Читать книгу The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection - George Fraser MacDonald - Страница 62

I was back in Patusan just a few years ago, and it’s changed beyond belief. Now, past the bend of the river, there is a sleepy, warm little village of bamboo huts and booths, hemmed in by towering jungle trees, drowsing in the sunlight; fowls scratching in the dirt, women cooking, and no greater activity than a child tumbling and crying. However much I walked round, and squinted at it from odd angles, I couldn’t match it to my memory of bristling stockades along the banks, with five mighty wooden forts fringing the great clearing – the jungle must have been farther back then, and even the river has changed: it is broad and placid now, but I remember it narrow and choppy, and everything more cramped and enclosed; even the sky seems farther away nowadays, and there’s a great peace where once there was pandemonium of smoke and gunfire and rending timber and bloody water.

They were waiting for us when we swept round the bend in line abreast, Phlegethon and the rocket-praus leading, with our spy-boats lurking under the counters waiting to strike. Although it was broad dawn you couldn’t see the water at all; there was a blanket of mist a yard deep on its surface, cutting off not only sight but sound, so that even the Phlegethon’s wheel gave only a muffled thump as it hit the water, and the splash of the sweeps was a dull, continuous churning as we ploughed the fog.

There was a huge log-boom just visible above the mist fifty yards ahead, and beyond it a sight to freeze your blood – from bank to bank, a line of great war-praus, swarming with armed men, pennants hanging from their masts, skull-fringes bobbing, and as we came into view, a hideous yell going up from every deck, the war-gongs booming, and that d---l’s horde shaking their fists and brandishing their weapons. It was taken up from the manned stockades on the right bank, and the wooden forts behind – and then the fort guns and the praus’ bow-chasers belched smoke, and the air was thick with screaming shot, whining overhead, driving up jets of water from the misty surface or crashing home into the timbers of our craft. The rocket-praus fired back, and in a moment the still air was criss-crossed with the smoky vapour trails, and the pirate battle-line shuddered under the pounding of the Congreves; shattering explosions on their decks, bursts of flame and smoke, men diving from their upper works, and then their cannon roaring back again, turning the narrow river into an inferno of noise and destruction.

“Spy-boats away!” bawls Brooke from the Phlegethon’s rail, and out from under the counters raced half a dozen of Paitingi’s shells, darting in towards the boom, only the rowers visible above the mist, so that each crew was just a line of heads and shoulders cleaving through that woolly blanket. Just beyond the boom the foggy water was thick with enemy canoes, their musketeers firing raggedly at our spy-boats. I saw heads vanish here and there as the shots took effect, but the spy-boats forged on, and now the pirates were closing on the boom itself, scrambling on to the huge logs, swords and parangs in hand, to deny our men a foot-hold. And above both sides the great gun duel continued, between our praus and theirs, in one continuous h---lish din of explosion and crashing timber, punctuated by screams of wounded men and bellowed commands.

You couldn’t hear yourself think, but at such times it’s best not to, anyway. I was at Brooke’s elbow, straining every nerve to keep his body between mine and the enemy’s fire without being too obvious about it. Now he was directing our musketeers’ fire from the Phlegethon’s bow, to cover our spy-boatmen, who were fighting furiously to drive the pirates from the boom so that the great binding-ropes could be cut and the boom broken to give our vessels passage; I flung myself down, yelling nonsense, between two of our riflemen, seizing a piece myself and making great play at loading it. Brooke, on his feet, was walking from man to man, pointing out targets.

“That one in the yellow scarf – lively, now! Got him! The big fellow with the spear – the Malay beyond Paitingi – there, now, the fat one in the stern of yon canoe. Blaze away, boys! They’re failing – go on, Stuart, get the axes going on those cables! Come on, Flashman, off we go!”

He slapped me on the shoulder – just when I’d got myself nice and snug behind the sandbags, too – and perforce I had to tumble after him over the Phlegethon’s side into the Jolly Bachelor, which was bobbing alongside, packed with Dido’s men. I heard a shot clang on the Phlegethon’s plates just above my head as I went sprawling into the sloop, and then hands were hauling me upright, and a bearded tar was grinning and yelling: “’Ere we go, sir! Twice round the light’ouse for a penny!” I plunged after Brooke, stumbling over the cursing, cheering men who squatted on the deck, and fetched up beside him near the bow-chaser, where he was trying to make himself heard above the din, and pointing ahead.

