Flashman's Lady

by George MacDonald Fraser

  I asked him if he meant to devote his life to chasing pirates, and he came all over solemn, gazing out over the sea with the wind ruffling his hair.

  “It may well be a life’s work,” says he. “You see, what our people at home will not understand is that a pirate here is not a criminal, in our sense; piracy is the profession of the Islands, their way of life—just as trading or keeping shop is with Englishmen. So it is not a question of rooting out a few scoundrels, but of changing the minds of whole nations, and turning them to honest, peaceful pursuits.” He laughed and shook his head. “It will not be easy—d’you know what one of them said to me once?—and this was a well-travelled, intelligent head-man—he said: ‘I know your British system is good, tuan besar; I have seen Singapura and your soldiers and traders and great ships. But I was brought up to plunder, and I laugh when I think that I have fleeced a peaceful tribe right down to their cooking-pots.’ Now, what d’you do with such a fellow?”

  “Hang him,” says Wade, who was sitting on the deck with little Charlie Johnson, one of Brooke’s people,24 playing main chatter.* “That was Makota, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, Makota,” says Brooke, “and he was the finest of ’em. One of the stoutest friends and allies I ever had—until he deserted to join the Sadong slavers. Now he supplies labourers and concubines to the coast princes who are meant to be our allies, but who deal secretly with the pirates for fear and profit. That’s the kind of thing we have to fight, quite apart from the pirates themselves.”

  “Why d’you do it?” I asked, for in spite of what Stuart had told me, I wanted to hear it from the man himself; I always suspect these buccaneer-crusaders, you see. “I mean, you have Sarawak; don’t that keep you busy enough?”

  “It’s a duty,” says he, as one might say it was warm for the time of year. “I suppose it began with Sarawak, which at first seemed to me like a foundling, which I protected with hesitation and doubt, but it has repaid my trouble. I have freed its people and its trade, given it a code of laws, encouraged industry and Chinese immigration, imposed only the lightest of taxes, and protected it from the pirates. Oh, I could make a fortune from it, but I content myself with a little—I’m either a man of worth, you see, or a mere adventurer after gain, and God forbid I should ever be that. But I’m well rewarded,” says he blandly, “for all the good that I do ministers to my satisfaction.”

  Pity you couldn’t set it to music and sing it as an anthem, thinks I. Old Arnold would have loved it. But all I said was that it was undoubtedly God’s work, and it was a crying shame that it went unrecognised; worth a knighthood at least, I’d have said.

  “Titles?” cries he, smiling. “They’re like fine clothes, penny trumpets, and turtle soup—all of slight but equal value. No, no. I’m too quiet to be a hero. All my wish is for the good of Borneo and its people—I’ve shown what can be done here, but it is for our government at home to decide what means, if any, they put at my disposal to extend and develop my work.” His eyes took on that glitter that you see in camp-meeting preachers and company accountants. “I’ve only touched the surface here—I want to open the interior of this amazing land, to exploit it for the benefit of its people, to correct the native character, to improve their lot. But you know our politicians and departments—they don’t care for foreign ventures, and they’re jolly wary of me, I can tell you.”

  He laughed again. “They suspect me of being up to some job or other, for my own good. And what can I tell ’em?—they don’t know the country, and the only visits I ever get are brief and official. Well, what can an admiral learn in a week? If I’d any sense I’d vamp up a prospectus, get a board of directors, and hold public meetings. ‘Borneo Limited’, what? That’d interest ’em, all right! But it would be the wrong thing, you see—and it’d only convince the government that I’m a filibuster myself—Blackbeard Teach with a clean shirt on. No, no, it wouldn’t do.” He sighed. “Yet how proud I should be, some day, to see Sarawak, and all Borneo, under the British flag—for their good, not ours. It may never happen, more’s the pity—but in the meantime, I have my duty to Sarawak and its people. I’m their only protector, and if I leave my life in the business, well, I shall have died nobly.”

  Well, I’ve seen pure-minded complacency in my time, and done a fair bit in that line myself, when occasion demanded, but J.B. certainly beat all. Mind you, unlike most Arnoldian hypocrites, I think he truly believed what he said; at least, he was fool enough to live up to it, so far as I could see, which is consistent with my conclusion that he was off his head. And when you remember that he excited the wrath of Gladstone25—well, that speaks volumes in a chap’s favour, doesn’t it? But at the time I was just noting him down as another smug, lying, psalm-smiter devoted to prayer and profit, when he went and spoiled it all by bursting into laughter and saying:

  “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 and Suleiman Usman and the Balagnini sea-wolves are the best friends I’ve got. Perhaps our radical M.P.s 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?”

  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 cutthroat 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 long-boat.

  “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 long-boats’ 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!”*

  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 her, 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 recognised 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.