painted it? I hadn’t believed him above half, but when I thought of that frightful n***** commandant in his bumbee tartan kilt and brolly…well.

Author's Note posted:

So hostile to foreigners was Madagascar that comparatively few written authorities exist for the first half of the last century, and those named by Flashman are the principal ones in English; they bear out virtually every detail which he gives about that astonishing island and its appalling ruler, Ranavalona I, James Hastie (1786-1826) was a soldier, not a missionary; he was tutor to two Malagassy princes and British agent on the island at a time when Europeans were still tolerated there. His journal is in the Public Record Office. W. Ellis’s Three Visits to Madagascar, 1858, Madagascar Revisited, 1867, and The Martyr Church of Madagascar, 1870, are invaluable sources for Queen Ranavalona’s reign, and the island background and people, as is S. P. Oliver’s Madagascar, 1886. See also H. W. Little’s Madagascar. 1884, J. Sibree’s The Great African Island, 1880, and L. McLeod’s Madagascar and its people, 1865. But none compares with the indomitable and entertaining Ida Pfeiffer, that great tourist whose Last Travels contains a wealth of informative detail recorded at first hand.

quote:

Fortunately for my immediate peace of mind I didn’t know one of the worst things about Madagascar, which was that once you were inside it, you were beyond hope of rescue. Even the most primitive native countries, in my young days, were at least approachable, but not this one; its capital. Antananarivo (Antan’, to you), might as well have been on the moon. There was no appeal to outside, or even communication; no question of Pam or the Frogs or Yanks sending a gunboat, or making diplomatic representations, even. You see, no one knew about Madagascar, hardly. Barring a few pirates like Kidd and Avery in the old days, and a handful of British and French missionaries—who’d soon been cleared out or massacred—no one had visited it much except heeled-and-ready traders like Solomon, and they walked damned warily, and did their business from their own decks offshore. We’d had a treaty with an earlier Malagassy king, sending him arms on condition that he stopped slave-trading, but when Queen Ranavalona came to the throne (by murdering all her relatives) in 1828, she’d broken off all traffic with the outside world, forbidden Christianity and tortured all converts to death, revived slavery on a great scale, and set about exterminating all tribes except her own. She was quite mad, of course, and behaved like Messalina and Attila the Hun, either of whom would have taken one look at her and written to The Times, protesting.

Messalina was the third wife of Claudius, and in the Roman tradition was blamed for all the faults around him while they were married.

quote:

To give you some notion of the kind of blood-stained bedlam the country was, she’d already slaughtered one-half of her subjects, say a million or so, and passed decrees providing for a wall round the whole island to keep out foreigners (it would only have had to be three thousand miles long), four gigantic pairs of scissors to be set up on the approaches to her capital, to snip invaders in two, and the building of massive iron plates from which the cannon-shots of European ships would rebound and sink them. Eccentric, what? Of course, all this was unknown to me when I landed; I began to find out about it, painfully, when they hauled me out of the cooler next morning, still—in my innocence—protesting and demanding to see my lawyer.

My French-speaking officer had disappeared, so all my entreaties earned was blows and kicks. I’d had no food or drink for hours, but now they gave me a stinking mess of fish, beans, and rice, and a leaf-spoon to eat it with. I gagged it down with the help of their vile brown rice-water, and then, despite my objections, I and a gang of other unfortunates, all black of course, were herded up through the town, heading inland.

Tamitave’s not much of a settlement. It has a fort, and a few hundred wooden houses, some of them quite large, with the high-pitched Malagassy thatches. At first sight it looks harmless enough, like the people: they’re black, but not Negro. I’d say, perhaps a touch of Malay or Polynesian, well-built, not bad-looking, lazy, and stupid. The folk I saw at first were poorer-class peasants, slaves, and provincials, both men and women wearing simple loin-cloths or sarongs, but occasionally we encountered one of the better-off, being toted about in a sedan—no rich or aristocratic Malagassy will walk a hundred yards, and there’s a multitude of slaves, bearers, and couriers to carry ’em. The nobs wore lambos—robes not unlike Roman togas, although in Antan’ itself their clothing was sometimes of the utmost outlandish extravagance, like my commandant. That’s the extraordinary thing about Madagascar—it’s full of parodies of the European touch gone wrong, and their native culture and customs are bizarre enough to start with, God knows.