We were driving in towards the boom, under a canopy of rocket-smoke, and now the gunfire was dispersing the mist, and you could see the oily water, already littered with broken timbers, and even a body here and there, rolling limp. On the boom it was a hand-to-hand mêlée between the pirate canoes and our spy-boatmen, a slippering, slashing dog-fight of glittering parangs and thrusting spears, with crashing musketry at point-blank range over the logs. I saw Paitingi, erect on the boom, laying about him with a broken oar; Stuart, holding off a naked pirate with his cutlass, shielding two Chinese who were swinging their axes at the great rattan cables securing the boom. Even as I watched, the cables parted, and the logs rolled, sending friend and foe headlong into the water; the Jolly Bachelor gave a great yell of triumph, and we were heading for the gap, into the smoke, while from our bow a blue light went up to signal the praus.

There was a frantic five minutes while we backed water in the space between the broken sides of the boom, Brooke and the bow-chaser crew spraying grape ahead of us, and the rest of us banging away at anything that looked like a hostile shape, either on the boom itself or in the canoes beyond. I used my Colt sparingly, crouched down by the bulwark, and keeping as well snuggled into the mob of tars as possible; once, when a canoe came surging out of the smoke, with a great yellow d---l in a quilted tunic and spiked helmet in the prow, brandishing a barbed lance, I took a steady sight and missed him twice, but my third shot got him clean amidships as he was preparing to leap for our rail, and he tumbled into the water.

“Bravo, Flashman!” cries Brooke. “Here, come up beside me!” And there I was again, red in the face with panic, stumbling up beside him as he leaned over the side, helping to haul Stuart out of the water – he’d swum from the broken boom, and was gasping on the deck, sodden wet, with a trickle of blood running from his left sleeve.

“Steady all!” roars Brooke. “Ready, oarsmen! Every musket primed? Right, hold on, there! Wait for the praus!”

Beyond the tangle of wreckage and foundering canoes, beyond the struggling swimmers and floating bodies, the two ends of the boom were now a good fifty yards apart, drifting slowly behind us on the current. The spy-boats had done their work, and our praus were moving ahead under their sweeps, coming up into line, half a dozen on either side, while the rocket-praus, farther back, were still cannonading away at the pirate line, perhaps two cables’ lengths ahead. Three or four of them were burning furiously, and a great reek of black smoke was surging down river towards us, but their line was still solid, and their bow guns fired steadily, sending up clouds of water round our praus and battering their upper works. Between them and us their canoes were in retreat, scurrying for the safety of the larger craft; Brooke nodded with satisfaction.

“So far, so good!” cries he, and standing up in the bows, he waved his hat. “Now then, you fellows, put your backs into it! Two blue lights, there – signal the advance! Cutlasses and small arms, everyone – tally-ho!”

The blue-jackets yelled and stamped, and as the blue lights went up the cheering spread along our line, and on either side the praus drove forward, bow-chasers blazing away, musketeers firing from the platforms, the crews crowding forward to the bows. As our line steadied the gunfire rose to a new crescendo; we were crouching down as the shot whined above us, and suddenly there was an appalling smash, a chorus of shrieks, and I found myself sodden with blood, staring in horror at two legs and half a body thrashing feebly on the deck in front of me, where an instant before a seaman had been ramming shot into the bow-chaser. I sat down heavily, pawing at the disgusting mess, and then Brooke had me on my feet again, yelling to know if I was all right, and I was yelling back that the corn on my big toe was giving me h--l – G-d knows why one says these things, but he gave a wild laugh and pushed me forward to the bow rail. I crouched down, shuddering and ready to vomit, helpless with fear – but who would have recognized it then?

Suddenly the cannonading died, and for a few seconds there was a silence in which you could hear the water chuckling under the Jolly Bachelor’s forefoot as she went gliding forward. Then the musketry crashed out again, as our sharpshooters on the praus poured their fire into the pirate line, and the pirates gave us back volley for volley. Thank G-d the Jolly Bachelor was too low and too close now for them to get at us with cannon, but as we drove in towards them the water either side was boiling with their small shot, and behind me there were cries and oaths of men hit; our whole line was charging across the water, praus on the flanks, Jolly Bachelor in the centre, towards the pirate vessels; they were barely fifty yards off, and I could only stare in horror at the nearest one, dead ahead, the platform which jutted out from her rails crowded with savage howling faces, brandished steel, and smoking barrels – “They’ll shoot us to pieces! We’ll founder – Jesus loves me!” someone was shouting, but nobody heard me in that fearful din. A seaman at my elbow screamed and stood up, tearing at a sumpitan dart in his arm; as I dived for the cover of the rail another stood quivering in a cable a foot from my face; Brooke leaned over, grinning, snapped it off, tossed it away, and then did an unbelievable thing. I didn’t credit it then, and scarcely do now, but it’s a fact.

