Flash For Freedom! fp-3

by George MacDonald Fraser

  It was obvious to me that I had fallen in with a lunatic, and possibly a dangerous one, but since in my experience a great many seamen are wanting in the head I wasn't over-concerned. He paid not the slightest heed to anything I said as we made our way down to the jetty with my valise behind on a hand-cart, but occasionally he would bark a question at me, and it was this that eventually prodded me into recollecting one of the few Latin tags which has stuck in my mind — mainly because it was flogged into me at school as a punishment for talking in class. He had been demanding information about my Indian service, mighty offensively, too, so I snapped at him:

  "Percunctatorem fugitus nam garrulus idem est",*[* Avoid the inquisitive man, for he is a talker.] which I thought was pretty fair, and he stopped dead in his tracks.

  "Horace, by G-d!" he shouted. "We'll make something of you yet. But it is fugito, d'ye see, not fugitus. Come on, man, make haste."

  He got little opportunity to catechise me after this, for the first stage of our journey was in a cockly little fishing boat that took us out into the Channel, and since it was h—lish rough I was in no condition for conversation. I'm an experienced sailor, which is to say I've heaved my guts over the rail into all the Seven Seas, and before we were ten minutes out I was sprawled in the scuppers wishing to God I'd gone back to London and faced the music. This spewing empty misery continued, as it always does, for hours, and I was still green and wobbly-kneed when at evening we came into a bay on the French coast, and sighted Mr Spring's vessel riding at anchor. Gazing blearily at it as we approached, I was astonished at its size; it was long and lean and black, with three masts, not unlike the clippers of later years. As we came under her counter, I saw the lettering on her side: it read Balliol College.

  "Ah," says I to Spring, who was by me just then. "You were at Balliol, were you?"

  "No," says he, mighty short. "I am an Oriel man myself."

  "Then why is your ship called Balliol College?"

  I saw his teeth clench and his scar darkened up. "Because I hate the b––y place!" he cried in passion. He took a turn about and came back to me. "My father and brothers were Balliol men, d'you see? Does that answer you, Mr Flashman?"

  Well, it didn't, but at that moment my belly revolted again, and when we came aboard I had to be helped up the ladder, retching and groaning and falling a-sprawl on the deck. I heard a voice say, "Christ, it's Nelson", and then I was half-carried away, and dropped on a bunk somewhere, alone in my misery while in the distance I heard the hateful voice of John Charity Spring bawling orders. I vowed then, as I've vowed fifty times since, that this was the last time I'd ever permit myself to be lured aboard a ship, but my mind must still have been working a little, because as I dropped off to sleep I remember wondering: why does a British ship have to sail from the French coast? But I was too tired and ill to worry just then.

  Sometime later someone brought me broth, and having spewed it on to the floor I felt well enough to get up and stagger on deck. It was half-dark, but the stars were out, and to port there were hghts twinkling on the French coast. I looked north, towards England, but there was nothing to be seen but grey sea, and suddenly I thought, my G-d, what am I doing here? Where the deuce am I going? Who is this man Spring? Here I was, who only a couple of weeks before had been rolling down to Wiltshire like a lord, with the intention of going into politics, and now I was shivering with sea-sickness on an ocean-going barque commanded by some kind of mad Oxford don — it was too much, and I found I was babbling to myself by the rail.

  It's always the way, of course. You're coasting along, and then the current grips you, and you're swept into events and places that you couldn't even have dreamed about. It seemed to have happened so quickly, but as I looked miserably back over the past fortnight there wasn't, that I could see, anything I could have done that would have prevented what was now happening to me. I couldn't have resisted Morrison, or refused Spring — I'd had to do what I was told, and here I was. I found myself blubbering as I gazed over the rail at the empty waste of sea — if only I hadn't got lusty after that little b—-h Fanny, and played cards with her, and hit that swine Biyant — ah, but what was the use? It was done, and I was going God knew where, and leaving Elspeth and my life of ease and drinking and guzzling and mounting women behind. But it was too bad, and I was full of self-pity and rage as I watched the water slipping past.