For example, they have their markets at a distance from their villages and towns—nobody knows why. They hate goats and pigs, and will lay babies out in the street to see if their births are “fortunate” or not; they are unique. I believe, in the whole world in having no kind of organised religion—no priests, no shrines or temples—but they worship a tree or a stone if they feel like it, or personal household gods called sampy, or charms, like the famous idol Rakelimalaza, which consists of three dirty little bits of wood wrapped in silk—I’ve seen it. Yet they’re superstitious beyond belief, even to the extent of dispraising those things they value most, to avert jealous evil spirits, and believing that when a man is dying you must stuff his mouth with food at the last minute—mind you, that may be because they’re the most amazing gluttons, and drunkards, too. But, as with so many of their practices, you sometimes feel they are just determined to be different from the rest of the world.

Ranavalona would actually ban the baby deserting, and limiting organized religion certainly guts potential sources of power beyond your control. But we'll get to the queen when we meet her.

quote:

I noticed that the soldiers who escorted our chain-gang were of a different stamp from the rest of the people—tall, narrow-headed fellows who marched in step, to a mixture of English and French words of command. They were brutes, who thrashed us along if we lagged, and treated the populace like dirt. I learned later they were from the Queen’s tribe, the Hovas, once the pariahs of the island, but now dominant by reason of their cunning and cruelty.

I’ve endured some horrible journeys in my time—Kabul to the Khyber, Crimea to Middle Asia, for a couple—but I can’t call to mind anything worse than that march from Tamitave to Antan’. It was 140 miles, and it took us eight days of blistered feet and chafing chains, trudging along, at first over scrubby desert, then through open fields, with peasants stopping in their work to stare at us indifferently, then through forest country, with the great jungly mountains of the interior coming slowly closer. We passed mud-walled villages and farms, but at night our captors just made us lie and sleep where we stopped: they carried no rations, but took what they wanted from unprotesting villagers, and we prisoners got the scraps. We were sodden by rain, burned agonisingly by the sun, bitten raw by mosquitoes, punished by blows and welts—but the worst of it was ignorance. I didn’t know where I was, where I was going, what had happened to Elspeth, or even what was being said around me. There was nothing for it but to be herded on, like an animal, in pain and despair. After the first day or so I was beyond thought; all that mattered was survival.

To make matters worse, there was no road to travel—oh no, the Malagasies won’t have ’em, for fear they might be used by an invader. Examine the perverse logic of that, if you like. The only exception is when the Queen travels anywhere, in which case they build a road in front of her, mile by mile, twenty thousand slaves grubbing with picks and rocks, and a great army following, with the court; why, every night they build a town, walls and all, and then leave it empty next day.

We were privileged to see this, when we reached the high plain midway on our journey. The first thing I noticed was dead bodies scattered about the place, and then groups of wailing, exhausted natives along our line of march. They were the road-builders; there were no rations provided for ’em, you see, so they just fell out and died like flies. This was the Queen’s annual buffalo-hunt, and ten thousand slaves perished on it, inside a week. The stench was indescribable, especially along the road itself—which cut perversely across our line of march—where they were lying in rows, men, women, and children. Some of them would haul themselves up as we passed, and crawl towards us, whimpering for food; the Hovas just kicked them aside.

To add to the horrors, we passed occasional gallows, on which victims were hung or crucified, or simply tied to die by inches. One abomination I’ll never forget—five staggering skeletons yoked together at the neck by a great iron wheel. They put them in it, and turn them loose, wandering together, until they starve or break each other’s necks.

The Queen’s procession had passed by long before, up the rough, rock-paved furrow of the road which ran straight as a die through forest and over mountain. She had twelve thousand troops with her, I learned later, and since the Malagassy army has no system of supply or rations they had just picked the country clean, so in addition to the slaves, thousands of peasants starved to death as well.

You may wonder why they endured it. Well, they didn’t, always. Over the years thousands had fled, in whole tribes and communities, to escape her tyranny, and the jungles were full of these people, living as brigands. She sent regular expeditions against them, as well as against those distant tribes who weren’t Hovas; I’ve heard it reckoned that the slaughter of fugitives, criminals, and those whom her majesty simply disliked, amounted to between twenty and thirty thousand annually, and I believe it. (Far better, of course, than wicked colonial government by Europeans—or so the Liberals would have us believe. God, what I’d have given to get Gladstone and that pimp Asquith on the Tamitave road in the earlies; they’d have learned all they needed to know about “enlightened rule by the indigenous population”. Too late now, though; nothing for it but to hire a few roughs to smash windows at the Reform Club—as though I care.)

