The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection

by George MacDonald Fraser

  I goggled at these things, hardly understanding, and then looked at Comber; he was lying with his eyes shut, and his face working.

  “You’re a spy,” says I. “A spy on the slavers!”

  He opened his eyes. “You … may call it that. If it is spying to help to deliver these poor creatures … then I am proud to be a spy.” He made a great effort, gasping with pain, and turned on his side towards me. “Flashman … hear me … I’m going … soon. Even if you don’t … see this as I do … as God’s work … still, you are a gentleman … an Army officer. Why, you are one of Arnold’s people … the paladins. For God’s sake, say you will help! Don’t let all my work … my death … be in vain!”

  He was in a desperate sweat, straining a hand out towards me, his eyes glittering. “You must … in honour … and, oh, for these poor lost black souls! If you’d seen what I’ve seen … aye, and had to help in, God forgive me … but I had to, you see, until I had done my work. You must help them, Flashman; they cannot help themselves. Their minds are not as ours … they are weak and foolish and an easy prey to scoundrels like Spring … but they have souls … and this slavery is an abomination in God’s sight!” He struggled to get farther up. “Say you will help … for pity’s sake!”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Take those letters.” His voice was weakening, and I could see blood seeping through his blanket; he must have opened his wound in his exertion. “Then … my chest … there under the canvas shirt … packet. Copy of Spring’s accounts … last voyage. I took some of them … completed them this trip. Letters, too … evidence against him … and others. For God’s sake get them to the Admiralty … or the American Navy people … oh, dear God!”

  He fell back, moaning, but by then I was ferreting through his chest, snatching out a slender packet sewn in an oilskin cover. I slipped it and the letters quickly out of sight in my pocket, and bent over his cot.

  “Go on, man! What more? Are there any others like yourself—agents, officers, or what?”

  But he just lay there, coughing weakly and breathing in little moaning gasps. I closed the chest and sat down to see if he would revive again, and after a moment he began to mumble; I leaned close, but it was a moment before I could make out what he was saying—in fact, he was singing, in a little whisper at the back of his throat; it was that sad little song. “The Lass so good and true”, that they call “Danny Boy” nowadays. I knew at once, without telling, that it was the song his mother had used to sing him to sleep, for he began to smile a little, with his eyes closed. I could have kicked the brute; if he’d spent less time making his soul and belly-aching to me about hell fire, and minded his duty, he would have had time to tell me more about his mission. Not that I cared a button for that, but all knowledge is useful when you’re in the grip of folk like Spring. But he was going to slip his cable with all the good scandal untold, by the looks of it.

  Sure enough, when his whispered song died away, he began muttering, “Mother … Sally … yes, Mother … cold …” but nothing to make sense. It was maddening. Of course, my generation were preoccupied with their mothers, which sets me apart; mine died when I was little, you see, and I never really knew her, which may account for a deal. It crossed my mind, in that moment, what will I have to say in the last few seconds before I slip over the edge of life? Whose name will be on my repentant lips? My father’s?—now there would be a cheery vision to carry over to the other side, all boozy face and rasping voice. Elspeth’s? I doubt it. Some of the other ladies?—Lola, or Natasha or Takes-Away-Clouds-Woman or Leonie or Lady White Willow or … no, there wouldn’t be time. I’ll have to wait and see. Which reminds me, young Harry East, when they pulled what was left of him into the dooli at Cawnpore, muttered, “Tell the doctor”, and everyone thought he meant the surgeon—but I knew different. He meant Arnold, which as a dying thought has one advantage, that the Devil, if you meet him later, will be an improvement.

  So I speculated, as Comber’s breathing slackened, and then I saw the shadow of death cross his wasted face (there is such a shadow, down from the temple and across to the chin, seen it scores of times) and he was gone. I pulled the blanket over his head, went through his jacket pockets and chest, but found nothing worth while except a pencil case and a good clasp knife, which I appropriated, and then went topsides to tell Spring.