He stood up, full height in the bows, one foot on the rail, threw away his straw hat, and folded his arms, staring straight ahead at that yelling, grimacing Death that was launching shot, steel, and poisoned arrows at us in clouds. He was smiling serenely, and seemed to be saying something. “Get down, you mad b----r!” I shouted, but he never even heard, and then I realized that he wasn’t speaking – he was singing. Above the crash of musketry, the whistle and thump of those horrid darts, the screams and the yells, you could hear it:

“Come, cheer up, my lads,

’Tis to glory we steer,

To add something new

To this wonderful year—”

He was turning now, one hand on a stay for balance, thumping the time with his other fist, his face alight with laughter, roaring to us to sing – and from the mob behind it came thundering out:

“Heart of oak are our ships,

Jolly tars are our men,

We always are ready,

Steady, boys, steady,

We’ll fight and we’ll conquer again and again!”

The Jolly Bachelor shuddered in the water as we scraped under the platform of the pirate prau, and then shrieking, slashing figures were dropping among us; I went sprawling on the deck, with someone treading on my head, and came up to find myself staring into a contorted, screaming yellow face; I had an instant’s glimpse of a jade earring carved like a half-moon, and a scarlet turban, and then he had gone over the side with a cutlass jammed to the hilt in his stomach; I fired at him as he fell, slipped in the blood on the deck, and finishing up in the scuppers, glaring about me in panic. The deck was in turmoil, resolving itself into knots of blue-jackets, each killing a struggling pirate in their midst and heaving the bodies overside; the prau we had scraped was behind us now, and Brooke was yelling:

“Steady, oarsmen! Pull with a will! There’s our quarry, you chaps! Straight ahead!”

He was pointing to the right bank, where the stockade, hit by rocket fire, was collapsed in smouldering ruin; beyond it lay one of the forts, its stockade blazing fiercely, with figures scattering away, and a gallant few trying to douse the flames. Behind us was an unbelievable carnage; our praus and the pirates’ locked together in a bloody hand-to-hand struggle, and through the gaps our longboats surging in the wake of the Jolly Bachelor, loaded with Malay swordsmen and Dyaks. The water was littered with smoking wreckage and struggling forms; men were falling from the platforms, and our boats were picking them up when they were friends, or butchering them in the bloody current if they were pirates. Smoke from the burning praus was swirling in a great pall above the infernal scene; I remembered that line about “a death-shade round the ships” – and then someone was shaking my arm, and Brooke was shouting at me, pointing ahead to the nearing shore and the smoking breach in the stockade.

“Take that fort!” he was yelling. “Lead the blue-jackets! Charge in, d’ye hear, no covering, no halting! Just tear in with the cutlass – watch out for women and kids, and prisoners! Chase ’em, Flashy! Good luck to you!”

I inquired tactfully if he was b----y mad, but he was ten yards away by then, plunging through the shallows as our boat scraped into the shelving bank; he scrambled up the shore, waving to the other longboats to close on him; they were turning at his signal – and there was I, revolver in shaking fist, staring horrified over the bows at the charred ruins of the stockade, and beyond it, a good hundred yards of hard-beaten earth, already littered with cannon casualties, and beyond that again, the blazing barrier of the fort’s outer wall. Ch---t knew how many slashing fiends were waiting in there, ready to blast us with musketry and then rip us up at close quarters – if we ever got that far. I looked round at the Jolly Bachelor, crammed with yelling sailors, straw hats, bearded faces, white smocks, glaring eyes, cutlasses at the ready, waiting for the word. And the word, no doubt about it, was with old Flash.

Well, whatever you may say of me, I know my duty, and if there was one thing Afghanistan had taught me, it was the art of leadership. In a trice I had seized a cutlass, thrust it aloft, and turned to the maddened crew behind me. “Ha, ha, you fellows!” I bellowed. “Here we go, then! Who’ll be first after me into yonder fort?” I sprang to the bank, waved my cutlass again, and bawled, “Follow me!”

They came tumbling out of the boat on my heels, yelling and cheering, brandishing their weapons, and as I stood shouting, “On! On! Rule, Britannia!” they went pouring up the shore, scattering the embers of the stockade. I advanced with them, of course, pausing only to encourage those in the rear with manly cries, until I reckoned there were about a score in front of me; then I lit out in pursuit of the vanguard, not leading from behind, exactly – more from the middle, really, which is the safest place to be unless you’re up against civilized artillery.

