The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection

by George MacDonald Fraser

  I’ll give it to Solomon, he hadn’t lied about the luxury of his brig, the Sulu Queen. She was quite the latest thing in screw vessels, driven by a wheel through her keel, twin-masted for sail, and with her funnel well back, so that the whole forward deck, which was reserved for us, was quite free of the belching smoke which covered the stern with smuts and left a great black cloud in our wake. Our cabins were under-deck aft, though, out of the reek, and they were tip-top; oak furniture screwed down, Persian carpets, panelled bulkheads with watercolour paintings, a mirrored dressing-table that had Elspeth clapping her hands, Chinese curtains, excellent crystal and a well-stocked cellarette, clockwork fans, and a double bed with silk sheets that would have done credit to a New Orleans sporting-house. Well, thinks I, this is better than riding the gridirona; we’ll be right at home here.

  The rest of the appointment was to match; the saloon, where we dined, couldn’t have been bettered for grub, liquor and service – even old Morrison, who’d been groaning reluctantly, I gathered, ever since he’d agreed to come, had his final doubts settled when they set his first sea meal before him; he was even seen to smile, which I’ll bet he hadn’t done since he last cut the mill-hands’ wages. Solomon was a splendid host, with every thought for our comfort; he even spent the first week pottering about the coast while we got our sea-legs, and was full of consideration for Elspeth – when she discovered that she had left her toilet water behind he had her maid landed at Portsmouth to go up to Town for some, with instructions to meet us at Plymouth; it was royal treatment, no error, and d--n all expense.

  Only two things raised a prickle with me in all this idyllic luxury. One was the crew: there wasn’t a white face among ’em. When I was helped aboard that first night, it was by two grinning yellow-faced rascals in reefer jackets and bare feet; I tried ’em in Hindi, but they just grinned with brown fangs and shook their heads. Solomon explained that they were Malays; he had a few half-caste Arabs aboard as well, who were his engineers and black gang, but no Europeans except the skipper, a surly enough Frog with a touch of nigger in his hair, who messed in his cabin, so that we never saw him, hardly. I didn’t quite care for the all-yellow crew, though – I like to hear a British or Yankee voice in the foc’sle; it’s reassuring-like. Still, Solomon was a Far East trader, and part-breed himself, so it was perhaps natural enough. He had ’em under his heel, too, and they kept well clear of us, except for the Chink stewards, who were sleek and silent and first-rate.

  The other thing was that the Sulu Queen, while she was fitted like a floating palace, carried ten guns, which is about as many as a brig will bear. I said it seemed a lot for a pleasure-yacht, and Solomon smiled and says:

  “She is too valuable a vessel to risk, in Far Eastern waters, where even the British and Dutch navies can afford little protection. And” – bowing to us – “she carries a precious cargo. Piracy is not unknown in the islands, you know, and while its victims are usually defenceless native craft – well, I believe in being over-cautious.”

  “Ye mean – there’s danger?” goggled Morrison.

  “Not,” says Solomon, “with ten guns aboard.”

  And to settle old Morrison’s qualms, and show off to Elspeth, he had all forty of his crew perform a gun practice for our benefit. They were handy, all right, scampering about the white-scrubbed deck in their tunics and short breeches, running out the pieces and ramming home cold shot to the squeal of the Arab bosun’s pipe, precise as guardsmen, and afterwards standing stock-still by their guns, like so many yellow idols. Then they performed cutlass-drill and arms drill, moving like clockwork, and I had to admit that trained troops couldn’t have shaped better; what with her speed and handiness, the Sulu Queen was fit to tackle anything short of a man-of-war.

  “It is merely precaution piled on precaution,” says Solomon. “My estates lie on peaceful lanes, on the Malay mainland for the most part, and I take care never to venture where I might be blown into less friendly waters. But I believe in being prepared,” and he went on to talk about his iron water-tanks, and stores of sealed food – I’d still have been happier to see a few white faces and brown whiskers around us. We were three white folk – and Solomon himself, of course – and we were outward bound, after all.

