“But can’t they relieve you from Jallalabad, for God’s sake?” says I.
“I reckon they got their ’ands full, sir,” says he, shaking his head. “They can ’old out there long enough; ol’ Bob Sale – Gen’l Sale, I should say – ain’t worried about that. But makin’ a sortie to relieve us ’ud be another matter.”
“Oh, Christ,” says I, “out of the frying pan into the fire!”
He stared at me, but I was past caring. There seemed no end to it; there was some evil genie pursuing me through Afghanistan, and he meant to get me in the end. To have come so far, yet again, and to be dragged down within sight of safety! There was a palliasse in the corner of the tower, and I just went and threw myself down on it; my back was still burning, I was half-dead with fatigue, I was trapped in this hellish fort – I swore and wept with my face in the straw, careless of what they thought.
I heard them muttering, Hudson and the sergeant, and the latter’s voice saying: “Well, strike me, ’e’s a rum one!” and they must have gone outside, for I heard them no more. I lay there, and must have fallen asleep out of sheer exhaustion, for when I opened my eyes again it was dark in the room. I could hear the sepoys outside, talking; but I didn’t go out; I got a drink from the pannikin on the table and lay down again and slept until morning.
Some of you will hold up your hands in horror that a Queen’s officer could behave like this, and before his soldiers, too. To which I would reply that I do not claim, as I’ve said already, to be anything but a coward and a scoundrel, and I’ve never play-acted when it seemed pointless. It seemed pointless now. Possibly I was a little delirious in those days, from shock – Afghanistan, you’ll admit, hadn’t been exactly a Bank Holiday outing for me – but as I lay in that tower, listening to the occasional crackle of firing outside, and the yelling of the besiegers, I ceased to care at all for appearances. Let them think what they would; we were all surely going to be cut up, and what do good opinions matter to a corpse?
However, appearances still mattered to Sergeant Hudson. It was he who woke me after that first night. He looked pouch-eyed and filthy as he leaned over me, his tunic all torn and his hair tumbling into his eyes.
“How are you, sir?” says he.
“Damnable,” says I. “My back’s on fire. I ain’t going to be much use for a while, I fear, Hudson.”
“Well, sir,” says he, “let’s have a look at your back.” I turned over, groaning, and he looked at it.
“Not too bad,” says he. “Skin’s only broke here an’ there, and not mortifying. For the rest, it’s just welts.” He was silent a moment. “Thing is, sir, we need every musket we can raise. The sangars are closer this morning, an’ the niggers are massing. Looks like a proper battle, sir.”
“Sorry, Hudson,” says I, rather weak. “I would if I could, you know. But whatever my back looks like, I can’t do much just yet. I think there’s something broken inside.”
He stood looking down at me. “Yes, sir,” says he at length. “I think there is.” And then he just turned and walked out.
I felt myself go hot all over as I realised what he meant by that; for a moment I almost jumped off the palliasse and ran after him. But I didn’t, for at that moment there was a sudden yelling on the parapets, and the musketry crashed out, and Sergeant Wells was bawling orders; but above all I heard the blood-curdling shrieks of the Ghazis, and I knew they were rushing the wall. It was all too much for me; I lay shuddering on the straw while the sounds of fighting raged outside. It seemed to go on forever, and every moment I expected to hear the Afghan war-cries in the yard, hear the rush of feet, and see the bearded horrors dashing in the door with their Khyber knives. I could only hope to God that they would finish me off quickly.
As I say, I may genuinely have had a shock, or even a fever, at this time, although I doubt it; I believe it was just simple fear that was almost sending me out of my mind. At all events, I have no particular idea of how long that fight lasted, or when it stopped and the next assault began, or even how many days and nights passed by. I don’t recall eating and drinking, although I suppose I must have, or even answering the calls of nature. That, incidentally, is one effect that fear does not have on me; I do not wet or foul myself. It has been a near thing once or twice, I admit. At Balaclava, for example, when I rode with the Light Brigade – you know how George Paget smoked a cigar all the way to the guns? Well, my bowels moved all the way to the guns, but there was nothing inside me but wind, since I hadn’t eaten for days.