We charged across the open space, howling like hounds; as we ran, I saw that on our right flank Brooke was directing the Malay swordsmen towards another fort; they were drawing those dreadful kampilans with the hair-tufts on their hilts, and behind them came a second wave from the boats, of half-naked Iban, carrying their sumpitan spears and screeching “Dyak! Dyak!” as they ran. But none of ’em matched the speed and fury of my tars, who were now almost up to the blazing fort stockade; just as they reached it the whole thing, by great good luck, fell inwards with a great whooshing of sparks and smoke, and as the foremost leaped through the burning rubbish I was able to see how wise I’d been in not leading the charge myself – there, in a ragged double line, was a troop of pirate musketeers presenting their pieces. Out crashed their volley, knocking over one or two of our first fellows, and then the rest were into them, cutlasses swinging, with old Flash arriving full of noble noise at the point where our chaps were thickest.

It seemed to me that I could employ my best efforts picking off the enemy with my Colt, and this gave me the opportunity to watch something which is worth going a long way to see, provided you can find a safe vantage – the terrible cut-and-thrust, shoulder to shoulder, of British blue-jackets in a body. I daresay the Navy has been teaching it since Blake’s day, and Mr Gilbert, who never dreamed what it was like, makes great fun of it nowadays, but I’ve seen it – and I know now why we’ve been ruling the oceans for centuries. There must have been a hundred pirates to our first line of twenty, but the tars just charged them in a solid wedge, cutlasses raised for the backhand cut – stamp and slash, then thrust, stamp and slash, then thrust, stamp-slash-thrust, and that pirate line melted into a fallen tangle of gashed faces and shoulders, through which the sailors ploughed roaring. Those pirates who still stood, turned tail and fairly pelted for the fort gates, with our chaps chasing and d--ning ’em for cowardly swabs – made me quite proud to be British, I can tell you.

I was fairly close up with the front rank, by now, bellowing the odds and taking a juicy swipe at any wounded who happened to be looking t’other way. The defenders had obviously hoped their musketeers would hold us beyond the gate, but we were in before they knew it. There was a party of pirates trying to swing a great gun round to blast us at the entrance; one of ’em was snatching at a linstock, but before he could touch it off there were half a dozen thrown sheath-knives in his body, and he sprawled over the gun while the others turned and fled. We were in, and all that remained was to ferret out every pirate for the place to be ours.

This presented no difficulty, since there weren’t any – for the simple reason that the cunning b-----ds had all sneaked out the back way, and were even now scurrying round to take us in the rear at the gate. I didn’t know this, of course, at the time; I was too busy despatching armed parties under petty officers to overrun the interior, which was like no fort I’d ever seen. In fact, it was Sharif Sahib’s personal bamboo palace and headquarters, a great labyrinth of houses, some of ’em even three storeys high, with outside staircases, connecting walkways, verandahs, and screened passages everywhere. We had just begun to ransack and loot, and had discovered the Sharif’s private wardrobe – an astonishing collection which included such varying garments as cloth-of-gold turbans, jewelled tiaras, toppers, and morning dress – when all h--l broke out from the direction of the main gate, and there was a general move in that direction. General, but not particular – while the loyal tars surged off in search of further blood, I was skipping nimbly out of Sharif Sahib’s wardrobe in the opposite direction. I didn’t know where it would lead, but it was at least away from the firing – I’d seen enough gore and horror for one day, and I sped quickly across a bamboo bridge into the adjoining house, which appeared to be deserted. There was a long passage, with doors on one side, and I was hesitating over which would be the safest bolt-hole, when one of them shot open and out rushed the biggest man I’ve ever seen in my life.

He was at least seven feet tall, and as hideous as he was big – a great yellow, globular face set on massive shoulders, with a tasselled cap on top, staring pop-eyes, and a great sword clutched in his pudgy hands. He screamed at the sight of me, backing down the passage in a strange, waddling run, and then he swung his sword back over his head, squealing like a steam-whistle, overbalanced, and vanished with a rending crash down a steep flight of stairs. By the sound of it he must have carried away two floors with him, but I wasn’t waiting about for any more like him – I leaped through the nearest door, and stopped dead in my tracks, unable to believe my eyes. I was in a great room full of women.

I closed my eyes, and opened them, wondering if I was dreaming, or having hallucinations after my trying day. It was still there, like something out of Burton’s “Arabian Nights” – the illustrated one that you can only get on the Continent. Silken hangings, couches, carpets, cushions, a stink of perfume coming at you in waves – and the ladies, a round score of them – beautifully round, I realized, and evidently proud of it, for there wasn’t clothing enough among the lot of ’em to cover one body respectably. A few sarongs, wisps of silk, bangles, satin trousers, a turban or two, but not worth a d--n when it came to concealing those splendid limbs, shapely hips, plump buttocks, and pouting tits. I could only gape, disbelieving, and tear my eyes from the bodies to the faces – every shade from coffee and beige to honey and white, and all beautiful; red lips parted and trembling, dark, kohl-fringed eyes wide with terror.