  Of course, if I'd been like Jack Merry or Dick Champion, or any of the other plucky little prigs that Tom Brown and his cronies used to read about, setting off to seek my fortune on the bounding wave, I'd have brushed aside a manly tear and faced the future with the stout heart of youth, while old Bosun McHearty clapped me on the shoulder and held me enthralled with tales of the South Seas, and I would have gone to bed at last thinking of my mother and resolving to prove worthy of my resolute and Christian commander, Captain Freeman. (God knows how many young idiots have gone to sea after being fed that kind of lying pap in their nursery books.) Perhaps at twenty-six I was too old and hard-used, for instead of a manly tear I did another manly vomit, and in place of Bosun McHearty there came a rush of seamen tailing on a rope across the deck, hurling me aside with a cry of "Stand from under, you –– farmer! ", while from the dark above me my Christian commander bellowed at me to get below and not hinder work. So I went, and fell asleep thinking not of my mother, or of the credit I'd bring my family, but of the chance I'd missed in not rogering Fanny Locke that afternoon at Roundway Down. Aye, the vain regrets of youth.

  You will judge from this that I wasn't cut out for the life on the ocean wave. I can't deny it; if Captain Marryat had had to write about me he'd have burned his pen, signed on a Cardiff tramp, and been buried at sea. For one thing, in my first few days aboard I did not thrash the ship's bully, make friends with the nigger cook, or learn how to gammon a bosprit from a leathery old salt who called me a likely lad. No, I spent those days in my bunk, feeling d––d ill, and only crawling on deck occasionally to take the air and quickly scurry below again to my berth. I was a sea-green and corruptible Flashy in those days.

  Nor did I make friends, for I saw only four people and disliked all of them. The first was the ship's doctor, a big-bellied lout of an Irishman who looked as though he'd be more at home with a bottle than a lancet, and had cold, clammy hands. He gave me a draught for my sea-sickness which made it worse, and then staggered away to be ill himself. He was followed by a queer, old-young creature with wispy hair who shuffled in carrying a bowl from which he slopped some evil-looking muck; when I asked him who the d—-l he was he jerked his head in a nervous tic and stammered:

  "Please, sir, I'm Sammy."

  "Sammy what?"

  "Nossir, please sir, Sammy Snivels, cap'n calls me. But they calls me Looney, mostly."

  "And what's that?"

  "Please sir, it's gruel. The doctor sez for you to eat it, please, sir," and he lumbered forward and spilled half of it over my cot.

  "D—n you!" cries I, and weak and all as I was I caught him a back-handed swipe on the face that sent him half across the cabin. "Take your filth and get out!"

  He mowed at me, and tried to scrape some of the stuff off the floor back into the bowl. "Doctor'll thump me if you don't take it, please, sir," says he, pushing it at me again. "Please, sir, it's nice tack, an' all — please, sir," and then he squealed as I lunged out at him, dropped the bowl, and fairly ran for it. I was too weak to do more than curse after him, but I promised myself that when I was better I would put myself in a better frame of mind by giving the blundering half-wit a thumping on my own account, to keep the doctor's company.

  Next man in was no half-wit, but a nimble little ferret of a ship's boy with a loose lip and a cast in one eye. He gave me a shifty grin and sniffed at the spilled gruel.

  "Looney didn't 'ave no luck, did 'e?" says he. "I told 'im gruel wouldn't go down, no'ow."

  I told him to go to blazes and leave me alone.

  "Feelin' groggy, eh?" says he, moving towards the bunk. "Grub'
s no good ter you, mate. Tell yer wot; I'll get in bed wiv yer for a shillin'."

  "Get out, you dirty little b d," says I, for I knew his kind; Rugby had been crawling with 'em. "I'd sooner have your great-grandmother."

  "Snooks!" says he, putting out his tongue. "You'll sing a different tune after three months at sea an' not a wench in sight. It'll be two bob then!"

  I flung a pot at him, but missed, and he let fly a stream of the richest filth I've ever listened to. "I'll get Mister Comber ter you, yer big black swine!" he finished up. "E'll give you what for! Ta-ta!" And with that he slipped out, thumbing his nose.

  Mr Comber was the fourth of my new acquaintances. He was third mate, and shared the cabin with me, and I couldn't make him out. He was civil, although he said little enough, but the odd thing was, he was a gentleman, and had obviously been to a good school. What a playing-field beauty like this was doing on a merchantman I couldn't see, but I held my tongue and watched him. He was about my age, tall and fair haired, and too sure of himself for me to get on the wrong side of. I guessed he was as puzzled about me as I was about him, but I was feeling too poorly at first to give much heed to him. He didn't champion the cabin boy, by the way, so that worthy's threat had obviously been bluff.