But in that fort, at the very end of my tether, I seemed to lose my sense of time; delirium funkens had me in its grip. I know Hudson came in to me, I know he talked, but I can’t remember what he said, except for a few isolated passages, and those I think were mostly towards the end. I do remember him telling me Wells had been killed, and myself replying, “That’s bad luck, by God, is he much hurt?” For the rest, my waking moments were less clear than my dreams, and those were vivid enough. I was back in the cell, with Gul Shah and Narreeman, and Gul was laughing at me, and changing into Bernier with his pistol raised, and then into Elphy Bey saying, “We shall have to cut off all your essentials, Flashman, I’m afraid there is no help for it. I shall send a note to Sir William.” And Narreeman’s eyes grew greater and greater, until I saw them in Elspeth’s face – Elspeth smiling and very beautiful, but fading in her turn to become Arnold, who was threatening to flog me for not knowing my construe. “Unhappy boy, I wash my hands of you; you must leave my pit of snakes and dwarves this very day.” And he reached out and took me by the shoulder; his eyes were burning like coals and his fingers bit into my shoulder so that I cried out and tried to pull them free, and found myself scrabbling at Hudson’s fingers as he knelt beside my couch.
“Sir,” says he, “you’ve got to get up.”
“What time is it?” says I. “And what d’ye want? Leave me, can’t you, leave me be – I’m ill, damn you.”
“It’s no go, sir. You can’t stay here any longer. You must stand up and come outside with me.”
I told him to go to the devil, and he suddenly lunged forward and seized me by the shoulders.
“Get up!” he snarled at me, and I realised his face was far more haggard than I’d ever seen it, drawn and fierce like an animal’s. “Get up! You’re a Queen’s officer, by God, an’ you’ll behave like one! You’re not ill, Mr Precious Flashman, you’re plain white-livered! That’s all your sickness! But you’ll get up an’ look like a man, even if you aren’t one!” And he started to drag me from the straw.
I struck out at him, calling him a mutinous dog, and telling him I’d have him flogged through the army for his insolence, but he stuck his face into mine and hissed:
“Oh, no, you won’t! Not now nor never. Because you an’ me ain’t going back where there’s drum-heads an’ floggings or anything, d’ye see? We’re stuck here, an’ we’ll die here, because there’s no way out! We’re done for, lieutenant; this garrison is finished! We haven’t got nothing to do, except die!”
“Damn you, then, what d’ye want me for? Go and die in your own way, and leave me to die in mine.” I tried to push him away.
“Oh, no sir. It ain’t as easy as that. I’m all that’s left to fight this fort, me and a score of broken-down sepoys – and you. And we’re going to fight it, Mr Flashman. To the last inch, d’ye hear?”
“You bloody fight it!” I shouted at him. “You’re so confounded brave! You’re a bloody soldier! All right, I’m not! I’m afraid, damn you, and I can’t fight any more – I don’t care if the Afghans take the fort and Jallalabad and the whole of India!” The tears were running down my cheeks as I said it. “Now go to hell and let me alone!”
He knelt there, staring at me, and pushed the hair out of his eyes. “I know it,” he said. “I half-knew it from the minute we left Kabul, an’ I was near sure back in that cellar, the way you carried on. But I was double certain sure when you wanted to kill that poor Afghan bitch – men don’t do that. But I could
n’t ever say so. You’re an officer and a gentleman, as they say. But it doesn’t matter now, sir, does it? We’re both going, so I can speak my mind.”
“Well, I hope you enjoy doing it,” says I. “You’ll kill a lot of Afghans that way.”
“Maybe I will, sir,” says he. “But I need you to help. And you will help, for I’m going to stick out here as long as I can.”
“You poor ninny,” says I. “What good’ll that do, if they kill you in the end?”
“This much good, that I’ll stop those niggers mounting guns on this hill. They’ll never take Jallalabad while we hold out – and every hour gives General Sale a better chance. That’s what I’m going to do, sir.”
One meets them, of course. I’ve known hundreds. Give them a chance to do what they call their duty, let them see a hope of martyrdom – they’ll fight their way on to the cross and bawl for the man with the hammer and nails.