I wondered for a moment if I’d been killed in the fight and transported to some delightful paradise; but celestial or earthly, I couldn’t pass up a chance like this, and the thought must have shown in my expression, for with one accord the whole gorgeous assembly screamed in unison, and turned to flee – mind, I don’t blame ’em, for Flashy leering in your doorway, covered in blood and grime, pistol in one hand and bloody cutlass in t’other, ain’t quite the vicar dropping in to tea. They ran pell-mell, falling over cushions, blundering into each other, scrambling for the other doors in the room, and it seemed only common sense to grab for the nearest, a voluptuous little thing whose entire wardrobe was a necklace and gauzy trousers; it may have been my hand on her ankle, or her top-heavy bosom, that made her overbalance; either way, she fell through a curtained alcove and slithered headlong down a narrow stairway, scrambling and shrieking with Flashy in hot pursuit. She fetched up against a screen wall at the bottom, I seized her joyfully – and in that moment I was recalled to a sense of my true position by a sound that drove all carnal thoughts from my mind: a deafening volley of musketry crashed in the street just outside the flimsy house-wall, there was a clash of steel, a jabber of native voices – pirates, for certain – and in the distance an English voice bawling orders to take cover.

It seemed a capital notion; I pinned the wriggling wench to the floor, brandished my pistol, and mouthed at her to be silent. She lay shuddering in my grip, her face working with terror – lovely little face it was, part Chink-Indian-Malay, probably, great eyes filled with tears, short nose, plump little lips – and, by George, she was handsomely built, too; more by instinct than a-purpose, I found myself taking an appraising fondle, and she trembled under my hand, but had sense enough to keep her mouth shut.

I listened fearfully; the pirates were moving just beyond our screen wall, and then suddenly they were blazing away again, yelling and cursing or crying out in agony, feet running and shots whining horribly near – I clapped a hand over her mouth and gripped her close, terrified that she would scream and bring some bestial savage cleaving through the flimsy wall to fillet me; we lay there, in the stuffy dimness of the stair-foot, with the noise of battle pounding by not six feet away, and once, during a second’s lull in the tumult, I heard the sounds of squealing and wailing somewhere overhead – the other young ladies of the Patusan finishing school waiting to be ravished and murdered, presumably. I found I was hissing hysterically in her ear: “Quiet, quiet, quiet, for G-d’s sake!” and to my astonishment she was whimpering tearfully back, “Amiga sua, amiga sua!” stroking my sweating face with her hand, a look of terrified entreaty in her eyes – she was even trying to smile, too, a pathetic little grimace, straining to bring her slobbering lips up to mine, making little moaning noises.

Well, I’ve seen women in the grip of terror often enough, but I couldn’t account for this passionate frenzy – until I realized that my shuddering was of a curiously rhythmic nature, that I had a quivering tit in one hand and a plump thigh in the other, that our nether garments seemed to have come adrift somehow, and that my innards were convulsing with another sensation besides fear. I was so startled I nearly broke stride – I’d never have believed that I could gallop a female without realizing I was doing it, yet here we were, thundering away like King Hal on honeymoon, after all I’d been through that day, and with battle, murder, and sudden death raging around us. It just shows how your better instinct will prevail in a crisis – some fall to prayer, others cry upon Queen and Country, but here’s one, I’m proud to say, who instinctively fornicated in the jaws of death, gibbering with fright and reckless lust, but giving of his best, for when you realize it may be your last ride you make the most of it. And, d’you know, it may well be true that perfect love casteth out fear, as Dr Arnold used to say; leastways, I doubt if I can ever have been in finer tupping trim, for in the last ecstatic moment my partner fainted clean away, and you can’t do better by ’em than that.

They were still going at it hammer and tongs outside, but after a while the action seemed to move along, and when presently I heard in the distance the unmistakable sound of a British cheer, I judged it was safe to venture forth again. My wench had come to, and was lying limp and blubbering, too scared to stir; I had to lay the flat of my sword across her rump to drive her up the stairs, and then, after a cautious prowl, I sallied out.

It was all over by then. My blue-jackets, who didn’t seem to have missed me, had driven off the pirate attack, and were busy emptying the fort of its valuables before it was burned, for Brooke was determined to destroy the pirate nests utterly. I told ’em that during the fighting I’d heard the cries of women in one of the buildings, and that the poor creatures must be sought out and treated with all consideration – I was very stern about that, but when they went to look it appeared that the whole gaggle had decamped into the jungle; there wasn’t a living soul left in the place, so I went off to find Brooke and report.²⁹

Outside the fort it was a nightmare. The open space down to the river was littered with enemy corpses – most of them headless, for the victorious Dyaks had been busy at their ghastly work of collecting trophies, and the river itself was just a mess of smoking wreckage. The pirate praus had either been burned in the battle or had fled upriver; fewer than a quarter of them had escaped, scores of their crews had been killed or driven into the jungle, and great numbers of wounded and prisoners had been herded into one of the captured forts. All five of them had been taken, and two of them were already alight; when night came down on Patusan it was still as bright as day from the orange flare of the burning buildings, the heat was so intense that for a time we had to retire to our boats, but all through the night the work had to go on – prisoners to be guarded and fed, our own wounded to be cared for, the loot of the forts assessed and shipped, our vessels repaired, stores replenished, fresh weapons and ammunition issued, dead counted, and the whole sickening confusion restored to some sort of order.

