The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection

by George MacDonald Fraser

  “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 Suleiman Usman and the Balagnini sea-wolves are the best friends I’ve got. Perhaps our radical MPs are right, and I’m just a pirate at heart.”

  “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 h---ish 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.26

  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 h--l 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 G-d’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?”
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br />   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 cut-throat 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 longboat.

  “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 longboats’ 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!”b

  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 here, 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 recognized 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.

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

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

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

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

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