  However, these thoughts were soon dispelled in the interest of the voyage. I shan’t bore you with descriptions, but I’m bound to say it was the pleasantest cruise of my life, and we never noticed how the weeks slipped by. Solomon had spoken of three months to Singapore; in fact, it took us more than twice as long, and we never grudged a minute of it. Through the summer we cruised gently along the French and Spanish coasts, looking in at Brest and Vigo and Lisbon, being entertained lavishly by local gentry – for Solomon seemed to have a genius for easy acquaintance – and then dipping on down the African coast, into the warm latitudes. I can look back now and say I’ve made that run more times than I can count, in everything from an Indiaman to a Middle Passage slaver, but this was not like any common voyage – why, we picnicked on Moroccan beaches, made excursions to desert ruins beyond Casablanca, were carried on camels with veiled drivers, strolled in Berber market-places, watched fire-dancers under the massive walls of old corsair castles, saw wild tribesmen run their horse races, took coffee with turbaned, white-bearded governors, and even bathed in warm blue water lapping on miles and miles of empty silver sand with palms nodding in the breeze – and every evening there was the luxury of the Sulu Queen to return to, with its snowy cloths and sparkling silver and crystal, and the delicate Chink stewards attending to every want in the cool dimness of the saloon. Well, I’ve been a Crown Prince, once, in my wanderings, but I’ve never seen the like of that voyage.

  “It is a fairy-tale!” Elspeth kept exclaiming, and even old Morrison admitted it wasn’t half bad – the old b----rd became positively mellow, as why shouldn’t he, waited on hand and foot, with two slant-eyed and muscular yellow devils to carry him ashore and bear him in a palki on our excursions? “It’s daein’ me guid,” says he, “I can feel the benefit.” And Elspeth would sigh dreamily while they fanned her in the shade, and Solomon would smile and beckon the steward to put more ice in the glasses – oh, aye, he even had a patent ice-house stowed away somewhere, down by the keel.

  Farther south, along the jungly and desert coasts, there was no lack of entertainment – a cruise up a forest river in the ship’s launch, with Elspeth wide-eyed at the sight of crocodiles, which made her shudder deliciously, or laughing at the antics of monkeys and marvelling at the brilliance of foliage and bird-life. “Did I not tell you, Diana, how splendid it would be?” Solomon would say, and Elspeth would exclaim rapturously, “Oh, you did, you did – but this is quite beyond imagination!” Or there would be flying-fish, and porpoises, and once we were round the Cape – where we spent a week, dining out ashore and attending a ball at the Governor’s, which pleased Elspeth no end – there was the real deep blue sea of the Indian Ocean, and more marvels for my insatiable relatives. We began the long haul across to India in perfect weather, and at night Solomon would fetch his guitar and sing dago dirges in the dusk, with Elspeth drowsing on a daybed by the rail, while Morrison cheated me at écarté, or we would play whist, or just laze the time contentedly away. It was tame stuff, if you like, but I put up with it – and kept my eye on Solomon.

  For there was no doubt about it, he changed as the voyage progressed. He took the sun pretty strong, and was soon the brownest thing aboard, but in other ways, too, I was reminded that he was at least half-dago or native; instead of the customary shirt sleeves and trousers he took to wearing a tunic and sarong, saying jokingly that it was the proper tropical style; next it was bare feet, and once when the crew were shark-fishing Solomon took a hand at hauling in the huge threshing monster – if you had seen him, stripped to the waist, his great bronze body dripping with sweat, yelling as he heaved on the line and jabbering orders to his men in coast lingo … well, you’d have wondered if it was the same chap who’d been bowling slow lobs at Cant
erbury, or talking City prices over the port.

  Afterwards, when he came to sit on the deck for an iced soda, I noticed Elspeth glancing at his splendid shoulders in a lazy sort of way, and the glitter in his dark eyes as he swept back his moist black hair and smiled at her – he’d been the perfect family friend for months, mind you, never so much as a fondling paw out of place – and I thought, hollo, he’s looking d----d dashing and romantic these days. To make it worse, he’d started growing a chin-beard, a sort of nigger imperial; Elspeth said it gave him quite the corsair touch, so I made a note to roger her twice that night, just to quell these girlish fancies. All this reading Byron ain’t good for young women.

  It was the very next day that we came on deck to see a huge green coastline some miles to port; jungle-clad slopes beyond the beach, and mountains behind, and Elspeth cried out to know where it might be. Solomon laughed in an odd way as he came to the rail beside us.