I’ve seen the aftermath of battle fifty times if I’ve seen it once, and it’s h-ll, but through all the foulness and exhaustion there’s always one cheery thought – I’m here. Sick and sore and weary, perhaps, but at least alive and sound with a place to lie down – and I’d had a good if somewhat alarming rattle into the bargain. The one snag was that there’d been no sign of the Sulu Queen, so the whole filthy business would have to be gone through again, which was not to be contemplated.

I said as much to Brooke, in the faint hope that I might get him to give up – of course, I played it full of manly anguish, torn between love of Elspeth and concern at what her rescue had already cost. “T’ain’t right, raja,” says I, looking piously constipated. “I can’t ask this kind of … of sacrifice from you and your people. G-d knows how many lives will be lost – how many noble fellows … no, it won’t do. She’s my wife, and – well, it’s up to me, don’t you see …”

It was dreadful humbug, hinting I’d take on the job single-handed, in some unspecified fashion – given the chance I’d have legged it for Singapore that instant, sent out reward notices, and sat back out of harm’s way. From which you may gather that a busy day among the Borneo pirates had quite dissipated the conscientious lunacy which had temporarily come over me in the stokehold the previous night. But I was wasting my time, of course; he just gripped my hand with tears in his eyes and cried:

“Do you truly think there’s a man of us who would fail you now? We’ll win her back at any cost! Besides,” and he gritted his teeth, “there are these pirate rascals to stamp out still – we’ve won the decisive battle, thanks to valour such as yours, but we must give ’em the coup de grâce! So you see, I’d be bound to go on, even if your loved one were not in their foul hands.” He gripped my shoulder. “You’re a white man, Flashman – and I know you’d go on alone if you had to; well, you can count on J.B. to blazes and beyond, so there!” That was what I’d been afraid of.

We were another two days at Patusan, waiting for news from Brooke’s spies and keeping to windward of the Dyaks’ funeral pyres on the river-bank, before word came that the Sulu Queen had been sighted twenty miles farther upstream, with a force of enemy praus, but when we cruised up there on the 10th the birds had flown to Sharif Muller’s fort on the Undup river, so for two more days we must toil after them, plagued by boiling heat and mosquitoes, the stream running stronger all the time and our pace reduced to a struggling crawl. The Phlegethon had to be left behind because of the current and snags, to which the pirates had added traps of tree-trunks and sunken rattan nets to trammel our sweeps; every few minutes there would have to be a halt while we cut our way loose, hacking at the creeper ropes, and then hauling on, drenched with sweat and oily water, panting for breath, eyes forever turning to that steaming olive wall that hemmed us in either side, waiting for the whistle of a sumpitan dart that every now and then would come winging out of the jungle to strike a paddler or quiver in the gunwales. Beith, Keppel’s surgeon, was up and down the fleet constantly, digging the beastly things out of limbs and cauterizing wounds; fortunately they were seldom fatal, but I reckoned we were suffering a casualty every half-hour.

It wouldn’t have been too bad if I’d still had the Phlegethon’s iron sheets to skulk behind, but I had been assigned to Paitingi’s spy-boat, which was as often as not in the lead; only at night did I go back aboard the Jolly Bachelor with Brooke, and that wasn’t much comfort – huddled up for sleep at the foot of her ladder after the tintacks had been scattered on her deck against night attack, sweating in the cramped dark, filthy and unkempt, listening to the screaming noise of the jungle and the occasional distant throb of a war-gong – doom, doom, doom, out of the misty dark.

“Drum away, Muller,” Brooke would say, “we’ll be playing you a livelier tune presently, just you wait. We’ll see some fun then – eh, Flashy?”

By his lights, I suppose that what happened on the third day along the Undup was fun – a dawn attack on Muller’s fort, which was a great stockaded bamboo castle on a steep hill. The rocket-praus pounded it, and the remnants of the pirate fleet in their anchorage, and then Dido’s men and the Dyaks swarmed ashore, the latter war-dancing on the landing-ground before the assault, leaping, shaking their sumpitans and yelling “Dyak!” (“that’s aye their way,” says Paitingi to me as we watched from the spy-boat, “they’d sooner yelp than fight” – which I thought pretty hard). Poor Charlie Wade was killed storming the fort; I heard later he’d been shot while carrying a Malay child to shelter, which shows what Christian charity gets you.