There's quite a bit to take in here. How much is Flashman talking, how much might be Fraser offering his two bits, and just what the facts inside the country Madagascar were at the time.

quote:

In the meantime, I’d little sympathy to spare; my own case, as we finally approached Antan’ after more than a week of tortured tramping, was deplorable. My shirt and trousers were in rags, my shoes were worn out, I was bearded and foul—but strangely enough, having plumbed the depths, I was beginning to perk up a trifle. I wasn’t dead, and they weren’t bringing me all this way to kill me—I was even feeling a touch of lightheaded recklessness, probably with hunger. I was lifting my head again, and my recollections of the end of the march are clear enough.

We passed a great lake along the road, and the guards made us shout and sing all the way past it; I later heard it was to placate the ghost of a dissolute princess buried nearby—dissolute female royalty being Madagascar’s strong suit, evidently. We crossed a great river—the Mangaro—and steaming geysers bubbling out of pools of boiling mud, before we came out on a level grass plain, and beyond it, on a great hill, we beheld Antananarivo.



I'll give a more thorough detailing of all that and more in the future but we'll be exploring the city... next time!

* # ? Oct 9, 2021 12:46
  • Quote
radmonger
Jun 6, 2011
 It’s kind of interesting. The wiki on her says:

quote:


Ranavalona's European contemporaries generally condemned her policies and characterized her as a tyrant at best and insane at worst. These negative characterizations persisted in Western scholarly literature until the mid-1970s. Later academic research recast Ranavalona's actions as those of a queen attempting to expand her empire while protecting Malagasy sovereignty against the encroachment of European cultural and political influence.


But that doesn’t seem to be actually disputing any of the facts, merely restating them in positive language.

* # ? Oct 9, 2021 14:06
  • Quote
poisonpill
Nov 8, 2009

The only way to get huge fast is to insult a passing witch and hope she curses you with Beast-strength.

radmonger posted:

But that doesn’t seem to be actually disputing any of the facts, merely restating them in positive language.

You're ready for twitter

* # ? Oct 9, 2021 14:53
  • Quote
Hunterhr
Jan 4, 2007

And The Beast, Satan said unto the LORD, "You Fucking Suck" and juked him out of his goddamn shoes

Wikipedia posted:

Madagascar's population reducing from 5 million in 1833 to 2.5 million in 1839

Yeah uh it looks pretty bad.

* # ? Oct 10, 2021 00:56
  • Quote
How are u
May 19, 2005

by Azathoth
I'd forgotten how wild this part of the book becomes. Yikes.

* # ? Oct 12, 2021 00:48
  • Quote
Arbite
Nov 4, 2009





 Very graphic public executions follow.

quote:

It took my breath away—of course, I didn’t even know what it was, then, but it was like nothing you’d expect in a primitive n***** country. There was this huge city of houses, perhaps two miles across, walled and embattled in wood, and dominated by a hill on the top of which stood an enormous wooden palace, four storeys high, with another building alongside it which seemed to be made of mirrors, for it shimmered bright as a burning-glass in the sunlight. I stared at it until I was almost blinded, but I couldn’t make out what it was—and in the meantime there were other wonders closer at hand, for as we approached the city across the plain which was dotted with huts and crowded with village people, I thought I must be dreaming—in the distance I could hear a military band playing, horribly flat, but there could be no doubt that the tune was “The Young May Moon”! And here, sure enough, came a regiment in full fig—red tunics, shakos, arms at the shoulder, bayonets fixed, and every man-jack of them black as Satan. I stood and fairly gaped; past they went in column, throwing chests, and shaping dooced well—and at their head, God help me, half a dozen officers on horseback, dressed as Arabs and Turks. I was beyond startling now—when a couple of sedans, draped in velvet, passed by bearing black women done up in Empire dresses and feathered hats, I didn’t even give ’em a second glance. They, and the rest of the crowds, were moving across the front of the city, and that was the way our guards drove us, so that we skirted the city wall until we came presently to a great natural amphitheatre in the ground, dominated by a huge cliff—Ambohipotsy, they call it, and there can be no more accursed place on earth.

There must have been close on a quarter of a million people thronging the slopes of that great hollow below the cliff—certainly more than I’ve ever seen in one congregation. This great tide of black humanity was gazing down to the foot of the cliff; our guards brought us up short and pointed, grinning, and looking down that vast slope of people I saw that in a clear space long narrow pits had been dug, and in the pits were scores of human beings, tied to stakes. At the end of each pit huge cauldrons were fixed, above roaring fires, and even as we watched a gong boomed out, the enormous chattering crowd fell silent, and a gang of black fiends tilted the first of the cauldrons, slowly, slowly, while the poor devils in the pits shrieked and writhed; boiling water slopped over the cauldron’s lip, first in a small stream, then in a scalding cascade, surging down into the pit with a horrible sizzling cloud of steam that blotted out the view. When it cleared I saw to my horror that it only filled the pit waist deep—the victims were boiling alive by inches, while the onlookers bayed and cheered in a tumult of sound that echoed across that ghastly amphitheatre of death. There were six pits; they filled them one by one.