“My best wishes,” says I. “I’m not stopping you.”
“Yes, you will, sir, if I let you. I need you – there’s twenty sepoys out there who’ll fight all the better if there’s an officer to sick ’em on. They don’t know what you are – not yet.” He stood up. “Anyway, I’m not arguing, sir. You’ll get up – now. Or I’ll drag you out and I’ll cut you to bits with a sabre, a piece at a time.” His face was dreadful to see just then, those grey eyes in that drawn, worn skin. He meant it; not a doubt of it. “So just get up, sir, will you?”
I got up, of course. I was well enough in body; my sickness was purely moral. I went outside with him, into a courtyard with half a dozen or so sepoy bodies laid in a row with blankets over them near the gate; the living ones were up on the parapet. They looked round as Hudson and I went up the rickety ladder to the roof, their black faces tired and listless under their shakos, their skinny black hands and feet ridiculous protruding from red uniform jackets and white trousers.
The roof of the tower was no more than ten feet square, and just a little higher than the walls surrounding it; they were no more than twenty yards long – the place was less a fort than a toy castle. From the tower roof I could see Jallalabad, a mile away, apparently unchanged, except that the Afghan lines seemed to be closer. On our own front they were certainly nearer than they had been, and Hudson hustled me quickly under cover before the Afghans could get a bead on us.
We were watching them, a great crowd of horsemen and hillmen on foot, milling about out of musket shot, when Hudson pointed out to me a couple of cannon that had been rolled up on their right flank. They had been there since dawn, he said, and he expected they would start up as soon as powder and shot had been assembled. We were just speculating when this might be – or rather, Hudson was, for I wasn’t talking to him – when there was a great roar from the horsemen, and they started to roll forward towards our fort. Hudson thrust me down the ladder, across the yard, and up to the parapet; a musket was shoved into my hands, and I was staring through an embrasure at the whole mob surging at us. I saw then that the ground outside the walls was thick with dead; before the gate they were piled up like fish on a slab.
The sight was sickening, no doubt, but not so sickening as the spectacle of those devils whooping in towards the fort. I reckoned there were about forty of them, with footmen trailing along behind, all waving their knives and yelling. Hudson shouted to hold fire, and the sepoys behaved as though they’d been through this before – as they had. When the chargers were within fifty yards, and not showing any great enthusiasm, it seemed to me, Hudson bawled “Fire!”; the volley crashed out, and about four went down, which was good shooting. At this they wavered, but still came on, and the sepoys grabbed up their spare muskets, rolling their eyes at Hudson. He roars “Fire!” again, and another half dozen were toppled, at which the whole lot sheered off.
“There they go!” yells Hudson. “Reload, handily now! By God,” says he, “if they had the bottom for one good charge they could bowl us over like ninepins!”
This had occurred to me. There were hundreds of Afghans out yonder, and barely twenty men in the fort; with a determined rush they could have carried the walls, and once inside they would have chewed us up in five minutes. But I gathered that this had been their style all along – half-hearted charges that had been beaten off, and only one or two that had reached the fort itself. They had lost heavily; I believe that they didn’t much care about our little place, really, but would rather have been with their friends attacking Jallalabad, where the loot was. Sensible fellows.
But it was not going to last; I could see that. For all that our casualties had not been heavy, the sepoys were about done; there was only a little flour left for food, and barely a pannikin of water a man in the big butt down by the gate; Hudson watched it like a hawk.
There were three more charges that day, or maybe four, and none more successful than the first. We banged away and they cleared out, and my mind began to go dizzy again. I slumped beside my embrasure, with a poshteen draped over me to try to keep off the hellish heat; flies buzzed everywhere, and the sepoy on my right moaning to himself incessantly. By night it was as bad; the cold came, so bitter that I sobbed to myself at the pain of it; there was a huge moon, lighting everything in brilliant silver, but even when it set the dark wasn’t sufficient to enable the Afghans to creep up on us, thank God. There were a few alarms and shots, but that was all. Dawn came, and the snipers began to crack away at us; we kept down beneath the parapet, and the shots chipped flakes off the tower behind us.
