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 realization 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.
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 Pyramids31 – weren’t you, gaffer?”
“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 G-d, 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, d--n 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 manoeuvre 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 blowpipemen; 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 d----d 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.
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 b-----s, 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 agonizingly 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!”32
Chapter 8
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 porthole opposite me. That wasn’t right, though; no portholes 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 d---l 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 d---l 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, G-d only knew why, not to let me perish of blow-pipe poison. Difficult to know what to sa
y, so I didn’t.
“You can guess why you are alive,” says he. “It is because of her – whose husband you were.”
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 nigger pirate, this scum of the East, my confusion and discretion vanished together in rage.
“You b----y 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 mart – 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—”
The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection Page 81