That was the main performance, you understand. After that, figures appeared at the top of the cliff, which was three hundred feet up, and the luckier condemned were thrown off, the crowd giving a great rising whistle as each struggling body took flight, and a mighty howl when it struck the ground below—there was particular applause if one landed in the water-pits, which were still steaming mistily with the contorted figures hanging from their stakes. They didn’t just throw the condemned people down the cliff, by the way—they suspended ’em first by ropes, to let the mob have a good look, and then cut them free to drop.

Not for the last time is the book comparing the same practice (in this case public execution) in different parts of the world. In London the crowd was loudly disappointed with how subdued the matter was, in Borneo it was portrayed as an almost jovial affair between judge and sentanced, and here in Madagascar it is a very graphic display to sate and normalize the hunger for blood in the populace.

quote:

I make no comment myself—because as I watched this beastly spectacle I seemed to hear the voice of my little Newgate friend in my ear—“Interesting, isn’t it?”—and see again the yelling, gloating audience outside the Magpie and Stump; they were much the same, I suppose, as their heathen brethren. And if you tell me indignantly that hanging is a very different thing from boiling alive—or burning, flaying, flogging, sawing, impaling, and live burial, all of which I’ve seen at Ambohipotsy—I shall only remark that if these spectacles were offered in England it would be a case of “standing room only”—for the first few shows, anyway.

However, if the relation of such atrocities nauseates you, I can only say that I swore to tell the truth of what I saw, and any qualms you may suffer were as nothing to poor old Flashy’s mental distress as we were herded away from the scene of execution—I’ll swear we were only there because our guards didn’t want to miss it—and through one of the massive gates into Antan’ town proper. Its name, by the way, means “City of a Thousand Towns”, and it was as impressive at first hand as it had been from a distance. Wide, clean streets were lined by fine wooden buildings, some of them two and three storeys high (all building must be of wood, by law) and starved and shaken with terror as I was, I could not but marvel at the air of richness there was about the place. Well-stocked booths, shady avenues, neatly-robed folk bustling about their business, expensively-carved and painted sedans swaying through the streets, carrying the better sort, some in half-European clobber, others in splendid sarongs, and lambas of coloured silk. There was no making sense of it—on the one hand, the horrors I had just watched, and on the other this pleasant, airy, civilised-looking city—with Captain Harry Flashman and friends being kicked and flogged through the middle of it, and no one giving us more than a casual glance. Oh, aye—every building had a European lightning conductor.

They locked us in an airy, reasonably clean warehouse for the night, took off our fetters, and gave us our first decent meal for a week—a spicy mutton stew, bread and cheese, and more of their infernal rice-piddle. We scoffed it like wolves—a dozen woolly n****** snuffling over their bowls and one English gentleman dining with refinement, I don’t think. But if it did something for my aching, filthy body, it did nothing for my spirits—this nightmare of existence seemed to have endured forever, and it was mad, incredible, out of all reason. But I must hang on—I had played cricket once, and bowled Felix; I had been to Rugby, and Horse Guards, and Buckingham Palace; I had an address in Mayfair; I had dined at White’s—as a guest, granted—and strolled on Pall Mall. I wasn’t just a lost soul in a lunatic black world, I was Harry Flashman, ex-11th Hussars, four medals and Thanks of Parliament, however undeserved. I must hang on—and surely, in the city I’d seen, there must be some civilised person in authority who spoke French or English, to whom I could state my case and receive the treatment that was my due as a British officer and citizen. After all, they weren’t real savages, not with streets and buildings like these—a touch colourful in the way they disposed of malefactors, no doubt, and no poor relief worth a drat. but no society’s perfect. I must talk to someone.

Young Flash could still be fooled by appearances.

quote:

The difficulty was—who? When they turned us out next morning, we were taken in charge by a couple of black overseers, who spoke nothing but jabber; they thrust us along a narrow alley, and out into a crowded square in which there was a long platform, railed off to one side, with guards stationed at its corners, to keep the mob back. It looked like a public meeting; there were a couple of black officials on the platform, and two more seated at a small table before it. We were pushed up a flight of steps to the platform, and made to stand in line; I was still blinking from the sunlight, wondering what this might portend, as I looked out over the crowd—blacks in lambas and robes for the most part, a few knots of officers in comic-opera uniforms, plenty of sedans with wealthy Malagassies sitting under striped umbrellas. I scanned the faces of the officers eagerly; those would be the French-speakers, and I was just about to raise a halloo to attract their attention when a face near the front of the crowd caught my eye like a magnet, and my heart leaped with excitement.