  “He’s gone at last, is he?” was his charitable comment. “Aye, omne capax movet urna nomen.d We need not pretend he is a great loss. Blackwall fashion was about his style25—a sound enough seaman, but better fitted for an Indiaman than our trade. Very good, you can tell the sailmaker to bundle him up; we’ll bury him tomorrow.” And he continued to survey the horizon through his glass, while I slipped away to think over the momentous news I’d learned from the dying Comber. Obviously the fact that he had been an Admiralty man working against the slavers was of the first importance, but for the life of me I couldn’t see what use it might be to me. For all that I’d soothed his passing moments out of an uncommon civility, I didn’t mind a snap whether his precious evidence ever reached government hands or not. In fact, it seemed to me that if an information was laid against the Balliol College and her master, those who had sailed with him would land in the dock as well, and they included H. Flashman, albeit he wasn’t aboard willingly. Yet my knowledge, and Comber’s, might be valuable somehow, provided I kept them safe from prying eyes.

  So it seemed to me at the time anyway, so I took a leaf out of Comber’s book, and in the privacy of my berth sewed his two letters into my belt. I hesitated a long while over the packet, for I knew the secrets it contained would be fatally dangerous to whoever shared them; if Spring ever found out it would be a slit throat and a watery grave for me. But curiosity got the better of me in the end; I opened it carefully so that it could be re-sealed, and was presently goggling my way through the contents.

  It was prime stuff, no question: all Spring’s accounts for 1847 copied out in minute writing—how many niggers shipped, how many sold at Roatan and how many at the Bay of Pigs, the names of buyers and traders; a full description of deals and prices and orders on British and American banks. There was enough to hang old John Charity ten times over, but that wasn’t the best of it; Comber had been at his letters, too, and while some of them were in cypher, quite a few were in English. They included one from the London firm which had supplied the trade goods for our present voyage; another from New York lawyers who seemed to represent American investors (for Comber had annotated it with a list of names marked “U.S. interests, owners”) and—oh, b - - - - y rapture!—a document describing the transfer of the Balliol College from its American builders, Brown & Bell, to a concern in London among the names of whose directors was one J. Morrison. I almost whooped at the sight of it—what Spring was thinking of to keep such damaging evidence aboard his vessel I couldn’t fathom, but there it was. I found Morrison mentioned in one other letter, and a score of names besides; it might not be enough to hang him, or them, but I was certain sure he would sell his rotten little soul to keep these papers from the public gaze.

  I had him! The knowledge was like a warm bath—with these papers at my command I could, when I got home again, turn the screw on the little shark until he hollered uncle. No longer would I be the poor relation; I would have evidence that could ruin him, commercially and socially, and perhaps put him in the dock as well, and the price of my silence would be a free run through his moneybags. By gad, I’d be set for life. A seat in the House? It would be a seat on the board, at least, and grovelling civility from him to me for a change. He’d rue the day he shanghaied me aboard his lousy slave ship.

  Chuckling happily, I sewed it all up again in its oilskin, and stitched this carefully into the lining of my coat. There it would stay until I got home and it could be employed in safety to my enrichment and Morrison’s confusion. I reflected, as I went back on deck later, that it all came from my act of Christian kindness in listening by Comber’s deathbed and comforting
his last moments. There’s no doubt about it; virtue isn’t always just its own reward.

  Comber wasn’t buried the next day, because one of the slaves died during the night, and when the watch found him at dawn they naturally heaved the body overside to the sharks. For some reason this sent Spring into a passion; he wasn’t having a white man buried at sea on the same day as a black had been slung over, which seemed to be stretching it a bit, but a lot of the older hands agreed with him. It beats me; when I go they can plant me in with the whole population of Timbuctoo, but others see things differently. Spring, now, was mad about little things like that, and when eventually we did come to bury Comber on the morning after, and his body had been laid out on a plank by the rail, all neatly stitched up in sail-cloth, our fastidious commander played merry h - - l because no one had thought to cover it with a flag. This on a Dahomey slaver, mark you. So we all had to wait with our hats off while Looney was despatched to get a colour from the flag locker, and Spring stamped up and down with his Prayer Book under his arm, cursing the delay, and Mrs Spring sat by with her accordion. She was wearing a floral bonnet in honour of the occasion, secured with a black scarf for mourning, and her face wore its usual expression of vacant amiability.