  It was four or five days before I got my sea legs, and by then I was heartily sick of the Balliol College. Nowadays you have no notion of what a sailing-ship was like in the forties; people who travel P.O.S.H. in a steam packet can't imagine, for one thing, the h—-ish continual din of a wooden vessel — the incessant creaking and groaning of timber and cordage, like a fiend's orchestra playing the same discordant notes, regular as clockwork, each time she rolled. And, by G-d, they rolled, far worse than iron boats, bucketing up and down, and stinking, too, with the musty stale smell of a floating cathedral, and the bilges plashing like a giant's innards. Oh, it was the life for a roaring boy, all rights and that was only the start of it. I didn't know it, but I was seeing the Balliol College at her best.

  One morning, when I was sufficiently recovered to hold down the gruel that Looney brought me, and strong enough to kick his backside into the bargain, comes Captain Spring to tell me I'd lain long enough, and it was time for me to learn my duties.

  "You'll stand your watch like everyone else," says he, "and in the meantime you can start on the work you're paid for — which is to go through every scrap of that cargo, privatim et seriatim, and see that those long-shore thieves haven't bilked me. So get up, and come along with me."

  I followed him out on deck; we were scudding along like a flying duck with great billows of canvas spread, and a wind on the quarter deck fit to lift your hair off. There was plenty of shipping in sight, but no land, and I knew we must be well out of the Channel by now. Looking forward from the poop rail along the narrow flush deck, it seemed to me the Balliol College didn't carry much of a crew, for all her size, but I didn't have time to stop and stare, with Spring barking at me. He led me down the poop ladder, and then dropped through a scuttle by the mizzen mast.

  "There you are," says he. "Take a good look."

  Although I've done a deal more sailing than I care to remember, I'm no canvas-back, and while I know enough not to call the deck the floor, I'm no hand at nautical terms. We were in what seemed to be an enormous room stretching away forward to the foremast, where there was a bullthead; this room ran obviously the full breadth of the ship, and was well lighted by gratings in the deck about fifteen feet above our heads. But it was unlike the interior of any ship I'd ever seen, it was so big and roomy; on either side, about four feet above the deck on which we stood, there was a kind of half-deck, perhaps seven feet deep, like a gigantic shelf, and above that yet another shelf of the same size. The space down the centre of the deck, between the shelves, was piled high with cargo in a great mound — it must have been a good seventy feet long by twelve high.

  "I'll send my clerk to you with the manifest," says Spring, "and a couple of hands to help shift and stow." I became aware that the pale eyes were watching me closely. "Well?"

  "Is this the hold?" says I. "It's an odd-looking place for cargo."

  "Aye," says he. "Ain't it, though?"

  Something in his voice, and in the dank feel of that great, half empty deck, set the worms stirring inside me. I moved forward with the great heap of cargo, bales and boxes, on one side of me, and the starboard shelves on the other. It was all clean and holystoned, but there was a strange, heavy smell about it that I couldn't place. Looking about, I noticed something in the shadows at the back of the lower shelf — I reached in, and drew out a long length of light chain, garnished here and there with large bracelets. I stood staring at them, and then dropped them with a clatter as the truth rushed in on me. Now I saw why the Balliol College had sailed from France, why her deck was this strange shape, why she was only half-full of cargo.

  "My G-d!" cries I. "You're a slaver!"

  "Good for you, Mr Flashman!" says Spring. "And what then?"

  "What then?" says I. "Well, you can turn your b d boat about, this minute, and let me ashore from her! By G-d, if I'd guessed what you were, I'd have seen you d––d, and old Morrison with you, before I set foot on your lousy packet!"

  "Dear me," says he softly. "You're not an abolitionist, surely?"

  "D—n abolition, and you too!" cries I. "I know that slaving's piracy, and for that they stretch your neck below high-water mark! You — you tricked me into this — you and that old swine! But I won't have it, d'ye hear? You'll set me ashore, and —"

  I was striding past him towards the ladder, as he stood with his hands thrust deep in his pockets, eyeing me under the brim of his hat. Suddenly he shot out a hand, and with surprising strength swung me round in front of him. The pale eyes gazed into mine, and then his fist drove into my belly, doubling me up with pain; I reeled back, and he came after me, smashing me left and right to the head and sending me sprawling against the cargo.

  "D—n you!" I shouted, and tried to crawl away, but he pinned me with his foot, glaring down at me.