The only part I took in the fight, though, was when a prau broke free from the pirate anchorage and made off upriver, sweeps going like blazes and war-gong thundering. Paitingi danced up and down, roaring in Scotch and Arabic that he could see Muller’s personal banner on her, so our spy set off in pursuit. The prau foundered, burning from rocket-fire, but Muller, a persevering big villain in quilted armour and black turban, took to a sampan; we overhauled it, banging away, and I was having the horrors at the thought of boarding when the sensible chap dived overboard with his gang at his heels and swam for it. We lost him near the jungle-edge, and Paitingi tore his beard, cussing as only an Arab can.

“Come back and fight, ye son-of-a-Malay-b---h!” cries he, shaking his fist. “Istagfurallah! Is it thus that pirates prove their courage? Aye, run to the jungle, ye Port Said pimp, you! By the Seven Heroes, I shall give thy head to my Lingas yet, thou uncircumcised carrion! Ach! Burn his grandmither – he’s awa’ wi’ it, so he is!”

By this time the fort was taken,³⁰ and we left it burning, and the dead unburied, for it had been discovered from a prisoner that our principal quarry, Suleiman Usman, with the Sulu Queen – and presumably my errant wife – had taken refuge up the Skrang river with a force of praus. So it was back down the Undup again, a good deal faster than we had come up, to the mainstream, where Phlegethon was guarding the junction.

“You can’t run much farther now, Usman, my son,” says Brooke. “Skrang’s navigable for a few miles at most; if he takes Sulu Queen any distance up he’ll ground her. He’s bound to stand and fight – why, he’s still got more men and keels than we have, and while we’ve been chasing Muller he’s had time to put ’em in order. He must know we’re pretty used up and thinned out, too.”

That was no lie, either. The faces round the table in Phlegethon’s tiny ward-room were puffy and hollow-eyed with fatigue; Keppel, the spruce naval officer of a week ago, looked like a scarecrow with his unshaven cheeks and matted hair, his uniform coat cut and torn and the epaulette burned away; Charlie Johnson, with his arm in a bloodstained sling, was dozing and waking like a clockwork doll; even Stuart, normally the liveliest of fellows, was sitting tuckered out, with his head in his hands, his half-cleaned revolver on the table before him. (I can see it now, with the little brass ram-rod sticking out of the barrel, and a big black moth perched on the foresight, rubbing its feelers.) Only Brooke was still as offensively chipper as ever, clean-shaven and alert, for all that his eyes looked like streaky bacon; he glanced round at us, and I could guess that he was thinking: this pack can’t follow much longer.

“However,” says he, grinning slyly, “we ain’t as used up as all that, are we? I reckon there’s three days’ energy left in every man here – and four in me. I tell you what …” he squared his elbows on the table “… I’m going to give a dinner-party tomorrow night – full dress for everyone, of course – on the eve of what is going to be our last fight against these rascals—”

“Bismillah! I’d like tae believe that,” says Paitingi.

“Well, our last on this expedition, anyway,” cries Brooke. “It’s bound to be – either we wipe them up or they finish us – but that ain’t going to happen, not after the drubbings we’ve given ’em already. I’ve got a dozen of champagne down below, and we’ll crack ’em to our crowning success, eh?”

“Wouldn’t it be better to keep ’em for afterwards?” says Keppel, but at this Stuart raised his head and shook it, smiling wearily.

“Might not all be here by then. This way, everyone’s sure of a share beforehand – that’s what you said the night before we went in against the Lingas in the old Royalist, ain’t it, J.B.? Remember – the nineteen of us, five years ago? ‘There’s no drinking after death.’ By Jove, though – there ain’t many of the nineteen left …”

“Plenty of new chums, though,” says Brooke quickly, “and they’re going to sing for their supper, just the way we did then, and have done ever since.” He shoved Charlie Johnson’s nodding head to and fro. “Wake up, Charlie! It’s singing night, if you want your dinner tomorrow! Come on, or I’ll shove a wet sponge down your back! Sing, laddie, sing! George has given you the lead!”