  Looney came back presently, and you wouldn’t believe it, he was carrying the Brazilian colours. We were wearing them at the moment, this being the Middle Passage,26 so I suppose he thought he’d done right, but Spring flew into a towering passion.

  “D - - n your lousy eyes!” cries he. “Take that infernal Dago duster out of my sight—would you bury an Englishman under that?” And he knocked Looney sprawling and then kicked him into the scuppers. He cursed him something fearful, the scar on his head bright crimson, until one of the hands brought a Union Jack, and then we got on with the service. Spring rattled through it, the shotted corpse went over with a splash, Mrs Spring struck up, we all sang “Rock of Ages”, and the “amen” hadn’t died away before Spring had strode to the unfortunate Looney and kicked his backside again so hard that he went clean down the booby hatch to the main deck. I’ve often thought how instructive it would have been for our divinity students to see how the offices for the dead were conducted aboard the Balliol College.

  However, this was just another incident which I relate to show you what kind of a lunatic Spring was; I suppose it stands out in my mind because the next few weeks were so uneventful—that may seem an extraordinary thing to say about a slave voyage on the Middle Passage, but once you are used to conditions, however remarkable, you start to twiddle your thumbs and find life a bore. I had little to do beyond stand my watches, help dance the slaves, and continue the instruction of Lady Caroline Lamb. She took to following me about, and had to be made to wear a cotton dress that the sailmaker ran up, in case Mrs Spring caught sight of her—as though she’d never seen naked black wenches before, by the hundred. Lady Caroline Lamb didn’t care for this, and whenever she was in my berth she used to haul the dress off, and sit stark by the foot of my cot, like a black statue, waiting to be educated, one way or the other.

  One other thing I should mention, because it turned out to be important, was the behaviour of Looney. Whether Spring’s hammering had driven him even more barmy I can’t say, but he was a changed man after Comber died. He’d been a willing, happy idiot, but now he became sullen, and started if anyone spoke to him, and took to muttering to himself in corners. I cuffed him smartly to make him stop it, but he wouldn’t; he just blubbered and mowed and shuddered if Spring’s name was even mentioned. “He’s the Devil!” he whined. “The b - - - - y Devil! He bashed us, for nowt. He did, the - - - -.” And he would crawl away, whimpering obscenities, to find a place to hide. Even Sullivan, who was softer with him than most, couldn’t prevail on him to do his duties aft as steward, and the cook’s Chinese mate had to serve in Spring’s cabin.

  So we ran westward, and then north-west, for about a month if I remember rightly, until one morning I learned that we were out of the Atlantic and into the Caribbean. It all looked alike to me, for the weather had continued fine the whole way and I’d never worn more than my jersey, but now a change came over the ship. Each day there was gun drill at the long nines and twelves, which struck me as ominous, and you could sense a growing restlessness among the hands: where men off watch had been content to loaf before, they now kept watching the horizon and sniffing the wind; either Spring or Sullivan was always at the after rail with the glass; whenever a large sail was sighted Spring would have the guns shotted and their crews standing by. As the weather grew even hotter, tempers got shorter; the stench from the slave-deck was choking in its foulness, and even the constant murmuring and moaning of the cargo seemed to me to have taken on a deeper, more sinister note. This was the time, I learned, when slave mutinies sometimes broke out, as more of them died—although only five perished all told in our ship—and the others became sullen and desperate. You’d been able to feel the misery and fear down on the slave-deck, but now you could feel the brooding hatred; it was in the way they shuffled sulkily round when they were danced, heads sunk and eyes shifting, while the hands stood guard with the needle-guns, and the light swivel pieces were kept armed and trained to sweep the decks if need be. I kept as well away from those glowering black brutes as I could; even the sharks which followed the ship didn’t look more dangerous—and there were always half a dozen of them, dark sinuous shapes gliding through the blue water a couple of fathoms down, hoping for another corpse to come overside.