  “That’s the strangest country, perhaps, in the whole wide world,” says he. “The strangest – and the most savage and cruel. Few Europeans go there, but I have visited it – it’s very rich, you see,” he went on, turning to old Morrison, “gums and balsam, sugar and silk, indigo and spices – I believe there is coal and iron also. I have hopes of improving on the little trade I have started there. But they are a wild, terrible people; one has to tread warily – and keep an eye on your beached boat.”

  “Why, Don Solomon!” cries Elspeth. “We shall not land there, surely?”

  “I shall,” says he, “but not you; the Sulu Queen will lie well off – out of any possible danger.”

  “What danger?” says I. “Cannibals in war canoes?” He laughed.

  “Not quite. Would you believe it if I told you that the capital of that country contains fifty thousand people, half of ’em slaves? That it is ruled by a monstrous black queen, who dresses in the height of eighteenth-century fashion, eats with her fingers from a table laden with gold and silver European cutlery, with place-cards at each chair and wall-paper showing Napoleon’s victories on the wall – and having dined she will go out to watch robbers being burned alive and Christians crucified? That her bodyguard go almost naked – but with pipe-clayed cartridge belts, behind a band playing ‘The British Grenadiers’? That her chief pleasures are torture and slaughter – why, I have seen a ritual execution at which hundreds were buried alive, sawn in half, hurled from—”

  “No, Don Solomon, no!” squeals Elspeth, covering her ears, and old Morrison muttered about respecting the presence of ladies – now, the Don Solomon of London would never have mentioned such horrors to a lady, and if he had, he’d have been profuse in his apologies. But here he just smiled and shrugged, and passed on to talk of birds and beasts such as were known nowhere else, great coloured spiders in the jungle, fantastic chameleons, and the curious customs of the native courts, which decided guilt or innocence by giving the accused a special drink and seeing whether he spewed or not; the whole place was ruled by such superstitions and crazy laws, he said, and woe betide the outsider who tried to teach ’em different.

  “Odd spot it must be,” says I. “What did you say it was called?”

  “Madagascar,” says he, and looked at me. “You have been in some terrible places, Harry – well, if ever you chance to be wrecked there” – and he nodded at the green shore – “pray that you have a bullet left for yourself.” He glanced to see that Elspeth was out of earshot. “The fate of any stranger cast on those shores is too shocking to contemplate; they say the queen has only two uses for foreign men – first, to subdue them to her will, if you follow me, and afterwards, to destroy them by the most fearful tortures she can devise.”

  “Playful little lady, is she?”

  “You think I’m joking? My dear chap, she kills between twenty and thirty thousand human beings each year – she means to exterminate all tribes except her own, you see. When she came to the throne, some years ago, she had twenty-five thousand enemies rounded up, forced to kneel all together in one great enclosure, and at a given signal, swish! They were all executed at once. She kept a few thousand over, of course, to hang up sewed in ox skins until they rotted – or to be boiled or roasted to death, by way of a change. That’s Madagascar.”

  “Ah, well,” says I, “Brighton for me next year, I think. And you’re going ashore?”

  “For a few hours. The governor of Tamitave, up the coast, is a fairly civilized savage – all the ruling class are, including the queen: Bond Street dresses, as I said, and a piano in the palace. That’s a remarkable place, by the way – big as a cathedral, and covered entirely by tiny silver bells. G-d knows what goes on in there.”

  “You’ve visited it?”

  “I’ve seen it – but not been to tea, as you might say. But I’ve talked to those who have been inside it, and who’ve even seen Queen Ranavalona and lived to tell the tale. Europeans, some of ’em.”

  “What are they doing there, for G-d’s sake?”

  “The Europeans? Oh, they’re slaves.”

  At the time, of course, I suspected he was drawing the long bow to impress the visitors – but he wasn’t. No, every word he’d said about Madagascar was gospel true – and not one-tenth of the truth. I know; I found out for myself.