He was a tall man, wide-shouldered but lean, wearing a bright embroidered shirt under a blue broadcloth coat, and with a silk scarf tied like a cravat: he and his neighbour, a portly sambo resplendent in sarong and cocked hat, were taking snuff in the local fashion, the lean chap accepting a pinch from the other’s box on the palm of his hand and engulfing it with a quick flick of his tongue (it tastes beastly, I can tell you). He grimaced and raised his eyes: they met mine, and stared—they were bright blue eyes, in a face burned brown under a mane of greying hair. But there was no doubt of it—he was a white man.

“You!” I roared. “You, sir! Monsieur! Parlez-vous français? anglais? Hindi? Latin? bloody Greek, even? Listen to me—I must talk to you!”

One of the guards was striding forward to thrust me back, but the lean man was pushing his way through the mob, to my unutterable relief, and at a word from him to the officials he was allowed to approach the platform. He looked up at me, frowning, as I knelt down to be close to him.

“Français?” says he.

“I’m English—a prisoner, from a boat that came in at Tamitave! In God’s name, how can I get out of this? No one listens to me—they’ve been dragging me all over the blasted country for week! I must—”

“Gently, gently,” says he, and at the sound of the English words I could have wept. Then : “Smile, monsieur. Smile—what is the word—broadly? Laugh, if you can—but converse quietly. It is for your own good. Now, who are you?”

I didn’t understand, but I forced a ghastly grin, and told him who I was, what had happened, and my total ignorance of why I’d been brought here. He listened intently, those vivid eyes playing over my face, motioning me to speak softly whenever my voice rose—which, as you can imagine, it tended to do. All the time he was plainly avoiding glancing at my guards or the officials, but he was listening for them. When I had finished he fingered his cravat, nodding, as though I’d been telling him the latest from “Punch”, and smiling pleasantly.

“Eh bien,” says he. “Now attend, and not interrupt. If my English she is not perfect, I use French, but better not. No? Whatever I say, betray no amaze’, do you see? Smile, if you please. Good. I am Jean Laborde, once of the Emperor’s cavalry. I have been here thirteen years, I am a citizen. You do not know Madagascar?”

I shook my head, and he put back his head and laughed softly, plainly for the onlookers’ benefit.

“They detest all Europe, and English especially. Since you land without permission, they treat you as naufragé—how you call?—shipwreck? Castaway? By their law—please to smile, monsieur, very much—all such persons must be made slaves. This is a slave-market. They make you a slave—forever.”

The smiling brown face with its blue eyes swam in front of me; I had to hold on to the edge of the platform. Laborde was speaking again, quickly, and the smile had vanished.

“Say nothing. Wait. Wait. Do not despair. I will make inquiry. I see you again. Only wait, don’t despair. Now, my friend—forgive me.”

On the heels of the last word he suddenly shouted something in what I took to be Malagassy, gesturing angrily. Heads came round, my guard stooped and wrenched at my shoulder, and Laborde struck me full in the face with his open hand.

“Scélérat!” he cried. “Canaille!” He swung angrily on his heel and pushed his way back into the grinning crowd, while the guard kicked me upright and thrust me back into line. I tried to call to Laborde, but I was choked with horror and my own tears, and then one of the officials mounted a rostrum, shouting an announcement, the chatter of the crowd died away, the first of our coffle was pushed forward, and the bidding began.

Well, now Flashman's heading up to the same spot he would watch Cassy make them some money, but without any clear plan or hope of escape.

This also ends another chapter without any excerpts from Elspeth. Let's see where everyone ends up... next time!

* # ? Oct 13, 2021 06:05
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Genghis Cohen
Jun 29, 2013
 The upcoming bits are absolutely nuts. I would be interested to learn more about how much is 100% true and if there is any outdated/misunderstood historical evidence Fraser was drawing on. I mean, some of what we're about to read beggars belief, not that that means it isn't true.

* # ? Oct 14, 2021 10:12
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# ? Jun 11, 2024 12:51
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Beefeater1980
Sep 12, 2008

My God, it's full of Horatios!






 People are pretty amazing at being awful when they have no constraints.

* # ? Oct 14, 2021 11:03
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