  I wasn’t the only one in a fine state of nerves on the last week’s run along the old Spanish Main; apparently even Spring was apprehensive, for instead of running up north-west to the Windward Passage and our intended destination—which was somewhere on the north side of Cuba—he held almost due west for the Mosquito Coast, which if anything is a more God-forsaken shore than the one we had left in Africa. I saw it only as a far distant line on our port beam, but its heavy air lay on the ship like a blanket; the pitch bubbled between the planks, and even the wind seemed to have come from a blast furnace door. By the time we stood into the bay at Roatan, which you’ll find on the map in the Islas de la Bahia, off the Honduras Coast, we were a jittery, sun-dried ship, and only thankful that we’d come safe through with never a Yankee patroller or garda costa in sight.27

  We dropped anchor in that great clearing-house of the African slavers, where Ivory Coast brigs and schooners, the Baltimore clippers and Angola barques, the Gulf free-traders and Braziliano pirates all rode at their moorings in the broad bay, with the bumboats and shorecraft plying among them like water-beetles, and even the stench of our own slave-deck was beaten all to nothing by the immense reek of the huge barracoons and pens that lined the shore and even ran out into the sludgy green waters of the bay on great wooden piers. One never dreams that such places exist until one sees and hears and smells them, with their amazing variety of the scum of the earth—blacks and half-breeds of every description, Rio traders with curling mustachios and pistols in their belts and rings in their ears, like buccaneers from a story-book; Down Easter Yankees in stove-pipe hats with cigars sticking out of faces like flinty cliffs; sun-reddened English tars, some still wearing the wide straw hats of the Navy; packet rats in canvas shirts and frayed trousers; Scowegians with leathery faces and knives hanging on lanyards round their necks; Frog and Dago skippers in embroidered weskits with scarves round their heads, and niggers by the hundred, of every conceivable shape and shade—everyone babbling and arguing in half the tongues on earth, and all with one thing in common: they lived by and on the slave trade.

  But best of all I remember a big fellow all in dirty white calicos and a broad-brimmed Panama, holding on to a stay in one of the shore-boats that came under our counter, and bawling up red-faced in reply to some one who had asked what was the news:

  “Ain’t ye heard, then? They found gold, over to the Pacific coast! That’s right—gold! Reckon they’re pickin’ it up fast as they can shovel! Why, they say it’s in lumps big as your fist
—more gold’n anyone’s ever seen before! Gold—in California!”28

  * * *

  a Where are you hastening, fools?

  b Without offending modesty.

  c I am a Roman citizen. I hate vulgar profane persons.

  d Every name is shaken in death’s great urn.

  Chapter 5

  We landed all our slaves at Roatan, herding them down into the big lighters where the Dago overseers packed them in like sheep, while Spring conducted business aft of the mizzen-mast with half a dozen brokers who had come aboard. A big awning had been rigged up, and Mrs Spring dispensed tea and biscuits to those who wanted it—which meant to Spring himself and to a wizened little Frenchman in a long taffeta coat and wideawake hat, who perched on a stool sipping daintily from his cup while a nigger boy stood behind fanning the flies off him. The other brokers were three greasy Dagoes in dirty finery who drank rum, a big Dutchman with a face like a suet pudding who drank gin punch, and a swarthy little Yankee who drank nothing at all.

  They had all made a quick tour of the slave-deck before it was cleared, and then they bickered and bid with Spring, the Dagoes jabbering and getting excited, the other three mighty calm and business-like. In the end they divided the six hundred among them, at an average price of nine dollars a pound—which came to somewhere between seven and eight hundred thousand dollars for the cargo. No money changed hands; nothing was signed; no receipts were sought or given. Spring simply jotted details down in a note-book—and I daresay that after that the only transactions that took place would be the transfer of bills and orders in perfectly respectable banks in Charlestown, New York, Rio and London.