  But from the sea it looked placid enough. Tamitave was apparently a very large village of yellow wooden buildings set out in orderly rows back from the shore; there was a fairish-sized fort with a great stockade some distance from the town, and a few soldiers drilling outside it. While Haslam was ashore, I examined them through the glass – big buck niggers in white kilts, with lances and swords, very smart, and moving in time, which is unusual among black troops. They weren’t true niggers, though, it seemed to me; when Haslam was rowed out to the ship again there was an escorting boat, with a chap in the stern in what was a fair imitation of our naval rig: blue frock coat, epaulettes, cocked hat and braid, saluting away like anything – he looked like a Mexican, if anything, with his round, oily black face, but the rowers were dark brown and woolly haired, with straight noses and quite fine features.

  That was the closest I got to the Malagassies, just then, and you may come to agree that it was near enough. Solomon seemed well satisfied with whatever business he had done ashore, and by next morning we were far out to sea with Madagascar forgotten behind us.

  Now, I said I wouldn’t weary you with our voyage, so I shall do no more than mention Ceylon and Madras – which is all they deserve, anyway, and take you straight away across the Bengal Bay, past the infernal Andamans, south by the heel of Great Nicobar, and into the steaming straits where the great jellyfishes swim between the mainland of Malaya and the strange jungle island of Sumatra with its man-monkeys, down to the sea where the sun comes from, and the Islands lie ahead of you in a great brilliant chain that runs thousands of miles from the South China Sea to Australia and the far Pacific on the other side of the world. That’s the East – the Islands; and you may take it from one who has India in his bones, there’s no sea so blue, no lands so green, and no sun so bright, as you’ll find beyond Singapore. What was it Solomon had said – “where it’s always morning.” So it was, and in that part of my imagination where I keep the best memories, it always will be.

  That’s one side of it. I wasn’t to know, then, that Singapore was the last jumping-off place from civilization into a world as terrible as it was beautiful, rich and savage and cruel beyond belief, of land and seas still unexplored where even the mighty Royal Navy sent only a few questing warships, and the handful of white adventurers who voyaged in survived by the speed of their keels and slept on their guns. It’s quiet now, and the law, British and Dutch, runs from Sunda Strait to the Solomons; the coasts are tamed, the last trophy heads in the long-houses are ancient and shrivelled,13 and there’s hardly a man alive who can say he’s heard the war gongs booming as the great robber fleets swept down from the Sulu Sea. Well, I heard ’em, only too clearly, and for all the good I’ve got to say of the Islands, I can tell you t
hat if I’d known on that first voyage what I learned later, I’d have jumped ship at Madras.

  But I was happily ignorant, and when we slipped in past the green sugar-loaf islands one fine April morning of ’44, and dropped anchor in Singapore roads, it looked safe enough to me. The bay was alive with shipping, a hundred square-riggers if there was one: huge Indiamen under the gridiron flag, tall clippers of the Southern Run wearing the Stars and Stripes, British merchantmen by the bucketful, ships of every nationality – Solomon pointed out the blue crossed anchors of Russia, the red and gold bars of Spain, the blue and yellow of Sweden, even a gold lion which he said was Venice. Closer in, the tubby junks and long trading praus were packed so close it seemed you could have walked on them right across the bay, fairly seething with half-naked crews of Malays, Chinese, and every colour from pale yellow to jet black, deafening us with their high-pitched chatter as Solomon’s rowers threaded the launch through to the river quay. There it was bedlam; all Asia seemed to have congregated on the landing, bringing their pungent smells and deafening sounds with them.

  There were coolies everywhere, in straw hats or dirty turbans, staggering half-naked under bales and boxes – they swarmed on the quays, on the sampans that choked the river, round the warehouses and go-downs, and through them pushed Yankee captains in their short jackets and tall hats, removing their cheroots from their rat-trap jaws only to spit and cuss; Armenian Jews in black coats and long beards, all babbling; British blue-jackets in canvas shirts and ducks; long-moustached Chinese merchants in their round caps, borne in palkis; British traders from the Sundas with their pistols on their hips; leathery clipper men in pilot caps, shouting oaths of Liverpool and New York; planters in wideawakes making play among the niggers with their stout canes; a file of prisoners tramping by in leg-irons, with scarlet-coated soldiers herding them and bawling the step – I heard English, Dutch, German, Spanish, and Hindi all in the first minute, and most of the accents of England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland and the American seaboards to boot. God knows what the native tongues were, but they were all being used at full pitch, and after the comparative quiet we’d been used to it was enough to make you dizzy. The stink was fearful, too.