  "Now, see here, Mister Flashman," says he. "I didn't want you, but I've got you, and you'll understand, here and now, that while you're on this ship, you're mine, d'ye see? You're not going ashore until this voyage is finished — Middle Passage, Indies, homeward run and all. If you don't like slaving — well, that's too bad, isn't it? You shouldn't have signed aboard, should you?"

  "I didn't sign! I never —"

  "Your signature will be on the articles that are in my cabin this minute," says he. "Oh, it'll be there, sure enough — you'll put it there."

  "You're kidnapping me!" I yelled. "My G-d, you can't do it! Captain Spring, I beg you — set me ashore, let me get off — I'll pay you — I'll —"

  "What, and lose my new supercargo?" says this devil, grinning at me. "No, no. John Charity Spring obeys his owner's orders — and mine are crystal clear, Mister Flashman. And he sees to it that those aboard his ship obey his orders, too, ye hear me?" He stirred me with his foot. "Now, get up. You're wasting my time again. You're here; you'll do your duty. I won't tell you twice." And those terrible pale eyes looked into mine again. "D'ye understand me?"

  "I understand you," I muttered.

  "Sir," says he.

  "Sir."

  "Come," says he, "that's better. Now, cheer up, man; I won't have sulks, by G-d. This is a happy ship, d'ye hear? It should be, the wages we pay. There's a thought for you, Flashman — you'll be a d––d sight richer by the end of this voyage than you would be on a merchantman. What d'ye say to that?"

  My mind was in a maze over all this, and real terror at what the consequences might be. Again I pleaded with him to be set ashore, and he slapped me across the mouth.

  "Shut your trap," says he. "You're like an old woman. Scared are you? What of?"

  "It's a capital crime," I whimpered.

  "Don't be a fool," says he. "Britain doesn't hang slavers, nor do the Yankees, for all their laws say. Look about you — this ship's built for slaving, ain'
t she? Slavers who run the risk of getting caught aren't built so, with chains in view and slave decks and all. No, indeed, qui male agit odit lucem*[* The evil-doer hates the light.] — they pose as honest merchantmen, so if the patrols nab 'em they won't be impounded under the equipment regulations. The Balliol College needs no disguises — for the simple reason we're too fast and handy for any d––d patrol ship, English or American. What I'm telling you, Mister Flashman, is that we don't get caught, so you won't either. Does that set your mind at rest?"

  It didn't, of course, but! knew better than to protest again. All I could think of was how the h—l I was going to get out of this. He took my silence for assent.

  "Well enough," growls he. "You'll begin on this lot, then" — and he jerked a thumb at the cargo. "And for Christ's sake, liven up, man! I'll not have you glooming up this ship with a long face, d'ye see? At eight bells you'll leave off and come to my cabin — Mrs Spring will be serving tea for the officers, and will wish to meet you."

  I didn't believe my ears. "Mrs Spring?"

  "My wife," he snapped, and seeing my bewilderment: "Who the d—-l else would Mrs Spring be? You don't think I'd ship my mother aboard a slaver, do you?"

  And with that he strode off, leaving me in a fine sweat. Thanks to an instant's folly, and the evil of that rotten little toad, my father-in-law, I was a member of the crew of a pirate ship, and nothing to be done about it. It took some digesting, but there it was; I suppose that after all the shocks I'd had in my young life this should have been nothing out of the way, but I found myself shuddering at the thought. Not that I'd any qualms about slaving, mark you, from the holy-holy point of view; they could have transported every nigger in Africa to the moon in chains for all I cared, but I knew it was a d––d chancy business — aye, and old Morrison had known that, too. So the old swine had his fingers in the blackbird pie — and I'll lay my life that was a well concealed ledger in his countinghouse — and had taken advantage of the Bryant affair to shanghai me into this. He had wanted me out of the way, and here was a golden chance of making sure that I would be away for good; no doubt Spring was right, and the Balliol College would come through her voyage safe, as most slavers did, but there was always the chance of being caught, and rotting your life away in jail, even if they didn't top you. And there was the risk of getting killed by niggers on the Slave Coast, or catching yellow jack or some foul native disease, as so many slaving crews did — oh, it was the perfect ocean cruise for an unwanted son-in-law. And Elspeth would be a widow, I would never see her, or England, again, for even if I survived the trip, word of it might get home, and I'd be an outlaw, a felon …