Johnson blinked and stammered, but Brooke gave tongue with “Here’s a health to the King, and a lasting peace”, thumping the table, and Charlie came in, croaking, on the lines

“So let us drink while we have breath

For there’s no drinking after death”

and carried on solo to the end, goggling like an owl, while Brooke beat the table and cried, good boy, Charlie, sick ’em, pup. The others looked embarrassed, but Brooke rounded on Keppel, badgering him to sing; Keppel didn’t want to, at first, and sat looking annoyed and sheepish, but Brooke worked away at him, full of high spirits, and what else was the chap to do? So he sang “Spanish Ladies” – he sang well, I’m bound to say, in a rolling bass – and by this time even the tiredest round the table were grinning and joining in the chorus, with Brooke encouraging and keeping time, and watching us like a hawk. He sang “The Arethusa” himself, and even coaxed Paitingi, who gave us a psalm, at which Charlie giggled hysterically, but Keppel joined in like thunder, and then Brooke glanced at me, nodding quietly, so I found myself giving ’em “Drink, puppy, drink”, and they stamped and thumped to make the cabin shiver.

It was a shameful performance – so forced and false it was disgusting, this jolly lunatic putting heart into his men by making ’em sing, and everyone hating it. But they sang, you’ll notice, and me along with ’em, and at the finish Brooke jumps up and cries:

“Come, that’s none so bad! We’ll have a choir yet. Spy-boats will lead tomorrow – 5 a.m. sharp, then Dido’s pinnace, the two cutters, gig, Jolly Bachelor, then the small boats. Dinner at seven, prompt. Good night, gentlemen!”

And off he went, leaving us gawking at each other; then Keppel shook his head, smiling, and sighed, and we dispersed, feeling pretty foolish, I dare say. I found myself wondering why they tolerated Brooke and his schoolboy antics, which were patently pathetic; why did they humour him? – for that is what it was. It wasn’t fear, or love, or even respect; I suspect they felt it would somehow be mean to disappoint him, and so they fell in with every folly, whether it was charging a pirate prau in a jolly-boat or singing shanties when they ought to have been nursing their wounds or crawling away to sink into an exhausted sleep. Yes, they did humour him – G-d only knows why. Mind you, mad and dangerous as he was, I’m bound to say he was difficult to refuse, in anything.

I managed it later that night, though, admittedly not to his face. I was snug under the Jolly Bachelor’s ladder when the pirates came sneaking silently out of the mist in sampans and tried to take us by surprise. They were on the deck and murdering our lookouts before we were any the wiser, and if it hadn’t been that the deck was littered with tacks to catch their bare feet, that would have been the end of the ship, and everyone aboard, including me. As it was, there was the deuce of a scrap in the dark, with Brooke yelling for everyone to pitch in – I burrowed closer into cover myself, clutching my pistol, until the hurroosh had died down, when I scuttled up quickly and blundered about, glaring and letting on that I’d been there all the time. I did yeoman work helping to heave dead pirates overside, and then we stood to until daylight, but they didn’t trouble us again.

Next day it began to rain like fury, and we set off up the Skrang into a perfect sheet of water which cut visibility almost to nothing and pitted the river like small-shot. All day we toiled slowly into the murk, with the river narrowing until it was a bare furlong wide, and d---l an enemy did we see. I sat sodden in Paitingi’s spy-boat, reduced to the nadir of misery, baling constantly until my whole body cried out with one great ache; by dark I was dropping with fatigue – and then, when we anchored, d--n my skin if we didn’t have to shave and wash and dig out clean duds for Brooke’s dinner-party on the Jolly Bachelor. Looking back, I can’t imagine why I put up with it – I don’t attempt to fathom the minds of the others; they all dressed in their best, soaking wet, and I couldn’t show unwilling, could I? We assembled in the Jolly Bachelor’s cabin, steaming and dripping, and there was the table laid for dinner, silver, glass, and all, with Brooke in his blue swallow-tail and brass buttons, welcoming us like a b----y governor-general, taking wine with Keppel, waving us to our seats, and frowning because the turtle soup was cold.

I don’t believe this is happening, thinks I; it’s all a terrible nightmare, and Stuart isn’t sitting opposite me in his black broadcloth with his string-cravat tied in a fancy bow, and this ain’t real champagne I’m drinking by the light of reeking slush-lamps, with everyone crowded round the board in the tiny cabin, and they’re not listening breathlessly while I tell ’em about getting Alfred Mynn leg-before at Lord’s. There aren’t any pirates, really, and we’re not miles up some stinking creek in Borneo, drinking the loyal toast with the thunder bellowing outside and the rain gushing down the companion, and Brooke clipping cigars and passing them round while the Malay steward puts the port on the table. I couldn’t bring myself to believe that all round us was a fleet of sampans and spy-boats, loaded with Dyaks and blue-jackets and other assorted savages, and that tomorrow we would be reliving the horror of Patusan all over again; it was all too wild and confused and unreal, and although I must have accounted for a bottle of warm champagne, and about a pint of port, I got up from that table as sober as I sat down.

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