I must have been dozing, for I was shaken awake by an almighty crash and a thunderous explosion; there was a great cloud of dust swirling about, and as it cleared I saw that a corner of the tower had gone, and a heap of rubble was lying in the courtyard.
“The cannon!” shouts Hudson. “They’re using the cannon!”
Out across the plain, there it was, sure enough – one of their big guns, directed at the fort, with a mob of Afghans jostling round it. Five minutes it took them to reload, and then the place shook as if an earthquake had hit it, and there was a gaping hole in the wall beside the gate. The sepoys began to wail, and Hudson roared at them to stand fast; there was another terrific crash, and then another; the air was full of flying dust and stones; a section of the parapet along from me gave way, and a screaming sepoy went down with it. I launched myself for the ladder, slipped, and rolled off into the debris, and something must have struck my head, for the next thing I knew I was standing up, not knowing where I was, looking at a ruined wall beyond which there was an empty plain with figures running towards me.
They were a long way away, and it took me a moment to realise that they were Afghans; they were charging, sure enough, and then I heard a musket crack, and there at the ruined wall was Hudson, fumbling with a ramrod and swearing, the side of his face caked with blood. He saw me, and bawled:
“Come on! Come on! Lend a hand, man!”
I walked towards him, my feet weighing a ton apiece; a red-coated figure was moving in the shadow of the wall, beside the gate; it was one of the sepoys. Curiously, the wall had been shot in on either side, but the gate was still standing, with the flag trailing at its staff on top, and the cords hanging down. As the shrieks of the Ghazis drew nearer, a thought entered my head, and I stumbled over towards the gate and laid hold of the cords.
“Give in,” I said, and tugged at the cords. “Give in, and make ’em stop!” I pulled at the cords again, and then there was another appalling crash, the gates opened as though a giant hand had whirled them inwards, the arch above them fell, and the flagstaff with it; the choking dust swirled up, and I blundered through it, my hands out to grab the colours that were now within reach.
I knew quite clearly what I wanted to do; I would gather up the flag and surrender it to the Afghans, and then they would let us alone; Hudson, even in that hellish din and horror, must have guessed somehow what was in my mind, for I saw him crawling towards the colours, too. Or perhaps he was trying to save them, I don’t know. But he didn’t manage
it; another round shot ploughed into the rubble before me, and the dirty, blue-clad figure was suddenly swept away like a rag doll into an engulfing cloud of dust and masonry. I staggered forward over the stones, touched the flagstaff and fell on my knees; the cloth of the flag was within reach, and I caught hold of it and pulled it up from the rubbish. From somewhere there came a volley of musketry, and I thought, well, this is the finish, and not half as bad as I thought it would be, but bad enough for all that, and God, I don’t want to die yet.
There was a thunder like a waterfall, and things were falling on me; a horrible pain went through my right leg, and I heard the shriek of a Ghazi almost in my car. I was lying face down, clutching at the flag, mumbling, “Here, take the bloody thing; I don’t want it. Please take it; I give in.” The musketry crashed again, the roaring noise grew louder, and then sight and hearing died.
Chapter 12
There are a few wakenings in your life that you would wish to last forever, they are so blissful. Too often you wake in a bewilderment, and then remember the bad news you went to sleep on, but now and then you open your eyes in the knowledge that all is well and safe and right, and there is nothing to do but lie there with eyes gently shut, enjoying every delicious moment.
I knew it was all fine when I felt the touch of sheets beneath my chin, and a soft pillow beneath my head. I was in a British bed, somewhere, and the rustling sound above me was a punkah fan. Even when I moved, and a sudden anguish stabbed through my right leg, I wasn’t dismayed, for I guessed at once that it was only broken, and there was still a foot to waggle at the end of it.
How I had got there I didn’t care. Obviously I had been rescued at the last minute from the fort, wounded but otherwise whole, and brought to safety. Far away I could hear the tiny popping of muskets, but here there was peace, and I lay marvelling at my own luck, revelling in my present situation, and not even bothering to open my eyes, I was so contented.
Flashman Papers Omnibus Page 24
